0900 London // 1000 Paris // 1100 Gaza City; Suez
On the morning of November 2, representatives of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Gaza persuaded the Egyptian commanders to surrender to avert further bloodshed among the civilians, refugees, and United Nations staff. One Egyptian platoon refused to surrender and held out until midday; a Palestinian brigade continued to hold out for another day in Khan Yunis, to the south. Journalist Robert Henriques, who was traveling with the Israeli forces, claimed that few Egyptian soldiers were taken prisoner: “Many of them buried their weapons and uniforms in the sand and wandered back in their underclothes, 150 miles, to Egypt.”1 In fact, an estimated four thousand Egyptian and Palestinian soldiers were rounded up by the IDF and police after being trapped in Gaza when it was severed from Egypt. From Baghdad, Nuri es-Said “begged” the British government to make Israel release its Egyptian prisoners. Otherwise, he feared, Britain would be blamed throughout the Arab world for their capture, too.2
The shell and bomb damage from the previous night’s offensive could be seen on military emplacements around the outskirts of Gaza City. The central market square filled up with Israeli soldiers. “They danced, sang, laughed, shouted, patted the backs of passing Arabs, and gave bars of chocolate to urchins who seemed to be getting over their shyness rapidly,” reported the London Times correspondent. But most of the Arabs he saw outside this cheerful scene looked poor and shabby, especially the refugees living in patched, dirty tents. One Israeli soldier told him that some refugees had clapped their hands when they saw Israeli troops. “They thought,” he said, “that our coming meant their return to the homes they left in 1948.”3 It did not.
The outlook from London was bleak. Key to the British and French case for intervention had been the principle of keeping the Suez Canal open. Nasser had prepared blockships filled with heavy cement, scrap iron, and empty beer bottles in the Great Bitter Lake. They could be sunk deliberately in the canal to obstruct any traffic.4 The Anglo-French force had meant to destroy the blockships before they could be moved into position. Despite their efforts, at least four ships had been sunk at the northern end of the canal. Anglo-French airstrikes had again gone off target. As Anthony Nutting noted with despair, “In one case at least we had actually done Nasser’s job for him by sinking a blockship after it had taken up its position.”5 Forty-seven ships eventually were sunk in the canal. The Egyptians also blew up the supports of El Firdan Bridge, collapsing it across the waterway. By November 2, the canal was unusable, cutting off Europe’s main oil supply route and global shipping.6 “Instead of keeping the Suez Canal open, the [Anglo-French] action closed it,” wrote CIA agent Miles Copeland, “as the dumbest intelligence analyst, either British or American, could have predicted.”7
At the highest levels of the British government, there was still dithering over when or even whether to begin the landing. “I was reminded of the scene from The Pirates of Penzance in which the policemen are on the wharf and presumably about to embark to do battle with the pirates,” wrote American diplomat Chester Cooper. In the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, the ladies on the wharf encourage the policemen to go forward to glory; the policemen keep singing about how they will go, without actually moving—to the increasing frustration of the ladies. “As of that Friday, the ‘policemen’ were still on the wharves and airfields of Cyprus, and I among others was not at all sure that they would, in fact, ever really ‘go.’”8 Many Britons, as well as Americans, did not believe they could go ahead at the price of further enraging the United States. That morning, Selwyn Lloyd asked Anthony Nutting to help him draw up a formal plan for the United Nations to step into Britain and France’s place. Lloyd thought he might be able to get Lester Pearson to move his plan in the General Assembly after the weekend, on Monday November 5. “He had thrown us a straw and we were clutching at it in a desperate attempt to extricate ourselves from our predicament,” Nutting wrote.9
While Eisenhower was exerting maximum pressure to pull Eden back, Mollet was exerting maximum pressure to pull him further in. “In the [French] ministry of defence,” Pineau wrote, “nervous tension peaked. The British ‘delay’ was spoken of as a real sabotage of the operation.”10 Mollet and Pineau now wanted the joint invasion to go ahead on Monday, at the same time as the General Assembly session during which Lloyd was hoping they could get out of it. This was a day in advance of the original schedule, and meant that paratroopers would have to be dropped in just forty-eight hours, on Sunday morning. But naval support could not be moved. The seaborne forces would arrive on Tuesday morning regardless of any speedup of the parachute drop—so British and French paratroopers would have to hold their own for two whole days without heavy backup. The French suggested that the Israelis could take Kantara, on the east side of the canal, to protect the paratroops. This, of course, would confirm to the world the true extent of the conspiracy with Israel, which Eden still believed he could hide. It had, for instance, still not been fully revealed to the commander of Operation Musketeer, General Keightley—though he was beginning to have his suspicions. As he wrote to the chiefs of staff that day, “The situation regarding Franco-Israeli cooperation is getting increasingly disturbing.”11
The admiral of the Fleet, Lord Mountbatten, gave Eden’s private secretary a letter to pass on to the prime minister unopened. “I know that you have been fully aware over these past few weeks of my great unhappiness at the prospect of our launching military operations against Egypt,” he wrote. He had carried out the prime minister’s orders, he said, “although I did not believe that a just and lasting settlement of any dispute could be worked out under a threat of military action,” but now that the bombing had started he could remain silent no longer. He was writing, he said, “to beg you to turn back the assault convoy before it is too late, as I feel that the actual landing of troops can only spread the war with untold misery and world-wide repercussions.” He concluded forcefully: “You can imagine how hard it is for me to break with all service custom and write directly to you in this way, but I feel so desperate about what is happening that my conscience would not allow me to do otherwise.”12 Eden telephoned Mountbatten back, claiming that no civilians had been killed. The prime minister would not turn back the convoy.
