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- [00:01]
Anita Anand
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.
- [00:19]
Alex von Tunzelman
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- [01:53]
William Duranpool
Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
- [01:55]
Anita Anand
Anita Anand and me, William Duranpool, episode.
- [01:59]
William Duranpool
Five of our Suez Crisis series. And again, our guide through this really labyrinthine moment in history where we were on the brink of Armageddon and we really, really were, is Alex von Tinsel when thank you very much for coming back to speak to us.
- [02:15]
Anita Anand
Our Armageddon correspondent indeed.
- [02:20]
Alex von Tunzelman
Never thought I'd have to know the plural of apocalypse.
- [02:22]
William Duranpool
Well, it's always a useful thing, it seems, looking at this series. Now look, we left the last episode on Eden standing before his people saying, look, I'm a man of peace. I haven't changed. You've changed. They've all changed. I'm the same guy. I'm. I'm a. I'm a lover, not a fighter. What we didn't say this is Saturday 3rd November 1956, but something monumental happens at midnight on the same day. The same day that Eden is talking about. Wasn't me, Gav. What happens, Alex?
- [02:55]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, bit of a spanner in the works. So Abba Eban, who's Israel's ambassador to the un, pulls a bit of an unexpected move, stands off at the UN and says, actually Israel agrees to an immediate ceasefire if Egypt does too. Egypt had already accepted the call for the ceasefire, so what that meant is that there's a ceasefire. Israel and Egypt are no longer at war. In fact, there are two nations holding out against peace and they are Britain and France who said that they are intervening in a police action as peacekeepers.
- [03:25]
Anita Anand
Why does he do that? Why does Israel suddenly sort of break ranks with its two co conspirators?
- [03:32]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, because bit of a wild card is basically the short version of that. I mean, they've got what they want. They've managed to grab a load of land in the Sinai.
- [03:41]
Anita Anand
Plus Gaza. Very important. They've taken over Gaza. And in the future.
- [03:45]
Alex von Tunzelman
Exactly.
- [03:46]
Anita Anand
Series on the history of Gaza. We're going to talk about in some detail about the massacres that take place at this point in 1956 in Gaza, which are an echo of what's going on today. But we'll leave that for the moment. So anyway, they've got what they want and they just want to freeze the lines at this point, is that the idea?
- [04:03]
Alex von Tunzelman
Pretty much, yeah. And I mean, really, what do they think they owe Britain or France ultimately? Don't really care. Kind of your problem now, Governor.
- [04:10]
William Duranpool
They sort of also refer to them as bastards. Bastards. Bastards. Because they don't think that Britain, they think Britain hasn't sort of kept its end of the bargain.
- [04:18]
Anita Anand
But Alex, why do they think they'll be allowed to keep this land? Just because of the ceasefire doesn't mean things can just go back to where they were before.
- [04:25]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, not everybody thinks they will be and there is quite a lot of discussion about that and all of this. But, you know, I think they probably just saw at this point, look, we've kind of got. We want, which is Sinai. We're dealing with the situation in Gaza as we see fit. That's happening. And yes, I mean, I think it'll be really interesting in your future series to hear more about that. It is pretty horrifying, that situation.
- [04:44]
Anita Anand
Men being lined up in squares in Gaza, taken off in drugs and machine guns.
- [04:49]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yeah, I mean, it's really horrific. Things are taking place at this point. The fact is that that's what Israel ultimately cares about. It doesn't want to conquer Egypt I mean that's not the goal and they don't want to take the Suez Canal. Ultimately that is not of a great deal of interest to them. So as far as they're concerned, they kind of done their thing, you know, and now they want to get on with, you know, suppressing the situation in Gaza.
- [05:11]
Anita Anand
And they're pissed off with their allies too. The bombing didn't place where they want it. They think Britain is behaving in a. And the French in a Eustace way.
- [05:19]
Alex von Tunzelman
But it's obviously a complete disaster for Britain and France because they're like planning to go in and have this peacekeeping.
- [05:24]
William Duranpool
War and there's no war, there's no war to peacekeeping.
- [05:27]
Anita Anand
I should say that I grew up on this moment and my dad as a young soldier who'd been, was there.
- [05:32]
Alex von Tunzelman
Still conscription, they called up reserves.
- [05:34]
Anita Anand
So I think he was called up as a reserve and he was flown to Cyprus and was awaiting being shipped to the Suezone. He never got there because of this.
- [05:42]
Alex von Tunzelman
There we go.
- [05:43]
William Duranpool
Now if this was a TV series, you would have a frizzle cut and maybe a voice saying meanwhile, meanwhile on the other side of the world, we're talking about the stroke of midnight, Israel saying, okay, you know what? Ceasefire, we're not doing this anymore. On Sunday the 4th of November. So that's hours after everything changes for France and Britain. It is also going to change for Hungary. The Soviet troops have entered Budapest. Alex, just bring us up to speed because it is all happening at speed. What's going on.
