Eden, however, was as committed as ever to war. Egyptian flexibility at the United Nations, which had allowed Lloyd to craft the mutually acceptable six principles, threatened the prime minister’s goal of overthrowing Nasser. On October 13 Eden instructed his foreign minister to accept the French suggestion that a poisonous amendment be added to this diplomatic settlement to make it unacceptable to Nasser. The French proposed requiring that Egypt also accept the U.S.-British-French plan endorsed by a majority at the London Conference in August and already turned down once by Nasser in September. Later that day Britain introduced the amended version of the diplomatic deal as a resolution before the UN Security Council. As expected by Eden and the French, the Soviets vetoed the amended Security Council resolution on behalf of the Egyptians, and the entire diplomatic process stalled.
As he was scuttling the UN negotiations, Eden turned to the rank and file of the Conservative Party for moral support. Out of nostalgia for the empire, the party faithful had never wavered in its support for a forceful policy to rid Egypt of Nasser. On October 13 Eden told a cheering audience at the Conservative Party conference, “We have refused to say that in no circumstances would we ever use force. No responsible government could ever give such a pledge.”
Information from British intelligence also strengthened Eden’s determination. A major assessment dated October 11 had echoed his belief that if Nasser were to get away with keeping the Suez Canal, Britain’s position in the Middle East would soon collapse.8 It was considered only a matter of time before Nasser’s supporters in Iraq, Jordan, and the Persian Gulf succeeded in sweeping away any pro-Western governments and increasing Cairo’s and Moscow’s influence in the region.
On October 14 a French delegation arrived in London to discuss British participation in the Israeli-French plan to attack Egypt and remove Nasser. Eden was no friend of Israel’s. He had once sided with Arabists in the Foreign Office who had opposed supporting the establishment of the state of Israel. However, the British prime minister had already made up his mind that he could no longer postpone the war. The French explained the existing plans for a two-country operation and the reasons why Great Britain should turn it into a tripartite attack. They suggested that hours after Israel had launched its attack, the British could join the French in ordering the Egyptians and the Israelis to withdraw their forces from the canal zone. Then an Anglo-French force should occupy the canal zone. The world would be told that the goal was to protect freedom of navigation through the Suez Canal. In fact the French assumed that this coordinated action would bring about the downfall of Nasser and his regime. Despite the misgivings of his foreign secretary and minister of defense, Eden agreed to include Great Britain in the operation.
Eden’s embrace of the French strategy broke the last barrier to large-scale military action against Nasser. The British having indicated their willingness to meet with the Israelis, the French invited their allies to meet in Paris on October 21 to discuss the coordinated attack. It was also decided to keep the conspiracy a secret from the United States and, of course, the Soviet Union.
KHRUSHCHEV WAS IN Warsaw as the French prepared for the meeting in Paris. The situation in Poland was extremely dynamic. Within days of regaining his membership in the Polish Politburo, the independently minded Gomulka had become the most influential figure in the Polish government. Ochab had been forced to resign, and Gomulka’s actions since taking the reins from his pro-Soviet predecessor had transformed Khrushchev’s worries into alarm. “Poland might break away from us at any moment,” he later recalled thinking at the time.9 Besides the removal of the KGB men in Polish security, a request that the Soviets had already accepted, the Poles were now demanding the firing of Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovky, whom Moscow had earlier compelled them to appoint their defense minister.
Khrushchev believed that Soviet troops might be necessary to keep Poland in the Warsaw Pact. But he would first lead a high-level delegation to confront Gomulka and the Polish Communist leadership directly. This would be Gomulka’s chance to demonstrate his loyalty to the Soviet bloc. If Khrushchev did not get the assurances that he required, his troops would enter Warsaw the next day. In preparation for the attack, two battle divisions were ordered to assume a holding position a hundred kilometers outside the Polish capital city.
On October 19, accompanied by Presidium members Molotov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich, and Zhukov, Khrushchev arrived in Warsaw. Gomulka had refused to issue a formal invitation to the Soviets, an act that Khrushchev later described as “like spitting in our face.”10 Once the Soviets arrived, the Poles had no choice but to meet. Aware of the force waiting in the wings, the Poles then opted to show some deference. Gomulka spoke of Polish-Soviet solidarity and pleaded with Khrushchev to call off the use of Soviet troops. “Everything will be in order here,” he said reassuringly,” but don’t allow Soviet troops into Warsaw, or it will become virtually impossible to control events.”
