Readers’ Responses to Our Question (76)

i was in co.b 503 airborne munich germany in oct, 1956 i can remember sitting on a plane for more than 2 hours ready to go into hungary they gave me live ammo after a few hours they let us off the plane some deal had been agreed on anyone remember?

i was in co.b 503 airborne munich germany in oct, 1956 i can remember sitting on a plane for more than 2 hours ready to go into hungary they gave me live ammo after a few hours they let us off the plane some deal had been agreed on anyone remember?

i was in co.b 503 airborne munich germany in oct, 1956 i can remember sitting on a plane for more than 2 hours ready to go into hungary they gave me live ammo after a few hours they let us off the plane some deal had been agreed on anyone remember?

As I understand it, the "Hungarian Revolution" was sort of "staged". To "avoid" the real war. And they choose communistism. Today they still ride this excuse to try and WORK AROUND other countrys and there goals/rules, even Russia. I find the country a disgrace

Im sorry but all the people who were afraid about world war 3 should just stop talking because when hungry started the uprissing they wanted to be free just like the U.S. thats why there should have been a war but when the time came no one help them out. but they helped out iraq... oh they were being tortured? hungarians where beging tortured too sometimes not physically but it did the same damage.and we're not just talking about one country we are talking about half of europe. I understand that the soviet union fell a few years later but what if it never did fell you would had to have fought them some time and if not then when? when they had even better weapons?

p.s. I am a young hungarian boy who lives in U.S. I wanted to learn how hungary was helped out by the most powerfull and great country in the world but in stead, I had to learn that the U.S. had turned there back on the hungarians. I mean america treated europe like sh_t and thats why i think people should just stop being pus__s about a 3rd world war
p.p.s please excuse my language. and my spelling errors that I have not noticed

"risking a nuclear war for Hungary? What for?" - the best example of American ignorance... While I agree that averting a nuclear war was a wise decision, this comment just demonstrates the alterior motives of "spreading freedom" that we Americans are doing in Iraq right now.

Here's an interesting angle on this question: I was in Hungary in 1987, at a time when there were still lots of Russian troops to be seen on the streets of Budapest and other towns. I asked the same question as today's topic of an engineer I met, an earnest, likeable fellow who was born just before the 1956 uprising. His answer shocked me: "Oh you know, our leaders at that time had made a big mistake. They had let a lot of criminals, a lot of bad people out of prison. When these people were making trouble and destroying property and trying to take over, we were very lucky that the Russians were there to help us and to get things back to normal."

I didn't argue with his premise (even though a close family friend had been one of those criminals he talked about and had been fortunate to get out of Hungary alive when the Russian troops crushed the rebellion), because it was clear that he believed the version of history that he was telling me. But I thought that it was an aberration. So I asked at least half a dozen other educated people, in several different cities, the same question. Sometimes they spoke English, and sometimes I asked through my interpreter. And I got almost verbatim the same response. Both young people and those who were old enough to remember the events of 1956 told the same story—weak, ineffective, but probably well-meaning Hungarian leaders had let a lot of troublemakers out of prison, and then things got out of hand, until the Russians thankfully came to the country's rescue.

It was a striking demonstration of the power of propaganda and state control of the media. I had a similar experience a few years later in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where I learned that most everyone I asked was incredulous and indignent at the suggestion that Germany and Russia were ever allies at the outset of WWII.

I now wonder sometimes whether the version of events that I "know" from our government may be just as slanted sometimes. Very sobering.

Hungary is an excellent example of how containment works. Thank God the neo-cons were just plain old Manhattan Trotskyites during Eisenhower's term.

Irrelevant question. US politicians made the decision at the time based on their considerations and interests. The problem is the hollow US freedom rhetoric that we are exposed to all the time. Just admit that countries have interests, but lack moral values. Start with Iraq and oil.

I arrived in France in Jan of 1956 and was assigned to the 388th Fighter Bomber Wing at Etain France. When the people in Hungary had their revolt I though we were going to get involved. Many of our combat wings dispersed. I was with a group of less than 30 that moved from France to a future German AFB just north of Munich. Our job was to load up fuel in the underground tanks, off load bombs and other munitions, beds etc for another 500 folks should we expand the base. We slept in the I guess you could say standard 12 man tents. We put in wooden floors and had two stoves in each tent. I was there from November till Jan of 1957. Looked to me like we were ready to go and I was young enough to be disappointed when we did not get involved. I can still see the faces of those who made it to Munich and were flown out to the US of A. Was about 50,000 of them before it was over. I look back and have to really be happy that both the US and Russians kept their power dry as I firmly beleive this would have been a war none of us wanted and those nukes more than likely would have been going off all over the place.

I remember the episode as a kid and felt really sympathetic toward the Hungarians but riskihg a nuclear war for Hungary? What for?
Bottom line is that we averted a possible nuclear war and eventually won.

My Dad, who was twenty in 1956, told me that at his college many students signed a petition offering to go to Hungary as volunteers to fight against the Russians. He says that they were told by the US government that this would forfeit their American citizenship, and so the movement died. I've always been fascinated by this story, but he doesn't recall any more about it. Does anyone know any information about this episode? Who started the petition, how widespread it was and what happened to it? Did any volunteers actually go? Thanks.