- [06:12]
Alex von Tunzelman
It is, I mean, effectively this is a full scale invasion. Soviet troops come in with tanks, with guns and just start crushing the resistance in Budapest.
- [06:23]
Anita Anand
And not just sort of Soviet troops, they're specifically sort of Tatars, aren't they? They're sort of Mongols and from the far eastern provinces. So they don't look like sort of fellow Europeans or people you can mistake for your neighbour from just over the border. This feels like an invasion of foreigners.
- [06:37]
Alex von Tunzelman
There were a lot of rumors, although I was really unable to substantiate them fully, but there were a lot of rumors that those troops were told that they were actually going to, to Egypt to fight the British and French in an anti imperial action to liberate Egypt. Not that they were going to go and murder protesters in Hungary. You know, they were told that the Danube was the Suez Canal. Now I don't know, it kind of sounds a bit far fetched, I don't entirely know, but I also know that if you look at what's happened with foreign Fighters in Ukraine. When Russia has sent them, they definitely have told them some lies about what they're going there to do. So who knows what was going on?
- [07:13]
Anita Anand
How interesting. Meanwhile, bombing is continuing. Britain and France are now actually dropping bombs, not just loading the aircraft, but bombing Port Said and Port Foad.
- [07:24]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, I mean, you know, basically, this is all because Britain and France haven't actually stopped their plan for peacekeeping, even though there is now peace and nobody needs to keep it. But actually, of course, as we know, they didn't want to be a peacekeeping force, they wanted to have a war. So they're still doing that. Again, this is, you know, extremely clear to everybody who's watching it. So just straight away, after, you know, this deadline, they start warplanes start zooming over Egypt and start bombing Port Said. Paratroopers floating down. So your father may not have made it there from Cyprus, but some people did, you know, some paratroopers did actually make it there, you know, and it's a really terrifying scene. They're bombing civilian targets, they're bombing towns. You have families screaming, running from the sight of the bombs.
- [08:11]
Anita Anand
Are there heavy civilian casualties?
- [08:12]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, there are considerable ones, of course, as you would probably expect. Pretty hard to get the exact numbers. But, yes, it's a war situation. It's a really terrifying situation. Meanwhile, in Budapest, you've got tanks shooting civilians, you've got children, elderly, people lying in the street. And you've got the same sort of scenes happening in Port Said and Port Fuad at the same time. There's this kind of, again, sense that this world war is happening, that this is happening all over at the same time.
- [08:37]
William Duranpool
But, Alex, while all this is going on, this bombing is going on, and they're meeting sort of very little resistance because they have just, you know, they've got the firepower, they've got the numbers and the firepower. What is Eden thinking at this point? Is he thinking, woohoo, we're winning, or is he thinking, woohoo, we've won? What is he thinking?
- [08:53]
Alex von Tunzelman
I mean, that basically there was a sort of temporary ceasefire declared quite quickly by the local Egyptian commander in Port Said, and British and French. Effectively, what this was was just them saying, please could you reconnect the water supply to Port Said, which you've cut off. Please stop killing civilians. The British commander said, can you surrender? The Egyptians said, no, we can't surrender, but could we just have a temporary ceasefire just for the sake of the civilian population? So this message was relayed, and you have to think every message at this point, once again, this isn't just going, you're not getting out your iPhone and texting somebody in London. It's going through a lot of relays. And so what you get is actually a bit of a change of the message. It's relayed from the ground commander there in Port Said to the British general in Cyprus, and from Cyprus it is relayed again to London. And basically in Cyprus, they thought what this meant is that actually the local Egyptian commander would not make any opposition the next day, when there were British and French amphibious landings. So they say, oh, brilliant, means no opposition. When this got all the way back to Britain, it was taken to mean that, in fact, Egypt had surrendered. Now, this is not what's happened. What's happened is a little temporary local ceasefire that has not been approved in Cairo. However, Eden is in the Commons, leaps out of his seat and says, we've got a ceasefire. There's up where everyone's happy. Eden runs back to Downing street, summons the chiefs of Staff, starts hugging them and saying, oh, my dear chiefs, how grateful I am to you. You've been magnificent. It's all worked out perfectly. He thinks he's wondering, he has not.
- [10:30]
William Duranpool
He has not. He has not won. And when it becomes apparent that he has not won and his hostilities then continue and, you know, the bombs again start falling closer and closer to Cairo, it isn't the United nations that steps in, even though they've been ignored completely by Britain and France. And the ceasefire deadline has come and gone and both Israel and Egypt have said they agreed to the ceasefire, but the bombing continues. It isn't them. It's not the Americans who come in and say, look, what are you doing? Britain and France, what the hell is this? It comes from a very unusual quarter and it is a really stark threat. Who is it that actually steps up to Britain and France?
- [11:11]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, we must say, the Americans were stepping up and doing a lot, but what they were doing was largely trying to squeeze Britain from a kind of financial and economic perspective. The people who step up and say, if you go any further, we're going to kill you are the Soviets.