“Only one hope remains, that the United States will use its power to stop the fighting and so save us from the worst consequences of our government’s insanity,” wrote the philosopher Bertrand Russell to the Manchester Guardian that day.13 Following the United States Sixth Fleet’s maneuvers threatening the British in the Mediterranean, some thought the United States Navy might use its military power to stop the war. There is some evidence that this was considered. The American admiral Arleigh Burke, speaking characteristically plainly in 1966, remembered that he had discussed with Foster Dulles what the American Sixth Fleet should do.
“The British can’t do it,” Burke said, referring to the invasion of Egypt. “And the reason why the British can’t do this is, because they are totally unprepared.” Burke had talked to Mountbatten, who had told him that the British navy and the Royal Air Force had been sitting around in Malta and Cyprus for months over the summer while politicians prevaricated. Then, all of a sudden, the order had come to move—and they were not ready. (Gerald Templer, chief of the Imperial General Staff, disputed this: he argued that “we were certainly ready with our available resources,” but “wishful political thinking could not alter the facts of geography”—the ships could not be sped up.)14
“For God’s sake, let’s give them [the British] the craft—give them ours,” Burke said to Dulles. “They’re over there. They’ve got to make this thing successful.”
Dulles told Burke that he did not think the British should succeed.
“Well, we’ve got to support them, I think,” said Burke.
“No, we can’t,” Dulles replied.
Dulles asked where the Sixth Fleet was. Burke told him it was probably northwest of Cairo. The fleet was keeping a close eye on the British, and pilots were flying over them. “And then he had the idea that, maybe we could stop them,” Burke remembered.
“Mr. Secretary, there is only one way to stop them,” Burke said. “We can stop them. But we will blast the hell out of them.”
“Well, can’t you stop them some other way?” asked Dulles.
“No,” said Burke. “If we’re going to threaten, if we’re going to turn on them, then you’ve got to be ready to shoot. . . . We can defeat them—the British and the French and the Egyptians and the Israelis—the whole goddam [sic] works of them we can knock off, if you want. But that’s the only way to do it.”
Burke did not describe Dulles’s reply. He did say that he felt it necessary to leave the situation open for the commander of the Sixth Fleet, Vice Admiral Charles R. Brown. “I gave him orders to go to sea, to be prepared for anything, to have his bombs up, to be checked out, so that we would be ready to fight either another naval force or against land targets.”
“Who’s the enemy?” Brown asked.
Burke replied, “Don’t take any guff from anybody.”
“I didn’t know who the damned enemy was,” he remembered ten years later, “because we were having this discussion.”15
Among some in the State Department and CIA in Washington, there was a feeling that Foster Dulles was taking the wrong line. “I confess I have continued to feel that we went too far,” said Richard M. Bissell of the CIA a decade later. “If we had found ways to drag our feet for two or three days, the British and the French could have consolidated their hold of the Canal.” Bissell was overstating the case—the British and French did not have the canal and were at least four days away from being in position to take it, so there was no question of consolidating their hold within two or three days. “And I think we probably could have preserved at least a reasonably righteous posture, at the same time doing less damage to our European alliance.”
Bissell had several arguments with Allen Dulles. “Allen was quite touchy about it,” he remembered. “He was very defensive of his brother’s stated attitudes and position.”
