Posted on 06/16/2021 9:51:08 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Fifty years ago today, the onetime Hungarian Prime Minister and three others associated with the country’s shattered 1956 revolution were hanged in Budapest for treason by the Soviet-backed Hungarian government.
A moderate Communist, Imre Nagy assumed leadership of Hungary from 1953 to 1955, a period of ideological thawing after the death of Joseph Stalin.
Nagy charted a “new course” towards Austrian-style neutrality or Yugoslavian-style “national Communism” not yoked to Moscow, opposed domestically by his predecessor and rival Matyas Rakosi, who eventually ousted the reform-minded minister.
But Nagy’s anti-Soviet credentials saw him elevated back to the office by popular acclamation during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution — an interval of the nation’s history still deeply cherished in Hungary today. Here’s a recollection by newsreel montage to the strains of Beethoven’s salute to the national martyrs of another time and place.
Nagy held the office for only ten days before Soviet intervention crushed the revolution. He issued this radio appeal to the world (in Hungarian, followed by the English version at about 0:34) on November 4, 1956:
It was an appeal against all geopolitical realities; Hungary was the Soviet Union’s sphere, and western counter-intervention could have precipitated World War III. Verbal outrage abounded, of course:...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
“Moderate Communist’’? Were there ever any ‘’moderate Nazis’’?
The Soviets tricked Nagy into coming to “talks” about the ongoing Hungarian Revolution, was seized, quickly tried at a kangaroo court and killed.
My father-in-law, an Army CI officer, went into Hungary and got some revolution leaders and their families out of the country to safety. That is one untold story that might stay that way, unfortunately. In my father-in-law’s case, due to intelligent secrecy, “deeds spoke louder than words” since the words are still highly classified.
PS: One American military advisor I met in Pleiku, Central Highlands, So. Vietnam, in Nov. 1970, was a Hungarian child refugee, smuggled out of the country in 1956. He joined the US Army as a way to thank America for giving him freedom and to fight back against the Communists as payback.
His name was Klimko. I’d take him to cover my back any day.
One of my favorite childhood books was Lazlo Hamori's Dangerous Journey,, about a young boy's escape from Communist Hungary.
Oscar Schindler. Karl Plagge.
Are there any “Moderate Democrats”?
While compelled to join the party Schindler was no Nazi.
None that I was ever aware of.
Got any evidence for the claim that he was forced to join the Nazis? He was a member of the Sudeten German Party, which merged into the NSDAP after Germany gained the Sudetenland in 1938. Are you referring to that merger as him being forced into the Nazi Party?
Which, going full circle, means that some were moderate.
In between high school graduation and entering the Marines, I worked at a commercial photo processing company. There was a husband-wife team of artists who had escaped from Hungary. They were both vehemently anti communist.
She was a beautiful woman
Back in the 90’s I would sometimes make deliveries to the 7-Up bottler in Richmond, Va. The warehouse manager was a guy who escaped Hungary in his late teens. He enlisted in the US army and served in Vietnam. Pretty cool guy. Tough but pretty cool.
Much later, around 2010 or so I pulled for a company with about 300 trucks. I met a co-worker who escaped Hungary while the Soviet Union was still in charge. Big fun loving guy who loved to laugh. As conservative as anyone you will ever meet. He and I would run together whenever we got the chance.
He lived in southern Illinois. He loved the countryside in Illinois but hated the stranglehold that Chicago had on the political landscape.
I haven’t been in touch with him in some time, he must be losing his mind over politics these days.
Strange name to apply to a Nazi.
Can’t remember the details, but some were so bad they disgusted folks in the SS.
Which, of course, leads to the fairly narrow field of study of Jews in the SS.
Things are always a bit more complicated than the broad brush strokes would try to say. Hitler himself intervened on behalf of at least 3 folks that were classified as Jewish. Although I wouldn’t classify him as a moderate.
Hitler himself was always aware of his Jewish ancestry and took pains to hide it. The entire Nazi hierarchy were a collection of moral idiots, fat slobs(Goering and Bormann,) drug addicts(Hitler himself and Goering) and a clubfooted dwarf.(Goebbels)). Himmler himself was a runty little git and all of them, by Nazi racial and hygiene would have been shoved into a gas chamber.
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