720. Revolution in the Soviet Empire: Revenge of the Red Army (Part 2)

This episode is brought to you by Revolut. Standing still leaves no legacy. History is written by progress, by revolution. Fighting for independence, dismantling those broken systems, defying injustice. Every revolution begins with the refusal to accept the norm, a demand for more. And Revolut is founded on the same principle. Originally established to push back the frontiers of traditional banking, it puts the power back into your hands. You can manage all of your money in one app. Plus, you can earn while you spend with the RevPoints reward system. As a fully authorised UK bank, your money is FSCS protected. Sign up to Revolut today at revolut.com forward slash T-R-I-H. That's all lowercase. And. This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realises, or rather everybody else realises, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So, you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people? So they asked over 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear. There was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai slash restishistory. And keep thinking. This episode is brought to you by Autotrader. Now, if car shopping feels like a massive faff, buying your car online at Autotrader makes it way, way easier, really. So you can shop loads and loads of cars online. You can compare prices. You can check the financing and trade-in options. And, of course, you can do it from wherever you are. You start online, go to the dealer for your test drive, and finish wherever works for you. Your information, your data, stays with you, so there is no starting over. Plus, you are working with local dealers, and there are real people there to help. So buy your car online. On Autotrader. Really. Since the early morning hours, Russian troops are attacking Budapest and our population. Please tell the world of the treacherous attack against our struggle for liberty. Our troops are already engaged in fighting. Help, help, help. SOS, SOS, SOS. The people have just overturned a tram to use as a barricade near this building. In the building, young people are making Molotov cocktails and hand grenades to fight tanks. We are quiet, not afraid. Send the news to the public of the world, and say it should condemn the aggression. The fighting is very close now, and we haven't enough guns in the building. I don't know how long we can resist. Heavy shells are exploding. Above, jet planes are roaring. A shell just exploded nearby. Now there is heavy fighting in the direction of the National Theatre, near us in the centre of the city. In our building, we have youngsters of 15, men of 40. Don't worry about us. We are strong, even if we are a small nation. When the fighting is over, we will rebuild our unhappy country. So those were telex messages sent from the Hungarian newspaper Sobod Nap, which, of course, as all of us who speak Hungarian know, translates as a free people. And it was sent to the Associated Press newsroom in Vienna on the morning of Sunday, the 4th of November, 1956. And then just before 11am, the line went dead, and the newsroom in Vienna heard nothing more. And Dominic, just one of the many tragic scenes from the denouement of the Hungarian, which is a milestone in the Cold War, of course, a turning point in the history of communism. Although, I mean, how much of a turning point is interesting to debate? And we will explore these issues in today's episode. But first, could we have a reminder of what's going on? Because people remember that our previous episode was dominated by the charismatic. Swashbuckling. The great blaze of charisma that was Imre Nodj. And I looked up and I discovered it actually means Mr. Big. So like in Sex and the City. Or indeed, Live and Let Die. Yeah, well, that reflects our different perspectives, doesn't it, Dominic? It does indeed. Also, I'll tell you who else it reminds me of is Jorg, which is the name that Andrew Ridgely called George Michael. Really? Yeah, because it was Jorgios, Jorg. Right. Anyway, that's by the by. Remind us who Nodj is, why he's such a hero. Or is he? And what's going on? All right, we'll come to Nodj in just a sec. Just the big context. So last time we entered, didn't we, on the 25th of October, 1956. And that was three days into this popular uprising against the communist regime that had ruled Hungary since the end of the Second World War. And the revolution was originally inspired by intellectuals and students. So people with a lot of Polonex. You can't leave it alone, can you? I can't. Even when they're heroic and fighting for freedom. It's just a knee-jerk. It's a knee-jerk thing now. I know. They're protesting against general repression and censorship. But then it became amalgamated with the anger of factory workers and peasants, people who had terrible working and housing conditions, low wages, high prices. And they felt that they were just downtrodden and they weren't being heard. And it shot through with this sense of Hungarian patriotism, fury at their leader's slavish loyalty to the Soviet Union. And that, of course, was symbolized by the presence on Hungarian soil of so many Soviet troops. So last time. Successive Stalinist leaders Matias Rakosi and Erna Gera were kicked out. And the man at the top, your hero, this sort of walrus-moustached family grocer lookalike, Imre Nodz, Mr. Big. And Nodz, to remind people, he's a very sort of stolid, dogged man. He's a party loyalist. He wants to save socialism, restore order. He's also a moderate who has been arguing for a kinder, gentler, more authentically Hungarian path to socialism. So Nodz has been pulled in different directions. And spoiler alert, the tension between those two things will have tragic consequences for him. So as we heard last time, on the morning of the 24th of October, Nikita Khrushchev, the kind of paramount leader of the Soviet Union, ordered the Red Army to move into Budapest and restore order. They ran into heavy resistance on the streets. They lost five tanks and 120 men that first day. And so as night falls on the 25th, the second day, there are massive crowds on the streets. They're singing the national anthem, waving these Hungarian flags with the communist emblem cut out. And they are building barricades in preparation for the Soviet attack. Now, we've talked almost entirely about Budapest. But actually, this is now a nationwide uprising. So in cities and towns across Hungary, there are big demonstrations. And they unite people of all classes. So workers, peasants, policemen, intellectuals, public officials, army officers, and so on. And in the cities, people are producing independent newspapers. They've taken over radio stations. Workers have taken over factories. They're organising public transport themselves. Workers' councils are kind of taking charge of people's food, all of this kind of thing. And in the countryside, the