Khrushchev wavered over whether to be satisfied with what Gomulka and the others in the Polish government told him. At first he seemed to think the crisis was resolved and told his longtime ally Mikoyan that upon reflection the use of troops would be a mistake. But no sooner had he arrived back in Moscow late on October 19 than he appeared to have changed his mind. “We’ve decided our troops should enter Warsaw tomorrow morning after all,” Khrushchev told a surprised Mikoyan.11
Thanks to some expert delaying by Mikoyan, who was strongly against the use of Soviet troops, the attack on the Polish people did not happen. Mikoyan knew Khrushchev very well. Although he had a penchant for bold and aggressive strokes, the Soviet leader could be dissuaded from acting rashly, if given the chance to take a deep breath and think the matter through. At a Presidium meeting two days later, on October 21, Khrushchev opted to take Gomulka at his word. “We need to display patience,” he said.12 Soviet troops were taken off alert.
WHILE CONFLICT was averted in Poland, Israel’s prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, arrived in Paris to plan the coordinated attack on Nasser, with whom he had strong grievances. The Israeli leader was eager to put an end to the attacks by Egyptian irregular forces, known as fedayeen, across the border into Israel. He also hoped that military action would open to Israeli shipping the Suez Canal and the Strait of Tiran, both of which fed the Israeli port city of Eilat. His trip, like that of the Secretary Lloyd, was kept secret. The meetings were to take place at a private home in the fashionable suburb of Sèvres, well beyond the scrutiny of the international press or any lucky Soviet or U.S. spies.
Ben-Gurion was uncomfortable about having to rely on the British, in large part because he blamed them for having obstructed the creation of the state of Israel. In an effort to maintain a relationship with the Arabs, the British had deliberately slowed the emigration of Jews to Palestine, which remained under British mandate until 1948. Christian Pineau, the French foreign minister, was insistent that the Israeli leader overlook his past differences with the British. “The English,” he said, “are incapable of acting without a pretext.”13 Ben-Gurion understood that he had to provide the pretext as the price for British military participation.
While Ben-Gurion felt discomfort and suspicion, the British representative at Sèvres experienced disgust and didn’t mind showing it. Lloyd, who had opposed Eden’s decision, behaved in front of the other delegates as if he had a “dirty smell under his nose.” It was commonly known that he preferred a peaceful solution to the crisis and was in Sèvres only because Eden had told him to go. When Ben-Gurion asked him why the English didn’t just settle with Nasser at the UN, the foreign secretary parroted Eden’s thinking: Any diplomatic settlement over the Suez Canal was unacceptable to Great Britain because it meant that Nasser remained in power. Getting him out was Eden’s chief objective.
The uncomfortable English gentleman’s words satisfied Ben-Gurion. Convinced now that London meant business, the Israelis agreed to the complex French plan. It would begin with an Israeli attack on Egypt, followed
by an Anglo-French bombing campaign and an allied landing in the canal zone. The parties quibbled over the length of the delay between the Israeli attack and the intervention by the Europeans. Ben-Gurion wanted almost no gap at all. He had lived in London during the blitz, when Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed the city, and feared the effects of Arab bomber sorties against Israeli cities before the French and British established air supremacy. The British had other concerns and hoped instead for a three-day delay. They compromised and agreed on a thirty-six-hour delay.14 As the meeting ended on October 22, Israel promised to attack exactly a week later, on October 29.
THE SOVIETS KNEW nothing about these plans. Soviet intelligence had a hard time following the developments in the Mediterranean because Moscow lacked high-altitude spy planes comparable to the American U-2. Through its Syrian ally and from well-informed articles in the British and French press, however, the Kremlin collected some good information about the movements of French and British units in and around Cyprus. Marshal Zhukov presented each member of the Presidium with a special report on those military movements. The GRU, the military intelligence service, had detected French and British reinforcements in the region, but could not provide any sense of Paris’s and London’s intentions.15
Further evidence of how far Moscow’s thoughts were from the possibility of a near-term attack came in the Kremlin’s preparations for the visit of Syrian President Shukri Quwatly.16 The visit, which had been planned for some time, was due to begin October 30. In its outlines of Syria’s needs, Soviet intelligence made no mention of the possibility of Middle East conflict. Quwatly was expected to request a friendship treaty with Moscow and a huge loan for economic development.