After the crisis, though, Allen Dulles and Bissell discussed it again, and Allen revealed more. “Don’t you realize that the individual who was really furious with the British and French and absolutely insistent on the action we took was Eisenhower not Foster?” Allen asked. “Foster probably would have played this quite differently.”16 James Hagerty, Eisenhower’s press secretary, agreed. The line on Suez, he said, “was Eisenhower’s decision, and no one could make that decision, but himself, in that campaign. It was his decision to do exactly what we did.”17
1200 London; Edinburgh // 1300 Paris // 1400 Cairo // 1600 Moscow
In Moscow, the Hungarian politicians János Kádár and Ferenc Münnich—the men the Soviets had secretly flown in from Budapest the previous night—had been given a makeover. A week of political turmoil had not done their personal grooming any favors, and their Soviet handlers judged them too scruffy to appear in front of the presidium. They were taken shopping in Moscow and fitted out with new wardrobes. Kádár was scandalized when they tried to force him into Italian shoes: “What would the comrades say back home if I showed up in flashy shoes?”18
Once they had been smartened up, Kádár and Münnich met with the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Kádár proposed a political solution to the rebellion; Münnich called for military intervention by the Soviets.19 Radio stations in Moscow began to broadcast warnings to Budapest not to make “a wrong step” and alleged that “reactionary counterrevolutionaries” were being strengthened by reinforcements from Austria, who they alleged were encouraged by the United States.20
In London, opposition members in the House of Commons tried to force Eden to say whether he would accept the decision of the United Nations General Assembly that there should be a cease-fire in the Middle East. Eden refused to answer, saying that he needed to study the resolution and the speeches made for and against it before making a statement to the House. Labour MP Arthur Henderson asked him if he could at least halt any further attacks on Egypt until he had read the resolution. “No, Sir; I can give no such undertaking,” Eden replied.21
Hundreds rioted in Edinburgh as antigovernment protesters clashed with supporters. Fireworks, bags of flour, tomatoes, and eggs were thrown. One student attempted to set fire to a Union flag in the university’s Old Quadrangle. The student was “severely handled,” reported the London Times, though it did not say whether by police or counterdemonstrators. There were further scuffles at Leeds and Oxford universities.22 The Labour MP Tony Benn bought up yards of blue and white ribbon to make badges to distribute among British supporters of the United Nations.23
Meanwhile, Britain and France tried to work out how to respond to Dulles’s United Nations resolution and his intimation that, were they to press ahead, they would be responsible for World War III. “The resolution put peace in a strait-jacket,” Eden wrote mournfully later.24 Christian Pineau arrived in London that afternoon. “It was a most unhappy encounter,” remembered Nutting. Eden and Lloyd now felt they must reply to the United Nations in meek terms, stating that the Anglo-French “police action” would graciously defer to the command of the United Nations if Israel and Egypt agreed to a United Nations force remaining in place. Until then, only limited numbers of British and French troops would be stationed between the forces of Israel and Egypt. The original plan for Britain and France to hold the Suez Canal and its ports until Nasser fell from power or caved to their demands was struck out. So, too, was the determination of Britain and France to restore canal transit rights to Israeli ships. “This was a somewhat miserable mouse to emerge from the mountain of great hopes on which Eden and Mollet had jointly set their hearts less than three weeks earlier,” Nutting wrote.25
The United Nations General Assembly met that morning in New York. It was, according to Eden, “in an emotional mood. There was talk of collective measures against the French and ourselves.”26 He would later insist that Britain and France had always been acting selflessly in defense of “world trade” and that their actions had been misunderstood by the Americans. “The old spoor of colonialism confused the trail,” he wrote.27
“The mood of the United Nations is grim, and there are enough extremists around to inflame opinion further against the two western Powers and Israel, however much the United States and several others may counsel moderation,” wrote a Times of London correspondent. “Especially among the Arab countries is there talk about the use of sanctions against the parties concerned. Such talk may be mere bombast, but if the fighting goes on much longer they may try to translate it into action.”28
Lester Pearson met with Dag Hammarskjöld and Foster Dulles to try to bolster support for his own resolution. Pearson’s plan called for a cease-fire to be followed by the arrival of a United Nations force and broader Middle East peace negotiations. Hammarskjöld was initially dubious about the prospects for a United Nations force. He could not imagine which countries would send troops or where they would send them. He was concerned about whether it would look as if the United Nations were setting up a force just to get Britain and France out of trouble. He knew that would enrage the Soviets. If the force could in any way be seen as threatening Egypt’s sovereignty, it would enrage the Arab world, too.
In the United States, right-wingers were relishing the opportunity to speak the language of postcolonial liberation. “For the first time in history we have shown independence of Anglo-French policies towards Asia and Africa which seemed to us to reflect the colonial tradition,” said the vice president, Richard Nixon, in a speech that day. “This declaration of independence has had an electrifying effect throughout the world.”29
Eisenhower was worn down by it. “Life gets more difficult by the minute,” he wrote to his friend Alfred Gruenther. “I really could use a good bridge game.” He continued: “I believe that Eden and his associates have become convinced that this is the last straw and Britain simply had to react in the manner of the Victorian period. . . . But I don’t see the point in getting into a fight to which there can be no satisfactory end; and in which the whole world believes you are playing the part of the bully, and you do not even have the firm backing of your entire people.”30
In Cairo that afternoon, Nasser’s cabinet was debating a possible surrender. Salah Salem, one of the original Free Officers, argued that Nasser should address the nation, explaining that Egypt was going to surrender to prevent further disaster. “Let us rise and give ourselves up to [Humphrey] Trevelyan, the English Ambassador,” he concluded.
“My opinion, Salah, is that it is more honorable for me to commit suicide, before doing such a thing,” replied Abdel Latif al-Baghdadi.
“Far better for us all to commit suicide here, before taking such a step,” said Nasser. He ordered vials containing phosphate-cyanide—enough for all of them. “I am serious about what I’ve said,” he added.31 Salem backed down.
