← Empire: World History
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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:20]
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- [00:46]
Alex von Tunzelmann
How doers Get More Done Olivia loves a challenge.
- [00:51]
Expedia Advertiser
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- [01:29]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan.
- [01:33]
William Dalrymple
And me, William Dalrymple.
- [01:35]
Anita Anand
And again, we are delighted to be joined by Alex von Tunsleman, author of Blood and Sand. It is a marvellous book and we left you on quite the cliffhanger. I mean, I think it's one of the best cliffhangers we've ever done. World War 3, it's about to erupt.
- [01:50]
Alex von Tunzelmann
I mean, it's a biggie.
- [01:52]
Anita Anand
I mean, it is a biggie. And I think people these days do not realize they talk about, you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or they talk about the times we're living in today, but this was properly on the brink. And just remind us, why were you looking at two different arenas of action which both seem to be going to hell in a handcart simultaneously?
- [02:12]
Alex von Tunzelmann
That's absolutely right. So what you had is Britain and France colluding with Israel to start a war in the Middle east, specifically for Israel to stage an invasion of Egypt that would allow Britain and France to intervene, ostensibly to protect the Suez Canal, but actually really to take over and topple Gamal Abdul Nasser, the leader of Egypt, simultaneously and unrelated. And yet in the minds of many very powerful people, surely it had to be related. There was the first major uprising in the Soviet satellite states against Soviet control. And that happened in Hungary. And it was a popular uprising centered around Budapest, but actually sort of nationwide. Completely spontaneous and yet happening so much in the same days that you had Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, and indeed over in the us, many people in Washington thinking, surely there must be some sort of plan going on here on the other side, and these things must be linked.
- [03:12]
Anita Anand
So what was extraordinary from that episode, and I think it bears repeating before we sort of dive into the nitty gritty of all of this, is two things are apparent. Number one, these are almost the death throes of a colonial mindset in Europe, because that is what France and Britain are working on.
- [03:30]
William Dalrymple
Some would say that the colonial mindset has not entirely disappeared from Europe even today. But yes, we'll let that pass on.
- [03:37]
Anita Anand
This issue of the canal itself, that how could it possibly be run and how can we possibly do business with an Egyptian looking after a canal in Egypt? And you've got this sort of secretive conversation going on between these two old colonial powers. But on the other hand, the thing that I found most eye watering of all is that you've got the brink of World War three going on and no direct line of communication between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and America, no way that they can pick up the phone and back channel each other going, are you really doing this? No, we're not. Okay, stand down. There is just no, there's over communication, secret communication on one side and zero communication on the other side.
- [04:16]
Alex von Tunzelmann
That's right. There's no direct phone line actually between the White House and the Kremlin till after the Cuban Missile Crisis several years later.
- [04:22]
Anita Anand
Astonishing.
- [04:23]
William Dalrymple
There's also just the astonishing cynicism of this whole invasion. The fact that it's sort of so completely naked, and the fact that there's no even remote pretense at any virtuous motive for this. It sort of goes right back to sort of 18th century Clive in India, sort of weighing one power against another. And just the completely open cynicism of the British, the sense that they can do this just because they want to do it and don't even have to dress it up. It's an astonishingly sort of backward glance from the, from the Seven Year War or something.
- [04:57]
Alex von Tunzelmann
I mean, unfortunately, as you say, the mindset of them probably also hadn't changed really that much by the 1950s. And I think it's very striking from both Britain and France. And in a sense, the difference, I'm sure we'll come back to this, because it comes up again and again between Britain and France, is that France is completely shameless about this. Whereas actually in Britain, Eden does feel the need to at least try and keep this secret. In fact, he gets quite obsessed with the idea of keeping collusion secret. He wanted all copies of the secret agreement with Israel. The protocol of server found and burnt. Both the Israelis and the French completely refused to do that. So didn't happen. And he kept lying about this for the rest of his life. In his memoirs, he wrote there was no collusion, even though by then everybody knew that there had been. He tried to insist on it for the rest of his life. So he obviously did feel some sort of shame about it. Not enough not to do it, but enough to feel sort of guilty and try and cover it up.
- [05:52]
Anita Anand
I mean, you've mentioned Eden, so let's do a quick recap. If people haven't listened via the Empire Club. And by the way, this is a very good reason to join the Empire Club because you don't have to wait in between episodes. You can just binge the whole lot. EmpirePoduk.com is where you can join up and then you can get these things in one great hot flood. But if people are listening and there's been a period of time. So Anthony Eden, you've mentioned, debonair man who's been in government for a very long time. He was there during Yalta. He was critical of Churchill. He's handsome, he is older, with a much younger wife. You have Nasser, who we've kind of established as a bit matinee idol, kind of hot, much younger and very much more interesting, perhaps to Eden's wife and Eden at this point in time, and Guy Morlay. And I just remind us about Guy Morlay because we sort of talked about him very lightly, but we need to sort of paint a picture.