I was in the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, when the revolt broke out. The division was in the process of getting organized. There was no way it could have been used to "roll back the tide of communism." There was nothing that could have been done by the US. In recent years I have been in Hungary twice with Habitat for Humanity and no one ever said to me that we let them down, even though we did. I heard a lot about the Treaty of Trianon [1920] which stripped Hungary of some ethnic Hungarians by giving them to Czechoslovakia and Romania. Somehow the timing was wrong for us to intervene in the revolt, although it did lead to a gradual lessening of the Soviet grip on the country.

I am really impressed by the language and coherence of these postings compared to other blogs and comment pages. Probably because many of the posters are international. Much less irrational ideology than is typical of US discourse. However, I think that more recent scholarship demonstrates that it was Churchill, not FDR, who cut a deal with Stalin to leave East Europe to USSR if it would leave Britain with control of Greece. The idea that in time of leadership transition USSR would have folded is interesting speculation, but too risky to have tried. As the saying goes, no nukes is good nukes, and couldn't have been counted on, even if they did only reach Germany. Like Iran, Hungary gave us no point of entry to intervene, but as has been pointed out, many points of entry for USSR troops. USSR still had huge amounts of WWII might — lots of big guns, lots of still superior tanks, and lots of troops close to the action, plus the puppets. We did not have the overwhelming airpower then that we do now. Vietnam proved that even 10 years later. I find very convincing the posts by the Vets of the era. Korea proves the virtues of self-defense. Even though they are unstable and might share their weapons, we dare not attack — not saying we should — because of their defense capacity. The people who point out Iran's desire for nukes to have Korea's safety are exactly correct. Despite their language, I think Iran is stable, interested only in having nukes to be immune from US attack, which it has good reason to fear — not that I am saying we would attack (not that I am saying we wouldn't) but that from Iran's viewpoint, they might well think we would. (I'm saying Iran is unlikely to export of WMD or commit outright aggression; I'm not excluding support of terrorism or export of fundamentalism.) I think the parallels between US encouraging the Hungarians in 1956 and US encouraging the Shiites after GWI are quite well taken. To any one contemplating any US intervention anywhere, I recommend Phil Och's song, "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land." Whether our intent is good, whether we only think it is good, or whether we only pretend it is good, any US intervention is inherently alien, inevitably racist, and thus unwelcome, mistaken, and doomed to failure. No one has considered the question, what if John Foster Dulles and Richard Nixon had given liberated Hungary the same democracy we gave pre-Castro Cuba, Diem's Vietnam, Franco Spain, Latin America of the 1950s and 1960s or 1980s, or as has been mentioned, Iran?

Why not Darfur? Now? Same reason probably. No natural resources.

I find reading these comments somewhat disappointing. Especially the idea posed that Eisenhower's pro-Democracy rhetoric led some of the eastern bloc nations to think the U.S. was poised to aid any of them who rose up against the Soviet bear. I do recall JFK using this kind of language. Can anyone cite anything Ike said that resembled JFK's "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans... unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world"?

If anyone wishes to dare think of the outcome of a venture into Hungary of 1956, let them study the outcome of the halfhearted Cold War ventures into Cuba of 1961, or later in Vietnam. War are best fought for the cause of a nation's pure survival, not lofty political rhetoric.

I was alive safely in the USA during the 56 revolt. From my perspective the US and Britain saw little to be gained by forcing a showdown with the Soveits. Germany, to many a much greater prize, was still very unstable just 11 years from WWII. I remember a teacher saying the revolt was a symptom of repression, and that freedom would prevail. True enough it did.

Our leaders at the time did not have either the foresight or great economic engine, to bankrupt our then great advesary in the USSR. Reagan did have both, something that did not make him too popular if you remember.

Hungary's heroes may have placed far too much upon an assumption that the US and allies would move to protect their postion. They did however, provide an image of hope and love for freedom ever so briefly conquering repression from the outside.

I find it a bit aggrevating, that our president (lower case by choice) go to Hungary and espouse the words he did. This president has done more to curtail open debate, individual freedom, and used outright untruths at home...hypocracy will be the unfortunate legacy his administration will leave. I pray one day we will regain our prescious personal freedoms so battered by this "conservative" administration.

To Argosi -

I really don't mind that someone, somewhere is discussing our role (or lack of same) in the affairs of Hungary in the 1950s. It's just seeing it in the context of this stark vacuum (and I'm talking about the entire mainstream media during this entire post-9/11 rhetorical wasteland) of discussion on WHY Iran might be arming itself, here in 2006.

We just get the daily dose of establishment message about how fundamentalist the leaders of Iran are, and we all know what that means (wink wink): that they are deluded nutcases who just like to randomly blow up things and kill people. You know those Muslims, yadayada. Never is it considered that some of this bomb-chase may be a completely *rational* response to our demonstrated disregard for international sovereignty and near-universal opinion, and our particular history with regard to the country in question. And the lesson they've learned by watching our behavior toward Korea vs Iraq. Get the bomb, and the US respects your sovereignty. Don't, and they have no reason to. Because you know those Americans. They just like to randomly blow up things and kill peopl.

We are considered by the majority of the world as the greatest threat to peace. US. Do you think maybe some of that is based on some reality? How long does the "oh, those Swedes and Indonesians are just jealous because we have more Coke billboards than they do" line of BS prop up your justification for our doing whatever our corporate interests want us to on the international scene?

NO!
Hungary had no oil, no major business were experiencing any difficulties that we know of, and no Hungarian leader had tried to assinate my dad. There was just no very pressing reason to commit our heros to a just war even if our country thanked them.