If Egypt’s army were defeated and the invaders occupied Cairo, Nasser planned to “organize and lead a guerrilla resistance movement.” He readied an underground press and communications network. Fedayeen cells were activated, safe houses were set up, and arms were stashed in secret locations. He sent a team to organize a secret emergency headquarters between Cairo and Alexandria in the Nile delta, near Tanta.32 He also made a tactical decision to pull his Fourth Armored Division out of Sinai and back over the Suez Canal. This pulled them out of the probable trap that had been laid for them in the desert and put them in place to defend the mainland. At this suggestion, Abdel Hakim Amer was horrified. The Egyptian army, he averred, would never retreat.
“It’s not a matter of dying heroically,” Nasser told him. “It’s a matter of fighting heroically.”
Amer had to admit that he had visited the military academy a few months before and witnessed a lesson in which the trainee officers were being instructed in the mechanics of withdrawal. So outrageous had he found this that he had stood up and declared that the entire subject of withdrawal was being taken off the Egyptian military curriculum from that moment.
Patiently, Nasser sat down with Amer and tried to run through a war-gaming exercise. “I am going to be [Moshe] Dayan and you Amer,” he said. “Let us try to work out what each of us is likely to do.”
Still Amer resisted. “Nobody is going to surrender or escape and everybody is going to fight,” Nasser told him. “Pull yourself together, Hakim. The whole army will be converted into a guerrilla force and pulled deep into Egypt, and let them fight us there. Your behavior is unmanly; the first shots have hardly been fired.”
As Amer squirmed, he continued. “I don’t want you people issuing any orders. There is no countermanding my orders. Don’t you understand they are trying to destroy the army, that it is a three-way conspiracy? If you can’t do any better than mope like old women then you will be arrested and tried.”33
According to Heikal, “Nasser was sorely tempted to dismiss him [Amer] on the spot.”34 He did not, but instead telephoned all the senior officers in the Fourth Armored Division himself and ordered them directly to get out of Sinai. Nasser was now in charge of the civilian and military response of his country, and that response was going to be delivered with all possible force. The Egyptians knew they were outgunned—but they had resisted British military occupation before, and they would resist it again.
1100 Washington DC // 1600 London // 1800 Cairo // 2000 Moscow
A group of British and French airmen in Cyprus prepared two bombs for that evening’s raid. Slogans were written on them in chalk. One said, “Nasser’s Rock and Roll”; the other began as “Love to Nasser” but the last three letters of his name were crossed out and replaced with “ty” so that the message read “Love to Nasty.” The New York Times correspondent noted that these “were not spontaneous: both were lettered on bombs for the benefit of a group of visiting photographers.”35 The British and French military public relations officers may have misjudged the international mood. The reaction to their operation throughout the Arab world was grim. In Amman, the Jordanian government delivered a note to the British ambassador stating, “Ministry also see in this action a form of united Anglo-French-Israel plan begun with Israel aggression which aimed at justifying armed Anglo/French intervention against Egypt and her sovereignty to realize illegal Anglo/French objects in the Suez Canal.” The British ambassador was so outraged at the suggestion that he refused to accept the note and handed it back to the Jordanian prime minister in person. “He took it without comment,” the ambassador noted.36 An internal CIA memorandum on French actions in Algeria and Suez noted, “France has taken action in both areas which does much to insure [sic] that the transition from French to Moslem rule in North Africa will continue to be accompanied by violence and which may preclude the future economic development of Morocco and Tunisia in concert with France.” The kidnapping of Ahmed Ben Bella and the Algerian leaders had been bad enough. Now, with the Suez intervention, the CIA confidently expected “an extension of general hostilities throughout North Africa.”37
“Why, if Britain intends to resist Israel[i] aggression, have no attacks been made on military installations in Israel instead of confining the bombardment to Egyptian targets?” the Saudi Arabian deputy foreign minister, Yousef Yassin, asked the correspondent from the London Times. If the journalist had an answer, he did not report it. Instead he noted that Riyadh was being expensively rebuilt. It was now “ablaze at night with fairy lights, luminous mosaics, and Arabic texts in Neon lighting, giving the impression of a Disney land.” Yet even in this otherwordly place, opinion was united: “There is no doubt of the widespread popularity of Colonel Nasser or of the bitterness, resentment, and mistrust felt towards Britain. . . . As in the surrounding Arab States, he is welcomed here as the unifier of the Arab world and the defender of the Muslim faith against Israel[i] aggression.”38 Iskander Mirza, the president of Pakistan, requested a meeting of Muslim members of the Baghdad Pact—everyone except Britain—in Tehran. Britain’s most reliable ally, Iraq, agreed to attend. Exactly as so many of Eden’s advisers had predicted over the summer, the specter of British cooperation with Israel had made it impossible for Britain’s Arab friends to remain loyal. According to an American diplomatic report, “Nuri appeared quite ill and shaken, and high-level Iraqi officials in general are deeply despondent over the difficult situation which the current situation presents to Iraq.”39