- [06:43]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Yes, I mean, he's a really interesting character. So he was. He quite recently came in as the leader of France just in 1956, and he was a socialist. But the thing that you have to sort of adjust your mind to from a modern perspective is that that did not mean that in any way he was going to try to give independence to France's kind of colonial possessions, partly because they weren't really seen as colonial possessions by the French. They were. So Algeria, which was having this uprising against French control, was seen by. By the French and by indeed some Algerians as part inherently of France, and therefore, you know, an overseas department with equal rights. And therefore they're saying, well, it's not a colony, so this uprising is effectively illegitimate. And he very much took that view, that this was some troublemakers being annoying in a place that was inherently part of France.
- [07:35]
William Dalrymple
And the third part of this triangle is David Ben Gurion in Israel, who is this sort of Einstein lookalike with kind of mad gray hair, very capable, extremely ruthless. He'd been the one who in a sense had overseen the Palestinian nakba only eight years before and from the Arab point of view responsible for 750,000 Palestinians ending up outside Palestine, many of them sitting now on the Egyptian border in Gaza where of course they remain. And these three pulled together, as you described beautifully last time, Alex, into this unholy triangle, working together to re establish colonial power effectively on the Suez zone. Reacting to Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal by using this as an opportunity to reassert control.
- [08:28]
Alex von Tunzelmann
And I would just emphasize that, you know, it was sort of reacting to the nationalization of the Suez Canal. But that was really a hook. All of these countries already had their reasons and these leaders specifically already had reasons. They hated Nasser, which long predated the nationalization. So really when that happened it was a catalyst. But it wasn't that Nasser could have avoided this by just not doing that.
- [08:49]
William Dalrymple
But in some version of the stories, Nasser is aware that it's going to provoke a massive response from Britain and France. It's not that he's surprised that they reacted the way they did.
- [08:59]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Absolutely. I mean he knows that this is a bit of a trigger. But at the same time, you know, it was, this was already courses of action that were well underway. I mean, you know, even if you go back to March 1956, long before the canals nationalized, you have, you know, things like George Young and British secret intelligence services planning actually a triple coup simultaneously in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt to try and re establish Britain's interests in the Middle East. You have all sorts of kind of extraordinary preparations going on for regime change in that region and for promoting, well, the British want to promote Iraqi interests, the Americans Saudi. But basically the CIA was very pro Nasser and saw him as a very useful figure in the Middle East. They thought he was someone they could work with.
- [09:48]
William Dalrymple
A stabilizing nationalist, but not pro Soviet.
- [09:52]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Not Marxist, not pro Soviet, independent. Going down that non aligned route, you know, I mean not their dream of a leader, but much more practical and very powerful.
- [10:00]
Anita Anand
They thought he was a man they could do business with, he was younger, he spoke the language and they felt that he could be if not tamed, but at least spoken to. Now let's go forward to this very important date, October 30, 1956. So after all these secret meetings have taken place. The cigarette packet plan is being enacted. An ultimatum is issued directly to the ambassador of Egypt. What exactly are they saying to him?
- [10:27]
Alex von Tunzelmann
So yes, Britain and France issue a 12 hour ultimatum which is an incredibly short period of time by the way for a military ultimatum and they issue it technically simultaneously to the ambassador at the Egyptian Embassy and to the charge d' affaires at the Israeli Embassy in London or the. Though of course the Israelis know this is coming because they are in on this plan. So that is really for show. Both nations were ordered to stop fighting and withdraw 10 miles from the Suez Canal. Egypt was also told to accept temporary occupation temporary of key points on the Canal by Anglo French forces operating as a police action. And if they didn't these countries accept this ultimatum within 12 hours Britain and France would intervene militarily.
- [11:15]
Anita Anand
But what is extraordinary about this is that actually the mileage between these two forces on the ground does not make sense when you apply it to the ultimatum. And I think you mentioned this last time but it's worth doing the distances again. Alex, I know you mentioned them last time but just tell us exactly why this sounds so stupid.
- [11:33]
Alex von Tunzelmann
After 12 hours everyone can see this as stupid because the ultimatum had been planned on the basis that the British and French thought the Israelis would probably get all the way to the Suez Canal by this point. Well they hadn't. They were still bogged down in the Sinai and that's actually quite a long way east of the Suez Canal. So in fact the front where the Egyptians and Israelis were fighting each other was then between about 75 and 125 miles east of the canal. So effectively this statement that they must both withdraw 10 miles from the canal was actually asking the Egyptians to withdraw, draw another 135 miles within their own territory while Israel was actually being asked to advance between 65 and 115 miles into Egyptian territory. So this just didn't work.
- [12:22]
William Dalrymple
How did that happen? Just that they, they delivered it at the wrong time. That they hadn't got the intelligence of where the armies were.
- [12:28]
Anita Anand
It's the Israelis being bogged down. They just didn't get as far as they thought they would get. I mean they just counted on the Israelis moving a lot faster.
- [12:35]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Huge, huge cock up. I mean and it was, you could tell it had been pre planned because of this because it wasn't responsible but.
- [12:43]
Anita Anand
No resemblance of what was going on the ground. Now how did civil servants, civil servants will have been watching this? I mean if a secret plan and Eden was as paranoid as he was for Some of them, they will have woken up, read the newspapers or heard it on the wireless that hang on, we've issued an ultimatum and hang on, I know a little bit about the region. Hang on a minute, I've got many hang ons here. I mean, what kind of response was going on around the British Parliament and the Civil service?
