Empire: World History - 286. Suez Crisis: Hungary Revolts & Britain Bombs Egypt (Part 3)

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

What did the Queen think about Britain’s humiliating failures in Suez in 1956? Why did France and Britain not inform their American allies of the invasion? What was simultaneously going on in Hungary that sent the UN into crisis mode? William and Anita are joined once again by Alex Von Tunzelmann, author of Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, & The Crisis That Shook The World, to explore the chaos that Britain and France inflicted on Egypt in 1956.  Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. And again, we are delighted to be joined by Alex von Tunselman, author of Blood and Sand. It is a marvellous book, and we left you on quite the cliffhanger. I mean, I think it's one of the best cliffhangers we've ever done.

World War III is about to erupt. I mean, it's a biggie. I mean, it is a biggie. And I think people these days do not realise they talk about, you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis or they talk about the times we're living in today. But this was properly on the brink. And just to remind us why, were you looking at two different arenas of action, which both seem to be going to hell in a handcart.

simultaneously. That's absolutely right. So what you had is Britain and France colluding with Israel to start a war in the Middle East, specifically for Israel to stage an invasion of Egypt that would allow Britain and France to intervene ostensibly to protect the Suez Canal, but actually really to take over and topple Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of Egypt, simultaneously and unrelated, and yet in the minds of many very powerful people surely had to be related, there was the first major uprising in the Soviet satellite states against Soviet control. And that happened in Hungary. And it was a popular uprising, centered around Budapest, but actually sort of nationwide,

completely spontaneous. And yet happening so much in the same days that you had Nikita Hirschov, the leader of the Soviet Union, and indeed over in the US, many people in Washington thinking, surely there must be some sort of plan going on here on the other side and these things must be linked. So what was extraordinary from that episode, and I think it bears repeating before we sort of dive into the nitty-gritty of all of this, is two things are apparent.

Number one, these are almost the death throes of a colonial mindset in Europe because that is what France and Britain are working on. Some would say that the colonial mindset is not entirely disappeared from Europe even today, but yes, we'll let that pass. On this issue of the canal itself, how could it possibly be run and how can we possibly do business with an Egyptian looking after a canal in Egypt? And you've got this sort of secretive conversation going on between these two old colonial powers. But on the other hand, the thing that I found most eye-watering of all is that you've got the brink of World War III going on and no direct line of communication between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and America. No way that they can pick up the phone and back channel each other going, are you really doing this?

No, we're not. Okay, stand down. There is just no, this overcommunication, secret communication on one side and zero communication on the other side. That's right. There's no direct phone line actually between the White House and the Kremlin until after the Cuban Missile Crisis several years later. Astonishing. There's also just an astonishing cynicism of this whole invasion. The fact that it's sort of so completely naked and the fact that there's no even remote pretense

and any virtuous motive for this. This sort of goes right back to sort of 18th century Clive in India, sort of weighing one power against another and just the completely open cynicism of the British. The sense that they can do this just because they want to do it and don't even have to dress it up, it's an astonishingly sort of backward glance from the seven-year war or something. I mean, unfortunately, as you say,

the mindset of them probably also hadn't changed really that much by the 1950s. And I think it's very striking from both Britain and France. And in a sense, the difference, I'm sure we'll come back to this because it comes up again and again between Britain and France is that France is completely shameless about this, whereas actually in Britain, Eden does feel the need to at least try and keep this secret. In fact, he gets quite obsessed with the idea of keeping collusion secret. He wanted all copies of the secret agreement with Israel, the Protocol of Cerva found and burnt. Both the Israelis and the French completely refused to do that. so it didn't happen. And he kept lying about this for the rest of his life. In his memoirs,

he wrote there was no collusion, even though by then everybody knew that there had been. He tried to insist on it for the rest of his life. So he obviously did feel some sort of shame about it, not enough not to do it, but enough to feel sort of guilty and try and cover it up. I mean, you've mentioned Eden. So let's do a quick recap. If people haven't listened by the Empire Club, and by the way, this is a very good reason to join the Empire Club because you don't have to wait in between episodes. you can just binge the whole lot. Empirepoduk.com is where you can join up and then you can get these things in one great hot flood.