Israel had now taken east and central Sinai. The Egyptian army was obeying Nasser’s order to withdraw to the mainland, but the troops fought fiercely around El Arish—holding the Israelis off until the morning of November 2. According to journalist Robert Henriques, traveling with Israeli troops, when the IDF soldiers took El Arish, they found radios left playing and abandoned tables already set for meals. Amid the confusion, “a couple of Egyptian jeeps pulled up at a petrol station in the town and asked to be refuelled. An Israeli soldier started to serve his customers before he realised that they were all Egyptian officers.”40
Neither side was immune to mix-ups. One Israeli tank squadron opened fire on what it believed to be an Egyptian tank squadron, taking out an impressive eight tanks in five minutes. When the clouds of dust churned up by the firing and the treads settled, it turned out that they had in fact just shot to pieces a fellow Israeli squadron. “Our capacity for misadventure is limitless,” wrote Moshe Dayan in his diary.41
British air raids over Cairo took out the radio transmitters. A propaganda station called Voice of Britain, based in Cyprus, occupied the frequency usually used by Nasser’s Voice of the Arabs. Voice of Britain began to broadcast Operation Musketeer’s psychological operations material. “You have taken to hiding in little villages,” the announcer said. “Do you realise what that means? We shall have to come and bomb you there. Imagine your own village being bombed. Imagine your own wife and children, your mother and your father, your grandparents having to run away from home. . . . We shall find you and bomb you, however much you hide. . . . You made only one mistake. You trusted Nasser.”42 Voice of Britain was broadcast from a requisitioned BBC Arabic Service station. The Arab staff made four attempts to sabotage it and one to make an unauthorized broadcast. As a result, three of them were placed under house arrest.43
With his own radio station off air, Nasser could no longer communicate directly with ordinary Egyptians. “The only way for me was to go to El Azhar [mosque] and give a speech,” he remembered. “And I went to El Azhar in an open car and there were aeroplanes over Cairo attacking the military targets. But the people were in the roads by that time, and all of the time I was in the open car they were raising the slogan ‘We will fight, we will fight.’”44
Nasser attended Friday prayers at El Azhar. Afterward, he spoke to the enormous crowd that had gathered. He explained why Egyptian forces had retreated from the Sinai, saying they had done so to avoid a trap: Britain and France had planned to draw them into the sands so they could snatch out the heart of Egypt. When he told them the Egyptian army had ransacked British stores along the Suez Canal on its way back to the mainland (tens of thousands of tons of British ammunition, military equipment, and vehicles were still stored there under the terms of the 1954 Canal Zone evacuation agreement), the applause was so loud that his speech could no longer be heard.
“In Cairo I shall fight with you against any invasion,” he said. “We shall fight to the last drop of our blood. We shall never surrender.”45 He told them that Egypt had always been a graveyard of invaders. This became the theme for one of many popular songs at the time, “The Nile, Graveyard of All Invaders,” often sung along with “O Gamal, Opener of the Door of Freedom.”46
Though there were rumblings in the Egyptian military and government against Nasser’s leadership, the great majority of the Egyptian people united behind him. This revealed how unrealistic the British psychological operations plan was. A scattering of leaflets dropped from foreign aircraft and some poisonous radio broadcasts from Cyprus were not, in a matter of days, likely to turn the Egyptian public against their popular leader while the country was being attacked by all of its worst enemies at once. If anything, Anglo-French propaganda may have backfired to shore up Nasser’s support.
According to his friend Mohammed Heikal, Nasser “had been encouraged by the demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere. So, though he would be grateful for any aid the Russians could give, he did not want to coordinate action with them.” The Soviets did not want to coordinate action with Egypt either, while they were preparing to invade Hungary. There was a diplomatic reception in Moscow that night attended by the Egyptian ambassador, Mohamed el-Kouni, and Nikita Khrushchev. When the two spoke, everyone in the room craned their necks to see if they could read what was going on from their faces.
