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UPRISING! One Nation’S Nightmare: Hungary 1956

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UPRISING! One Nation’S Nightmare: Hungary 1956 One Nation’s Nightmare: Hungary 1956 1 David Irving UPRISING! One Nation’s Nightmare: Hungary 1956 F FOCAL POINT This PDF version: © Parforce UK Ltd 2001 Report errors 2 Click! UPRISING! + Introduction 7 Who Was Who In Hungary 17 1 The Engine Room 23 2 Liberation 30 3 Rákosi 36 4 Salami Tactics 41 5 The High Profile 49 6 Takeover 56 7 The Tortured Silence 63 8 Trial and Error 72 9 Into the Darkness 82 10 The Stone Quarry 96 11 All Things Bright and Soviet 107 12 The Treadmill 115 13 Uncle Imre 127 14 Mightier than the Sword 141 15 Fan Language 152 16 Man in a Porkpie Hat 162 17 Run, Rabbit, Run 172 18 Vicious Circle 184 19 In Which Voices are Raised 196 20 Humble Pie 210 21 The Big Pageant 224 22 Critical Mass 236 23 Nagy Smells a Rat 248 24 Violence in a Narrow Street 264 25 Who Are You? 280 26 Big Lie, Small Lie 294 27 New Guns Settling Old Scores 305 28 Each Man has Two Reasons 316 29 Parliament Square 329 30 Policeman on a Plywood Chair 346 31 The Tide of Rebellion 361 32 A Share of the Blame 378 33 Crumbling 396 34 Ceasefire 410 35 Lowering the Barriers 421 36 Joseph Dudás 431 37 Colonel Kopácsi Shrugs Again 452 38 Wool over their Eyes 471 39 Khrushchev Changes his Mind 485 40 Declaration of Independence 503 41 Has Anybody Seen Kádár? 520 42 Fraternal Kisses 532 43 We’ll Meet Again 551 44 Second Coming 570 45 Tricked, Kidnapped, Deported, Hanged 590 Epilogue: Back from the Dead 610 This PDF version: © Parforce UK Ltd 2001 Report errors One Nation’s Nightmare: Hungary 1956 3 Sources Chapter 1: The Engine Room 616 Chapter 2: Liberation 616 Chapter 3: Rákosi 616 Chapter 4: Salami Tactics 617 Chapter 5: The High Profile 617 Chapter 6: Takeover 618 Chapter 7: The Tortured Silence 618 Chapter 8: Trial and Error 620 Chapter 9: Into the Darkness 620 Chapter 10: The Stone Quarry 621 Chapter 11: All Things Bright and Soviet 622 Chapter 12: The Treadmill 622 Chapter 13: Uncle Imre 624 Chapter 14: Mightier than the Sword 626 Chapter 15: Fan Language 627 Chapter 16: Man in a Porkpie Hat 628 Chapter 17: Run Rabbit Run 628 Chapter 18: Vicious Circle 631 Chapter 19: In Which Voices are Raised 632 Chapter 20: Humble Pie 634 Chapter 21: The Big Pageant 636 Chapter 22: Critical Mass 637 Chapter 23: Nagy Smells a Rat 639 Chapter 24: Violence in a Narrow Street 641 Chapter 25: Who are You? 643 Chapter 26: Big Lie, Small Lie 645 Chapter 27: New Guns Settling Old Scores 647 Chapter 28: Each Man has Two Reasons 647 Chapter 29: Parliament Square 649 Chapter 30: Policeman on a Plywood Chair 651 Chapter 31: The Tide of Rebellion 653 Chapter 32: A Share of the Blame 655 Chapter 33: Crumbling 657 Chapter 34: Ceasefire 658 Chapter 35: Lowering the Barriers 659 Chapter 36: Joseph Dudás 660 Chapter 37: Colonel Kopácsi Shrugs Again 662 Chapter 38: Wool over their Eyes 663 Chapter 39: Khrushchev Changes his Mind 665 Chapter 40: Declaration of Independence 668 Chapter 41: Has Anybody seen Kádár? 670 Chapter 42: Fraternal Kisses 671 Chapter 43: We’ll Meet Again 673 Chapter 44: Second Coming 675 Chapter 45: Tricked, Kidnapped, Deported, Hanged 677 Epilogue: Back from the Dead 681 Select Bibliography 682 Index to the printed edition 694 This PDF version: © Parforce UK Ltd 2001 Report errors 4 UPRISING! Publishers of Uprising included Britain: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd. Germany: Albrecht Knaus Verlag (Bertelsmann AG); Heyne Taschenbuchverlag France: Editions Acropole Italy: Alberto Mondadori Editore Serialised in Der Spiegel (Hamburg) First Printing 1981 Second Printing 1986 Electronic Edition 2001 Website download edition © Parforce UK Ltd. 2001 This Adobe .pdf (Portable Document Format) edition is uploaded onto the FPP website as a tool for students and academics. It can be downloaded for reading and study purposes only, and is not to be commercially distributed in any form. