287. Suez Crisis: Lies, Cyanide Pills, & Soviet Tanks (Part 4)

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0:28Hello and welcome to episode four of Empire in our Suez Crisis series with me, Anita Arnang. And me, William Durumbo. And of course, with Alex von Tindelman, author of Blood and Sand. And Alex has just been taking us through, if it weren't so Armageddon-y, it would be like a soap opera. There are so many fascinating vignettes and characters and things going on off screen, as with the best kind of sort of soap operas. And you keep dipping in and out of different areas. And we left you on a cliffhanger. We left you with Egypt. Nasser now has mobilized his country on a war footing. The Brits have managed to annoy everybody, especially the Israelis, with whom they were in cahoots to take control.

1:14I'd say they'd join the Egyptians a bit more, probably, than bombing them. I mean, that's a given. Including your civilian airport in Cairo. I'd be a bit pissed off if I was Egyptian. Yeah. They've annoyed the Americans. They haven't told them about it. They've annoyed their own parliamentarians. The Queen is quite annoyed. but also you've got the fact that they're doing things completely wrong. They've annoyed the Israelis because they said they would bomb and take out the Egyptian Air Force and they've managed to miss them completely and they've taken out a civilian airport instead and bombed runways which just have nothing to do with the military planes that they were supposedly targeting.

1:52So, you know, Moshe Dayan is calling them bastards, bastards, bastards. That's where we left you in the last episode. And we have that brilliant insight into how the Syrians sort of rush off to the Soviet Union saying, help us, help us, General Zhukov, only you can save us. It's like, you know, from Flash Gordon, you're our only hope now. Or help us, Obi-Wan, Kenobi. And like, you know, the Soviets say, what do you want from us? What are we meant to do? And also, they have their own stuff going on. It's all hotting up. Getting to boiling point. So, I mean, they're suppressing a Hungarian revolution.

2:26And what are the British now saying to Moscow, because they've completely taken their eye off world affairs, all eyes are on Egypt. So what is going on then when the Soviets start making their moves in Hungary? Well, I mean, you've got the British ambassador in Moscow, a man called William Hayter. I looked at his messages back and so on. You can see that the poor man is completely exasperated with this entire situation. And of course, everybody has very, very inadequate information. And I know we've said that, but it's always worth emphasising that there's very little trust between a lot of these powers and also very little communication.

3:01And they're not very good, actually, at working out what's going on. So at this point, Hayter says the Soviet government regards Suez as a heaven-sent distraction from Hungary. And the world is looking at the Middle East. At this point, you have enormous numbers of Red Army troops and tanks and so forth rolling across the border into Hungary. So, you know, the Soviets are obviously planning pretty major crackdown. And they kind of know that nobody's going to pay them a whole load of attention because all this stuff happening in the Middle East. So this is very useful for them. Is there a sense in Britain that they've scored a bit of a lone goal?

3:38Because one of the things they obviously didn't count on was all this going on at the same time. Absolutely. In Britain and also in America, where you have to remember in the US, of course, where they're, you know, strong anti-communist feeling in the government. And lots of people in the American government and security services had been waiting for years for some kind of anti-Soviet uprising like this to happen. They were really hopeful of it. Actually, if you look at the CIA records, they didn't think it would happen in Hungary. They'd assessed the chances there, extremely minimal and cut CIA funding for a lot because they just didn't think that was very feasible.

4:10Anyway, they got that completely wrong. Here it was happening. And there was absolutely nothing they could really do about it because of all this. So, again, they're furious. so I mean at this point Hayter says you know the Soviets don't really want to send troops to Egypt because they're too busy but and he says but one of the things that's holding them back from getting involved in Egypt is that they still don't entirely believe that the Americans aren't also working with Britain and France that this isn't some sort of mega trap that is being laid and they still can't entirely sort that out they can't they can't imagine that the British are being quite stupid enough to do something as sort of blatantly hopeless as Sue is.

4:48You've got exactly it. They're like, surely they wouldn't be that dumb. I mean, that would be insane. It must be cleverer than it looks. Exactly. Surely there's some kind of extra plan here because this one's really stupid. Anyway, so that's sort of what's happening. The Soviets think surely the Brits aren't as dumb. The Brits are precisely this dumb is unfortunately the reality of the situation. There are various places in the world where the Brits are always considered to be much more clever than they actually are. Iran is one of these countries where they always think the Brits are behind everything.