In 1956 I was a member of the 5th Air Force stationed in the Far East and I clearly remember the uprising in Hungary, the Suez Canal invasion and the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam.

Throughout the Cold War period the disposition of ground forces in Europe heavily favored the Soviet Union. If the US and NATO had intervened militarily to support the Hungarian uprising, the probability was an overwhelming Soviet response in Europe and military defeat or stalemate for the US and NATO. Keep in mind that the Warsaw Pact forces, not just Soviet, surrounded Hungary and that any intervention was subject to intense attack from all sides. The ability to seize and hold Hungary in this scenario was extremely unrealistic. There was much greater equality in military technology then than now. Moreover, we would have found ourselves in the situation of waging war and trying to protect the civilian population at the same time. If we can't do it in Iraq today, it would have been impossible in 1956.

The prospects of a nuclear war was daunting for both sides. Without elaborating fully it is sufficient to argue that the US had more to lose than the Soviets. In any event, a full nuclear exchange would be so devastating that "winning" is a meaningless term.

Fortunately, the leadership in the US and NATO avoided a war that could have resulted in horrific devastation for the US, Europe, and the Soviet Union.

Oops !

It was Jan. 2002 (and not Jan 2001) of course for the calling off of the Eisenhower doctrine, in the first post-9/11 State of the Union speech by president Bush ...

What's all this talk about the Eisenhower doctrine applied to... 21st century Iraq ?

Wake up everybody: this is no longer 1989 but... post 9/11 ! The Soviet Union with its thousands of nukes pointed at the West is a thing of the past and so is the Cold War !

In case, you haven't noticed: the Eisenhower doctrine (aka "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard") was officially and rightly called off by President Bush on Jan. 20, 2001.

But of course, there will always be those that want to wait for the Iraqs of the world to become nuke-sanctuarized North Koreas so they can blame the Bush team AGAIN for... letting it happen !

Some others have smartly commented that the real question is not whether the US should have intervened, but whether the US should have provoked the rebellion in the first place.
I believe, however, that much mythology has emerged about what exactly the US did to encourage the uprising. The US funded Radio Free Europe and the CIA was involved in putting Hungarian emigres on the air with a message for Hungarians to resist Soviet rule. But no explicit promise was made that the US would come to Hungary's assistance.
Indeed, the CIA and those Hungarians working at RFE were fully surprised by the uprising, which was chiefly provoked by the appalling rule of Matyas Rakosi coupled with news of Kruschev's denouncement of Stalin.

Re. Hungary vs Iraq:

Actually there's a huge similarity in the manner in which the Americans acted in Hungary and Iraq; at the end of the the first Iraq War the "marsh Arabs" were encouraged to rise up against Saddam only to be left without any support.

Missing from this conversation is much examination of the other question: was the US right to persuade the Hungarians to rise up in the first place? Such encouragement was voiced for months by the CIA through western European radio broadcasts. These persuaded many Hungarians that if they rose up, America would come in to help them. It all seems like a college boys' prank in light of the non-arrival of American forces, just a prank that killed lots of Hungarians and had many more imprisoned and tortured.

That the CIA doesn't learn all that much, or care all that much, shows in much the same merry prank played on Iraq's Kurds in the 1990s. While we hear often of Saddam Hussein's repression of the Kurdish uprising of 1991, there is less mention of the belief among leaders of the uprising that they had been promised, face-to-face, US military assistance if they took up arms against their national government. Of course, no such help arrived, and many Kurds were killed, imprisoned, tortured after their uprising failed. As consolation prize, the US and UK established a no-fly zone where Iraqi Kurds still lived, to protect them in some degree from further Husseinite repression.

We have yet to see the real cost of the CIA's recently bungled intervention in Mogadishu, but doubtless that will be making headlines one day soon.

It was proved to be a wise desision. The policy of non interference and working on winning the minds and hearts of normal population casted the foundation for elimination of communism from the east europe. i had an opportunity to visit east europian countries in seventies when the cold war was on peak. the normal population was eddict to any thing related to USA weather it is marlbro cigarette or wrangler jean. VOA transmissions were jammed to avoid the peoples tuning the station.

if in 2050 washingtn post editor post same question of the policies of today then i do not how the toddlers of teens of today will reply

To B2O :" I just don't understand the delusion this country is mired in"

It's easy: Everybody has his/her agenda, priorities, values and a whole lot of demands.

You, for instance, don't think much of the topic at hand. Hungary is of no interest to you. You seem to think we ought to discuss why Iran is entitled to fear the US and therefore to arm itself with nuclear bombs. You may or may not be right but could you not wait until the topic comes up? It sure is bound to, in one context or another.
Then you could advocate the excuse for Iran and North Korea to arm themselves to the teeth with nuclear missiles.

To Alec: ""There is no reason why a single American should die for the freedom of anybody else.""

Well said, Alec! It took me soooo much longer to say more—not less— but the same. As to the food package, I am sure you repaid it and some!

Good for you. Just think what America could be if only Her immigrants
would be half as loyal as you obviously are. Your parents and you probably had to wait a long time in a camp in Austria or Italy, before you were let in.

But now America lets in whiners, troublemakers, fanatics, all "refugees", so that they can breed the offspring who will hate Her.

And America is sending Her troups to spread democracy to the Middle East so that She may have peace at Her doorsteps. What folly!
No wonder the war on terrorism is expected to last for ever!