The Egyptians themselves were encouraging the Soviets to believe that the crisis had passed. Even after the collapse of the negotiations with the French and the British in New York, the Egyptian government informed the Soviets that it was no longer concerned about a Western attack on the canal. “It is in large measure settled,” Egypt’s el-Kouni told the Soviet Foreign Ministry on October 16.17 The Egyptians were now using terms like “we won” to explain the fact that nearly three months had passed since the nationalization and the French and British still seemed tied up in diplomatic knots.
Nasser was much more concerned about events in Jordan than he was about any Western attack on his country. Criticizing King Hussein as being as inept as King Farouk, the Egyptians worried that Jordan’s domestic instability would provoke outside interference from the West or its allies. Nasser’s specific concern was that his great regional rival, Nuri al-Said of Iraq would be invited to send battalions into Jordan to protect Amman from an Israeli attack.
The Kremlin was cool when the Egyptians tried to interest the Soviet Union in Jordan.18 Grateful that the threat of a European war with Egypt had receded, Moscow was not particularly interested in looking for a new source of contention with London or Paris. The Kremlin counseled steady nerves. Cairo was talking about sending a joint Egyptian-Syrian military force to Jordan to bolster the country. Moscow wanted nothing to occur that could give the British a pretext to send more troops into the Middle East. With the Suez Canal lost, London might be considering using Amman as its new strategic center in the region.
As events unfolded, Moscow’s understanding of the Suez situation suffered from a lack of any insight into British intentions. Tom Driberg had returned in mid-October to assure Guy Burgess that Eden did not have it in him to resort to force to deal with Nasser. In conveying this information to the Soviet leadership, Burgess had added a note of reserve. He did not think Driberg’s optimism was entirely justified.19 However, with Soviet intelligence unable to detect any evidence to the contrary, the Kremlin, especially Khrushchev, allowed itself to be optimistic about Eden. Khrushchev did not believe that the British would go to war with Egypt. He had convinced himself that the struggle between East and West, which was how he interpreted aggression against his Egyptian ally, would be restricted to political and economic competition in the nuclear age.20
IN THE WEEK between the secret conclave in Sèvres and the Israeli attack, Hungary so preoccupied Khrushchev that he had little opportunity to test his assumptions about the Middle East. Just as it was gaining confidence in Poland’s Wladyslaw Gomulka, the Kremlin lost whatever respect it had for Hungary’s Ernö Gerö. Events in Poland had emboldened the leaders of the Hungarian democracy movement to challenge the ineffectual Gerö. On October 22, students at Budapest’s Technical Institute published a list of sixteen demands, including the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungary, the nomination of Imre Nagy as Communist Party leader, the organization of national multiparty elections by secret ballot, and the “reconsideration” of the entire Soviet-Hungarian relationship. The next day, amid chants for “national independence and democracy,” students tore down the huge statue of Stalin that dominated the city’s main square. The revolt radiated outward from the capital, making a mockery of Soviet-style police controls, which had been designed to prevent unofficial public demonstrations. In the eastern provincial center of Debrecen near the Hungarian-Romanian border, students occupied the local party headquarters and the main office of the secret police. Gerö, who was just returning from consultations with Tito in Yugoslavia, was at a loss about what to do.
Khrushchev spent much of October 23 on the telephone with Gerö getting updates on the deteriorating situation in the Hungarian capital. The reports of rebellion in Budapest left no doubt in Khrushchev’s mind that it was time for Soviet military intervention. The Soviet Army had already developed plans as early as July for Operation Wave, a military action to crush any street demonstrations in Budapest.21 In the Kremlin discussion of what measures to take now in Budapest, Mikoyan was again the loudest voice calling for restraint. He believed that Moscow should abandon Gerö and give Nagy the chance as leader to calm the situation. Perhaps Nagy could duplicate what Gomulka had achieved in Warsaw.