But if people are listening and there's been a period of time, so Anthony Eden you've mentioned, debonair, man who's been in government for a very long time. He was there during Yalta. He was critical of Churchill. He is handsome. He is older with a much younger wife. You have Nassar who we've kind of established

as a bit matinee idol kind of hot, much younger, and very much more. interesting perhaps to Eden's wife and Eden at this point in time. And Guillemole, and I just remind us about Gimoli, because we sort of talked about him very likely, but we need to sort of paint a picture. Yes, I mean, he's a really interesting character. So he was, he quite recently came in as the leader of France just in 1956, and he was a socialist. But the thing that you have to sort of adjust your mind to from a modern perspective is that that did not mean that in any way he was going to try to give independence to France's kind of colonial possessions,

partly because they weren't really seen as colonial possessions by the French. So Algeria, which was having this uprising against French control, was seen by the French and by indeed some Algerians as part inherently of France. And therefore, you know, an overseas department with equal rights, and therefore they're saying, well, it's not a colony. So this uprising is effectively illegitimate. And he very much took that view that this was some troublemakers being annoying in a place that was inherently part of France. And the third part of this triangle is David Ben Gurian in Israel, who is this sort of Einstein look-like with kind of mad grey hair, very capable, extremely ruthless. He'd been the one who in a sense had overseen the Palestinian

Nakbah only eight years before, and from the Arab point of view, responsible for 750,000 Palestinians ending up outside Palestine, many of them sitting now on the Egyptian border in Gaza, where of course they remain. And these three pulled together, as you described beautifully last time, Alex, into this unholy triangle working together to re-establish colonial power, effectively on the suicide zone, reacting to NASA's nationalization. of the Suez Canal by using this as an opportunity to reassert control. And I would just emphasize that it was sort of reacting to the nationalization of the Seuss Canal, but that was really a hook. All of these countries already had their reasons,

and these leaders specifically already had reasons they hated NASA, which long predated the nationalization. So really when that happened, it was a catalyst, but it wasn't that NASA could have avoided this by just not doing that. But in some version of the stories, NASA is aware that's going to provoke a massive response from Britain and France. It's not that he's surprised that they reacted the way they did. Absolutely. I mean, he knows that this is a bit of a trigger, but at the same time, you know, it was, this was already courses of action that were well underway. I mean, you know, even if you go back to March 1956, long before the canals nationalised, you have, you know, things like George Young, British Secret Intelligence Services, planning actually a triple

coup simultaneously in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt to try and reestablish Britain's interests in the Middle East. You have all sorts of kind of extraordinary preparations going on for regime change in that region and for promoting, well, the British want to promote Iraqi interests, the Americans, Saudi. But basically, the CIA was very pro-Nasor and saw him as a very useful figure in the Middle East. They thought he was someone they could work with. A stabilising nationalist but not pro-Sov Not pro-Soviet, independent, going down that non-aligned route. You know, I mean, not their dream of a leader, but much more practical and very powerful. They thought he was a man they could do business with.

He was younger. He spoke the language. And they felt that he could be, if not tamed, but at least spoken to. Now, let's go forward to this very important date, October the 30th, 1956. So after all, these secret meetings have taken place, the cigarette packet plan is being enacted. an ultimatum is issued directly to the ambassador of Egypt. What exactly are they saying to him? So, yes, Britain and France issue a 12-hour ultimatum,

which is an incredibly short period of time, by the way, for a military ultimatum. And they issue it technically simultaneously to the ambassador at the Egyptian embassy and to the Charger de Ferre at the Israeli embassy in London, although, of course, the Israelis know this is coming because they are in on this plan. So that is really for show. Both nations were ordered to stop fighting and withdraw 10 miles from the Suez Canal.

Egypt was also told to accept temporary occupation, temporary, of key points on the canal by Anglo-French forces operating as a police action. And if they didn't, these countries accept this ultimatum within 12 hours, Britain and France would intervene militarily. But what is extraordinary about this is that actually the mileage between these two forces on the ground does not make sense when you apply it to the ultimatum. And I think you mentioned this last time, but it's worth doing the distances again, Alex. I know you mentioned them last time, but just tell us exactly why this sounds so stupid after 12 hours. You know, everyone can see this is stupid because the ultimatum had been planned on the basis that the British and French thought the Israelis would probably get all the way to the Suez Canal by this point. Well, they hadn't. They were still bogged down in the Sinai, and that's actually quite a long way east of the Sears Canal. So, in fact, the front where the Egyptians and Israelis were fighting each other, was then between about 75 and 125 miles east of the canal.

So effectively, this statement that they must both withdraw 10 miles from the canal was actually asking the Egyptians to withdraw another 135 miles within their own territory. while Israel was actually being asked to advance between 65 and 115 miles into Egyptian territory. So this just didn't work. How did that happen? Just that they delivered it at the wrong time, that they hadn't got the intelligence of where the armies were? It's the Israelis being bogged down. They just didn't get as far as they thought they would get. I mean, they just counted on the Israelis moving a lot faster.