- [11:26]
Anita Anand
And they do this on a quite sort of terrifying scale. They actually threaten to bomb London and Paris, effectively.
- [11:33]
Alex von Tunzelman
The minute that the Soviets feel that they've completely crushed the rebellion in Hungary, they've got rid of Imre Nagy, they've installed Janos Kadar as a new leader, you know, they're going to get Hungary back under control. That's going to happen. Then they turn their attention. Finally, two sewers to Egypt. And overnight, 5th to 6th of November, this letter arrives, this extraordinary letter, signed by Nikolai Bogano, but actually we know it was drafted by Nikita Khrushchev himself, which implied that this was about to get a whole lot bigger. And what this letter says, it's quite elliptical. It says what would have been the position of Britain if she had been attacked by stronger powers with all kinds of modern offensive weapons at its disposal. Remember that such countries at the present time need not even send their naval and air forces to British shores, but could use other means, such as rocket techniques. If rocket weapons were used against Britain and France, you would no doubt call this a barbarous act. But how is this different from the inhuman attack carried out by the armed forces of Britain and France on an almost unarmed Egypt? So this was red and it was elliptical. It had said rockets, it hadn't said nuclear. But what it had done is allude to the Soviet's medium range arsenal and point out that those could be fired at London and Paris. And, you know, nobody was absolutely sure in the west whether they could quite hit London and Paris, but they also weren't sure that they couldn't. It was pretty much on the periphery of where those weapons could have got to. It's quite interesting, this particular threat that came through in that there's quite a lot of dispute about it because afterwards, after all this had happened and the sort of chewing over what had gone on, everybody was very keen to say, oh, we never took the Soviet threat very seriously. You know, we didn't believe they could do it. No, of course not. Which is sort of what happens when something doesn't happen. People often afterwards say, oh, well, I never thought it would, obviously, I'm far too smart. I never thought this would happen. Actually, if you look at people at the time, it looks like they were pretty terrified actually when this threat came through because they weren't 100% sure it couldn't happen. There was a possibility that the Soviets, having just absolutely raised the ground in Budapest, might actually fire nuclear weapons at Britain and France.
- [13:46]
William Duranpool
You said just very briefly before we go to the break, that the Americans were actually stepping up to Britain and France, but they were doing it economically. I mean, you know, when, when, when somebody says that, I think of sanctions, but I mean, surely not, surely the Americans aren't doing sanctions against Britain. Surely that is not what America is doing to their closest ally?
- [14:06]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, kind of are, actually. That is pretty much what's happening. So the economics of this is fantastically complicated. But just to Sort of summarize it. What effectively is happening is that, as we've said, oil was not getting through from the Middle East. And as we said in an earlier episode, a very crucial thing about the oil that comes from the Iranian oil fields is that that is priced in pounds. Okay? So that's the oil you can buy with your pounds that you have as Britain. There is other oil that you can get that does not come from the Persian Gulf. That oil comes from Venezuela via the US that oil is priced in dollars. So you need to spend your dollars to do that. Britain doesn't have sufficient dollar reserves. And also what happens at this point is that there is quite a lot happening in one go economically. So again, I'm going to try and explain this in sort of really, really simple terms because it gets hella complicated. So what you have going on is that the total gold and dollar reserves that Britain has actually falls below the $2 billion level, which the bank of England and the British treasury considers is the minimum to keep the sterling area afloat. So what that means is that economically, Britain is completely collapsing.
- [15:15]
Anita Anand
And just to remind people, we came across the sterling area when we were doing the Irish series, there's a whole load of countries outside Britain which are pegged to the pound at this point, in the same way that many countries in the world today are pegged to the dollar.
- [15:29]
Alex von Tunzelman
Exactly.
- [15:30]
Anita Anand
And this means more than just that. Domestically, Britain's pound is going to be worth less than it is. It means that the whole reputation of sterling as an international currency, which in the 1950s was still absolutely one of the super strong currencies, that that will be threatened and that Britain's financial reliability will be undermined.
- [15:51]
Alex von Tunzelman
Exactly. So the point that they get to is basically the British saying to the Americans, okay, we're going to need to buy some oil off you, but can we please do it in pounds? Because we can't afford to spend our dollars on it. We have to do it in pounds. And Eisenhower says no. And he actually says, let them boil in their own oil. Wow. He is pretty determined to let Britain run aground on this if they don't stop. So it's a really Mauler move. It's an incredibly strong use. And actually, Dennis Healey said later that the only successful use of sanctions in history was America against Britain at Suez.
- [16:27]
William Duranpool
Blimey. Gosh. I mean, you can't imagine that these two close allies would be like this with each other. But America clearly, and Eisenhower in particular, who fought shoulder to shoulder, who entered World War II who had such a close working relationship with Churchill, who saw so many Americans die in a war that began in Europe, is basically saying, you know what? You disrespected us, you didn't tell us anything. You've been going nuts. I hate Eden. Sod the lot of you. I mean, it's just amazing. Just to, you know, summarise it that.
