THIS DAY IN 1956
SOVIETS CRUSH THE HUNGARIAN UPRISING
BACKGROUND
A few weeks earlier on October 23, 1956 Hungarians more or less took over Budapest from their Soviet oppressors. They ended one party rule and began a withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet’s finally got their tanks and superior military strength to put the whole thing away on November 4.
SIGNIFICANCE
While the West had shown resolve in protecting West Berlin, the combination of that example and Radio Free Europe broadcasts gave Hungarians the false hope that the West would step in and help them defeat the Russians. Had the Hungarians prevailed it would have been the first real defeat for Soviet backed communism. Our inaction no doubt gave the Soviets confidence that we could be pushed around. A Cuban Missile Crisis, a war in Vietnam and the nonsense in Nicaragua may have been avoided had the Eisenhower Administration stood up for the Hungarians.
The Bolsheviks learned a key lesson. The Americans would not try and roll back communism they would only try to defensively stop its expansion meaning that there would be no gains in our fight just fewer losses. Once the Soviets could rest that the Eastern block was safe they could easily fund communist uprisings all around the world. That’s a recipe for how you get involved in Vietnam. Also, those geniuses who said that Reagan didn’t defeat the Soviets but that their system disintegrated on its own have never answered why it didn’t disintegrate against all of the other American Presidents that refused to take them on.
There’s another lesson here too. Bush’s offensive invasion of Iraq is said to have created more terrorists. There’s no way that can be measured, but it’s certain that fighting a defensive war against communism created more communists not less. It wasn’t until Reagan insisted on SDI, invaded Grenada and took the fight to the enemy that we had fewer of them.
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