Huge cock-up. Huge cock-up. I mean, you could tell it had been pre-planned because of this, because it wasn't responding to events. But no resemblance of what was going on the ground. Now, how did civil servants, where civil servants will have been watching this? I mean, if a secret plan in Eden was as paranoid as he was, for some of them, they will have woken up, read the newspapers or heard it on the wireless,

that, hang on, we've issued an ultimatum. And hang on, I know a little bit about the region. Hang on a minute, I've got many hang-ons here. I mean, what kind of response was going on around the British Parliament and the civil service? I mean, you know, people were completely horrified by this and sort of didn't know what to make of it. So, I mean, you know, you have things like Evelyn Schockberg, who was a civil servant listening to the radio. And he wrote in his diary at that point, you know, staggered by this. It seems to have every fault.

It is clearly not genuinely impartial since the Israelis are nowhere near the canal. It puts us on the side of the Israelis. The Americans were not consulted. The UN is flouted. We're about to be at war without the nation or parliament, having being given a hint of it. We think A.E., Anthony Eden, has gone off his head. Brilliant. That was pretty representative, actually, of what people were saying.

Yeah. You know, because people aren't completely stupid. They could see that this was nonsense. Yeah, but then he stands up. It's 15 minutes after the announcement of this ultimatum. Eden finally takes this to Parliament because he's been doing this without any kind of democratic mandate whatsoever. It's an important foreign policy decision, but he has not passed it by anybody else. Do you know from Hansard or from the time, you know, what was the reaction when Eden got to his first?

feet and finally told Parliament the thing that he had been planning with the French for a long time, and they just still don't know that he'd secretly been planning with the French. Well, you know, there's a little bit of the Conservatives backing him, although you have to remember a lot of them probably also didn't know about this conspiracy and this secret plan and thought he was being genuine. That's a very important part of this story. And many people remember this as a great moment of division between left and right. For example, my parents-in-law, who were engaged at this time, very nearly broke off their marriage.

because my slightly right-wing father-in-law was very much behind Suism, giving Johnny Arab what he deserved, while my mother-in-law thought this was an appalling act of antediluvian colonialism. And I think that was reflected across the country. This is a major dividing line with many people had very different ideas. Yeah, and I mean, you certainly see Labour figures immediately challenging this in Parliament. Dennis Healy asking, you know, have the Americans been consulted? Have you asked them what they think of this ultimatum? And Eden just comes out with this very bland response about we've been in close communication with them, which is not true, actually.

You know, they haven't. They've been concealing it. They do get challenged immediately. And as you say, you initially what you see in the first year, it evolves very fast this situation. What you see initially is a sort of partisan left-right split. But actually, as it becomes more and more clear what is going on, you actually see quite a lot of people on the right, also deeply horrified by what is happening. I mean, because this doesn't make sense, and you've got to also remember, apart from it

just not making sense, there's nothing a Tory grandee hates more, let me tell you, even to this day, than being kept in the dark. They feel insulted, they feel slighted, they feel disrespected. So you've got all of this sort of momentum building up, even sort of bubbling up within the parties. So party loyalties aside, Eden is not universally liked by his Tory. Very far from it. At all.

Quite unpopular at this point. Already before all this. Yeah. Yeah, he was very high-handed with colleagues. He talked down to everybody. He thought he was better than everybody. He was also remarkably bitchy about his colleagues as well. So, you know, he was an unpopular man in the party.

And so when he stands up in all of his pomposity and says before Parliament, what we hoped for, what we asked for, what we prayed for, is that both parties to whom these appeals have been made, Israel and Egypt, he meant, will accept them because if they do accept them, then we will truly believe that a new era can open in the Middle East. And you can just imagine, although, you know, Hansard, I often think this is a failure of Hansard, does not record the and the eye rolling alone would have been really voluble on those benches. And you've got, you know, the Labour MP, you mentioned Dennis Healy.

By the way, quick aside about Dennis Healy, what's the phrase that you most associate with Dennis Healy? Silly Billy, right? That's what he's meant to have said. You silly, but didn't say it. It was Mike Yardwood who did impersonations of him who first brought in silly Billy, because he was actually very, very funny in his insults. And it was only after Mike Yardwood did it, that the substantially eyebrowed Dennis Healy took it on and made it his own and then became famous to silly Billy. Wasn't his phrase.

Anyway, at some aside, but Tony Ben, another Labour MP, wrote in his diary on this day, it is impossible to see how this can end without far graver disasters. And what is going on in America? Are they also thinking of far graver disasters, Alex? They are absolutely furious. Eisenhower is livid about this. I mean, there are stories about, you know, they're sort of wonderfully discreet, I think,

in a way that actually some of the British diaries aren't. But they sort of said, you know, the White House rang with barracks from language not heard since the era of General Grant. I mean, so you can only imagine the effing and blinding that was going on about Britain at this point. Shouts of perfidious Albion, this sort of thing, you know, there was a deep sense of betrayal. What was Eisenhower's attitude about the British in general? I mean, was he during the Second World War?