I post my comments to Masha Lipman's here, again. Perhaps it best belongs with the other replies to the revised question.
It is all Alec's, above me, fault. Sorry for the length and duplication of the post but Masha really pushed my button.
We still don't have any idea of what went on after WW2 within the Soviet Block, do we? Here it goes, as posted to your expert panelist
by an amateur. But trust me: I speak Pleno Jure, though Argosi is only my nickname.

Masha Lipman's comment would have been best left at the title she chose : Pragmatism Trumps Idealism.

Her premise that the Hungarian Revolution of October 1956 was in large part provoked by Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, in the spring of 1956,when he went as far as to denounce some of Stalin's "mistakes", is wrong on at least two counts :

First, the Hungarians had many reasons closer to their hearts, indeed their welfare and existence, to revolt against the Soviet-installed Communist regime and the Soviet Army occupation, than Khrushchev's lamentable speech.
No surprises in that speech for Hungarians; they had known the Soviet scourge, as all other people of the "Socialist" family did.

Second, Khrushchev's speech was simply a political ploy to ensure his supremacy in the bloody machinery of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, by starting yet another of their famous purges. I think the Hungarians did not much care one way or another who the Soviet dictator was. They abhorred Communism and the Soviet atrocities of the occupation, as did all the other populations of the so called "liberated" countries of Eastern and Central Europe.

And that brings me to this outrageous statement in Ms Lipman's commentary :
""It should also be remembered that as the liberator from Nazism, the Soviet Union had a lot of sympathizers in the countries of Europe.""

Nothing could be further from the truth as far as countries of Eastern and Central Europe is concerned. These countries had been trampled over, pilaged and raped by the Soviet Army on their way to Berlin, yet again robbed when the Soviet Army returned en masse from Berlin and stripped the "liberated" countries of factories, any little food left from the first "liberation", and took many innocent men and women away to Soviet labor camps.

These countries, next, were enslaved by the occupying forces left behind, and "The Iron Curtain descended over Europe", thanks to the Yalta Agreement, and to the great astonishment of American and British meddlers who trusted uncle Joe in dividing European spheres of influence.

Perhaps Ms Lipman was thinking of European countries who were not on the glorious Soviet Army's path in their fight agains the other plague, Nazism, soon to be replaced in the occupied countries by Communism.
Yes, some fools in France, Italy and elsewhere were sympathizers. How all of the "liberated" populations of the satellite
countries would have loved to see them live under the Soviet heel for a change!
Hungarians were just one of those populations. They had had enough by 1956!

Tired of waiting for the Anglo-Americans to reverse the errors of the Yalta Agreement, they took what matters they could into their own hands, revolted, hoped for help from the free world as they heard the big talk on Radio Free Europe, had a free government for a short time and paid the price for their thirst for freedom in blood, more prison for those captured and
the humiliation of the emigration camps for those who escaped.

But they had tried to do something about their freedom before any help from outside. Never expected the gift of it, only perhaps a little support from the community of nations to which they appealed.

To their credit, I think they did not actually expect America to send in troops. Not after eleven years from the betrayal of Yalta!

Nor did they go to pieces after the revolution was crushed. They adjusted to the new Communist government, made veiled, later open fun at it, chipped away at the
Iron Curtain from within until the time was right for ALL peoples of the Eastern and Central Europe to shed the Communist oppressors.

And, by God, that's what they have done for themselves: Freedom and Democracy the way it should be gained. Not given, bestowed or imposed, but earned!

Above all, not propped up by any foreign army, nor fought against by any fanatical insurgency.

Proud of what they have done, yet not showing off the purple fingers after casting their first free votes in many years, sometimes still voting for some old guard Communists hiding under a less conspicuous political umbrella, but doing that of their OWN FREE WILL in a DEMOCRACY that is of THEIR MAKING!

This year the Hungarians will commemorate their failed revolution of fifty years ago.
Let us resolve to honor those who died, went to prison or into exile during the October 1956 Revolution in Hungary.
Let us also remember the truth of their
success in finding Freedom and Democracy, as did all the other peoples previously under the Communist regimes, thirty some years after that!

So why then, I ask, belittle that truth by drawing a parallel with Iraq's case?
The only reasonable parallel is that in
Hungary's case there was absolutely no liberation as a result of the Soviet and
Anglo-American victory in WW2, while in Iraq's case there is hardly any liberation as a result of American and British invasion and occupation.
In either case there was not and there is not a political result that could reasonably be called DEMOCRACY, and most certainly not FREEDOM, with occupiers forcing their version of democracy and freedom down peoples' throats.

As for the capital difference I will try to repeat what I said in my response to the original question a few days ago:
-That an intervention in the Hungarian revolt would have been senseless, since the Yalta Agreement lost Hungary to the USSR.
-That the Hungarian people would have well deserved it to get help.
-That the Hungarian people did something by and for themselves, in spite of their predicament with an occupying Soviet army and their own KGB-style police on their backs.
-That freedom and democracy are best left up to those who may desire them, to gain by their own effort, as the history of the fall of Communism has recently enough proven.

I should think this will suffice to address the new context of the old question.

Any other comparison between the American ill-advised intervention in the tribal affairs of Iraq to "spread democracy", on one hand, and the Hungarian Revolution —when intervention would have been welcomed indeed, although not practical—
as well as the subsequent long lasting effort of all peoples from the satellite countries to free themselves, any such even attempt to a comparison, is a disgrace.

Posted by: Argosi | June 26, 2006 08:48 PM
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Well, thank you. Yours Pleno Jure, Argosi.

