1956 by Simon Hall

Author:Simon Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Back in the United States, President Eisenhower – who was in the midst of a gruelling re-election campaign against Adlai Stevenson, the former governor of Illinois – struggled to formulate an appropriate response. During a campaign stop in Denver, Colorado, on 20 October, Ike issued a terse statement explaining that ‘all friends of the Polish people recognize and sympathize with their traditional yearning for liberty and independence’.57 Three days later, at a dinner for the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners at Washington’s Sheraton-Park Hotel, the president reprised this theme. He told his audience of blue-collar union members that ‘the love of freedom was and is the strongest mark of Polish character’. Saluting the Poles for resisting the tyranny of ‘communistic imperialism’, Eisenhower declared that ‘the memory of freedom is not erased by the fear of guns and the love of freedom is more enduring than the power of tyrants’. The job of the United States, he explained, was to serve as ‘the champion of human freedom’. By upholding the principle of self-determination, providing aid or trade where appropriate, and through her own domestic example, America would help to ‘expand the areas in which free men, free governments can flourish’.58 Behind the scenes there was plenty of talk about providing the Poles with economic assistance, but one thing was perfectly clear: there was never any question of the West offering the Poles military support. In a televised interview, John Foster Dulles explained that such a move would risk triggering an all-out war.59

Moscow, too, decided against the use of force. Having toyed with the military option for several days, Khrushchev finally ordered Soviet troops back to their bases on 24 October.60 While Khrushchev seems to have been genuinely impressed by Gomułka, whom he judged a dependable ally, the Soviets were also deterred by intelligence reports that significant numbers of Polish troops would defend the new government, and unnerved by rumours of weapons being handed out in Warsaw’s factories in preparation for a possible Soviet attack. As Khrushchev noted, ‘finding a reason for armed conflict’ with the Poles would be easy, but ‘finding a way to put an end to such a conflict later would be very hard’. Moreover, Khrushchev was increasingly preoccupied with a far more serious and fast-moving crisis that was unfolding on the streets of Budapest.61

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