Was he pro-British? This was a break from his usual, or was he always pretty cynical about British motives? No, Eisenhower was pretty pro-British. He liked Churchill, yeah. Yeah, he liked Churchill. He kind of, well, mostly. I mean, he was quite irritated by him at points, but everybody was quite irritated by Churchill at points. I mean, this is sort of quite normal. Even his wife and children, yes. It was deeply his wife and children. But I mean, definitely, I think Eisenhower always saw the British.

And he kind of said so it's, you know, the British are always by my right hand. You know, they're really important ally. But this was just way too far. And it was a huge betrayal of that kind of what was previously considered the special relationship, this idea, which, you know, between kind of Eisenhower and Churchill and someone had seemed quite convincing this. sort of genuine friendship, you know, suddenly looked like complete nonsense. Also, a break with this new spirit of the age. The United Nations had just been formed. We had our special episode with Thant about the early days of the United Nations.

And this is meant to be a new era. And there's been so much rhetoric on all sides saying that, you know, the age of imperialism is over, the British have left India. And here we are with the British sort of doing Clive in India stuff all over again in 956. Exactly. And I mean, and also just not telling the Americans. and, you know, becoming quite clear quite quickly that, in fact, they've been lying to the Americans for months.

You can sort of see Eden sort of in his superiority thinking, oh, we'll sort out the Americans later, but he does have to come face to face with Her Majesty, the Queen. Now, this has been portrayed a couple of times in film and television adaptation, and I am absolutely dying to know how accurate those are, because certainly in those television portrayals, Hamad is not amused at all. A chilly reception. Oh, glacial, one might say. So just tell us the truth behind what happened as far as we know, Alex. How did that go? That meeting with the Queen that happens. By the way, if you don't know, in Britain, there is a weekly sit down between the Prime Minister and the Monarch where the Prime Minister, and it lasts about 15 minutes, two chairs opposite each other, where the Prime Minister of the day will inform their Majesty, whoever they might be at the time, what is going on? What her Majesty or His Majesty's Government is doing and what they're thinking. And that conversation where she had no idea would have been

hashtag orcs, I'm thinking. Go on, Alex, what was it? Well, I mean, the thing is, like, for the reasons you've said, we actually don't know because there is a tradition of complete confidentiality between monarch and prime minister. There are records of those meetings which are not subject to the official secrets act, are never declassified, are not publicly able. Really? They're specifically excluded. All royal papers are, yes. So they are all kept within the Royal Archive, and you can only access them if they let you,

which is very much on their gift. It doesn't matter whether they date back to Elizabeth I, that's still the case. So we don't know, particularly, what we do know is the gossip from the Queen's private secretary who wrote about it. Martin Charters wrote about it quite a bit, who was her private secretary at the time.

As depicted in the crown, brilliantly. Absolutely. depicted in the crown, depicted elsewhere. You know, so we know some from him. We know some from Lord Mountbatten, who was, you know, the Queen's cousin and was also a very senior British military leader at this point.

And basically, he was always kind of talking to the Queen. They had a very close relationship. And Matt Batten was never shy to let Royal Gossip. Very... Trey gossipy. I mean, what Charter said is that Mountbatten was talking to her.

He said he was typically devious, is what Charter says, that he was saying things like, I think they're being absolutely lunatic. He didn't mean her to sort of then immediately go and repeat that to Eden. He's just kind of trying to put these thoughts in her head, basically. We don't know whether she did directly. What we do know, what Charter's said, at least, if we believe him, is I think the Queen believed Eden was mad. When he came for his weekly meetings with the Queen, he ranged up and down and wouldn't sit still. He was edgy, jumpy. And what we do know, a small piece of, of information we do have, because this was very unusual, is that she requested, on that

first day, 30th October, when this kicks off, she requested top secret daily reports on the progress of military operations and intelligence to be delivered to her from the next day, and those would continue to be delivered daily till the 22nd of November. You can read those briefings in the British National Archives. So that's very unusual, that she would have done that. We should say at this point that Eden is about twice the Queen's age. She's just about 30 and he's coming on for 60 at this point. Yes. And I mean, I think, you know, it's worth bearing that in mind that like whatever passed there, you know, she's really still a very young woman and very much kind of at the beginning of her reign. Uncle Dickie probably leaning on her off camera a bit and saying these people are all nuts. And her trying to conduct herself, I mean, I think, you know, the thing we do know about her personality is she was deeply concerned with duty and with kind of conducting things in a very correct.