- [13:07]
Alex von Tunzelmann
I mean, people were completely horrified by this and sort of didn't know what to make of it. So I mean, you know, you have things like Evelyn Shuckberg, who was a civil servant, listening to the radio and he wrote in his diary at that point, you know, staggered by this. It seems to have every fault. It is clearly not genuinely impartial since the Israelis are nowhere near the canal. It puts us on the side of the Israelis. The Americans were not consulted. The UN is flouted. We are about to be at war without the nation or Parliament having been given a hint of it. We think AE Anthony Eden has gone off his head.
- [13:39]
William Dalrymple
Brilliant.
- [13:41]
Alex von Tunzelmann
That's pretty representative actually of what people were saying, you know, that, I mean, people, because people aren't completely stupid, they could see that this was nonsense.
- [13:49]
Anita Anand
Yeah. So. But then he stands up. It's 15 minutes after the announcement of this ultimatum. Eden finally takes this to Parliament because he's been doing this without any kind of democratic mandate whatsoever. It's an important foreign policy decision, but he has not passed it by anybody else. Do you know from Hansard or from the time, what was the reaction when Eden got to his feet and finally told Parliament the thing that he had been planning with the French for a long time and they just still don't know that he'd secretly been planning with the French.
- [14:17]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Well, you know, there's a little bit of the Conservatives backing him, although you have to remember a lot of them probably also didn't know about this conspiracy and this secret plan and thought he was being genuine.
- [14:28]
William Dalrymple
That's a very important part of this story. And many people remember this as a great moment of division between left and right. For example, my parents in law, who were engaged at this time, very nearly broke off their marriage because my, my slightly right wing father in law was very much behind Suez, giving Johnny Arab what, what he deserved. While my mother in law thought this was an appalling act of, of antediluvian colonialism. And I think that was reflected across the country. This is a, a major dividing line when many people had had very different ideas.
- [15:00]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Yeah. And I mean you certainly see Labour figures immediately challenging this in Parliament. Dennis Healey asking, you know, have The Americans been consulted, have you asked them what they think of this ultimatum? And Eden just comes out with this very bland response about, we've been in close communication with them, which is not true, actually. You know, they haven't. They've been concealing it. They do get challenged immediately. And as you say, you initially, what you see in the first year, it evolves very fast, this situation. What you see initially is a sort of partisan left right split. But actually, as it becomes more and more clear what is going on, you actually see quite a lot of people on the right also deeply horrified by what is happening.
- [15:40]
Anita Anand
I mean, because this doesn't make sense. And you've got to also remember, apart from it just not making sense, there's nothing a Tory grandee hates more, let me tell you, even to this day, than being kept in the dark. They feel insulted, they feel slighted, they feel disrespected. So you've got all of this sort of momentum building up, even sort of bubbling up within the party. So, party loyalties aside, Eden is not universally liked by his Tory.
- [16:04]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Very far from it at all.
- [16:05]
William Dalrymple
Quite unprofessional already before all this.
- [16:09]
Anita Anand
Yeah, yeah. He was very high handed with colleagues. He talked down to everybody. He thought he was better than everybody. He was also remarkably bitchy about his colleagues as well. So, you know, he was an unpopular man in the party. And so when he stands up in all of his pomposity and says before Parliament, what we hoped for, what we asked for, what we prayed for, is that both parties to whom these appeals have been made, Israel and Egypt, he meant, will accept them, because if they do accept them, then we will truly believe that a new era can open in the Middle East. And you can just imagine, although, you know, Hansard, I often think this is a failure of. Hansard does not record the. And the.
- [16:50]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Ugh.
- [16:51]
Anita Anand
The eye rolling alone would have been really voluble on those benches. And you've got, you know, the Labour MP you mentioned, Dennis Healey, by the way, quick aside about Dennis Healey. What's the phrase that you most associate with Dennis Healey? Silly billy. Right. That's what he's meant to have said. You silly Billy didn't say it. It was Mike Yarwood who did impersonations of him, who first brought in Silly Billy, because he was actually very, very funny in his insults. And it was only after Mike Yarwood did it that the substantially eyebrowed Dennis Healy took it on and made it his own and then became famous for Silly billy, wasn't his phrase Anyway, that's an aside, but Tony Benn, another Labour mp, wrote in his diary on this day, it is impossible to see how this can end without far graver disasters. And what is. What is going on in America? Are they also thinking of far graver disasters?
- [17:39]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Alex, they are absolutely furious. Eisenhower is livid about this. I mean, there are stories about, you know, they're sort of wonderfully discreet, I think, in a way that actually some of the British diaries aren't. But they sort of said, you know, the White House rang with barracks from language not heard since the era of General Grant. I mean, so you can only imagine the effing and blinding that was going on about Britain at this point. Shouts of perfidious Albion, this sort of thing. You know, there was a deep sense of betrayal.
- [18:12]
William Dalrymple
What was Eisenhower's attitude about the British in general? I mean, was he during the. During the Second World War, was he pro British and this was. This was a break from his usual. Or was he always pretty cynical about British motives?
- [18:23]
Alex von Tunzelmann
No, Eisenhower was pretty pro British.