- [16:57]
Anita Anand
Way, we should emphasize what happens at this point on the ground. You have speculators from several Middle Eastern oil producing nations transferring their wealth from British to Swiss banks. China withdraws its deposits in Britain and gives them to Egypt. The whole thing is absolutely on the skids.
- [17:17]
Alex von Tunzelman
India also at this point pulled its deposits in Britain, saying, yes, well, we need to fund a new five year plan, so we need this money now. But what's happening is basically a run on the pound. What's happening is that these countries start to think, okay, Britain's really, this is going horribly wrong. We want our money before it disappears.
- [17:33]
William Duranpool
Yeah. The total sum of all of this panic and, you know, people saying, actually Britain is now no longer a safe bet for your money and withdrawing their own funds exacerbates the situation and gives the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, who at the time is a man called Harold Macmillan, a nervous breakdown, which he publicly shows because he publicly now calls for a ceasefire. He knows that all of this is happening because of Suez. So you have this sort of, when it happens in British politics and it has, it is a real moment for a Chancellor to publicly break with his Prime Minister. He is the number two to the Prime Minister. So to come out and be absolutely publicly at odds is the death knell for any Prime Minister, really, Alex. And what happens as a result of him coming out and saying, you know what, stop, just stop, otherwise we're going to go broke.
- [18:23]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, it's pretty bad. And something notable is that Macmillan, who wrote quite detailed diaries, destroyed his diaries from the Suez period.
- [18:29]
William Duranpool
Oh, really?
- [18:30]
Alex von Tunzelman
Probably because of course, he very much supported the Suez War and, you know, was indeed seen as one of the sort of knife between his teeth hulks at the beginning of this. And then when he discovered how badly it went, suddenly he went to, no, no, no, I've always been against this. And of course, look at who the next Prime Minister is after Anthony Eden and you might start to understand haggle.
- [18:53]
William Duranpool
That is a cliffhanger. So you've got, you know, basically the British political establishment imploding before the world's eyes. We've just had a threat on London and Paris. You've had America playing its part in the economic implosion of Britain and saying, you know, let them boil in their own oil. Join us after the break where we find out just, I mean, Eden can't stay on, can he?
- [19:18]
Anita Anand
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- [20:24]
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Anita Anand
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- [20:56]
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- [21:05]
Alex von Tunzelman
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- [21:13]
William Duranpool
Welcome back. Okay, so we left you in what I suppose political analysts would call a cluster fudge of a situation for a sitting Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. He must be in a right old panic at this point, Alex, because, you know, friends are now turning against him even as you say, Harold Macmillan, his number two, who probably supported him all the way through this Suez crisis until he realised it was all going completely wrong.
- [21:36]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, yes, indeed he did. It's starting to look really Quite bad. Macmillan runs to the Cabinet and says, it's much worse than you think. We've lost, you know, $280 million in a week from the gold reserves, thanks to this war we've been having. And actually, that number he gives is completely wrong. It's massively overinflated. They'd actually lost about $50 million, going up to $85 million by the end of that first week.
- [21:58]
Anita Anand
So is he trying to get Eden to resign or what's the reason for the misinformation?
- [22:03]
Alex von Tunzelman
Definitely, at this point, but actually, it looks like some people think that he actually confused dollars and pounds and just.
- [22:09]
William Duranpool
Oh, no, oh, no.
- [22:11]
Alex von Tunzelman
When he told the Cabinet this incredibly wrong number, it's unclear, but he was certainly. Basically, the guy is in a complete tiz at this point and freaking out now. Do you think in the back of his mind, there's already somebody's going to have to take over from Eden when he inevitably falls? Maybe. Maybe there is. And certainly, you know, as I say, you can look at what happens. It's also worth saying at this point, because it's something that always comes up around the Suez Crisis, is that Eden was actually pretty unwell at this point. He'd been mentally and physically not well for years. And there's a lot of reports that in 1956 he'd been prescribed and was taking large quantities of amphetamines, Benzedrine particularly.
- [22:49]
William Duranpool
But this is because he had, like, an existing digestive problem, a biliary problem. They put it sort of quite prosaically where he, you know, basically his stomach acid was eating him and, you know, he was in pain a lot of time. He was day to day lurching from one horrible digestive agony to another.
- [23:06]
Alex von Tunzelman
And I think it's always worth noting that, you know, at this point, like, it was quite normal to put people on amphetamines. JFK would later be on large quantities of them as well. You know, we find it quite shocking today, but this was something in the 50s that was quite the done thing in the 60s, but obviously it would affect your judgment. So there's been a lot of discussion ever since. And macmillan kind of tried to push this of like, Eden's just crazy, he's off his head, smacked up on his bennies and, you know, this is what he's doing. But of course, what we have to reckon with, and here's where McMillan's narrative starts to be a bit fishy, is that they all agreed with Eden until it went wrong. So actually, they weren't all smacked off their heads. You know, some of them made this decision supposedly in complete sobriety. So there's been this big effort, you know, make Eden take all the blame for this.