way, trying to hold it together while Eden's being basically pretty loopy in front of her and jumping up and down like a maniac and kind of saying these things that she knows aren't true. I mean, lying to her. Yeah, she believes in order and she believes in, you know, sort of not the, we don't have a written constitution, but the unwritten constitution, which is if you're going to do something this big, you tell Parliament, you ask Parliament, you get Parliament behind you. This is not a monarchy or a dictatorship. And certainly, the monarch is not about to be replaced by Anthony Eden, who's suddenly on a whim, decides to do something this big. So one can imagine that all that we know of Queen Elizabeth the second is that she would have been pretty pissed off, because all of

this flies in the face of everything that she knows is duty to the country. How does Nasser react to this at the same time? Is he immediately onto what's going on? Does he correctly deduce this to be a ruse? Well, it starts to become apparent very quickly. And actually Nassah doesn't really. really believe this can be happening. He's so improbable. Completely shocked, yes, by this happening, that he sort of doesn't really believe it. And I mean, you know, they can see that there are British planes flying over. They can see what's happening. And they quickly realize, I mean, the first problem here is very, very quickly. So, I mean, after the ultimatum, for instance, the Egyptian ship, Ibrahim L.O.R., which in fact used to be HMS Cotersmoor, but Britain sold it

to Egypt. So was an ex-British ship, was shelling Haifa. in Israel. And what happened straight away, and this is still within the 12-hour ultimatum, about 3 a.m., is that Israel fought back, but so did a French ship, intervened on the part of Israel, captured this Egyptian ship, sailed it into Israel. So the French had already broken the ultimatum, even though it was only 12 hours. And the pretence of neutrality. Yeah, neutrality was gone. They were already intervening very clearly on the side of Israel. So, you know, NASA could see this happening. And he's kind of, what the hell is going on? What is happening here? This is just absolutely baffling. I mean, I know what it looks like, but surely not, right? Surely not. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't do it. They sure they couldn't do it. Not in this day and age. Not after the Second World War, he may be thinking. However, if you needed a little more convincing, a snowstorm will be thicket because both the British and French embassies in Cairo start destroying all their documents. I mean, just indiscriminately, the equivalent of Tesco receipts, parking tickets and communicates all go into a furnace. And it's described, I mean, you

do it beautifully, this sort of light flutter of ash that lands outside. Now, if you've got sort of neutral countries who are supposedly policing a volatile situation, they probably wouldn't be burning documents in this way. So I mean, all of these are signs. Looks a bit stinky, isn't it? A little bit stinky. Yeah. Anyway, look, with these ash snow settling around Cairo and the embassies, let's take a break and we'll come back to what is going on behind the iron curve. because there are two fields of drama happening simultaneously. Welcome back. So as we saw at the end of the last half, at the same time that the British and the French and the Israelis are getting up to all sorts of dodgy shenanigans in the Sinai Desert and heading for the Suez Zone, the USSR is mobilising in Budapest. Alex, bring us up to speed. What's going on in Hungary?

Well, effectively, what had happened in Hungary, you'd have this popular uprising against Soviet control. And it was quite specific in that it wasn't necessarily against communism more broadly. The person they were trying to install was a previous communist leader called Imre Noge, who was more liberal, less Stalinist. You say Noge, but we should pass it because someone may have read this in a book. You say Nogh, I say Nagy, let's call the whole thing off. N-A-G-Y, so all of our signoreamus have been reading this as Nagy and here you are to. educators. It is Nodge. Okay, thank you. Nodge is your Hungarian pronunciation. I think, although some Hungarians can call in and say how incredibly poor my Hungarian pronunciation is fair enough.

I'm a Hungarian friend in Delhi called Peter Nagy, who's going to be very proud discovery. He's been mispronouncing his name all his life. You should be the first in India to call him Nodg and see how that goes there. I mean, to be fair, I've mispronounce my own surname as von von Tundleman rather than Fontunsonman. So I mean, you know, I can only say that I'm also setting a standard here. Yeah, but you were telling us about Nodd. But indeed, you know, he's not somebody who, and this is sort of a fairly crucial point, that he's not somebody who's kind of anti-communist, is a communist, just a much more liberal communist and somebody who's not a Stalinist, doesn't have that sort of taint to him.