America should have intervened. Instead, it lied to the Hungarians, through the Voice of America (VOA), as pointed out by Vivian Newman (see above).

I have heard several of the VOA's bombastic messages beamed into Hungary in those days. "Just hold on for a few more days, we are coming to help you!" Two weeks later, the barbarians rolled into the city. American presence was a U.S. embassy car driving around in the city, taking photographs.

The VOA was, and is, a function of the U.S. government. And, "reporting the truth" was always a part of its formal mission, don't you know.

Now, 50 years later, it was certainly a thrill to see Bush The Ignorant congratulating the people of Hungary.

A PS to my last post: I didn't mean to suggest by any stretch of the imagination that we should actually *talk* about our history, and how it might be shaping the present. No, I am a good indoctrinated American and realize that to do so would be Wholly Unpatriotic (TM). By all means, we should continue bumbling on our self-absorbed way, running over anyone who gets in our way, killing any of those mean "terrorists" who want to keep our corporations from dominating other countries' natural resources.

To actually *talk* about this stuff would be entirely Unsupportive of The Troops (TM). We honor them best by sending them on hopeless missions to create more enemies for us (and thus more business for Grumman, Lockheed Martin and the wonderful Americans who make their living in the military-industrial complex), and create more terrorists. And to let them die for the bottom line of companies like Chevron-Texaco and its major stockholders. Like the woman for whom they named one of their tankers, Condoleezza Rice. As long as you have a yellow ribbon magnet on your gas-guzzling SUV, you're set. No need for thought.

Do people really not *get* these connections, or are they in a sort of permanent hypnotized, distracted haze? I just don't understand the delusion this country is mired in.

As a university student in Europe at the time (and a volunteer with Maltese Order to greet and feed the refugees at the border) I was chagrined by my government's radio broadcasting of false promises of help to the Hungarians. The decision to stay out of the confrontation may have been correct, but to deliberately mislead, and then let down, these people was reprehensible.

Does anyone else find it sadly ironic (and predictable) that with Iran-US relations so heated at the moment, the Post is debating the question of US foreign intervention in the 1950's, and the country in question is... Hungary??

Wouldn't it be just a weeee bit more relevant for us to be talking about the 1953 CIA coup that ousted a democratically-elected IRANIAN president, and installed the Shah? Over the next 20-some years, our Shah ruled repressively while doing the bidding of our oil companies. That uprising in the late seventies that resulted in American hostages taken - just a random act of coherent, orchestrated psychosis by those oh-so-crazy Muslims? It seems that's what most Americans still think, helped along by our compliant, domesticated media.

ASK YOURSELVES: WHY is Iran so intent on arming itself? Do you think they have ANY historical reason to think we might respect their sovereign integrity, especially after watching us invade and occupy Iraq on a bundle of laughably trumped up "evidence" that they were a threat?

Come on people. A propagandistic domesticated media is no reason to stop thinking for yourself. This country needs to grow up to survive. People won't respect us until we learn to respect others. They may fear us, but they won't want us around much if we don't evolve into trustworthy world citizens. It's your choice.

Our sage and heroic failure to lift a finger even rhetorically toward Hungary in '56 after inciting the country to an uprising was our finest hour as Americans in Eastern Europe since the hard-fought, yawning indifference to the fate of that country and others we previously displayed at Yalta. Hungary? What's that? Who cares?

As an eleven year old, I lived through Oct 23 and Nov 4, and the blessed day on Dec 24 when my parents and I left that unfortunate country for the last time.

Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magificent, the Emperor of Austria, Hitler, Stalin, Khruschev what an assortment of uninvited visitors who never wanted to leave. Poland, Czech and Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Afganistan, etc. it is the fate of these small countries to be pawns in the games of the giants. To the US at Yalta, Hungary was a dot on the map, in 1956, just an irritant of no strategic consequence. To the British, French and Israelis a jolly good cover to invade Egypt and repossess the Suez Canal.

Now kindly look at your side, your interest. I am now an American. A naturalized American. Ask yourself, how many Americans should have died for Hungary? or Korea or Viet Nam? or any other country that so desparately wants its freedom? We know how grateful the French are. As grateful as the Iraquis will be.

The Hungarians died for their freedom. They died in the 13th century, in the 16th, 19th, and in 1956. 30,000 in two weeks. With rifles and molotov cocktails fought the Russian tanks. Of course the Russians won. Never any doubt. The Russians executed the leaders and anybody caught with weapons. Teenagers were condemned to death; their execution postponed until they were 18.

There is no reason why a single American should die for the freedom of anybody else. Americans should fight their own battles and only in their interest. I know people love to talk; perhaps they should be the ones to go fight first. They rarely are.

Oh yes thanks for the food package. The powdered milk and cheese was great.

Excuse me. I forgot. Did the question pertain to 1956 Hungary or 1991 Iraq.

While the US was in a difficult position to respond to the Hungarian Uprising in light of the concurrent Suez Crisis, and thus is not clearly culpable, it missed a great opportunity to demonstrate the weakness of the Soviet bloc and delayed the liberation of Central Europe for over three decades. Supporting the Hungarian liberation did not have to entail massive numbers of US troops, as some of the comments implied, but could have covered a range of policy options, including provision of political backing, money, and arms. Since the US and USSR were subsequently on opposite battlelines on numerous occassions (even if indirectly) without the use of nuclear weapons, nuclear war would not have resulted out of this conflict either. The US assumed particular responsibility for the fate of the Hungarians after continually communicating to them that the US would support their efforts.