- [23:57]
Anita Anand
Where actually it's an act of Toryan fighting that familiar world where the Tories.
- [24:02]
William Duranpool
Turn each other and Macmillan looking on the horizon thinking, you know what, I could do that, I could move next door and I could be Prime Minister.
- [24:08]
Alex von Tunzelman
It's gonna be an empty chair there really soon.
- [24:10]
Anita Anand
I've never had it so good even. He might think quite even in a.
- [24:14]
William Duranpool
Last ditch attempt to kind of try and salvage something for himself or for his legacy or even, you know, just to stop the country going broke, goes to the French and says, look, we need to stop. How does he put it to the French? Because, you know, they, they haven't always listened to the English. Historically, they've been involved in this joint enterprise. Are they about to respect their recent brotherhood or not? When Eden comes and says, can we please stop because it's really hurting Britain.
- [24:41]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, yes. How do we think they get on? Well, basically Eden says, look, I don't think we can go on. The English can take a lot of things, but I do not think they'd be willing to accept the failure of sterling, which would have considerable consequences for the Commonwealth, which of course is right. It would all fall to bits. As William said, a lot of these currencies are pegged to sterling. It's going to cause real disaster. And he says, look, we're going to have a ceasefire in the next few hours. He says, this is in the morning of the 6th of November. He says it to Molay and Guy Mollet says, gosh, that's very quick. Can we just wait two or three more days? I think we can probably get some advantages then we can occupy more of the canal, you know, take a better negotiating position. And Eden says, I cannot hold out any longer. And Mol says, try to.
- [25:25]
William Duranpool
That's really understanding of the French. This man's currency is about to tank. And the French ring. Yeah, I know, but I know it is, but.
- [25:34]
Alex von Tunzelman
And Eden basically says, no, I really can't. I'm going to call Eisenhower and tell him this is what we're doing. You know, he actually does at this point. He knows the game's up at this point, it really is.
- [25:45]
William Duranpool
And so he picks up the phone, he calls Eisenhower unilaterally. Maybe the French are grumbling in the background, but they can't really stop him. So I mean, how does it all sort of stop? How does Everything just stop.
- [25:56]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, I mean, of course, they stop fighting pretty much immediately. Cause they sort of have to. And they have to abide by that, in a way. And now it looks pretty awful. And I think it's worth saying as well that Mollet trying to get Eden to go on for a few days, because again, this is where one of the historical myths around this comes from, starts quite soon afterwards that, you know, the sort of people who always did quite like the idea of the Suez War, who thought Nasser was awful, said, oh, if we'd just gone on for a few more days, you know, we could have got the canal, we could have got to Cairo. This is complete nonsense. There is no one, a military expert, who thinks that is remotely feasible. And furthermore, the invasion plan doesn't even have it. Plans for what Eden called, I'll quote, knocking Nasser off his perch. It has no plan for who is going to go back on the perch afterwards. And we know from what subsequently happened in places like Iraq that what that's going to lead to is complete chaos and a disaster. So this plan is terrible. It's absolutely hopeless. It's got no chance of success. The idea they could have gone on for like another 48 hours and it would have been fine, is just bonkers and just actually out of touch with what was happening on the ground. But they do stop. And obviously what you need and, you know, there's an agreement, they will withdraw. Effectively, they're given some time to withdraw. They, of course, have ceased fighting, but the troops are given time to withdraw basically until Christmas that year and to pull out. And what happens is that actually, at this point, one of the really major consequences of the Suez crisis is that everyone starts realizing it kind of sucks a bit that the UN had no way of dealing with this. It didn't have an army. It didn't have something that could have gone in and actually taken action had it needed to. So they actually create the UN Expeditionary Force made up of the countries of various nations. And there's an awful lot of controversy over which countries can be involved. Nasser refuses anything that he thinks has any ties to Britain. You know, it becomes very complicated as to who can be in it. But this is discussed then. And actually they then realize, crucially that they don't have any kind of uniform. That can mean that these forces drawn from various different armies can be recognized. But they do have these really handy blue bags that they've been given. So they start wearing these as berets, basically. And this becomes the blue beret of the UN that we still see today.
- [28:08]
Anita Anand
Really?
- [28:09]
Alex von Tunzelman
Wow.
- [28:10]
William Duranpool
That's where it dates from. That's amazing. So with the conclusion of the Suez crisis, where everybody sort of calming the hell down and realizing what went on, and you also have, you know, the Soviet tanks are in Hungary, that too has resolved, maybe not to everybody's liking, but it's at least done. The fighting is done. Are we in a safer world, Alex, as a result of this, or not?