- [18:25]
Anita Anand
He liked Churchill.
- [18:26]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Yeah, yeah, he liked Churchill. He kind of. Well, mostly. I mean, he was quite irritated by some points, but everybody was quite irritated by Churchill at points. I mean, this is.
- [18:35]
Anita Anand
Even his wife and children.
- [18:36]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Yes, especially his wife and children, you know, but I mean, definitely, I think Eisenhower always saw the British and he kind of said to his, you know, look, the British are always by my right hand, you know, they're really important ally. But this was just way too far. And it was a huge betrayal of that kind of what was previously considered the special relationship. This idea which, you know, between kind of Eisenhower and Churchill and so on, had seemed quite convincing. This sort of genuine friendship, you know, suddenly looked like complete nonsense.
- [19:08]
William Dalrymple
Also a break with this new spirit of the age. The United nations had just been formed. We had our special episode with Thant about the early days of the United nations. And this is meant to be a new era. And there's been so much rhetoric on all sides saying that, you know, the age of imperialism is over, the British have left India and here we are with the British sort of doing Cliven India stuff all over again in 1956.
- [19:29]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Exactly. And I mean, and also just not telling the Americans and, you know, becoming quite clear quite quickly that in fact they've been lying to the Americans for months.
- [19:38]
Anita Anand
You can sort of see Eden sort of in his superiority, thinking, oh, we'll sort out the Americans later. But he does have to come face to face with Her Majesty the Queen. Now, this has been portrayed A couple of times in film and television adaptation, and I am absolutely dying to know how accurate those are, because certainly in those televisual portrayals, her Maj is not amused at all. Tell me what happens. Oh, glacial, one might say. So just tell us the truth behind what happened, as far as we know. Alex, how did that go, that meeting with the Queen? That happens, by the way, if you don't know. In Britain, there is a weekly sit down between the Prime Minister and the monarch, where the Prime Minister. And it lasts about 15 minutes, two chairs opposite each other, where the Prime Minister of the Day will inform their Majesties, whoever they might be at the time, what is going on, what Her Majesty or His Majesty's Government is doing and what they're thinking. And that conversation where she had no idea would have been orcs, I'm thinking. Go on, Alex, what was it?
- [20:44]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Well, I mean, the thing is, like, for the reasons you said, we actually don't know, because there is a tradition of complete confidentiality between monarch and Prime Minister. There are records of those meetings which are not subject to the Official Secrets act, are never declassified, are not publicly. Really.
- [21:01]
William Dalrymple
They're specifically excluded.
- [21:02]
Alex von Tunzelmann
All royal papers are. Yes. So they're all kept within the Royal archive and you can only access them if they let you, which is very much on their gift. Doesn't matter whether they date back to Elizabeth the First. That's still the case. So we don't know particularly. What we do know is the gossip from the Queen's private secretary who wrote about it. Martin Charters wrote about it quite a bit, who was her private secretary at.
- [21:28]
William Dalrymple
The time, as depicted in the Crown. Brilliantly.
- [21:31]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Absolutely depicted in the Crown, depicted elsewhere, you know, so we know some from him, we know some from Lord Mountbatten, who was, you know, the Queen's cousin and was also a very senior British military leader at this point. And basically he was always kind of talking to the Queen. They had a very close relationship and.
- [21:47]
William Dalrymple
Mountbatten was never shy to let royalty.
- [21:50]
Anita Anand
Who'S gossipy, very trey gossipy.
- [21:54]
Alex von Tunzelmann
I mean, what Charter said is that Mountbatten was talking to her. You know, he said he was. He was typically devious, is what Charter says that. He was saying things like, I think they're being absolutely lunatic. He didn't mean her to sort of then immediately go and repeat that to Eden. He's just kind of trying to put these thoughts in her head, basically. We don't know whether she did directly. What we do know what Charter said, at least if we believe him. Is, I think the Queen believed Eden was mad. When he came for his weekly meetings with the Queen, he ranged up and down and wouldn't sit still. He was edgy, jumpy. And what we do know, a small piece of information we do have because this was very unusual, is that she requested, on that 1st day, 30th of October, when this kicks off, she requested top secret daily reports on the progress of military operations and intelligence to be delivered to her from the next day. And those would continue to be delivered daily till the 22nd of November. And you can read those briefings in the British National Archives. So that's very unusual that she would have done that.
- [22:59]
William Dalrymple
We should say at this point that Eden is about twice the Queen's age, she's just about 30, and he's coming on for 60 at this point.
- [23:06]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Yes. And I mean, I think, you know, it's worth bearing that in mind that like, whatever passed there, you know, she's really still a very young woman and very much kind of at the beginning of her reign, Uncle Dickie probably leaning on her off camera a bit and saying, these people are all nuts. And her trying to conduct herself. I mean, I think, you know, the thing we do know about her personality is she was deeply concerned with duty and with kind of conducting things in a very correct way, trying to hold it together, while Eden's being basically pretty loopy in front of her and jumping up and down like a maniac and kind of saying these things that she knows aren't true. I mean, lying to her.