“We are full of admiration for the way in which you are resisting aggression,” Khrushchev told Kouni, “but unfortunately there is no way in which we can help you militarily. But we are going to mobilize world public opinion.” Kouni reported this lukewarm endorsement in a telegram to Cairo.47
Foster Dulles arrived back in Washington. At the airport, he was asked by a journalist whether he would resign. Instead of replying, he “laughed heartily.” The United Nations, he said, had done a great thing by passing his resolution. “Never before has there been an example of such solidarity before all the world, dealing with such a grave matter.”48
When he got back to his office, Dulles telephoned Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador to the United Nations, in New York, to discuss the progress of the separate resolution on Hungary. Lodge told him the British and French were “in a very emotional condition—they say there will be a bad impression at home if we are in a hurry to get them on the dock and drag in Russia.” According to the transcript of the conversation, Dulles replied that he thought the British and French wanted to hide behind their association with the United States. “The Sec. thinks it is a mockery for them to come in with bombs falling over Egypt and denounce the SU [Soviet Union] for perhaps doing something that is not quite as bad [in Hungary]. L.[odge] agrees. The Sec. wants no part of it.”49
Throughout its existence, the Eisenhower administration’s attitude to the Soviet bloc had been to talk tough while acting little. Eisenhower did not want a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, especially from the mid-1950s, when the nuclear threat became more serious. The Soviets felt the same. American policy on the Soviet satellite states was openly to encourage “passive resistance” to Soviet-controlled regimes. The feasibility of mounting American special-forces operations in satellite states was explored, but only from behind desks in Washington. “Viewed as a potential theater of Special Forces operations, Hungary is singularly unpromising,” noted a report prepared for army intelligence in January 1956 by researchers at Georgetown University. Geographical conditions in the country were considered to provide poor cover for special forces, and the level of active resistance to Soviet domination was not clear. Even so, the report noted, “It may be argued that in no other European satellite is passive resistance so widespread, intense, and current . . . what is now dissidence may be converted into active resistance with the proper leadership.” Special forces would have a favorable prospect of rallying dissidents against the regime in some areas. “Furthermore, hot war conditions may radically change the resistance picture and other actors related to the feasibility of Special Forces operations.”50
Violent intervention in the Soviet bloc was not in the cards, but violence itself—as long as it was undertaken by residents of the satellites rather than Americans—did not seem unpalatable to the Eisenhower administration during the summer of 1956. “Avoid incitements to violence or to action when the probable reprisals or other results would yield a net loss in terms of U.S. objectives,” said a National Security Council policy statement approved by the president on July 18, 1956. “In general, however, do not discourage, by public utterances or otherwise, spontaneous manifestations of discontent and opposition to the Communist regime, despite risks to individuals, when their net results will exert pressures for release from Soviet domination.”51
Richard Nixon had gone further in a National Security Council meeting in July 1956: “The Vice President commented that it wouldn’t be an unmixed evil, from the point of view of U.S. interest, if the Soviet iron fist were to come down again on the Soviet bloc, though on balance it would be more desirable, of course, if the present liberalizing trend in relations between the Soviet Union and its satellites continued.” If the Soviet Union was not going to get nicer, it would help justify the American cause if it got much, much nastier.
Though Dulles and Nixon shared a strong antipathy to Communism, Dulles did not seem so exhilarated by the prospect of Soviet brutality. In the same meeting, he advocated a realist view. Movements termed national Communist—meaning non-Stalinist and non–Soviet controlled, like Tito’s government in Hungary—would be tacitly supported by the United States, in the hope they might “loosen the ties” with the Soviet Union. “Once these ties were loosened by the development of a national Communist government, it might ultimately be possible to go much further and to change the character of the Communist government in the satellites.”
While expressing his “emphatic agreement” with this policy, Nixon warned that it must not, under any circumstances, become public that the United States was supporting any form of Communist government—even a liberalizing one. “Accordingly, he hoped that everybody, from those present all the way down the line, would keep their mouths shut on this subject.” The Treasury secretary, George Humphrey, worried about the policy statement leaking out: “Imagine what would happen if portions of this paper were ever published in the newspapers. The effect on the Administration would be murderous.”52
On November 2, the American legation in Budapest was still attempting to encourage some form of intervention by Washington, however soft. A diplomat there noted that “the attitude of the people on the streets has been touchingly pro-American and that the potentiality of US influence in this period is tremendous.”53 At the very least, he hoped for further statements and talks on economic assistance. But the Eisenhower administration was in a bind: clear on the need to position itself internationally as different from and more appealing than the Soviets, while being effectively on the same side as them on the Suez question. If the United States were to capitalize on this moment to promote its opposition to imperialism in the postcolonial world, this was no time to stoke the fire in Hungary. With Khrushchev’s administration blaming foreign and especially American agents for the rebellion, it did not take a great deal of imagination to see how any form of American intervention there might be spun by the Soviets to look like hypocrisy.
1830 Brioni
A storm raged in the night over the Adriatic Sea. At his villa in the Brioni Islands, President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia made his way down through the squall to the landing stage next to the villa with his ambassador to Moscow, Veljko Mićunović, and the second and third most powerful Communist politicians in Yugoslavia after Tito himself, Edvard Kardelj and Aleksandar Rancović. The wind whipped the sea into gigantic peaks and troughs, but eventually a small boat appeared and was roped to the dock. From it emerged Nikita Khrushchev and Georgy Malenkov, both looking sick as parrots—the latter barely able to stand. “Malenkov was pale as a corpse,” remembered Khrushchev. “He gets carsick on a good road.”54 The boat trip had been bad; the plane before it, worse. Malenkov had spent most of the flight lying down, unable even to sit. “Khrushchev said it had been worse than in the war,” wrote Mićunović.55
“The Russians kissed us on both cheeks,” remembered Mićunović. “It was a very strange scene on that little empty quayside.” He was shocked: the Soviets and the Yugoslavs had been at odds for nearly seven years, and now there were kisses. “I still seem to feel Malenkov’s fat round face, into which my nose sank as if into a half-inflated balloon as I was drawn into a cold and quite unexpected embrace,” he wrote later.
Just half an hour later, a meeting began in the villa. The only people present were those six: no note takers, no interpreters, no secretaries. In his diary, Mićunović recorded the content of the talks, which went on from seven p.m. that evening until five a.m. the next morning. Though his account differs from Khrushchev’s own, it was set down much nearer to the event when it was fresh in his memory. Both versions are revealing of Khrushchev’s reasoning and state of mind.