- [28:34]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, interesting question. That's one for a whole other episode. I mean, effectively, yes, things, the sort of immediate hostilities have ceased. There's obviously a lot to work out. So still, and whereas in a really horrible world is, if we look back at Hungary, that the rebellion, that first rebellion, as I say, first serious rebellion against Soviet control has been just brutally crushed, absolutely ground into the dirt. People are killed, hanged over the Danube, people are imprisoned for years. There's a huge crackdown and that kind of incredibly illiberal Stalinist policy is rolled back in. After the destalinization that Khrushchev had attempted, he now decides, well, obviously if I let go of the reins at all, there's going to be this complete chaos. So he rolled back that incredibly tight control across the satellite states, across Eastern Europe. So it's a pretty frankly terrible outcome for Hungary. And who knows, had this Suez thing not been going on at the same time, who knows, maybe that could have been different, but certainly it was not.
- [29:35]
Anita Anand
So we've got the end game in Budapest, but where are the final lines after Suez is over? The Israelis are still at SH and the British paratroopers are still on the Suez Canal. What happens to both those armies?
- [29:53]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, Britain eventually is replaced by this UN expeditionary force, Britain and France and eventually have to pull out. Effectively, they have to pull out by Christmas of 1956. So the final withdrawal of British and French forces was on the 22nd of December out of the Suez Canal zone. They took everything with them. They also took a couple of little souvenirs. The French took a clock which the Empress Eugenie had given to Ferdinand de Lesseps, who, you'll remember, built the Suez Canal. British took a marble bust of Napoleon with them. And as they sort of embarked at Port Said the day before Christmas Eve, there was this colossal bronze statue of Ferdinand of Lesseps in Port Said at the end of the canal. And as the British and France withdrew, there were, you know, throngs of Egyptians cheering, waving Nasser's portrait aloft. And a large crowd assembled around this quayside, set explosives around that statue and blew it to smithereens. So the statue of de Lesseps, all that's left, it toppled into the canal. All that was left were his little boots affixed to a stone pedestal. And that was all that remained of de Lesseps in the canal.
- [30:59]
Anita Anand
Poor de Lesseps. He has a very unfortunate posthumous existence.
- [31:03]
Alex von Tunzelman
It doesn't go too well.
- [31:05]
William Duranpool
And also, I mean, you know, they need to unblock the canal because they've done a jolly good job of blockading it. How soon do they manage to get it operational again? And how does it operate again?
- [31:15]
Alex von Tunzelman
It takes ages to clear it. And this is one of the big points of argument, really, if, you know, Britain and France keep trying to argue that they should be allowed to stay in to sort things out, and the UN keeps saying, no, you're not allowed to stay in the sort things out. That's why we're going to send our expeditionary force to sort things out. You need to get the hell out of there because you caused this problem. There's a lot of squabbling over that. But, yeah, I mean, it takes weeks and weeks to clear the canal. It all takes ages to get back. And of course, during this time, even after the hostilities end, you've got to remember by this point, there's a major sterling crisis. Britain is heading into a wall and they do have to start restricting people's use of oil, which, Anita, as you said before, is a political disaster. It's a complete disaster. And in many ways, Eden tried to cling on briefly to power after the Suez crisis. He didn't actually immediately resign, as he quite possibly should have. He tried to cling on for a little bit, and basically. So he tried to cling on to power. And on the 21st of November, so, you know, a few weeks afterwards, he obviously had been under a lot of stress. And so, you know, the Cabinet Office announced that Eden was going to leave London for three weeks for a little holiday on the orders of his doctor, and Rab Butler would fill in for him and take over as sort of acting Prime Minister. So off Eden and his wife went for Jamaica, where they stayed at Ian Fleming's villa, Goldeneye.
- [32:33]
Anita Anand
In Fleming's Goldeneye, that's right, yeah.
- [32:35]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, absolutely. And rather naturally, this was. Was yet another complete disaster for him because, you know, the British public, who then weren't really allowed to turn any lights on or drive their cars, sort of felt that Eden probably shouldn't reward himself for Caribbean holiday, lots of lovely Caribbean holiday. And actually, even Ian Fleming's wife, Anne, said Torquay And a sunray lamp would have been more peaceful and patriotic. And, you know, Clarissa, Eden tried to argue, well, it wouldn't have been good because if we'd gone to Berkshire, Anthony would have carried on working. But really, the general public didn't see it that way at all. And Eden indeed did end up having to resign, going on more holidays for his ill health. And indeed, Harold Macmillan, taking his moment, having reinvented himself as the hero of the Suez crisis, took over as Prime Minister.
- [33:22]
Anita Anand
But as far as Britain's concerned, it's not just that Eden has resigned and they've got a new Prime Minister. Britain's entire imperial Persona is now shattered. They've lost India 10 years earlier in 1947. They've been trying to sort of keep appearances up, but this is the moment that the kind of terrible weakness of Britain economically is exposed. And therefore the foundations on which this remaining imperial edifice is built looks incredibly crumbly.
- [33:52]
Alex von Tunzelman
It's the crucial point. Post war, the discussion is about three superpowers in the world. You said this at the beginning of the series. Britain, the US and the Soviet Union. And literally after Suez, people start saying, no, there are two superpowers, powers, you know, because actually, it's pretty clear, because the US put these sanctions on Britain and stopped it doing it, that Britain actually cannot act without US support.