- [23:39]
Anita Anand
Yeah, she believes in order and she believes in, you know, sort of not the we don't have a written constitution, but the unwritten constitution, which is if you're going to do something this big, you tell Parliament, you ask Parliament, you get Parliament behind you. This is not a monarchy or a dictatorship. And certainly the monarch is not about to be replaced by Anthony Eaton, who suddenly, on a whim, decides to do something this big. So one can imagine that all that we know of of Queen Elizabeth II is that she would have been pretty pissed off because all of this flies in the face of everything that she knows is duty to the country.
- [24:14]
William Dalrymple
How does Nasser react to this? At the same time, is he immediately onto what's going on? Does he correctly deduce this to be a ruse?
- [24:25]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Well, it starts to become apparent very quickly and actually Nasser doesn't really believe this can be happening. He's so. It's so probable, completely shocked, yes. By this happening, that he sort of doesn't really believe it. And I mean, you know, they can see that there are British planes flying over, they can see what's happening and they quickly realize, I mean the first problem here is very, very quickly. So I mean after the ultimatum, for instance, the Egyptian ship Ibrahim Eloel, which in fact used to be HMS Cottesmore but Britain sold it to Egypt, so was an ex British ship was shelling Haifa in Israel. And what happened straight away, and this is still within the 12 hour ultimatum about 3am is that Israel fought back. But so did a French ship intervened on the part of Israel, captured this Egyptian ship, sailed it into Israel. So the French had already broken the ultimatum even though it was only 12 hours.
- [25:17]
William Dalrymple
And the pretense of neutrality, yeah, I.
- [25:19]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Mean neutrality was gone. They were already intervening very clearly on the side of Israel. So you know, Nasser could see this happening and he's kind of what the hell is going on? What is happening here? This is just absolutely baffling. I mean, I know what it looks like, but surely not right?
- [25:33]
Anita Anand
Surely they wouldn't do it. They wouldn't do that. They sure they couldn't do. Not in this day and age, not after the second World War. He may be thinking, however, if you needed a little more convincing, a snowstorm will be thicket because both the British and French embassies in Cairo start destroying all their documents. I mean just indiscriminately, the equivalent of Tesco. Receipts, parking tickets and communiques all go into a furnace. And it's described, I mean you do it beautifully that you know, this sort of light flutter of ash that lands outside. Now if you've got sort of neutral countries who are supposedly policing a volatile situation, they probably wouldn't be burning documents in this way. So I mean all of these are signs.
- [26:14]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Looks a bit stinky, doesn't it?
- [26:16]
Anita Anand
Little bit stinky, yeah. Anyway, look, look, with these ash snow settling around Cairo and the embassies. Let's take a break and we'll come back to what is going on behind the Iron Curtain. Because there are two fields of drama happening simultaneously.
- [26:33]
Commercial Announcer
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- [26:50]
Alex von Tunzelmann
It's so special.
- [26:51]
William Dalrymple
These teams collide.
- [26:52]
Commercial Announcer
Don't miss a lineup filled with electric matchups. Welcome back to College Football Kickoff Week presented by Modelo Labor Day weekend on ESPN and abc. Also available to stream on the all new ESPN app.
- [27:08]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back. So, so as we saw at the end of the last half, at the same time that the British and the French and the Israelis are getting up to all sorts of dodgy shenanigans in the Sinai Desert and heading for the Suez zone, the USSR is mobilizing in Budapest. Alex, bring us up to speed. What's going on in Hungary.
- [27:30]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Well, effectively what had happened in Hungary, you'd have this popular uprising against Soviet control. And it was quite specific in that it wasn't necessarily against communism more broadly. The person they were trying to install was a previous communist leader called Imre Nagy, who was more liberal, less Stalinist.
- [27:48]
Anita Anand
You say Noj, but we should pass it because someone may have read this in a book.
- [27:52]
William Dalrymple
You say Noj, I say Nagy. Let's call the whole thing off.
- [27:55]
Anita Anand
N a G Y. So all of us ignoramuses have been reading this as Nagy and here you are to educate it. It is Noj. Okay, thank you.
- [28:03]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Nodge is your Hungarian pronunciation, I think, although some Hungarians can call in and say how incredibly poor my, my Hungarian pronunciation is. Fair enough.
- [28:09]
William Dalrymple
I'm a Hungarian friend in Delhi called Peter Nagi who's going to be very put out discover he's been mispronouncing his name all his life.
- [28:16]
Anita Anand
You should be the first in India to call him Nodge and see how that goes down.
- [28:20]
Alex von Tunzelmann
I mean, to be fair, I've mispronounced my own surname as Von Tanzelman rather than Fontinselman. So I mean, you know, I can only say that I'm also setting a standard here.
- [28:28]
Anita Anand
Yeah, but you were telling us about Nodge.
- [28:30]
Alex von Tunzelmann
But indeed, you know, he's not somebody who, and this is sort of a fairly crucial point, that he's not somebody who's kind of, kind of anti communist, is a communist, just a much more liberal communist. And somebody who's not a Stalinist doesn't have that sort of taint to him. The Soviets had previously had him as leader of Hungary. So what people were reacting against really was that Soviet control was the incredibly harsh, overbearing Stalinist Soviet control. And the rebellion was against that and trying to do this. But it really worried the Soviets back in Moscow. Partly that was because all of this was also happening in the Middle East. And what they thought is that surely the CIA had its fingers all over what was going on in Budapest. And even though that might look like a kind of not anti communist revolution, they thought it probably was.