The Soviets had previously had him as leader of Hungary. So what people were reacting against, really, was that Soviet control, was the incredibly harsh, overbearing Stalinist Soviet control. And the rebellion was against that and trying to do this. but it really worried the Soviets back in Moscow. Partly that was because all of this was also happening in the Middle East. And what they thought is that surely the CIA had its fingers all over what was going on in Budapest. And even though that might look like a kind of not anti-communist revolution,

they thought it probably was. In your book, you have this scene of a Kremlin reception for the Prime Minister of Afghanistan and Molotov, after whom the Molotov cocktail is named, and which will be brought into play, both in Budapest and indeed in Port Suisse, Molotov tells everyone that the British and French are behind the Israeli invasion. That's right. He basically said at this dinner party, this is what's happening. And the British ambassador, in total good faith, by the way, because he has also not been informed. Exactly.

Says, this is absolute nonsense. You mustn't say this. It's not true. there's no way that the Britain would have done that in this day and age. The Britain will certainly soon be condemning Israeli aggression at the UN, as it always did, and this will be the correct course of action. And then he returned to his embassy after it and found the texts of this Anglo-French ultimatum. And he said, as I read it, I couldn't believe my eyes. I even began to wonder if I'd drunk too much at the Kremlin.

He thought, what is happening? So, as I say, he was on. answering in good faith. He was just wrong. But of course, to the Soviets, this just looked like a deeper and deeper conspiracy. Yeah, I mean, he wrote, he wrote, I thought I might have drunk too much. I can imagine it was F-bomb, F-bomb, F-bom, F-bom, F-bom! This is so embarrassing. Because it is, it's a nightmare for an ambassador to be completely out of the loop and to have, you know, Molotov, old stone arse, being better informed than even the man inside the tent. It's totally humiliating, you know, and you've got to think this. And this is why, you know,

when you ask whether conservatives support Eden and all of this, this is why a lot of them starts a shift is that they're humiliated. I mean, this is really awful. Even people who are quite sort of establishment British, who probably don't like NASA terribly much, we're quite loyal. You know, start thinking, hold on, this is disgraceful. I mean, we look dreadful and also that it's deeply dishonorable from Britain. Do the Soviets then immediately think?

I mean, they think, okay, there's a conspiracy, and they suspect the hand of the United States behind it, because the United States is the only other balancing superpower in their opinion in the world. And there is no phone to pick up and go, hey, hey, Dewey. Hey, Dwight, what's going on? No, we're not doing this. That doesn't exist. But is there, or how quickly is there the thought that actually, if Britain and France are doing this kind of nonsense and shenanigans,

maybe we could do some more shenanigans in Hungary and no one's going to. notice and no one's going to say anything to us because all eyes are currently on the canal. You tell a very nice story, Alex, in the book about Khrushchev passing on the story that he's heard from. Is it the French embassy that the English and the French are meeting saying, let's come to an agreement. You seem to have sort of trouble in your hands in Poland and Hungary. We understand how it is. We've got our own troubles in Egypt. Let's just sort of lay off each other until we sort of this out as brother imperialist. Is that a true story or is that just Khrushchev's Shall we say it's a projection?

I would say, I think what you can kind of see happening from a distance. I think it's incredibly hard to see this, by the way, in the moment, because it was chaos and the communications are really poor. So nobody really knew what was happening. And as I say, the Soviets were deeply concerned that this was actually a kind of anti-Soviet coup happening with American provocation, possibly British provocation, you know, going on in the background. They didn't know that it wasn't, put it that way. and they could see all this happening.

But there is also something that starts happening, and that's where this projection comes in, is that Khrushchev realizes that when they're doing all of this in Egypt, this is a bit of a chance to reimpose order on Hungary and not much is going to happen to stop them doing that because everybody's eyes are elsewhere. So there is a little bit of both going on. I think it's also, he kind of, you know, when he's saying,

oh, you know, you get on with your stuff in Egypt and we'll get on with our stuff. Here, you can see that Soviet attention, they're certainly watching what's happening in the Middle East. They're getting on with it. But they've got, for them, the kind of really burning crisis is in Hungary. And they think this is all just sort of your own spheres of influence. But actually, these things are actually spontaneous and not connected.

It's just causing a great deal of panic. But the fact that they're dealing with all this in Hungary makes them very jumpy and very nervous. And that is going to be really significant when we get to the resolution of this crisis. Well, let's just for one second put a pin on that. And we'll come back to it. Of course we will. because it's all coming to a head all at the same time. But the Brits have not only irritated some of their own,

they've irritated the Americans, they've spooked the Soviets, but they also will end up really pissing off the Israelis because they have made a promise to the Israelis that, you know what, if you do what we're going to do, is we're going to bomb the aircraft, the Egyptian aircraft that could be moved against you. That's what we're going to do.