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be commercially reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and to civil claims for damages. Readers are invited to submit any typographical errors to David Irving by mail at the address below, or via email at [email protected]. Rewards are paid for each error found and accepted. The website edition will be constantly updated and corrected. Informed comments and corrections on historical points are also welcomed. David Irving Focal Point Publications 81 Duke Street London W1K 5PE phone: 020 7491 3498 fax: 020 7409 7048 email: [email protected] Focal Point Publications are indebted to MrsThis Linda PDF version: Nelson © Parforce ofUK LtdIllinois 2001 for the work she put into preparing this book for the PDF editionReport errors One Nation’s Nightmare: Hungary 1956 5 David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. Incompletely educated at Imperial College of Science & Technology and at Univer- sity College London, he subsequently spent a year in Germany working in a steel mill and perfecting his fluency in the German language. Among his thirty books, the best-known include Hitler’s War; The Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field-Marshal Rommel; Accident, the Death of General Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; Göring: a Biogra- phy, and Nuremberg, the Last Battle. He has translated several works by other authors including Field-Marshal Keitel, Reinhard Gehlen and Nikki Lauda. He lives in Grosvenor Square, London, and has raised five daughters. By the same author (up to 1981) The Destruction of Dresden The Mare’s Nest The German Atomic Bomb The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 Accident — The Death of General Sikorski The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe Hitler’s War War Path Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel Translations The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel Breach of Security The Service — The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen This PDF version: © Parforce UK Ltd 2001 Report errors 6 UPRISING! This PDF version: © Parforce UK Ltd 2001 Report errors One Nation’s Nightmare: Hungary 1956 7 Introduction N The History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky wrote a chapter on Ithe art of insurrection. In it he defined: “Historians and politicians usually give the name of spontaneous insurrection to a movement of the masses united by a common hostility against the old regime, but not having a clear aim, delib- erated methods of struggle, or a leadership consciously showing the way to victory.” What happened in Hungary in October 1956 was not a revolution but an insurrection. It was an uprising. When it began it was spontaneous and leaderless, and it was truly a movement of the masses bound by one common hatred of the old regime. Yet it was an anti-Communist uprising like no other. Many of the rebels held Party membership cards. Most were workers or peasants. The un- canny feature was that it resembled the classic Marxist revolution, it was fed by conditions which Karl Marx had always predicted would result in revolution, and it was led by the workers, the very stratum which he had expected would take the revolutionary lead. The parallels with what happened in Poland in the late summer of 1980 are striking; the exception is that this summer the workers were subdued by blandishments and promises of reform, while in past decades the Marxist governments have invariably turned their machine guns on the work- ers from whom they villainously claim to draw their mandate. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 was crushed by a man who became in- stantly one of the most reviled men in his country. That same man is today one of Hungary’s most genuinely popular citizens, János Kádár. His life has sprung many contradictions, which cannot only be explained by his subservience to This PDF version: © Parforce UK Ltd 2001 Report errors 8 UPRISING! Moscow’s fickle whim. Initially, he identified himself with the uprising, served in its government, and referred to its origins even one month later, in a broad- cast on November 26th, as a “mass movement”; but by February 2nd he had shifted to harder ground, and declaimed to Party activists at Salgótarján, “A counter-revolution began in Hungary on October 23rd, 1956, in exactly the same way as it did on August 2nd, 1919. ” He put the country through a period of savage repression, which culminated in the execution of the (other) “accom- plices of Imre Nagy” in 1959. By that time, in fact, such a barbarity was quite superfluous, because the storm’s force was long spent: his subjects had finally accepted that there was to be no escape from the Soviet empire, that the Western powers had written them off and that they must make the best life they could for themselves under Marxist bureaucratic rule. Kádár played his part in this, declaring as his aim in the early 1960s, “We must win over every section of our people for the reconstruction of our coun- try.” The Party’s monopoly on high office was abolished. Once, he told workers at the Ikarus omnibus plant in Budapest, “The West attacks us because of our one-party system. They are right. We Communists must work as though there was a twenty-party system, with a secret general election every day.
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