Mikoyan’s views were ridiculed by the rest of the Soviet leadership. “Hungary is coming apart at the seams already with Nagy,” said Molotov.22 Molotov pressed for the introduction of force. So, too, did Foreign Minister Shepilov, Defense Minister Zhukov, and longtime Presidium members Kaganovich and Suslov. Zhukov and Kaganovich argued that there was no comparison between Poland and the current disorder in Hungary. This time they had to send troops.23
Operation Wave began the next day. Moscow had already placed its two mechanized divisions in Hungary on alert when it seemed that the Warsaw Pact was poised to launch a crackdown in Poland. On October 24 thousands of men from these units were sent into Budapest. In addition, portions of a mechanized division in Romania and one in the Ukraine were brought into Hungary to maintain security outside the capital city.24 To provide reliable reporting for the Kremlin and to test Mikoyan’s theories about Nagy’s capacity for leadership, Mikoyan and Suslov were also sent to Budapest.
The staggering toll of crushing the Hungarian freedom movement came home to the Soviets on October 28. Suslov, who had by then returned with Mikoyan, reported that on October 24 Soviet forces had opened fire on a group of demonstrators, killing at least 70 of them. Following this massacre, relations between the Hungarians and the Soviet Army reached a new low. The Hungarians began flying mourning flags, and on October 26 a pitched battle broke out between Soviet troops and a large group of armed Hungarian freedom fighters in a section of the capital. The Soviet Army was using tanks as well as infantrymen to crush the revolt. Suslov reported that there had been 3,000 Hungarian casualties, 600 of whom had died. The Soviet Army had itself lost 350 people in battle. Meanwhile Gerö had resigned amid the bloodshed and been replaced by Nagy. Khrushchev’s note takers did not write the words “atrocity,” “innocent victims,” and “war crime” in the official account of the meeting, and it is certain that no one in the room thought to use these words to describe what the Soviet Army had just done in Budapest. Nevertheless, Suslov’s report had a chilling effect on the discussion.25
Aro
und the room there was scant thirst for additional blood. Following Suslov’s report, only the aged Marshal Kliment Voroshilov defended the use of force. “Let’s not be in a rush to withdraw the troops,” said the Kremlin veteran. “The U.S. intelligence services are working harder than Comrades Suslov and Mikoyan.” But Voroshilov was soon drowned out by other leaders calling for a withdrawal from Budapest. Earlier in the day the newly installed regime of Imre Nagy had called for a cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of Soviet troops. Khrushchev held the majority view that this new government should be given a chance. If Nagy could establish control over Budapest, then the Soviet Union would respect a cease-fire and withdraw its troops from the Hungarian capital.
At the end of this long and draining session on October 28, Khrushchev reminded his colleagues they should not lose sight of the propaganda war with the West, especially in the developing world. Soviet moderation now would contrast dramatically with what the imperialists were trying to do in Egypt. “This is politically advantageous for us,” said the Soviet leader, who had not completely forgotten Nasser’s problem. “The English and the French are stirring up trouble in Egypt. Let’s not fall into their camp.”26
AS A TEMPORARY cease-fire took hold in Budapest and Soviet troops withdrew from the city, Israel launched its planned nighttime attack on Egypt. On October 29 Israeli planes dropped paratroopers at the entrance to the Mitla Pass in the central Sinai, only forty-five miles from the Suez Canal. Meanwhile Ariel Sharon, then a colonel (and years later the prime minister), led the remainder of the 202 Parachute Brigade across the Sinai to rejoin with this advance force. The Israeli Defense Forces achieved a strategic surprise. The Egyptians had been expecting an Israeli attack on Jordan, not on the Sinai. For days Sharon’s force had hugged the border with Jordan to distract Nasser. Israel also achieved a tactical surprise. Two hours before the parachute drop, four Israeli P-51 Mustang fighters had crossed into Sinai airspace to disrupt Egyptian communications. The pilots daringly dropped their planes to an altitude of twelve feet and cut the tops off telephone poles linking the Egyptian commands.27
Khrushchev's Cold War Page 16