- [29:18]
William Dalrymple
In your book you have this scene of a Kremlin reception for the Prime Minister of Afghanistan and Molotov, after whom the Molotov cocktail is named and which will be brought into play both in Budapest and indeed in Port Suez. Molotov tells everyone that the British and French are behind the Israeli invasion.
- [29:40]
Alex von Tunzelmann
That's right. He basically said at this dinner party, this is what's happening. And the British ambassador, in total good faith, by the way, because he has also not been informed. Exactly, says, this is absolute nonsense. You mustn't say this, it's not true. There's no way that the Britain would have done that in this day and age. That Britain will certainly soon be condemning Israeli aggression at the UN as it always did, and this will be the correct course of action. And then he returned to his embassy after it and found the text of this Anglo French ultimatum. And he said, as I read it, I couldn't believe my eyes. I even began to wonder if I'd drunk too much at the Kremlin.
- [30:22]
William Dalrymple
One too many bonker shots.
- [30:24]
Alex von Tunzelmann
What is happening? You know? So as I say, he was answering in good faith. He was just wrong. But of course, to the Soviets, this just looked like a deeper and deeper conspiracy.
- [30:32]
Anita Anand
Yeah, I mean, he wrote, he wrote, I thought I might have drunk too much. I can imagine. It was F bomb, F bomb, F bomb. F bomb. F bomb. This is so embarrassing because it is. It's a nightmare for an ambassador to be completely out of the loop and to have, you know, Molotov old stone ass being better informed than even the man inside the tent.
- [30:50]
Alex von Tunzelmann
It's totally humiliating. You know, and you've got to think this, and this is why, you know, when you ask whether conservatives support Eden and all of this, this is why a lot of them start to shift, is that they're humiliated. I mean, this is really awful. Even people who are quite sort of establishment British, who probably don't like Nasser terribly much, are quite loyal, you know, start thinking, hold on, this is disgraceful. I mean, we look dreadful. And also that it's deeply dishonorable from Britain.
- [31:15]
Anita Anand
Do the Soviets then immediately think, I mean, they think, okay, there's a conspiracy and they suspect the hand of the United States behind it because the United States is the only other balancing superpower, in their opinion, in the world. And there is no phone to pick up and go, hey, hey, hey, Dwight, what's going on? No, no, we're not doing this. That doesn't exist. But is there, or how quickly is there the thought that actually if Britain and France are doing this kind of nonsense and shenanigans. Maybe we could do some more shenanigans in Hungary and no one's going to notice and no one's going to say anything to us because all eyes are currently on the canal.
- [31:58]
William Dalrymple
You tell a very nice story, Alex, in the book about Khrushchev passing on. The story that he's heard from, is it the French embassy that the English and the French are meeting, saying, let's come to an agreement. You seem to have some sort of trouble in your hands in Poland and Hungary. We understand how it is. We've got our own troubles in Egypt. Let's just sort of lay off each other until we sort this out. Brother imperialists. Is that a true story or is that. Does Khrushchev sort of.
- [32:24]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Should we say it's a projection? I would say, I think what you can kind of see happening from a distance, I think it's incredibly hard to see this, by the way, in the moment because it was chaos and the communications are really poor. So nobody really knew what was happening. And as I say, the Soviets were deeply concerned that this was actually a kind of anti Soviet coup happening with American provocation, possibly British provocation, you know, going on in the background. They didn't know that it wasn't, put it that way, and they could see all this happening. But there is also something that starts happening, and that's where this projection comes in, is that Khrushchev realizes that when they're doing all of this in Egypt, this is a bit of a chance to reimpose order on Hungary and not much is going to happen to stop them doing that because everybody's eyes are elsewhere. So there is a little bit of both going on. I think it's also he kind of, you know, when he's saying, oh, you know, you get on with your stuff in Egypt and we'll get on with our stuff here. You can see that Soviet attention, they're certainly watching what's happening in the Middle East. They're getting on with it, but they've got for them the kind of really burning crisis is in Hungary. And they think this is all just sort of your own spheres of influence. But actually these things are actually spontaneous and not connected. It's just causing a great deal of panic. But the fact that they're dealing with all this in Hungary makes them very jumpy and very nervous. And that is going to be really significant when we get to the resolution of this crisis.
- [33:47]
Anita Anand
Well, let's just for one second put a pin on that. And we'll come back to it. Of course we will, because it's all coming to a head all at the same time. But the Brits have not only irritated some of their own, they've irritated the Americans, they've spooked the Soviets. But they also will end up really pissing off the Israelis because they have made a promise to the Israelis that, you know what, if you do what we say, what we're going to do is we're going to bomb the aircraft, the Egyptian aircraft that could be moved against you. That's what we're going to do. We promise we're going to do that. Do they keep their promise, Alex?
- [34:22]
Alex von Tunzelmann
No, they do not.