peasants in the villages are organising food supplies into Budapest to support the revolutionaries. So Simon Hall, in his book on 1956, quotes a building worker who was driving through rural, western Hungary on the 26th of October. And this building worker said, you know, wherever he drove, he could see people flying Hungarian flags in the villages. And peasants huddled around, you know, the single radio set in the village to try to find out what was going on. And as he points out in his book, Simon Hall, there are often big differences between the workers in the cities and the peasants in the countryside. But what seems to unite all of these different people is the single word freedom. That's the word that comes up again and again. And it has different meanings, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, political freedom, or simply national freedom from what they see as the Soviet jackboot. Now, of course, all revolutions have different sides to them. You know, we've done however many episodes on the French Revolution. There's idealism and enthusiasm, but there's also often a spirit of destruction. And this is true in 1956 as well. So by this point, there were reports from across Hungary of people destroying statues and war memorials, tearing down the red stars from buildings, breaking into communist party or secret police headquarters and things and this is not a bloodless revolution far from it so the most famous incident on the afternoon of saturday the 27th of october western journalists were taken across the border from austria to a little town of tom not bad i mean well not good to be fair i think it's it's a very long word but it's got magiar in it so i know what that means that means hungarian yeah but you know what magiar is actually pronounced mojor is it who knew they did victor orban knew i suppose yeah he'd know and indeed the new leader of hungary who's called we call peter magiar but i think they would call mojar mojor anyway wow i mean you learn a lot on the rest of history don't you people must be astounded how much they're learning when it's delivered with such authority that's what people really like about the show they can rely on us all these journalists taken to mosul mojorva and they're taken to a place where they're not allowed to talk about what they're doing and they're taken to a place where they're not allowed to talk about what they're doing and they're taken to a place which is crowded with bodies and the reason it's crowded with bodies is this the day before a thousand people had marched on the secret police headquarters in this little town to demand the removal of the communist red star they said take the red star down and put the hungarian flag up and the secret police commander at first seemed willing to talk and he was talking to the crowd then suddenly he pulled out his pistol and he fired it in the air and this was a signal and his men opened fire from the secret police building with machine guns and hand grenades at least 50 and the crowd were blown or blasted to pieces and the ground was strewn with their body parts the survivors were not enormously pleased it's fair to say they went to the local army base and they persuaded the soldiers to give them weapons and they came back and they laid siege to the secret police building most of the secret police had fled but two of them two young men were captured and lynched and there's a hideous description what happened to them in victor sebastian's book on 1956 the crowd threw itself upon them they were beaten and they were killed until their bodies were bloody objects then they were split into pieces as if this had been the work of wild animals so this is not you know it's not just sort of a fun and games revolution but anyway let's return to budapest and to our hero imre noj who is now established in the parliament building as prime minister and he obviously has been cast as the national savior in this story as we said he's torn between various different impulses he wants to defend the party he wants to restore order he wants to save socialism but also he wants to stand up for hungarian national dignity and he wants to unite the country behind a kind of positive vision and he has been talking to the emissaries from moscow anastas mikoyan armenian and mikhail suslov the chief ideologue about what concessions he can make and they have said to him look if this is what it takes tell people that you're going to have non-communists in the government you know we'll move almost backwards as it were towards a coalition so on the 27th of october that's what he announces a new cabinet most of them communists but some of them from the old smallholders party but it's a very familiar story in revolutions if he'd announced this week ago people would have said unbelievable what a tremendous moment but on the 27th of october it's a little bit too little too late so there were still huge crowds and no sign of the sort of fighting with the soviet troops dying down on the 28th he offers more he says i will recognize the just demands of the people i'll order the security forces to stop firing i will offer an amnesty to everybody who's been involved in this and we'll do little symbolic things that will bring back the old national holidays and the old national flag and on top of all that i'll abolish the secret police and now a big thing he says all soviet troops will return to their barracks and then we'll have talks with moscow on the full red army withdrawal from hungarian soil because that has become the issue that is the sort of symbolic center of this this has become the one thing around which all hungarians have now united we want every last russian soldier off hungarian soil and so there's a parallel there with the suez canal and the egyptian desire to see the british removed from the the zone exactly so yeah so again three days ago this would have been absolutely enormous is it enough fighting does start to die down the next morning and soviet units do start returning to their barracks but now outside budapest there are a lot of kind of provincial councils that work as councils that have been set up and they're keeping up the pressure and they say we want to see the red army out immediately we want elections you know we want free elections so on the afternoon of the 30th notch goes even further he says okay fine we'll abolish the one party communist state i'm going to form an entirely new coalition government there'll be social democrats there'll be people from the old national peasants party there'll be smallholders and communists i'm going to start talks with moscow immediately about withdrawing all of their troops so basically i'm giving you everything you want and it seems to work by the next day which is the 31st of october so now the sewers crisis in egypt is in full swing the egyptians um are fighting to hold back the israelis and the sinai britain and