Khrushchev opened the talks in an emotional fashion, “saying that Communists in Hungary were being murdered, butchered, and hanged.” He said he did not know whether Imre Nagy was merely a tool for the West or had always been an agent of imperialism. But the restoration of capitalism now looked alarmingly likely. “What is there left for us to do?” asked Khrushchev. “If we let things take their course the West would say we are either stupid or weak, and that’s one and the same thing. We cannot possibly permit it, either as Communists and internationalists or as the Soviet state. We would have capitalists on the frontiers of the Soviet Union.” Soviet troops were mostly in place, he told them, but it would take “a couple of days” before they were ready to stop the counterrevolution.
Khrushchev was worried that this had happened at a moment when the presidium had been distancing itself from Stalin: “There were people in the Soviet Union who would say that as long as Stalin was in command everybody obeyed and there were no big shocks, but that now, ever since they had come to power (and here Khrushchev used a coarse word to describe the present Soviet leaders), Russia had suffered the defeat and loss of Hungary.”
The crisis in Suez, Khrushchev said, presented an opportunity. Of course there would be a fuss made in the West and at the United Nations about what he would do in Hungary, but with Britain, France, and Israel waging a war with Egypt, he expected that to be “less” than could normally be expected. “They are bogged down there, and we are stuck in Hungary,” he explained.
Malenkov outlined the Soviets’ military plan. “It is clear that the Russians are going to intervene frontally and with great force, because they are completely isolated from the Hungarian people,” wrote Mićunović; “in fact, the population is opposed to the Russians.”
Mićunović’s version of events was loyal to Tito, portraying him as a bold critic of Soviet policy. Conversely, Khrushchev claimed Tito supported him wholeheartedly. “I expected even more strenuous objections from Tito than the ones we had encountered during our discussions with the Polish comrades,” said Khrushchev. “But we were pleasantly surprised. Tito said we were absolutely right and that we should send our soldiers into action as quickly as possible. . . . I would even say he went further than we did in urging a speedy and decisive resolution of the problem.”56
Mićunović instead asserted that the Yugoslavs advocated for “some political preparation, an effort to save what could be saved.” They suggested setting up a new government composed of Hungarians. Khrushchev and Malenkov vaguely agreed, though they were disillusioned with the leaders they had installed in the past, Rákosi and Gerő. “Khrushchev used coarse language about Rákosi and then even worse language about Geroe,” Mićunović remembered. Khrushchev told them that Rákosi had offered to go to Budapest to help the Soviet cause, but he had told him frankly, “Go down there and the people will hang you.”
“That idiot doesn’t understand the most elementary things,” remarked Malenkov.
For the next couple of hours, they discussed possible Hungarian leaders. Tito suggested that the Soviets favor the more liberal János Kádár (who had once been accused of being a Titoist) over the hard-line Ferenc Münnich.57 Then Khrushchev told them he had also been talking with the Chinese. He said that Chou En-lai, the Chinese premier, and Liu Shao-chi, the chairman of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress—Mao’s number two and number three—had come to Moscow. “The Chinese had apparently agreed to everything and had been in contact with Mao Tse-tung by telephone. He had agreed completely with the decision to intervene in Hungary.” Khrushchev went on to complain about the perfidy of the Poles for a while. “As usual when he is talking to Yugoslavs and wants to put them in a good mood, as though he were making some concessions to them, Khrushchev told some unflattering stories about Stalin,” Mićunović added.
Mićunović believed that night that he and his fellow Yugoslavs might have encouraged Khrushchev to rethink Imre Nagy’s fate. “Whenever the question of Imre Nagy came up, Khrushchev would generally repeat, ‘They are slaughtering Communists in Hungary,’ as though it was all being done on decisions taken by Nagy’s government and carried out by its services,” he noted. But he thought Tito had managed to soften him on this and said Khrushchev ultimately agreed that Nagy “could do much to help and to preserve his reputation as a communist.”58 Maybe, the Yugoslavs hoped, they might have talked the Soviets down from all-out war.
1600 Washington DC // 2100 London // 2200 Budapest
Yet the Soviet war plan was already well advanced. According to a later United Nations report, Hungary had by this time “to all intents and purposes been reinvaded.” There were around 2,500 trucks, 1,000 supporting vehicles, and somewhere between 75,000 and 200,000 men and women of the Red Army in Hungarian territory. Imre Nagy was still trying to negotiate with Moscow, hoping desperately that the enormous military presence in his country was merely “a show of strength.”59 The government in Moscow continued to deny that anything was happening.
Charles Bohlen, the American ambassador to Moscow, was at a reception that evening hosted by the Syrian embassy. He spoke to Nikolai Bulganin. “He denied that there had been any reinforcements from outside Hungary,” Bohlen reported, “but said there had been much movement [of] Soviet troops inside country which might have created impression [of] reinforcements.” The reception ended before Bohlen could press Bulganin on further points, but Bohlen did note that other Soviet leaders—Shepilov, Zhukov, and Sokolovsky—left early, and Khrushchev was nowhere to be seen. “I asked Voroshilov and Mikoyan whether he was ill and they said no he was at home, and in explanation said it was impossible for all of them to attend all receptions.”60 Khrushchev’s visit to Tito was a closely guarded secret.