We promise we're going to do that. Do they keep their promise? Alex? No. They do not. No, she said in a resigned tone. Okay, so what is the impact of that? Because taking out the wings is what is going to allow the Israeli army to advance or Israeli forces to advance without being struck in the sky. It's pretty standard, right? Is that you take out, you do air strikes at the beginning of this sort of military operation, right? And I mean, the plan had been that after this 12-hour ultimatum that Britain would bomb Egyptian, airfields, take out the Air Force, that would obviously cover and protect those Israeli invaders.

But of course, one of the problems was they were trying to make this look like a neutral intervention. And yet they were only bombing the Egyptians, not the Israelis. So once again, this is very confusing to anybody who's watching and trying to take them seriously. It's like, oh, it looks like you're pretty much on one side of this because you're not bombing the Israeli Air Force. So, you know, what starts happening is that the Brits start panicking, realizing this looks terrible. So they start doing things like postponing their bombing raids on the Egyptian Air Force without telling the Israelis they're doing that. So Moshe Dian, who was the Israeli military leader at that point, wrote in his diary, I'll quote, he says, those bastards, they make a political

agreement in which one of the main clauses, one we insisted on, was that an air strike on Wednesday morning would happen. And here they casually postpone the operation by 12 hours with no warning, not even an apology, the bastards. So that's pretty much how the Israelis are feeling. This is textbook from Eden. How to win friends and influence people. He's basically just like scattergun annoying. Fiss off everyone, yeah.

Every single person involved. Let me tell you what did happen when they bomb the Egyptian airfields, which was postponed by 12 hours. It's too late as far as the Israelis are concerned. And the idea was that the British were going to bomb Cairo West. That's a military airfield in Cairo, and that's where NASA kept a lot of his Soviet illusion bombers that he'd bought controversially from the Soviets.

At the last minute, British planes were already in the air. Word came from London that 1,300 American civilians were being evacuated along the side of Cairo West. So if they bombed that airfield, Eden was probably going to accidentally kill hundreds of innocent Americans. This was not going to help with his relationship with Eisenhower. Right? So the planes are in the air. Eden says, oh, my God, okay, we have to change the target.

This is obviously not possible. Bomb Almazza. That's another military airfield. Do that instead. The pilots had 10 minutes to change their plans. They didn't have very good maps and haven't been very well briefed. So they just bombed an airport that they could see. And it turned out this was in fact the civilian airport, right?

It was Cairo's main civilian airport, which, you know, the international airport. And of course, bombing a civilian. target straight away, an act of war, you know, really not ideal. And actually, NASA said at that point, he said, I still couldn't believe it. I quickly ran to the roof of my house. I had to see for myself. But it was true, British planes bombing Cairo's International Airport. And of course, what happened is then all his Ilyushan bombers were not bombed. So he just moved to the mall to Lutsor and bases in Syria, thus saving them for the entire operation. So, I mean, there's a complete disaster. So Alex, I mean, you know, he manages to move his airplanes out of the way.

They're tucked away. But this is all happening in front of the eyes of the Arab world. And how do these other countries see this? Because they haven't liked NASA very much, all of them. I mean, we were talking about the kind of split within the Arab world. But seeing this kind of territorial... Old-fashioned imperialism, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, what are the reactions like from his neighbours? Well, of course, they do vary quite a bit. I mean, you know, you've got this split in the Arab world, so, you know, much more kind of conservative... Just for a change, the Arab world isn't you like to do you like it? Just for a change. I know, amazingly, like that would ever be the case. You know, so you've still got kind of old school conservative Arab establishment like the government of Iraq who are incredibly pro-British. And Jordan. Yeah, you're watching this and rubbing their hands in Iraq. I mean, they're, you know, they're fine with this.

Serves that upstart Nasser right. Exactly. They're not too bothered. But other countries, of course, are free. freaking out Syria, much more closely aligned with NASA, are, you know, at this point, really freaking out, Shukhwatli, the leader of Syria actually runs to Moscow to try to persuade Marcel Rzukov in person to invade for the Soviets to invade the British and French. Yes, he does. And Issy told, hang on a minute, we've got a little local difficulty ourselves.

Sorry, could you come back? We're just a bit busy at the moment. Yes, could you come? Can you come? Can we chat later? Kuwati turns up in Moscow, yes, to speak to Zhukov, and several Presidian members. He met Krushchev, Pogana, and, you know, several of them. And he was, you know, completely freaking out. He said, you know, you've got to help Egypt.

