Tuesday, October 23rd, 1956. Stuttgart, Germany. Morning, a school day for me, like any other day; up and at ‘em. Breakfast, grab the lunch bag, kiss mom and dad, off to catch the bus for school. But it wasn’t an ordinary day, slightly over 600 miles due East from where I played in the forest, from where on the weekends I wandered about in the little town of Vaihengen near 7th Army Headquarters, war was breaking out.
It was not much of a war as wars go, but it was a war fraught with danger for the world and for the next several weeks, a war of ideas, of freedom as much as a war of bullets, tanks and death. Imre Nagy had been ousted as Prime Minister of Hungry for being insufficiently Communist and too liberal and the people of Hungry in general and Budapest in particular were upset, angry and willing to say so. Demonstrations began in Budapest, soon numbering thousands and tens of thousands. They marched, chanted, and demanded the restoration of Nagy.
The demonstration began as a march of solidarity with Wladyslaw Gomulka the Polish leader ousted for being “too liberal” and ended as a call for freedom and removal of the Soviet’s from Hungry. As the crowds grew, Erno Gerö, First Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and someone known for his hard line stances, went on the radio to say that demands for separation from the Soviet Union were lies and rumors. But the people of Hungry said otherwise. As the crowds grew, the demands became louder and louder, and they marched on the radio station to force a retraction. A heavy truck was used to try to batter a way into the station. Police opened fire and skirmishes between the demonstrators and armed police took place throughout the city. According to the BBC:
A running battle began to clear the crowd away from the building, while clashes between demonstrators and armed police broke out elsewhere in the city.When the crowds refused to disperse despite police opening fire on them, Mr. Gerö ordered Soviet tanks onto the streets.
The demonstrators, however, are showing no signs of giving up their protest, which is continuing into the night.”
That night, the Communist Party of Hungry met in emergency session and reinstated Nagy as Prime Minister. But the fuse had been lit, and the count down to revolution had begun.
In less than 48 hours, the people continued their demands, and Gerö’s tanks stayed on the streets. As the confrontation increased, the tanks opened fire pointblank into the crowds.
With hundreds dead and dying, with many more hundreds wounded the Communists fired Gerö and installed Janos Kadar. The Soviets began pulling out of Budapest on October 30th but Krushchev, fearing a spread of the “will of the people” sent them back in on November 4th with orders to re-take the city and firmly establish Soviet control over Hungry. The people of Budapest reacted with Molotov Cocktails and bravery unseen in resistance to the Soviet’s for some time. But they were no match for the Soviets and slowly but surely the Russians re-established control over the city and countryside.
Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy but the Russians kidnapped him and put him in prison. Nagy was tried for treason in a secret trial and executed in 1958.
I remember seeing the photographs of the slaughter, I remember having our “bags” packed in case we went to war with the Soviet Union and had to be evacuated. I remember Eisenhower calling for calm and a de-escalation of tensions. But the shadow of fear remained for sometime afterwards.
Scenes such as the one to the left would be repeated over the years as peoples sought freedom from tyrany; in Prague in 1968, in Warsaw, in East Berlin in 1999, in Lebanon in 2005. In Beireut in 1983, American and French troops, trying to keep the peace in Lebanon were senselessly murdered by those that think freedom can be stifled. The bottom line is that the search for freedom and self determination can be stifled and smothered for a while, but it can’t be killed. Freedom always wins in the end.
Linked at Cao’s Blog, Random Numbers and Wizbang
cross posted at GM’s Corner
Said GM @ 9:08 am | Permalink
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