In London, the minister of transport and civil aviation appeared on television that night to warn the public that there was now a “gap in this great pipeline of oil. As soon as the gap arrives, there will have to be some restriction on oil consumption in this country.” In Chester, the chancellor of the exchequer, Harold Macmillan, was giving a speech in support of a Conservative candidate at a by-election. He was unable to avoid questions about Suez. Macmillan expressed a desire to see the United Nations intervene, and he sounded shaken: “The quicker it gets going the better I shall be pleased,” he said. “Then we shall be only an advance guard. The strain is greater than the economy of the country can bear.”
He attempted to justify the government’s action. “I hope when history judges this matter it will be said: ‘These men have made mistakes, but they have had the courage to act instead of slinking into the easy way of passing the buck to someone else.’”61
At the United Nations in New York that evening, Britain, France, and the United States reunited to ask the Security Council to consider the situation in Hungary following Imre Nagy’s appeal. The discussion was held up because it could not be decided whether the Hungarian representative was loyal to the previous Stalinist regime or could be considered to represent Nagy’s government. The indications were that, once the representative’s credentials could be established and the Western powers could be certain of a strong pro-Nagy Hungarian voice, a resolution condemning Soviet aggression could be brought up in the Security Council. “Should Soviet Russia veto this resolution, as it is expected to do, then the matter could be referred to an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly (just as was the complaint against Britain and France over the Suez affair yesterday),” explained the Times of London, “and there is little doubt that Russia would then find herself almost as unpopular in the eyes of member States as Britain and France now are.”62
If this was a move by Britain and France to take the heat off themselves, the president of the United States would not go along with it. Eisenhower gave a speech in Philadelphia that night. He also linked Suez and Hungary, though not to Britain’s or France’s benefit. He expressed pride that the United States had declared itself against the use of force in either conflict. “We cannot and will not condone aggression,” he said, “no matter who the attacker, no matter who the victim.”63
2200 Washington DC
After his triumph at the United Nations the day before, Dulles had flown back to Washington that morning and put in a full day’s work. He went home afterward for dinner and backgammon with his wife, Janet, then retired to bed at around ten p.m. As he slept, a telegram clicked through at the office from Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador at the United Nations. Lodge reported a “strained and difficult” discussion with his British and French counterparts. Pierson Dixon, the Briton, “charge[s] US has lost interest in Hungary and now only wants [to] increase pressure on UK and France under GA [General Assembly] Suez resolution.” Dixon thought the Americans believed that Britain was advocating action on Hungary only in order to distract the world from Suez. “I explained US has not lost interest in Hungary but considers situation there too confused to permit our pressing substantive resolution to final vote,” Lodge wrote. He recommended that the United States back off introducing resolutions with France and Britain at all—but from now on bring them on a solo basis. This was a major move and would be a further visible break with the United States’ tripartite allies. “Please instruct urgently,” the message ended.64
According to the time stamp on the telegram, this arrived seven minutes after midnight. At almost exactly the same time, Dulles was woken up by searing abdominal pain. It ebbed, and he went back to sleep. A few hours later, it happened again.
He telephoned his special assistant, William Macomber. “I’ve been taken ill, Bill,” he said, “and I want you to come over here. The doctors are coming and the ambulance is coming. And I want you to be with me and sort of take charge of this until the Department opens. You can get in touch with Mr. Hoover. I don’t know how ill I am. But please come over. In the meantime, I want you to call [Eisenhower’s press secretary] Jim Hagerty and explain to him what’s happening and get his advice as to how we should play this from the public relations angle.”
Even in acute pain, Dulles never lost his focus on running the State Department. He was also conscious of the need not to damage Eisenhower’s electoral chances. “Mr. Dulles thought that his going into hospital at this key moment would remind an awful lot of people of the President’s earlier heart attack and could possibly have an adverse effect on their willingness to vote for him,” Macomber remembered. When Macomber arrived, the paramedics were trying and failing to carry the tall and now unexpectedly fragile Secretary of State down the spiral stairs from his bedroom. At last, Dulles sat and inched his way down in a crouched position, step by step.
Dulles was taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was soon given a stark diagnosis. It was cancer. He would have to have an operation without delay. He would be out of action completely until Monday.
Dulles told Macomber to find Hoover. “I want you to say to him that for everything but Suez, he’s Secretary of State,” said Dulles. “No non Suez problems can be brought to me. He’ll have to run those things.”
“In other words, on the key issue of the time, which was Suez, . . . he kept control of [sic] all through his illness,” said Macomber later. “It was an enormously impressive example of self-discipline.”65 Even though he stayed on top of developments, the fact that Dulles was pulled off the political front line in the State Department and the United Nations did lessen his influence over events. Suez and Hungary had just been overtaken by a personal crisis he could not ignore.