france preparing to start their air attacks but in hungary there is a sense that the drama is coming to an end now in fact on the streets there is now a sense of national euphoria they've won almost everything they wanted they have new political parties they have new independent newspapers there is this great sense of freedom budapest the capital is being run by a revolutionary council not led by communists but led by people from the old smallholders and social democratic parties and on the 30th of october the new york times correspondent begins his report home with the words the hungarian people seem to have won their revolution so an extraordinary story and there's more extraordinary things to come because in moscow in the kremlin the soviet presidium have been meeting every day to discuss the news from budapest and contrary to the sort of stereotype which is they're all hard-faced you know militaristic imperialistic repressive all of this most of the presidium agree we need to play this really carefully what we don't want is for everybody in the rest of the world to see us as repressive imperialists no heaven for fend but of course they don't see themselves that way this is it's an important point to make right they do they genuinely don't see themselves that way of course not so on the 30th of october when they're discussing it march marshal zhukov you know jason isaacs in the death of stalin the hero of the second world war says we do not want to go down quote the military path of occupation we should have a negotiated end to all this zhukov says to his colleagues we should withdraw troops from budapest and if necessary we should withdraw from hungary as a whole i don't want to get into a massive war with the hungarians if this is the way to keep them in the tent then this is what we'll do and so that's even more important than the fact that we're not going to go down the military path even in the kremlin release an extraordinarily conciliatory statement we want peaceful coexistence friendship and cooperation with imran nodger's government we have ordered our troops back to their bases and we are perfectly happy to talk to the hungarians about the red army leaving their territory again the slight parallel with uh the british attempt to get the arab countries that have been in the british empire to sign up to this new military kind of middle eastern nato yeah i mean i i suppose i'd never really thought of it that way but um i suppose you could i suppose you could say it that way if you want it yeah why not i do i'm throwing that into the mix why not throw it into the mix brilliant this is creative historical thinking happening on the hoof uh that's great yeah it's a spontaneity i'm so electrifying that's podcasting it is this is elite podcasting right so the next day the hungarians feel like they've won the 31st of october imran nodger addresses crowds in the revolution of which you were the heroes has been won we are living in the first days of our sovereignty and independence the next day the 1st of november in the white house the u.s secretary of state john foster dallas who we met last time when we're talking about suez he briefs president eisenhower he says as far as we can tell the soviet troops have definitively left budapest and returned to their barracks brilliant we don't need to worry about this anymore we can completely focus on suez and basically giving the british and the french a massive kicking the revolution is over and the hungarians have won but have they because even as this is happening in moscow khrushchev and his colleagues are having second thoughts on the morning of the 31st of october they met as usual the presidium on the second floor of the kremlin senate building and they met at this long table not quite vladimir's table but they met at this long table not quite vladimir's table it's sort of bay's table khrushchev at the head everybody's sitting around and khrushchev has not been sleeping he later said that hungary was like a nail being driven into my head now it may seem weird to have sympathy for nikita khrushchev the reason for this is that he's only really been soviet leader for about a year he emerged from a power struggle after the death of stalin his position is still pretty insecure which again is so like eden isn't it i mean the Well, I suppose this is all politicians though. All politicians tend to be anxious about their rivals worried about being outflanked worried about looking weak but you know eden has succeeded churchill chris jeff has succeeded stalin they're both looking to kind of flex their muscles to you know show that they're strong they can't afford to allow yeah you know fractious provinces to make them look weak it's a very fair comparison because they're the similar the anxiety about looking weak which is so often an important thing in politics i mean these are both brilliant examples of that aren't they and this is what's on khrushchev's mind this is why like eden actually he can't sleep that's what made me think of it that's the spontaneity of top podcasting podcasting gold so he's had his latest report from mikolyan and suslov in budapest and when khrushchev looks at it he doesn't think oh brilliant this has ended wonderfully he thinks this is terrible the communist party has basically fallen apart the factories across hungary have shut down newspapers and radio stations have been taken over by rebels and i quote the political situation in the country and in budapest is not getting better it is getting worse that's not all at this point khrushchev has almost certainly we can't be sure but almost certainly had reports of another massacre this time in budapest on the morning of the 30th of october and basically what happened in this massacre there are a group of revolutionaries that laid siege to the headquarters of the budapest kind of municipal communist party which was occupied by secret police and party officials the secret police started shooting at them and they hit some bystanders in the crowd including women then there was a massive gun battle and the boss of the budapest party who was a friend of imre nodge a close friend of nodge he brokered a ceasefire but while he was trying to organize a kind of full surrender and the evacuation of the building insurgents broke into the building and they shot him and they shot his bodyguards and then there was this horrendous scene where the people in the building most of whom were young army officers or young secret police officers were led outside it was captured by a photojournalist from life magazine british journalist called john sadovi and you can see his pictures online and they are pretty you know haunting these very young men are led outside most of them are absolutely absolutely terrified and they are shot in cold blood in full view of the cameras at point blank range 23 of them were shot in all their bodies were beaten and mutilated and