- [34:14]
Anita Anand
It needs the US in a way that it hadn't been perceived to need it before.
- [34:18]
Alex von Tunzelman
Exactly.
- [34:18]
Anita Anand
Although, of course, British efforts in World War II and everything else would have come to nothing without American support.
- [34:24]
Alex von Tunzelman
Of course. Of course.
- [34:25]
Anita Anand
But the fiction at least survives that Britain is this imperial power and until sue is, and after that is. And so what happens in the rest of the 50s and throughout the 60s and 70s is the acceleration of that imperial retreat.
- [34:39]
Alex von Tunzelman
Exactly. I mean, decolonialism. And in a sense, you know, with, I mean, of course, India and Pakistan and, you know, later, Bangladesh had already gone. The decolonization movement had begun before this. But I think this is really the point where you just cannot sustain any longer the sense of that Britain is a superpower or that that empire really means that kind of global power that Britain clearly once had and now does not.
- [35:02]
Anita Anand
We had in the last series when we had Sam Durand on with his shattered lands, talking about British pulling out of the Gulf that carries on until the 70s, but it's beginning to look completely absurd. So when the British have sort of imperial festivities in plumed hats on manicured lawns in Aden, everyone watching knows this is a sort of joke, that the empire, as Such no longer means anything. And Britain just frankly, has been cut down to size by Nasser. That's the key. The fact that Nasser, this matinee idol Arab who Eden completely dismissed, has in the eyes of the Arab world, pulled off this incredible coup and seen off Britain. This is a complete game changer for Arab nationalists.
- [35:51]
Alex von Tunzelman
Well, absolutely. I mean, as Nasser watches this happen, Mohamed Haikal said, you know, in the end, this was a personal business. It was a duel between two men. It was a situation that could only end in total victory for one and total defeat for another. Nasser won and he never felt one speck of pity for Eden. And actually, we have Nasser's own quote on this. When he saw Eden fall from power, lose his health and all this, Nasser said, well, it was the curse of the pharaohs. So there you go. So that's how he saw it.
- [36:19]
Anita Anand
When I was in Egypt as a young writer, I went to see Muhammad Haeckel, who was Nasser's great advisor during Suez, who wrote the great Egyptian Suez book, which I think you used in your research.
- [36:32]
Alex von Tunzelman
Oh, yeah, yeah. That quote just came from it.
- [36:34]
Anita Anand
And he very much took the view that it was Egypt that had cut Britain down to size and it was NASA's Egypt which was responsible for the end of the British Empire. His version was not that it was Nehru or Gandhi or anything like this. It was Egypt that saw the British lion off.
- [36:50]
Alex von Tunzelman
Victory like this obviously suddenly had many, many fathers. So Nikita Khrushchev also started going around parties saying, I've defeated Britain and France with my threat of a nuclear attack. The Americans, meanwhile, were like, we basically just did them with our sanctions. We've defeated Britain and France. So everybody pretty much thought they'd done that. And in a sense, I think actually they're all right. I mean, the fact is, it was this confluence of huge pressures was probably exactly. The problem is that Britain and France just could not stand against that.
- [37:27]
Anita Anand
Now the other two conspirators are thrust bizarrely into each other's arms by this. That's Israel and France. Although Israel has blown the whistle prematurely and not consulted France, this becomes an alliance in the future. And am I not right in thinking that it is the French who support the Israeli nuclear program in the aftermath of this, giving us what we now have, which is, although never publicly acknowledged, a nuclear armed Israel.
- [37:55]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, I mean, exactly. It did come out of this quite directly, actually, that basically the Israelis and the French had actually, even during the discussions of the protocol of Sevres, that collusion document, the French and Israelis had had side Discussions around that. Shimon Peres discussed with Guimolet the agreement for the building of a nuclear reactor at Dimona in southern Israel and the supply of uranium to fuel it. And the Israelis had wanted a nuclear reactor for some years. They could obviously see that the nuclear age was beginning. The collusion that they had with France over that was exactly how they managed to begin their nuclear program was through that cooperation with France. So that kind of is a fairly major outcome of the Suez crisis, which obviously is still something that we're looking at today.
- [38:43]
Anita Anand
And this collusion, which very much accelerates in the aftermath of Suez, is something that of course makes the French position in Algeria even more untenable. The next domino. We must definitely do a series on the French in Algeria before long, because it's such a great story. But that whole thing accelerates as a result of this defeat.
- [39:05]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yes, I mean, you know, Algeria is now an independent nation. So that didn't go the way Guy Mollet wanted, quite clearly. And so Ahmed Ben Bella, the Algerian rebel leader who actually the French forces kidnapped at the beginning of the Suez crisis, he actually remained in prison in France from 1956 until 1962. And he was actually only released when Algeria won its independence. He returned and became the country's first president. He was deposed for a little while after then. It all sort of. There was a bit of back and forth, but effectively, yes, I mean, Algeria did win its independence.