5:16And the Brits are quite... No, not that organized. I mean, you know, they really aren't. And I mean, he says, you know, like, obviously the Soviets are... But he said this really extraordinary thing might happen where, like, actually the Soviets might kind of get together with the Americans at the expense of Britain and France, a joint Soviet-American military action against Britain and France. I mean, which sounds totally bonkers, but of course, everything that was going on was totally bonkers. So who knows what can occur in this situation? And he also says that, you know, look, the Soviets can't come all the way over.

5:50You know, the map is large, as Zukov has pointed out to the Syrians. The map is large. There are some impediments. There's a number of countries in between the Soviet Union and Egypt, yes. We can see this is going to be tricky, but he says, you know, look, their prestige is heavily engaged with NASA and they will do all they safely can to avert another blow to it, such as they have suffered in Eastern Europe. In either event, says Hayter, I fear we are in for a bad time in our relations with this country. Again, another understatement. I love the understatement of both the diplomatic and civil service in this time.

6:22It is an astonishing understatement. Let's focus in, though, on Hungary. Because Nod, spelt naggy in case you've just read about this history and didn't know this, N-A-G-Y, It's 2pm on November 1st, 1956. And Nodge is sitting there and his desk is filling up with papers saying the Red Army is on the move. The Red Army is coming. It's coming. It's coming. So what does he do and what sort of unfolds after that? Right. I mean, this is obviously an incredibly tense situation. You imagine the might of the Red Army is coming for him. And that's a really serious army at this point. It's absolutely massive.

6:58He actually picks up the phone and withdraws Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, basically makes Hungary a neutral nation, takes it out of that Soviet bloc of that communist order. Is that a suicidal thing to do? Well, it was unanimously approved by the entire cabinet, and it was also a demand of the rebels, was that you get Soviet troops out of the country that you stop doing this. I think what you have to sort of think is that Nodz was sitting there thinking, they're coming for us all, this is going to happen, Our only hope is to say we're neutral and maybe then somebody international will intervene.

7:33But already all the T-54 tanks are rolling across the border. There's absolutely no way they're going to stop. Not really, no. But like, you know, I mean, it's a desperate situation, right? I mean, what do you do? Yeah, but to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, in a way, also gives the Soviets a little more proof that the Americans are involved. because what they're doing is they're chipping away at this block, this Soviet block behind the Iron Curtain that was meant to be solid, rock solid. So, if you've got countries, if Hungary does it, then who's going to be next? And so, you're going to have irritation at Nodge and his supposed not being Soviet enough, although you pointed out quite rightly he was a loyalist and was a Soviet appointment, if you like, in Hungary to begin with.

8:14But that is what the fear is in Moscow that this is the start of a domino topple. And so we've got to deal with this with an iron fist, right, Alex? Exactly. I mean, this has been a great fear in Moscow. It just nearly happened in Poland and they averted it. Now it's actually happening in Hungary. And when I say just nearly happened, like literally a couple of weeks before, I mean, it's been a very, very tense time. And they managed to avert it there by Khrushchev actually flying to Poland and sorting it out. this is very very scary for them and they also there's all this stuff is going on in the middle east is this the big one is this the big war between you know the cold war gets hot the superpowers start actually fighting each other you know yes it's all proxies at this point and whatever but like this can blow up very very quickly so i think it's fair to say that like you can see that there's a great deal of alarm so what's happening in the united nations this is as we know, a new institution.

9:07It's just come up in New York. This is, in a sense, one of the very first tests for this institution that is specifically designed to avoid war in future. What's going on there? Well, the Americans try to take this situation into the UN and try to resolve it that way. It's really interesting that they do that. I mean, basically, of course, NATO exists at this point as well. It exists since 1949. But there's not much prospect of resolving this through NATO because your big powerful people in NATO, apart from the US, are Britain and France. And what are they doing? Colluding with Israel and starting this war.