then they were strung up again in full view of the cameras and they were shot in the front of the cameras and they were shot in the from trees and from lampposts and people spat on their bodies as sadovi the photojournalist said i'd spent three years in the war meaning second world war but nothing i saw then could compare with the horror of this so khrushchev has almost certainly got this report about this massacre happening to kind of party officials khrushchev is is not a stranger to violence it's not like he's no he's a shrinking violet or something but this plays on his mind as does the fact that he's getting messages from other communist countries to say what on earth is going on in hungary so the chinese for example are saying oh you lost your minds you know hungary is in complete chaos you're doing nothing about it and even more significantly the other countries of the warsaw pact you know czechoslovakia romania and so on east germany they're very worried if you open the door to multi-party elections in hungary or people will want them in poland they want them in czechoslovakia reports already of student protests in some of these places most notably romania which has a big ethnic hungarian minority population there have been student protests in the city in the west of romania not far from hungary called timisoara actually a city that plays a massive part in the eventual revolution in 1989 and clashes with the security forces and so on so the kremlin is under pressure from all these people and also when they look at it they say if they see everything in terms of the wider balance of power so khrushchev now they're all assembled there he says to his colleagues if we withdraw from hungary this would encourage the american british and french imperialists they would interpret it as a sign of our weakness and they would go on to attack and our party would not understand us besides egypt we would be giving away hungary too so we have no other choice but to intervene so in other words this goes back to your point tom that as with the british in suez the motivation is if we don't do this we look weak and then we lose the rest of our empire what will other people think of us we we don't want to necessarily get stuck in but we feel like we have to and of course because suez has kicked off now that does make khrushchev's task a little bit easier the west are divided and distracted the americans have basically massively fallen out with britain and france so if we were ever going to crack down on hungary this is the time they would have done it though do you think anyway even if suez hadn't been going on yes i think they might have done it later but i think they would have done it anyway so khrushchev says to his guys okay forget what we said about withdrawing troops let us take the initiative in restoring order we will flood hungary with troops in the next few days i want this to be led by another second world war veteran marshal ivan konyev we will crush the revolution we'll find a new hungarian leader not just waste of space let's get someone we can really trust now there is one person who really disagrees with him about all this and this is anastas mikoyan ice cream guy ice cream armenian he flew in that night from budapest and he is stunned when he realizes that they have decided to invade after midnight mikoyan rang khrushchev at home and he said you know basically got him out of bed he said what are you doing i want let's have another meeting i want to make my case we should not use force i'm dead set against this whole thing and khrushchev said to him look we've made the decision we've established the timetable and we'd have to rip up the timetable for intervention if we meet again our whole plan would be ruined i personally think we made the right decision and you're wrong and then he hangs up communists they love a plan yeah but it's interesting isn't it because i think a lot of people think of the communist leadership as top-down repressive monolithic monolithic and here they're ringing each other at midnight having sort of shouting matches even more khrushchev gets up the next morning they live he lives like a mascot he gets up the next morning he walks to his car which is a kind of zil black limousine at the end of the drive and who's by the car mikoyan who lives basically next door and mikoyan says to him before you get in the car i'm telling you this is a terrible mistake it will undermine soviet union it will undermine the image of communism if blood is shed i don't know what i'll do with myself mikoyan says well i mean he's behaving better than mcmillan did or selwyn lloyd yeah he is the harold mcmillan of this story but he's behaving much better yeah that's absolutely true well actually there's another candidate to be the harold mcmillan which we'll come to in a second and khrushchev says to him look you know everybody else is telling us we've got to do this the poles the czechoslovaks the romanians the bulgarians even tito's telling us we've got to do this do you think this is easy for me khrushchev says we have to act we have no other choice and then he gets in the car and off he goes to work now already rumors of the decision have started to reach budapest so as early as the 31st of october there were reports that soviet engineers were building bridges across the river that motorized units were crossing into hungary from the border with what's now ukraine and by the next day the 1st of november there are more reports soviet troops far from returning to their barracks are actually moving in to secure the airports and there are tanks and thousands of reinforcements now coming across the borders from ukraine and romania and that morning notch calls in soviet ambassador yuri andropov and he says what's all this what's going on on drop off is totally impassive not an unfamiliar thing with a soviet or russian ambassador he's totally kind of stone faced and he says just troop movements yeah routine troop movements before we withdraw all our troops from your country and uh notch says i'm not sure you're telling me the truth and if you don't stop this we will leave the warsaw pact immediately and later that afternoon they've now got confirmation red army is crossing the border in force notch meets his cabinet and they all agree fine we're going to withdraw from the warsaw pact we're going to declare hungary a neutral country and they call and drop off back to tell him at five o'clock what do they think is going to happen do they seriously think that they can just slip the soviet leash like that it's really hard to say so it was often it's often said you see it repeated often in sort of popular media and i think the point of them doing this i think in an odd way notch thinks this might reassure the kremlin because if he says we want to be neutral we're absolutely going to be neutral that might reassure them that he's not going to go over to the