- [39:41]
Anita Anand
Massive emigration of the French in Algeria.
- [39:44]
Alex von Tunzelman
Absolutely.
- [39:44]
William Duranpool
Can I ask another? I mean, these days we talk about the strain that's been placed on the American and British special relationship with Trump in office and Trump saying these things unilaterally that sometimes Britain doesn't like, and Britain taking stances, particularly when it comes to Gaza, for example, recently, that America does not approve of. It was in tatters. At the end of Sirius, you had Eisenhower, you know, sort of just basically, he didn't give a. You know, NASA didn't care what happened to Eden. Eisenhower cared even less what happens to his ally. How long did it take to repair that relationship?
- [40:18]
Alex von Tunzelman
I mean, so, you know, I kind of think when we talk about the special relationship, I think it's sort of bonkers that people still talk about that.
- [40:25]
Anita Anand
Today and it's only talked about in Britain. The Americans never heard that.
- [40:28]
Alex von Tunzelman
I was going to say it's delusion on the part of the. The British, really.
- [40:31]
Anita Anand
The special relationship that America has is with Israel and it's only the British. And only British right wing newspapers ever refer to this mythical relationship.
- [40:39]
Alex von Tunzelman
Yeah, I mean, it's not, you know, and it kind of stopped, stopped existing at Suez. I mean, that's the thing they did. There was a closeness, as I say, you know, after World War II, but this really did shatter it pretty badly. And although relations were patched up in the aftermath of it, you know, there are a few months of quite chippy hostility between those leaders. But it did calm down again, you know, once Eden was gone and once they could find sort of new people to talk to and so forth, you know, everybody calmed down and Britain and America started cooperating again. But I don't think there was ever again really the idea of that complete level of trust. And I think you can see it because you can see various points in history. So for instance, you know, when the US tried to bring Britain in to Vietnam, tried to say, can you send US troops for Vietnam? Actually the answer came back was no, we remember Suez.
- [41:28]
William Duranpool
No, we remember Suez. Oh, wow.
- [41:30]
Alex von Tunzelman
So actually there's quite a specific impact.
- [41:33]
Anita Anand
The other brief moment when you get the kind of revival of this idea is of course Reagan and Thatcher. That's the next time that Britain and America are suddenly on the same page with two leaders that really like each other.
- [41:45]
Alex von Tunzelman
Exactly. Although even that was quite a fractured relationship in some ways and had moments in it.
- [41:50]
Anita Anand
Reagan goes and grenades invades Granada.
- [41:53]
William Duranpool
But you have to put these things in perspective. I mean, if you look at the whole of Europe, there is no arguing that Britain is the closest ally to America out of all the European powers. They'd much rather talk to Britain than they would the French, for example, where there has never been any chance.
- [42:08]
Alex von Tunzelman
No, they'd much rather talk to Germany than Britain. I think they much prefer Germany as a general rule.
- [42:13]
Anita Anand
And we lost what remaining use we ever had to America by withdrawing in Brexit. That was the moment when our usefulness finally dissolved, when you could argue that.
- [42:23]
Alex von Tunzelman
Britain was a bridge to Europe. Maybe that worked, but I don't think anymore that that's remotely functional.
- [42:28]
William Duranpool
Yeah, this is actually the start of one of those conversations that's going to catch fire on discord. I can just feel it because it is, you know, discuss discord family empirepod uk.com if you want to join our club and then you sort of get involved with each other and continue this conversation in earnest. And I know it's a lively one. So listen, all that is left is to thank brilliant Alex von Tunzelman and I really do commend to you her book Blood and Sand. It is, as you can imagine, a rip roaring read. It's brilliantly written as all her books are, and it is such a densely interesting story. Alex, thank you so very much. Till the next time we meet on Empire, it is goodbye from me, Anita.
- [43:06]
Anita Anand
Arnan and goodbye from me, William Duranpool.
- [43:15]
Alex von Tunzelman
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- [44:24]
Anita Anand
He truly was the great communicator. Together we're going to do what has to be done. He regrounded the GOP and conservative principles.
- [44:32]
Alex von Tunzelman
Free markets, government, and an unshakable faith in American exceptionalism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Ronald Reagan shook the country. People keep looking to government for the answer, and government's the problem.
- [44:48]
Anita Anand
President Reagan was shot in the chest by a gunman outside the Washington Hotel.
- [44:53]
Alex von Tunzelman
We did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Uncomfortable as it is to admit, the 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th. It's not Reagan's party anymore. Donald Trump destroyed Ronald Reagan. I thought he was great. His style, his attitude.
- [45:10]
Anita Anand
But not great on trade.
- [45:11]
Alex von Tunzelman
Will we be the party of conservatism or will we follow the siren song of populism?
- [45:17]
Anita Anand
Only one man has the proven experience we need.
- [45:21]
Alex von Tunzelman
Together we'll make America great again. Thank you very much. We hope you enjoyed that clip. To hear the full series, just search the Rest Is Politics US.