9:42So NATO isn't much cop at this point for resolving that sort of situation. And actually, the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dollars, really takes into the UN, which of course is headquartered in New York at this point. Presumably brand spanking new building, isn't it? Yes. Very shiny, I should think, at that point. What date does that building come up? Around now? Around now. I mean, the paint is basically just barely dry at the United Nations headquarters, and they're having to do this. You mentioned John Foster Dulles, after whom Dulles Airport is named. So if anyone sort of travels through that, this is the Dulles.

10:14It is, yeah. Well, you see, a lot of people thought it was named for Alan Dulles, who was the head of the CIA, who is his brother. So you've got this power bro thing going on within American circles of John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles. of course is again this 1950s architecture it's exactly the same sort of uh yeah mr incredible style shapes and of course alan dulles you know came up during our iran series when we talked about um the toppling of mosaddegh the coup that takes place so you've got dulles fingers all over everything but this particular dulles john foster dulles is going to the united nations because he wants to stop this kind of secretive adventurism that's going on thanks to his partners in NATO, France, and Britain.

10:58Now, when he does go and speak before the United Nations, the United Nations must have been pretty shocked as well. No? I mean, what do they think about all of this? Everybody's pretty shocked. This whole situation is bananas. John Foster Dulles, you know, as you say, his brother's head of the CIA. He's Secretary of State. Incredible sort of power, family going on. They've also got a sister who's a very powerful government economist, Eleanor. So, you know, there's a lot happening there at the top of government. And he was someone who rather like Dulles Airport, John Foster Dulles was generally regarded as remote, hard to get to, inaccessible and so forth.

11:34Hard to navigate. Winston Churchill used to call him Dull Dulles was his little nickname for him. So this was John Foster. Oh, Churchill has such a good turn of phrase. Alan Dulles is actually a much warmer character. I mean, also responsible for quite a lot of political assassinations and so forth. So, you know, not excusing him. but a definitely more sort of personable guy. He's the guy that kicks off the whole CIA sort of toppling of Guatemala, Iran, all those 1950s coups. He's responsible for an awful lot of stuff that happened in the mid-20th century. However, in person, much warmer, and John Foster a much kind of colder fish, really, and hard to get on with.

12:15He had been plotting various Middle Eastern coups that year. You know, somebody who absolutely was not imposed to a sort of imperialist action. But this seems to have really, the British-French action really triggered him, partly because I think he wasn't involved. They hadn't asked him. He'd been lied to. This was horrific. But also he was very rules-based. And it restricts his freedom of action in Hungary. This is a big one for America. Yeah, and he's a very strong anti-communist. So, you know, all of that is really, really crucial. What's going on? It's absolutely furious. And his speech at the UN actually was pretty extraordinary.

12:53You know, he said very openly, he said, this all had the potential, with Suez and Hungary both happening at the same time, that it could develop into a much bigger war. He said, the apparent impotence of this organization to deal with the situation may set a precedent which will lead other nations to attempt to take into their own hands the remedying of what they believe to be their injustices. If that happens, the future is dark indeed. indeed. And he mentions that when they wrote the UN Charter, San Francisco in 1945, that we had thought we'd seen perhaps the worst in war, that our task was to prevent a recurrence of what had been.

13:28And indeed, what then had been was tragic enough. But now we know that what can be will be infinitely more tragic than what we saw in World War Two. And the reason for that, of course, the more tragic is nuclear weapons, is that what ended World War Two, of course, in the Pacific was the nuclear bombs that were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, still the only use of nuclear weapons. But now everyone has a lot more of them, this can happen again. Remind me, by 1956, how bombed up is the Soviet Union? When did they get the bomb? Yes, very bombed up. So actually, Nikita Khrushchev's son, Sergei, was a nuclear bomb engineer.

14:06He ended up actually working in the US. I interviewed him for the book at the John Kennedy School in Massachusetts, quite extraordinarily. There was a very, very big nuclear arms race going on at this time. So what the Soviets had at this point, and this is going to become very important for very scary reasons, was really quite a lot of nuclear weapons. What was not so advanced at this stage, although again, there was very little information in the West, but what they had was the propulsion mechanisms. So you have these warheads, how far could you fire them was kind of a really crucial question.