capitalist camp which might be their fear i think that's mad and that may be the case but i think it's going to be the case that they're maybe they would look like martyrs in the eyes of the world i suppose i mean you of course if you were being really hard-headed if you were like that american professor john meersheimer who's always going on youtube and saying ukraine should surrender to the russians or whatever the realist then you would say the hungarians should have known that the soviet union was bound to crack down on them and they shouldn't have provoked them to this extent they should have done basically what the polls did and they should have done basically what the polls did and they should have done sort of made it clear that they would stay in the embrace. But I think the revolution has now got its own momentum and you know nudge is a prisoner of that momentum to some degree anyway they've called and drop off in to tell him it's five o'clock in the afternoon and they say we're gonna you know leave the warsaw pact and the new general secretary of the hungarian communist party janos kardar we met him last time he is mercury guy yeah mercury he'd been tortured exactly and he's seen as the sort of occupying the center ground of the communist party he's not an ultra moderate he's not a stalinist he's kind of in the middle kardar is very emotional and he says to andropov he says i have given my whole life to the communist party but if the soviets attempt to intervene in hungary with the use of arms he says i will take to the streets with a pistol myself against russian tanks and i would give my life for my country yeah very sort of stirring stirring yeah like churchill you know if this long island story of ours should end let us end only when we're all choking our own blood on the ground all this kind of thing and drop off says i'm gonna have to report all this to moscow off he goes and when he's gone nudge sent a telegram to the secretary general of the united nations who is of course dog homoshold and he says can the un please um guarantee hungarian neutrality we're asking all the great powers the united states soviet union britain and france wait to see britain on that list i know i was just thinking why get in even as we're behaving badly yeah but he knows that was just a blip um to guarantee hungarian neutrality and then at that evening nudge goes on the radio and he says to the hungarian people we are now a neutral country we're leaving the warsaw pact now invoking the united nations is actually never going to work of course it's not going to work because the united nations is completely distracted this is the first of november 1956 britain and france have launched their air war against egypt the general assembly of the united nations is arguing about whether there should be a ceasefire in egypt and actually when britain and france try to get change the subject and get them to talk about hungary the u.s secretary of state john foster dollar says this is a smokescreen i know what the british and french are up to quote they want the limelight off them i think it's a mockery for them to come in with bombs falling over egypt and to denounce the soviet union i want no part of it no the americans would never bomb the middle eastern country of course the very idea of course but actually even if suez hadn't happened the un would have done nothing in the west would have done nothing so the american radio station american backed radio station radio free europe you know all this time has been encouraging young people in poland and hungary rise up you know rise up against your oppressors one day the forces of freedom will liberate the captive nations of eastern europe but the truth of the matter is they're never going to do anything to help them because you know the risk of making a third world war is too great i mean we'll maybe come back to this after the break meanwhile in budapest the tragic denouement is fast approaching so it's now dawn on the 2nd of november there are 11 soviet mechanized divisions inside hungary the soviet troops are taking control of the railway stations and bridges and junctions that they've taken control of all the roads leading to budapest nudge is sending these increasingly sort of helpless plaintive messages to the united nations and the great powers rather pointlessly he decides to reshuffle his government so he's going to get rid of more communists and he's going to bring in more of the opposition parties but not the hapsburgs bring the hapsburgs back wow that would be that is absolutely the thing you should have done but while he is reshuffling his government one of his aides says to him the former interior minister ferenc munich and crucially the communist party general secretary janos kardar have vanished nobody has seen them since the meeting with andropov the soviet ambassador last night we've been looking for them but we cannot find them anywhere so what's happened to them i mean a lot hangs on that question um so we will find out what's happened to them and the tragic end of this incredible story after the break you this episode is brought to you by anthropic and they're the team behind claude so dominic we have been doing the rest of history now for almost six years we've done over 700 episodes and one of the things that strikes me is that over the course of that time certain historical figures have tended to crop up often in places where you wouldn't expect them but you know what ask the archive which is built with claude lets you search through the episode transcripts of the whole of the rest is history and you can find where a person or a friend of the rest of history has been raised or subject has cropped up in the great earth that is our show so tom i know you love a game do you like a game yeah of course guess how many episodes our great friend the kaiser has appeared in oh of course the ultimate friend of the show i yeah would wreck okay i reckon 32 okay i'm gonna do some live research how many do you think i think he's appeared in 300 episodes i think he's he's all everywhere 32 plays 300 so okay i'm i'm i'm going to say i was totally wrong the kaiser is mentioned in 80 episodes okay so i win love that game that's a great game is there not a sense in which we're both lost because he should have been in more no he should be mentioned more often shouldn't he he should be in more episodes no i feel that i won and i think that is the main thing so that's brilliant and the other thing that's brilliant is that you know we're six years into it but all the information is out there it's waiting to be searched and that is wonderful to know nothing in this show appears does it so ask the archive is built with claude from anthropic and you can find it at ask hyphen the hyphen archives.com ask it's something that you've always wondered about and it will find the episodes where we've talked about it hello everyone