- [34:24]
Anita Anand
No. She says, resigned, in a resigned tone. Okay, so what is the impact of that? Because taking out the wings is what is going to allow the Israeli army to advance or Israeli forces to advance without being struck from the sky.
- [34:39]
Alex von Tunzelmann
It's pretty standard, right? Is that you take out, you do airstrikes at the beginning of this sort of military operation, right? And I mean, the plan had been that after this 12 hour ultimatum that Britain would bomb Egyptian airfields, take out the air force, that would obviously cover and protect those Israeli invaders. But of course, one of the problems was they were trying to make this look like a neutral intervention, and yet they were only bombing the Egyptians, not the Israelis. So once again, this is very confusing to anybody who's watching and trying to take them seriously. It's like, oh, looks like you're pretty much on one side of this because you're not bombing the Israeli air force. So, you know, what starts happening is the Brits start panicking, realizing this looks terrible. So they start doing things like postponing their bombing raids on the Egyptian Air Force without telling the Israelis they're doing that. So Moshe Dayan, who was the Israeli military leader at that point, wrote in his diary, I'll quote, he says, those bastards, they make a political agreement in which one of the main clauses, one we insisted on, was that an airstrike on Wednesday morning would happen. And here they casually postpone the operation by 12 hours with no warning, not even an apology. The bastards. So that's pretty much how the Israelis are feeling.
- [35:52]
Anita Anand
This is textbook from Eden, how to win friends and influence people. He's basically just like scattergun annoying based off everyone. Yeah, every single person involved.
- [36:02]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Let me tell you what did happen when they bomb the Egyptian airfields, you know, which of course is postponed by 12 hours, is too late as far as the Israelis are concerned. And the idea was that the British were Going to bomb Cairo West. That's a military airfield in Cairo. And that's where Nasser kept a lot of his Soviet Ilyushin bombers that he'd bought controversially from the Soviets at the last minute. British planes are already in the air. Word came from London that 1300American civilians were being evacuated along the side of Cairo, where. So if they bombed that airfield, Eden was probably going to accidentally kill hundreds of innocent Americans. This was not going to help with his relationship with Eisenhower. Right. So the planes are in the air. Eden says, oh my God. Okay, we have to change the target. This is obviously not possible. Bomb Al Mazar, that's another military airfield. Do that instead. Right. The pilots had 10 minutes to change their plans. They didn't have very good maps and hadn't been very well briefed. So they just bombed an airport that they could see. And it turned out this was in fact the civilian airport. Right. It was Cairo's main civilian airport, which, you know, the international airport. And of course, bombing a civilian target straight away, an act of war, you know, really not ideal. And actually Nasser said, at that point, he said, I still couldn't believe it. I quickly ran to the roof of my house. I had to see for myself. But it was true. British planes bombing Cairo's international airport. And of course what happened is then all his Aleutian bombers were not bombed, so he just moved them all to Luxor and bases in Syria, thus saving them for the entire operation. So, I mean, it's a complete disaster.
- [37:43]
Anita Anand
So Alex, I mean, you know, he manages to move his airplanes out of the way, they're tucked away, but this is all happening in front of the eyes of the Arab world. And how do these other countries see this? Because they haven't liked Nasser very much, all of them. And we were talking about the kind of split within the Arab world, but seeing this kind of territorial, old fashioned imperialism. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what are the reactions like from his neighbours?
- [38:09]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Well, of course they do vary quite a bit. I mean, you know, you've got this between the Arab world, so, you know, much more kind of conservative just for a change.
- [38:17]
William Dalrymple
The Arab world isn't united.
- [38:20]
Alex von Tunzelmann
I know, amazingly, like that would ever be the case, you know. So you've still got kind of old school conservative Arab establishment like the government of Iraq, who are incredibly pro British and Jordan. Yeah. Watching this and rubbing their hands in Iraq. I mean, they're, you know, they're fine with this.
- [38:36]
William Dalrymple
Serves that upstart Nasser. Right, exactly.
- [38:39]
Alex von Tunzelmann
They're not too bothered. But other countries of Course, are freaking out. Syria much more closely aligned with Nasser, are, you know, at this point, really freaking out. Shukri Al Khawrtli, the leader of Syria, actually runs to Moscow to try to persuade Marshal Zhukov in person to invade for the Soviets to invade.
- [38:56]
William Dalrymple
He actually flies. He arrives. Really?
- [38:59]
Anita Anand
And is he told, hang on a minute. We've got a little local difficulty ourselves. Sorry, could you come back? We're just a bit busy at the moment. Yes, could you come? Can we chat later?
- [39:08]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Kawatli turns up in Moscow, Yes. To speak to Zhukov and several Presidian members. He met Khrushchev, Boganin, you know, several of them. And he was, you know, completely freaking out. And he said, you know, you've got to help Egypt. And Hustro said, but what shall we do? And he shouts, is it for me to tell you what to do? Egypt's being attacked. And Egypt believed you were going to come to her aid. If you do nothing, your position in the Arab world would be destroyed. And Khushl was like, what should we do, though? What do you want us to do? And Marshal Zhukov then unrolled this map of the Middle east on the table and said, do you see? We'd have to send our armies through Turkey, Iran, then into Syria and Iraq, and then on to Israel to attack the British and French forces. Like, this is like. Like completely impossible. This is going to happen. Kawatli, who'd kind of really lost it by this point, started shouting, marshal Zhukov, Marshal Zhukov, do you want me, a poor civilian, to tell you, the conqueror of Germany, the great Marshal, what should be done? And they were all just sort of stunned into silence and said, you know, we don't actually know how to do this, but we're having meetings to discuss the problem. So it's like, thank you for your comments.