14:41Were they thinking like the Americans were in World War II of dropping it from a big bomber, or had they already got intercontinental ballistic missiles? So we're a little bit before intercontinental. They had as medium range, largely missiles. So the Soviets at this point could not hit the US. That was not a feasible scenario. What they probably could do was hit Western Europe. And of course, that's where the aggressors were in this situation. So what you can see, I think, from Dulles' speech there is that he's already a day or two in, extremely worried about the potential for this to become nuclear war.

15:15And this is what we start talking about with World War III. So Alex, how does the UN respond to the speech? What's the vote and how does it pan out? So the UN votes overwhelmingly for Dulles' resolution for a ceasefire, 64 votes to five with six abstentions. So the votes against America at this point are of course Britain, France, Israel and Britain manages to kind of bully Australia and New Zealand into supporting them but that is disgraceful and imagine those countries voting against the US. It's really quite a moment. Also just very interesting that in his speech to G them up he says the apparent impotence of this organisation I mean that is something that is going to be levelled at the United Nations every time there is a resolution to follow.

15:58But okay, so you've got, again, now this is a debasement of Britain, just speaking from the British vantage point, that you have all of these countries, apart from the ones that are, you know, so colonially still attached to you and the ones that you've been scheming with, all ranged against you, which can only make Eden's position ever more untenable as the Prime Minister. And also, presumably, thrilling Khrushchev, the fact that he said split the West. That must be a first time since 1945 that that's happened. Yeah. And as I say, it took them a long time to accept and they were never entirely sure that the US weren't secretly working with Britain and France behind the scenes.

16:36But at this point, it starts to look like, wow, if they are, this is quite a bluff. This is pretty extraordinary. They do start to think, okay, what is going on here? This is something very complicated is happening. We don't really understand it. It's deeply confusing. And Dulles at this point, I mean, his main fear is that if you allow this to happen, other countries will take this as a mandate to do whatever they want to do. I mean, his eyes are very much on the Soviet Union, but there are other countries as well that might start making moves and manoeuvres. And the whole post-war peace would be undone and it could be undone within days.

17:13Do we have any sort of accounts of what he's saying, thinking, feeling at this time? He wins the vote, but that's still a far cry from getting people to get back into line, back into the pre-1956 line that they were all in. Yes, absolutely. And I mean, I think, you know, they've established this idea of this post-war rules-based order, which, you know, nominally we're still supposed to live in today, although there's quite a lot of dispute about that. The idea is that you will resolve these things through talking, through a forum, through this kind of thing, through, you know, international action.

17:45There is, of course, quite crucially, again, this will come up again most probably, there are no armed forces attached to the UN at this point. It has no way of enforcing what it's doing. But it is, on the other hand, obviously, an international body. And the idea is that we're going to avoid another world war by this. And at this precise point, it looks like, well, we're not. Just a few years in, that's already busted. so and the things are moving now apace because nasa who is at war and he's being attacked on all sides decides to blockade the suez canal which is exactly you know it's the cause of the french and the the british were always saying could happen that if you leave an egyptian in charge of the canal he's going to block it well he does block it i mean after the french and the british do what they do but we're talking about i mean this is a brilliant observation from you they basically fill bits of it in don't they alex with with things like you know sort of beer bottles Empty beer bottles.

18:38Ted, tell us what the blockade looks like. Egyptian stellar, stellar beer, which has a very heavy brown bottle. It does, exactly. Used way down this. Makes some lovely beer in the Middle East. And yeah, basically, certainly at this point. And yeah, I mean, so basically what he did was fill block ships, junk ships, filled with junk. So empty beer bottles, cement, scrap iron, kind of just junk. Fill those and just sink them in the canal, you know. So you're basically what you're doing is create, you're blocking the thing. Now, what's crucial here is that one of the justifications for the Anglo-French invasion was supposed to be, we must at all costs keep the canal open.

19:17But what all the military analysts had said correctly, as it turned out, is the first thing Nasser will do is block the canal, which of course he did. So this is why he did it. Because of course, if you're invaded, what do you do? Massive portcullis down in the middle of the thing. Everything that is a nightmare for these Western powers, post-war Western powers, is happening. Oil pipelines are being blown up. The Suez Canal is being blocked. And this is the same threat, isn't it? Because the only other way other than pipelines to get oil to the West is through tankers going through the Suez Canal.