And Krishov said, but what should we do? And he shouts, is it for me to tell you what to do? Egypt's being attacked, and Egypt believed you were going to come to her aid. If you do nothing, your position in the Arab world would be destroyed. And Krista was like, what should we do, though? What do you want us to do? And Marshall Zhukov then unrolled this map of the Middle East on the table and said, do you see we'd have to send our armies through Turkey, Iran, then into Syria and Iraq,

and then on into Israel to attack the British and French forces? Like, this is like completely impossible. This is going to happen. Kuwali, who kind of really lost it by this point, started shouting, Marshal Zhukov, Marshal, Zhukov, do you want me, a poor civilian to tell you, the conqueror of Germany, the great Marshal, what should be done? And they were all just sort of stunned into silence and said, you know, we don't actually know how to do this, but we're having meetings to discuss the problem. So it's like, thank you for your comments. And then the Syrians go on and do their own thing. They start blowing up pipelines.

They do. And this was something that was controversial because it was reported in the New York Times and in the West that NASA had asked the Syrians to blow up the oil pipelines. They were carrying it from the orphans, if you imagine, to the Mediterranean, that this was going to kind of stop the flow of oil. And actually, NASA had specifically asked them not to do that. That was misreported. He'd asked them not to do it because,

He was actually very mindful from the start, and he started to realise extremely fast that the US, who were quite good friends of his, did not approve of this Anglo-French action and were not involved in it. So he thought, I've got to keep the American suite. I do not want those pipelines blown up. Too late. Syrians had already done it. Pipelines blown up all over the place, no oil going anywhere. And this, as we learned in the last episode, is in a sense the first international crisis where the threat to oil supplies is at the absolute forefront of,

decision-making. So do we see when the pipelines go up? Do we see the price of oil spike? Do we see the pound collapse? I mean, what's Yes, that's all coming next week in the Suez crisis. In the next few days, that does indeed precisely start

happening. It becomes a very, very difficult situation. I mean, you have to remember, Europe at this point absolutely is energy dependent on oil. And where does that all come from? The Middle East. It's a story as old as time. It's a story as old as pipe. Exactly. At this stage, you don't have those Scottish oil fields, you don't have Russian ones. Those sources are not happening. And you can't get it from the Russians anyway, because they're Soviets at this point, and that's not happening. So, I mean, you know, it's all at this stage about the Middle East and all from there.

So look, we're coming to the end of this episode. And I want to sort of leave off on the last thing NASA does in response to all the chaos that's going around him. No one's listening to him. Things are happening at great speed. You know, the Syrians have just bombed. to the pipelines and risked pissing off the Americans. So it's all sort of really very tense. Is it at this point that he says, OK, you know what? We are on a war footing. I mean, what happens? Because he can't just stand there and just watch all of this. What does he do? No, I mean, he has to go onto a war footing. His country's been invaded by Israel. It's also now being invaded by Britain and France, who are, you know, sort of alleging that these two countries are at some sort of spontaneous war, which he knows they aren't, because he hasn't done that. You have to think this is a really, really quick

that he has to make, that he didn't know any of this was happening, that he, you know, like everybody else in the world, thought Israel was gearing up to invade Jordan. So he was kind of thinking about that situation, which isn't what's happened, they invaded him instead. He works out quite quickly that there is a division between the Americans on one hand and the British and French on the other. He had also not expected that. Nobody else had expected that either. So it's a really quick readjustment of all of this. So yes, he declares martial law, general mobilisation, straight onto a war footing. And he starts making radio broadcast, doesn't he?

Oh, yes. Yes, he says, we shall fight, we shall not surrender. We shall fight from village to village from place to place. Now, that doesn't sound quite as good in English as we will fight on the beaches. But it's very chaturilian. It sounds good in Arabic. Yeah, wonderful. Mincaria il carrier.

There we go. Wonderful. Goodness me. It's like Anthony Eden is in the room speaking his afternoon. Oh, that's such a lovely compliment, Alex. That's low. Low, below. How kind. Oh, guys.

So look, with those words hanging in the air, join us for the next episode where we're going to, again, shift our gaze because remember, the world is going to hell on two fronts. Let's not, you know, let's not do what the world is doing, which is solely focused on what's going on in the Middle East and the oil world ourselves, because there is something going on behind the iron curtain too, which is arguably nudging the world closer to World War III even than what's going on in the Middle East.

So join us next time. If you can't wait for the next episode, you don't what to do. I mean, these are so, so exciting. Just join the club, EmpirePodUK.com, EmpirePod UK.com. Then waiting is not a thing you ever have to do again. You can binge to your heart's content. And you help keep us broadcasting. This is what makes the wheels turn round, oils the engines of this pod.

So get out your WD-40, reach for your credit card and join the club. Yes, thank you very much. So till the next time we meet from a creaking, Anita Arnan. It's goodbye from me. And goodbye from a WD-40 holding WD.