In light of this tragic history, the US should be frank about the event's history and admit its own mistakes. As was mentioned above, the US government's decision was not clearly culpable, since the overall context made either choice highly uncertain and dangerous. In hindsight, however, an American President should have the courage and honesty to admit that certain choices could have been better. At the very least, he should show respect when visiting foreign countries and not try to sell a revisionist history that no local would buy.

In hindsight, given the still unresolved succession issue going on in the Kremlin, the US probably could have intevened succesfully in Hungary and forstalled Soviet intervention. This might even have led to a sooner collapse of the Soviet system in Eastern Europe. However given the unknowns at the time and the potential for a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union the risks involved were prohibitive. Our own history and traditions argued strongly against such actions. These traditions have searved us well and when we go against our traditions we engender discord in our own country. Communism has never truly been a threat to our system of Government and was only a temporary political threat to Western Europe during the years immedietly following WWII. Eastern Europe had to suffer much under Communism but we never truly had the power to prevent this, nor would our people have supported such a war. Even a much more limited war against a more limited opponent in Iraq has proven to be extremely divisive and problamatical today. However as Henry Kissenger wryly observed, "the history of events that didn't occur has never been written" and such speculation while intellectually fun is essentially pointless.

If the US intervened it would have been seen as a direct attack on the Soviet Union and so war, most probably nuclear war, would have broke out.
Having just studied the Cold War at school the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine offered money and supplies to combat Communism, not troops. The US did battle on the side of the Greeks but a Communist government had yet to be set up there meaning that issue is seperate to that of Hungary where a Communist government had been in place for the best part of a decade.
Khrushchev also seemed prepared to allow the revolutionary's who were trying to overthrow the Communists to set up a Government but Imre Nagy promised to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, which is why Khrushchev ordered Soviet forces in.
Overall if the US had stepped in there would have been huge bloodshed and another World War

I agree with the conclusion that American intervention in the Hungarian Uprising was not a viable option — sadly.

My family was stationed in Germany at the time, Dad being in the US Army. I still remember the anxiety and alarm from my childhood. A war, possibly nuclear, between the two powers would have affected our situation immediately. And I might not be here to share comments.

In 1956, I was 13 years old and a dedicated anti-Communist conservative. I had been taught over and over in my public school about the evils of totalitarianism and the virtues of democracy.

When the US did nothing to help the cause of freedom in Hungary, our nation revealed itself for what it was (and is) for the first time—at least in my eyes. Simply put, America was not interested in helping people fight for freedom if the adversary might prove too strong. Since that time, American actions have never varied. Our nation always stands down when the opposition looks too forceful. We want democracy, but we don't want it to hurt too much.

The wars in Iraq and Vietnam were simply more of the same. That is, setting aside the potential economic benefits, we THOUGHT the enemy was weak and were emboldened to take up the struggle for "freedom."

Not very remarkably, both Russia and China, nations which might give us too hard a time, have gone scot-free to pursue whatever anti-democratic excesses they wish(ed).

October 23 was sad and revealing. It did free me of the sentimental patriotism of childhood, and for that I'm thankful.

Ike buried thousands of soldiers when he commanded them in WW2. When someone has had the consequences of his military decisions displayed so starkly, it is natural for him to see body bags as the consequence of military decisions. Ike had no choice in WW2 but to send his men to battle and death. He had a choice in Hungary, and chose correctly.

Hungary is a land-locked nation despite the fact that "Admiral" Horthy was its leader during the period of the German occupation. We might have injected some paratroops without armor or artillery to support them. They would have quickly been overwhelmed.

Realistically, I have to agree that an intervention was not feasible.

But I still vividly recall, as a university student in Bonn, Germany, the cries of despair over radio (or phone?) before that avenue was shut down too. Everyone seemed to have their radios tuned to stations where these were re-broadcast — we could hear it from the open windows, walking home from classes. And of course we marched in protest, and were devastated when nothing happened.

Regarding FDR, please remember that he died in 1945, before the end of WWII. Therefore, we cannot say that he did 'nothing' to stop Stalin and the USSR from their actions in eastern Europe after the war.
Remember also that Truman was president, that he was very far from being passive in foreign affairs.
The facts on the ground were these: Stalin was determined to control eastern Europe and there was nothing in our power- save
re-mobilizing and fighting WWIII, just as Patton wanted to do - to stop him.
Rather than fight a hot war, WWIII, we wisely adopted the policy of Containment and waged a cold war.

More than Iraq, the mess in Hungary would have likely be the way Afghanistan turned out. US apparently can't manage direct wars, as in Iraq and Vietnam (and even Korea), or indirect wars such as Cuban uprising or Afghanistan. US, it seems, is still basking in WWII glory.

i'm not too sure about Hungary. I don't enough about it. But where the policy of intervention is concerned, it really depends on how we define the right thing. America intervene - publicly or otherwise - in many other conflict since. Everywhere from Indonesia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Panama. With very unconvincing result.

If the issue is an execercise of American foreign interest, then it might've been a good thing to weaken and chip away at the Eastern bloc early on. To argue for a moral highground - as it is now - i believe is a very different thing.

In order to answer the question, we must consider this from the Russian perspective. In 1914, Germany attacked Russia by way of Poland. Russia's army was defeated and its centuries-old government collapsed. In 1919, Britain and the United States invaded Russia to overthrow the new regime. In the 1938, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and the West did nothing, forcing Russia to make a separate peace with Germany, which the Germans then violated in 1941, bringing Hungarian fascist troops into Russian territory. In 1948, the Russians tried and failed to isolate the American advance base in Berlin, and then in 1956, a US-backed uprising in Hungary started to attack Russian troops.