19:48Suez Canal, right. So suddenly there is a prospect of no oil at all reaching Europe or America. We have a big problem, yes. Yeah, a big problem. But it doesn't deter the French. And is it true to say that actually, you know, the Brits are getting slightly cold feet and Eden's feeling slightly under siege at the moment. But it is the French saying, allez, vite. You know, they're the ones who are saying, let's go. Let's go, Eden. You know, yeah. The French have absolutely no intention of stopping. I mean, Eden, of course, you know, is sort of feeling, I think, much more squeamish. Well, he's not at this point feeling particularly squeamish about it.

20:20But Eden is more vulnerable to pressure from the Americans and also from his domestic situation. As I say, I think he clearly from the beginning felt far more need to be secretive about this operation than the French did. They never bothered being remotely secretive about it. He felt the need to say there was no collusion with Israel. France was like, well, of course, why not? It's a totally different environment. And I think there's a big cultural difference between Britain and France about how they operate in, even if I call it an empire, there'll be French people being like, but it wasn't an empire.

20:56It was all part of metropolitan France. How they operate in these outposts that they have. So at this point, yes, there's a huge problem. The oil is not flowing. And while in the US, of course, they have their own oil, they could also have oil from Venezuela and places like this, Britain and France do not particularly have an alternative supply of oil. If you remember, before they built the Suez Canal, as you mentioned in the first episode, ships had to go all the way around the Horn of Africa. That took weeks. That still took weeks, because even though we have faster ships at this point than you would have had in the 19th century, They're not like speedboats.

21:29You know, they're not kind of like going to speed through that. That is still going to take weeks. You've got a big gap. So basically, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation has to go on TV in Britain and say, we're going to have to restrict oil consumption in this country. Pretty much, turn your lights off and stop driving. Alex, just give me a little bit more idea about the French at this point. I'm just doing the math. 56 presumably is right at the peak of the Algerian war. All those scenes we see from the movie, the Battle of Algiers, those bombs going off in cafes and that sort of stuff, plus the French Secret Service torturing rebels.

22:04Presumably that's reaching its peak exactly at this moment and is egged on by this. And very early in the Suez Crisis, the French actually kidnapped Ahmed Ben-Bella and the leaders of the Algerian independence movement. They literally forced their plane down and imprisoned them in France. France, and that was kind of part of this whole thing for them, was trying to stop this rebellion in Algeria. As indeed you can see from the Battle of Algiers, that did not work. It didn't actually go at all well. I think that was partly because Molay, and he wasn't totally alone in this, but Molay and other members of the French administration had persuaded themselves that most of Algeria was loyal, loved being part of France, this is all great.

22:44It's just these couple of troublemakers, like Ahmed Ben-Bella, who are being stirred up by Nasser. Take him away. No problem. Was not true. And again, nudge my memory, but there's really quite serious bloodshed going on in Algeria. I mean, there's large numbers of people dying at this point. Yes, and it gets worse as well. But as I say, that's kind of part of their whole misunderstanding, that this is being caused by a couple of troublemakers rather than a really quite serious independence movement. But just going back to the British government announcing to people that you're going to have to tighten your belts, we're all in this together, turn off your lights and also stop filling up your cars.

23:19Now, even to this day, it is a political grenade to tell the electorate that they can't fill up their cars. I mean, that's why it's a blockade. That kind of strike is so serious, even in recent history. Your Morris Oxford is your castle at this period. But even today, honestly, even today, if there is a fuel crisis, that sends a government into crisis. We've seen it time and time again. So you will have in Britain at this time then, an opposition that is emboldened. that is like, you know, we have now actually, this is an election winning issue. If people are being told they can't fill up their cars, we're on the move.

23:59And so the opposition starts calling for a ceasefire and they start trying to batter Eden at the dispatch box saying, are you going to have a ceasefire? The United Nations has already started battering Eden. And he hasn't got that sort of wave of confidence, as you say, that the French had. And you've got in the form of Vice President Nixon, somebody very pointedly saying, you know what, mate, you carry on this path, Eden, and France, if you're listening, and there's going to be serious trouble with our special shoulder-to-shoulder relationship. Just remind us, what does Nixon say at the time?