and welcome back to the rest is history we ended the first half on a cliffhanger for the ages because with marshall connev soviet troops surrounding budapest poised to strike two of imre nodges closest colleagues have vanished into thin air a case for chief inspector sandbrook with his incredible mastery of hungarian brilliant thank you um and a detection indeed so one of these men is ferenc munich so he was a veteran communist he'd fought as a prisoner of war for the bolsheviks people might remember him he's only been a sort of very side character in this in the first episode he was the bloke who gave the eulogy at loslo roik's funeral and said you know people have been staggering out of the swamp of the cult of personality or something that's munich but the other person most significantly has vanished is the party's general secretary yarnosh kardar so we heard from him just a couple of moments ago telling the soviet ambassador andropov that he would fight the russian troops and he would fight the russian troops and he would fight the russian tanks himself he'd give his life for his country if he had to and you will remember him from the last episode tom he was the friend of loslo roik mercury guy yeah who was smeared with mercury you know who was at his fingernails pulled out tortured in prison for three years and he is the person who is he's the other person who's vanished now kardar is an absolutely central figure in modern hungarian history and he's a riddle wrapped in an enigma and he's the key speaker in what happens at the end of 56 so it's worth us talking a little bit about him who is this guy who's vanished he was born yarnosh sermonic in fiume which is now rieka in croatia in 1912 you see i'm just looking at him yeah i think he's a lot better looking than roik do you he's suave he looks got a kind of yeah he looks quite suave are you championing the wrong man though tom that's the question we're going to find out well people can be awful that is possible well we'll find out so this guy he was born sermonic his father was a hungarian soldier in the imperial army in the austro-hungarian army and his mother was a slovak servant girl they weren't married when he was born his mother followed his father back to hungary and she was trying to persuade his father to do the decent thing and marry her but he refused so she ended up living in a little village near lake boloton with her son yarnosh and they were very poor and at the end of the first world war she moved to budapest and got work as a cleaner a little yarnosh he left school at 14 he worked as a servant for a pig herder he worked as a newspaper boy and delivery boy then he was homeless for a bit and then he became an apprentice typewriter repairer then in 1928 yarnosh won a chess tournament he was 16 years old and his prize was a book by friedrich engels called anti-during oh goody goody mummy look what i've been given and it was a an explanation of i mean the anti-during basically tries to establish marxism as a scientific creed to prove the scientific truth of marxism when he lost his job in the depression he became a full-time communist activist he was in and out of prison and his alias he decided to take the alias cooper which in hungarian is kardar so this is how he became yarnosh kardar and he became very close to this Blake Royke. They became great pals. they were promoted together to the hungarian politburo at the end of the second world war now there's a really interesting description of kardar i mentioned already a bloke called sir brian cartledge who was the british ambassador to hungary and also to the soviet union in the 80s i think and he wrote has written this sort of definitive english language history of hungary from start to finish massive book and he met kardar and he was he's really interesting about him he says kardar was a personally very modest man he was low-key he spoke quietly and simply kardar didn't think of himself as an intellectual he genuinely saw himself as the kind of spokesman for the ordinary working people of hungary and cartledge said of kardar the key to him was not ideological marxism he wasn't the it wasn't his loyalty to the ideology but his loyalty to the institution to the party the true protector or so he believed of the interests and well-being of the hungarian people so every other consideration quote including those of morality and personal honor were subordinate for kardar to the interests of the party so this is the guy who has vanished what had happened to him was this when he left that emotional meeting where he said i'd rather die you know i will die if russian troops invade our country the other bloke munich said to him i'm going to the soviet embassy i think you should come with me and we can continue this conversation with the soviet ambassador they went to the soviet embassy and there andropov said to them look i'm going to level with you we aren't going to invade your country and it's a fait accompli there's nothing you can do to stop it nodges game is up and he is done for he said and andropov said listen i'll tell you what i'll do i'll fly you to moscow you can come with me you can talk to the presidium yourselves in the kremlin you can tell them what you think is going on in hungary and you can help us as soviet friends to sort it out and they said okay you know who knows what's going on in kardar's mind there when he gets on that plane but anyway he gets on the plane they fly to moscow they land in moscow they're driven straight to the kremlin to meet khrushchev and the presidium and as victor sebastian says in his fun book i mean it's weird to say fun book but it's a really dramatic book about the hungarian revolution and he says i'm going to level with you you can tell me what's going on in the revolution effectively what's happening here is the presidium are interviewing him for a job as the new dictator of hungary but kardar doesn't seem to realize this because he's unbelievably honest with them they say well what do you think about the revolution he says well to be honest i kind of was for it because i'm a hungarian patriot and you know i felt like we had to make some changes and everybody in hungary he says wants to see your troops out we want to see the back of the red army me he said to them they said well we're about to invade and he said well i think that's a very bad idea don't send in the tanks i quote if you do this the morale of the communists will be reduced to zero if order in hungary is restored by force the authority of the socialist countries will be eroded see how much he cares always he's thinking about what's good for socialism what's good for the party and how do they uh how do the russians take this well they're not i mean they're not pleased to hear this right because he's telling them that what they're doing is wrong khrushchev is still not sure is this guy the man khrushchev speaks to tito and tito says