The important thing to realize is that from a Russian perspective in the mid-20th century, fascism and capitalism were the same thing and "democracy" was just a propaganda buzzword used by the fascists/capitalists to justify continued oppression of the working class and other minorities. The Warsaw Pact was a defense response to NATO, which the Russians saw as an aggressor organization of US client states. From their perspective, the Hungarian uprising was the start of the Third World War; they considered the Hungarians in particular to be unrepentant fascists. If the Russians failed to hold back their enemies in Budapest, they imagined having to defend the gates of Moscow as they had in 1942 and 1812.

The "Russian bear" was not completely bluff; the Russians believed in their army and their propaganda. They would have fought hard. Their army was poorly prepared to fight unconvential enemies like Afghans or Chechens, but it was pretty good at throwing huge numbers of men into battle against national armies.

Of course the West would have won. In the end industrial and economic strength would have triumphed. But a nuclear war would have been horrific for Europe and probably would have hit several American cities. The Russian army could have continued operating for years by foraging for supplies. If the Russians had succeeded in nuking Washington or New York, nobody would be in the mood for a peace agreement that restored pre-war governments and borders. The US army would have had to occupy every Soviet city from Minsk to Vladivostok.

Radio Free America was right to criticize Soviet tyranny and right to call for the people of eastern Europe to rebel against that empire. It was wrong to imply that the West could do much to help. The US lied to the Hungarians, as it did to the Cubans, the South Vietnamese, and much later the Iraqis, in suggesting it would solve those peoples' problems for them. It may have been a more innocent age; Americans also used to believe their own propaganda. Now we know that politicians lie.

Bush could have apologized for the US saying it would help the Hungarian people fight the Soviet empire. But Eisenhower was right not to start the Third World War in 1956.

Living in West Berlin during the time the WALL was built, oh how I wanted the US to become involved. I can only imaging how much the Hungarians would have welcomed the involvement of the US. To bad that neither place had any oil to offer.

Any country that is invaded in conflict with international law should be helped to repell the invader. What was true in 1956 was still true in 2003; whether it's the USSR or the US as the oppressor.

We absolutely did NOT do the right thing. Previous comments are correct when they say the U.S. mislead and encouraged Hungarians to stand up and fight with our promises of help. We stood behind their backs and whispered "sweet encouragements" and they suffered for decades all of the consequences of Soviet Punishment after we failed to fulfill our end of the bargain. Americans should look back with shame at what we did and shame on any American President for pretending to understand what is was like for all the Hungarians who suffered greatly after the "Revolution". Most of us can never understand what it was like to be alive during those years under the rule of such a brual regime that followed.

Yes. But that answer must be qualified with 50 years of hindsight. History should be termed: After The Illusion Falls. We now know that the "Russian Bear" was mostly based on bluff. Their Army was large, but not as well maintained as we were led to believe and, internally, could not be thought of as entirely cohesive. The Russian Navy was still virtually non-existant, and their Air Force was, strategically, as equally thin. As Eisenhower, and subsequently Kennedy, found out, there was no "Bomber Gap", no "Missle Gap". Although not impossible, by 1956, the Russians would have been hard pressed to get a nuke as far as Western Germany, as they still lacked adequate delivery systems. Realize too, that in 1956 the Gulag was still at its prime, with millions of people rotting away in prison, with even more millions waiting their turn, that is, Russia was (again) a country held together by fear and coercion.
The questions that should retrospectively be asked is "Why DIDN'T we intervene? How could our highly touted and all powerful military be so fooled into believing the Russians were much more powerful than they really were?" The answer is obvious: Because the Miltary-Industrial Complex wanted to believe, so that the fear of the Russian Bear could be used for their own purposes of greed and policitcal manipulation; thus starting an oft repeated scenario in places like Viet Nam and (oopsie) Iraq?

Eisenhower warned us.

VioletP is correct - this question is not the one you should have asked. The correct question is not "should we have intervened" but "should we have led the Hungarians to believe that we would intervene when we had no intention of doing so?" The answer to that question is NO.

The United States could not help Hungary because, the world's attention was diverted to the Suez. On October 29, 1956, Israeli troops invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. They raced for Suez. The next day French and British troops also invaded Egypt. President Eisenhower comdemned this action. On Nov 4, 1956 The Russians suppressed the Hungarian Revolution. Israel, France and Britain should shared the main blame for the failed revolution. Had the world's attention been focused on Hungary, not the Suez, world opinion could of been focused on Hungary and the Hungarians might of been freed earlier.

Perhaps the question is why the US kept the Hungarians believing that they would send help through its Radio Free Europe broadcasts? Hungarians were betrayed by this propaganda just as they were when the allies decided to carve it up. Shame.

US foreign policy toward Hungary in 1956 was the result of basic pragmatism (what I wouldn't give for a little of that today). Recall that the early 1950's were a time of legitimately ominous days. Consider just these two: in July 1953, US forces had withdrawn from the Korean peninsula with a brutal indication of the way Kennan's containment policy would unfold over the coming decades. Any doubts about the steadfast determination of communist ideology on the battlefield were erased. Then, on November 22, 1955, the Soviets tested their first true hydrogen (fusion) bomb.