- [40:07]
William Dalrymple
And then the Syrians go on and do their own thing. They start blowing up up pipelines.
- [40:13]
Alex von Tunzelmann
They do. And this was something that was controversial because it was reported in the New York Times and in the west that NASA had asked the Syrians to blow up the oil pipelines that were carrying it from the Orfords, if you imagine, to the Mediterranean, that this was going to kind of stop the flow of oil. And actually, Nasser had specifically asked them not to do that. That was misreported. He'd asked them not to do it because he was actually very mindful from the start. And he started to realize extremely fast that the us, who were quite good friends of his, did not approve of this. Anglo French action and were not involved in it. So he thought, I've got to keep the American sweet. I do not want those pipelines blown up. Too late. Syrians had already done it. Pipelines blown up all over the place, no oil going anywhere.
- [40:53]
William Dalrymple
And this, as we learned in the last episode, is in a sense, the first international crisis where the threat to oil supplies is at the absolute forefront of all decision making. So do we see when the pipelines go up, do we see the price of oil spike? Do we see the pound collapse? I mean, yes, that's all coming next.
- [41:14]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Week, in the next few days. That does indeed, precisely start happening. It becomes a very, very difficult situation. I mean, you have to remember Europe at this point, absolutely, is energy dependent on oil. And where does that all come from? The Middle East.
- [41:30]
Anita Anand
So it's a story as old as time. It's a story as old as pipeline.
- [41:35]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Exactly. I mean, at this St. You don't have those Scottish oil fields, you don't have Russian ones. Those sources are not happening. And you can't get it from the Russians anyway because they're Soviets at this point and that's not happening. So, I mean, you know, this just. It's all at this stage about the Middle east and oil from there.
- [41:50]
Anita Anand
So, look, we're coming to the end of this episode and I want to sort of leave off on the last thing that NASA does in. In response to all the chaos that's going around him. No one's listening to him. Things are happening at great, great speed. You know, the Syrians have just bombed the pipelines and risked pissing off the Americans. So it's all sort of really, very tense. Is it at this point that he says, okay, you know what? We are on a war footing. I mean, what happens? Because he can't just stand there and just watch all of this. What does he do?
- [42:16]
Alex von Tunzelmann
No, I mean, he has to go onto a war footing. His country's been invaded by Israel. It's also now being invaded by Britain and France, who are, you know, sort of alleging that these two countries are at some sort of spontaneous war, which he knows they aren't because he hasn't done that. But you have to think this is a really, really quick adjustment that he has to make, that he didn't know any of this was happening, that he, you know, like everybody else in the world, thought Israel was gearing up to invade Jordan. So he was kind of thinking about that situation, which isn't what's happened. They invaded him instead. He works out quite quickly that there is a division between the Americans on one hand and the British and French on the other. He had also not expected that. Nobody else had expected that either. So it's a really quick readjustment of all of this. So, yes, he declares martial law, general mobilization, straight onto a war footing.
- [43:05]
William Dalrymple
And he starts making radio broadcasts, doesn't he?
- [43:08]
Anita Anand
Oh, yes.
- [43:09]
William Dalrymple
He says, we shall fight. We shall not surrender. We shall fight from village to village, from place to place. Now, that doesn't sound quite as good in English as we will fight on the beaches, but it's very Churchillian. It sounds good in Arabic. Min karya il carria.
- [43:26]
Alex von Tunzelmann
There we go.
- [43:27]
Anita Anand
Wonderful.
- [43:28]
Alex von Tunzelmann
Goodness me. It's like Anthony Eden is in the room speaking his language.
- [43:32]
Anita Anand
That's such a lovely compliment, Alice. Thank you. Hello below.
- [43:37]
William Dalrymple
How kind. How kind.
- [43:40]
Anita Anand
So, look, with those words hanging in the air, join us for the next episode where we're going to again shift our gaze, because remember, the world is going to hell on two fronts. Let's not, you know, let's not do what the world is doing, which is solely focus on what's going on in the Middle east and the oil reserves, because there is something going on behind the Iron Curtain too, which is arguably nudging the world closer to World War 3 even than what's going on in the Middle East. So join us next time. If you can't wait for the next episode. You know what to do. I mean, these are so, so exciting. Just join the club. Empirepod uk.com empirepoduk.com, then waiting is not a thing you ever have to do again.
- [44:19]
William Dalrymple
You can binge to your heart content and you help keep us broadcasting. This is what makes the wheels turn round, oils the engines of this pod. So get out your WD40, reach for your credit card and join the club.
- [44:34]
Anita Anand
Yes. Thank you very much. So, till the next time we meet. From a creaking Anita Anand. It's goodbye from me and goodbye from.
- [44:41]
William Dalrymple
A WD40 holding WD.