oh obviously you should pick this guy the fact that this guy has stood up to you a little bit you know that's exactly what you want this guy people in hungary will say he's patriotic he was tortured he was smeared in mercury and people urinated in his mouth people in hungary know this and they won't see him as just a stalinist puppet they know that he has suffered and they will give him a little bit of leeway because of it so the obvious question is why does kardar himself go along with this is this just treachery from him lots of listeners may say well he sounds like a terrible person it's like kind of marshall peter i suppose you could see it that way yeah i mean both peter and kardar would say i mean by the way i i despise peter but both of them would say well country's on its knees we were gonna lose anyway country's on its knees somebody had to step up and do the dirty work yeah to bring us back and i think reading about him his reputation in hungary today is very contested but there are there are a lot of people actually who are remarkably sympathetic so i mean a lot of critics of course but there are a lot of people who are also very sympathetic to him and they would say listen he knows the revolution is doomed he just wants to do the best for the party and he wants to rebuild his country so kardar was in moscow meanwhile in budapest you know the tension is at fever pitch so by the evening of the second anniversary of the revolution he's going to be the second of november the red army has encircled the city but the red army commanders are still keeping up pretense this is going to be solved by negotiations and in fact the next morning on the third of november senior soviet commanders arrived at the hungarian parliament they said we just come to chat about the withdrawal of all our troops from your country in fact the talks actually went quite well and they said well we'll continue the talks this evening at soviet military headquarters at the tukul base which is south of budapest and the hungarians sent their military officers their own commanders to this base and of course you know what's going to happen they walked in they started the negotiations clang yeah just before midnight door opens and a load of soviet kgb men walk in with carrying submachine guns and they're under the personal command of the soviet kgb chief evan seroff and these hungarian commanders are all put under arrest and just a few hours later 4 a.m marshal konyev issues the signal thunder 444 which is the code word to trigger operation whirlwind and this is the basically the final occupation of budapest so immediately 60 000 red army troops and thousands of tanks begin to move into the city and within an hour they are closing in on the city center they are meeting some resistance as they did before but this time they have come in such an overwhelming number of soldiers and they have come in such an overwhelming numbers and they are absolutely determined they're not going to be taking any prisoners now nudge could have ordered the hungarian army onto the streets to resist them to fight back but he decides not to he decides it's pointless we're outnumbered we're outgunned i don't want to waste people's lives and at 5 19 in the morning he goes on the state radio you can hear the gunfire in the background as he's talking and he says this is the president of the council of ministers of the hungarian people's republic today at daybreak soviet forces launched an attack on our capital with the obvious intention of overthrowing the legal democratic hungarian government our troops are fighting the government is in its place i am notifying the people of our country and the world so a little bit kind of lodomir zelensky february 2022 kind of vibe to this you know the government is in its place i'm not going anywhere but the difference is that kiev held out in 2020 but soviet troops are closing in very quickly on the parliament in budapest so a couple of hours later nudge and his family and about 30 of his close colleagues accepted an offer of sanctuary at the yugoslavian embassy at eight o'clock soviet tanks entered the parliament square and at 807 radio koshut the state radio broadcast its last message it was a woman's voice help hungary help help and then it went off air and that's not to say it was all done and dusted right there so marshal konev's men did encounter some resistance from about 15 000 factory workers and students but this time unlike a week or so earlier the soviet troops were absolutely merciless so whenever they encounter resistors they hammer them with their tanks and with their machine guns there's artillery that is shelling kind of rebel positions there are jet fighters strafing the city and there are western journalists on hand who are absolutely stunned and horrified by the carnage so a writer for francois for example describes tanks aiming at apartment buildings and just blasting them again and again six eight ten cannon shots the houses blown apart and crumbled the inhabitants either killed or lie wounded on the ground how do they compare to the british and the french and port said i think the british and the french are i mean they they there are some civilian casualties but nothing not on this scale yeah they're not they're not i mean for one thing they don't really have that many tanks and the tanks are not just absolutely pounding people's apartment buildings in the way that they are here so anyway by the evening of that first day konev's troops control most of the major buildings and intersections and stuff in budapest there are some rebels left they hold on for a few more days but the soviet troops just hammer and hammer at them if you look at the map of sort of across a block of about two square miles there are entire blocks of the city that are effectively destroyed shops apartment blocks churches hospitals even a children's clinic the streets are strewn with bodies now one of the reporters there was a communist a british communist called peter fryer who was reporting for the daily worker the newspaper of the communist party at great britain and in his report he wrote for four days and nights budapest was under continuous bombardment i saw a once lovely city battered bludgeoned smashed and bled into submission and when he sent this and other reports home to the Daily Worker. Not only did they refuse to print them, but the editor wouldn't let other members of staff even see them. And Fryer was so horrified by this that he left the paper and, of course, the Communist Party in protest. And we'll come back to this aspect of the story in a second. So there are loads of heartbreaking appeals. I mean, you read one right at the beginning. In the final hours, this is another one picked up by a Vienna monitoring station on the afternoon of the 4th of November. It was the last message from another rebel radio station. Civilized people of the world, on the watchtower