In that environment, the US engaged the Hungarian rebels in true realist mindframe. By stoking the fires of revolution through a little tough talk, the US essentially gambled with the house's money - verbal and moral support certainly wouldn't warrant Soviet action against the Western allies, and if the rebels were successful it would be a tremendous blow to the Soviets. There was nothing to lose - worst case scenario was the status quo.

Contrast this against the much more risk-seeking environment that had arisen by the 1980's. By that time, the US foreign policy apparatus, bolstered by the most active CIA in history, had little reservation about directly funding, arming and fueling the brutal Afghan insurgency that permanently demoralized the Red Army, though at a high future cost, as we now know.

"The US missed its essential chance to help the countries of Eastern Europe in 1945, at the Yalta Conference, when Franklin D. Roosevelt acquiesced to Stalin's demands, and allowed Soviet troops to enter and occupy Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.; when the US did not press for Soviet withdrawal from the Baltic States, which had been annexed by Stalin in 1940. "

Marcin is right on the money. The fallout from this action by Roosevelt allowed for a displacement to Siberia of a significant amount of the population in Latvia and Estonia, and a replacement of Ethnic Russians in an attempt to eliminate nationalism. That strategy obviously didn't work but it was cultural genocide. And we are somewhat responsible for that. I grew up knowing this as I am second generation Estonian but this fact has never been mentioned in any American History class I ever took.

Yes, the US acted wisely by not interfereing in the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Several compelling reasons can be noted, among these are; the then existing power balance was not in favor of the West; although the uprising was supported by a majority of Hungarians, wanting to be free of the Soviet camp, there was no universal agreement that another foreign power should move in to replace the Soviets, introducing an armed intervention or significant military supplies would have created a bloodbath and lengthy civil war. The Hungarians were fighting to regain their independence, not to change sides in the cold war. Although the revolution did not achieve independence in 1956, it paved the way for the future, by demonstrating to all that the Soviet domination was not to be tolerated forever.

Hungary cannot be taken out of context of other world events. At the same time that Hungary occurred, Eisenhower was incapacitated due to a heart attack and the US was pulled into the British last hurrah at Suez. The timing couldn't have been worse or better depending on one's perspective. A healthy president, a stand down in Suez, and his hawkish cabinet may have influenced outcomes in Hungary differently.

The US missed its essential chance to help the countries of Eastern Europe in 1945, at the Yalta Conference, when Franklin D. Roosevelt acquiesced to Stalin's demands, and allowed Soviet troops to enter and occupy Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.; when the US did not press for Soviet withdrawal from the Baltic States, which had been annexed by Stalin in 1940. The US decision to abstain from military action in 1956 was a consequence of what happened in 1945, and afterwards, in 1947-1948, when the US did nothing to prevent the Soviets from acting in flagrant breach of the law, whether on their own or through local proxies, and breaking the fledgeling democratic order in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Free and democratic elections were one of the terms of the Yalta agreement. The US did nothing to enforce those terms. The US did not undertake any substantial action after these terms had been violated by the Soviets. They did nothing to stop the Soviets from installing their own secret service / terror apparatus in the "liberated" countries of Eastern Europe in the immediate aftermath of WWII, and murdering, deporting or imprisoning political "undesirables".
This was when the US went wrong — not in 1956, when the US, correctly, in my opinion, recognized that the cost of an all-out nuclear/conventional war in Europe — and possible civil war, were countries as Poland or Hungary to be liberated — would outweigh the expected benefits.

The balance of real powers in the 1950s was surely not clearly tilted towards the U.S. for it to go in and smash the Iron Curtain. So, non-intervention was a pragmatic decision. However, the U.S. miscalculated in promoting anti-Soviet propaganda in Hungary, and the aspirations, freedom, and lives of many Hungarians were dashed in no small part due to this erroneous conduct of propaganda.

Sadly, I must admit that Eisenhower did the right thing in not intervening in Hungary in 1956. I did not think so in 1983 when I was studying in Hungary on a scholarship from my university in Ottawa: for me then the Hungarians, like the Czechs and the Poles, were possibly (in private converstation, naturally) in the 1980s the most pro-American people in the world.Also, you could still come across many buildings which had bullet-hole pot marks, but only young people usually talked about the events of that time—and this was during the time of Kadar's goulash-communism! Thus, I felt that the West missed an excellent opportunity to do something right then.

However, it's now obvious it couldn't have been otherwise. Many reasons have already been mentioned by other commentators here, but let me add a couple more. One key point is that the communist movement worldwide was not yet irrevocably fractured as it was to be after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Despite, Khrushchev's debunking of Stalin in early 1956, China and the then Soviet Union were still allies. A war with the Soviet Union could also had meant fighting China too. Secondly, Khrushchev's deStalinization drive paid early dividends in having Yugoslavia's Tito feel comfortable enough to make a state visit to Moscow in June 1956 and lead to a temporary rapprochement between the two countries. Without Yugoslavia's support (and Tito secretly accepted Khrushchev's rationale to invade Hungary in November), NATO had no land border to send aid to the Hungarians since the U.S., Britain and France had already signed with the Soviets the 1955 Austrian state treaty which recognized Austria's neutrality. To even fly over Austria or Yugoslavia could have worsened American relations with these two countries without really providing enough aid to benefit the Hungarians. From a strategic point of view, aiding Hungary significantly and in time to be of any effect would have been tricky, even reckless if it had triggered off WWIII, which in the end would not have benefited the West, let alone the Hungarians, Poles and Czechs.