of 1,000-year-old Hungary, the last flames begin to go out. Soviet tanks and guns are roaring over Hungarian soil. Our women are sitting in dread. They still have terrible memories of the Red Army in 1945. Save our souls. But by the 11th of November, the guns have fallen silent. The revolution is definitively over. So about 2000 to 700 Hungarians have been killed in the Soviet attack. More than half of those are civilians, 200 of them children, and tens of thousands injured. The Red Army lost about 700 men killed. There's also a massive kind of refugee exodus. So about 200,000 people fled the country across the borders into Austria or Yugoslavia. Some of them ended up in Britain and other European countries, but most of them ended up in Canada and the United States. Now, what's the rest of the world been doing? The rest of the world has been watching in horror, and doing absolutely nothing, really. So there were big demonstrations across Europe in most capitals. There were attacks on Soviet embassies in some very unexpected places in Luxembourg, in Iceland, in Switzerland, and so on. There were lots of offers of help for Hungarian refugees. So in Simon Hall's book, he describes some nice British examples, heartwarming British examples. So there was a place called Donington Hall in Leicestershire, sort of a big country house that turned itself into a camp for a hundred people. And there were a lot of people who were Hungarian children. There was a building firm in Wolverhampton, which built a free house, semi-detached house for a Hungarian family. So much Wolverhampton history. So much Wolverhampton in this, but some would say not enough, frankly. I mean, if you obviously listen to the bonus series, you've had a bit extra, but I think we could have had more. The end of the year, Time magazine picked the Hungarian freedom fighter as man of the year. So the Hungarians fought bravely against the most brutal tyranny on earth. And of Schiegen, history's greatest despotism to its foundations. That actually ended up being Kermit the Frog's voice. No, that sounded really good. Really? That was an excellent impression of a 1950s cold warrior. Yeah. Now the most famous example of solidarity with the Hungarians, the most sort of sentimental story comes at the Melbourne Olympics. So a bit of Australian history on the podcast. And this is actually one of the most celebrated moments in the history of the Olympics. So it's the blood in the water, water polo match. Are you familiar with this match Tom? I'm ashamed to say I'm not. So it was the semi-final of the water polo and the Hungarians were playing the Soviet Union. Oh goodness. And the crowd, there were loads of kind of Hungarian Australians in the crowd. It was a very, very raucous occasion and it turned violent in the pool, which is why it was called blood in the water. The Hungarians won 4-0, turned into a massive brawl, including the crowd. And the Hungarians went on to win the gold medal. And half of the team promptly defected, refused to go home. So it's been made into a film, two films, actually, this story, one of which was shown to George W. Bush in the White House. The obvious question is why, I mean, it's all very well to have these fine words and water polo crowds, but why didn't the West give them any practical help? Third World War? Third World War, of course. For the Hungarians though, this played into a familiar theme. So in 1848, 49, they'd risen against the Habsburgs. Their revolution, it was then crushed by Russian intervention in 1849. Well, we will be exploring the life of the Tsar who commanded that. Yeah. Nicholas I, right? Nicholas I, the gendarme of Europe. Exactly. So the Hungarians, to some extent, this is a familiar story for them. You know, they try to rise up, people offer, you know, well-meaning sentiments, but they don't offer practical help. I mean, I suppose the Iranians might say the same. I think there are probably quite a few, people who might say the same, actually, Chinese in 1989, right? So what was Eisenhower doing in all this? Eisenhower actually told his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, send a message to Moscow and tell Moscow, we do not see the Hungarians as potential allies. Don't worry, we are not behind all this. You know, we're not doing this as a balance of power, move against you, all of this. Now, of course, as the Hungarians themselves said, looked a little bit hypocritical because the Americans, all through the late 40s and 50s, had been talking about, you know, we're not doing this as a balance of power, we're not talking about how they would help the captive nations of Eastern Europe, and yet when it came to it, they would do nothing. This is actually what John Foster Dulles himself said in late October. Dulles said to his colleagues in Washington, it will be said that here are the great moments, and when they came and these fellows were ready to stand up and die, we were caught napping and we did nothing. I think he's not necessarily wrong. So the West did nothing, the revolution lost, and what happened next, just to tie up the story. So the revolution lost, and what happened next, just to tie up the story. On the morning of the 4th, after the operation to retake Budapest had begun, Kardar read a radio address to the Hungarian people. He said, the revolution began, you know, it's an honest and patriotic thing, but it's been taken over by reactionaries and fascists. So I'm assuming power at the head of an emergency worker peasant government. I've asked the Red Army to help us crush the sinister forces of reaction, and after that, I promise the Red Army will leave. And he was then escorted into Budapest by Soviet tanks, sworn in as prime minister, and installed in the parliament building, which has actually survived relatively unscathed from gunfire. Now, at first, Kardar's authority and credibility are pretty much non-existent. So he basically tries to win over people by appearing to be moderate. In his first big speech, he promises them higher wages. He says, I'll bring in. He makes a series of other promises. He says, don't worry, I won't bring back the secret police. And there won't be any witch hunt against the people who were in the revolution. And actually, when the dust has settled, Kardar says, we can have a multi-party system, and I'd love to have us. I'd love to see us have free elections. That'd be really nice. And what about the Nodzta? The Nodzta is still. He's still in the Yugoslav embassy. He's sheltering the Yugoslav. And Kardar says, listen, you know, I know that the Nodzta didn't want this to all go down as it did. He is absolutely free to come out. We won't pursue him. He should just come out and retire to private life. And obviously, no one would do anything to him. Now, does Kardar mean this? It's really impossible to say whether this is completely disingenuous or whether he's later reacting to pressure. But what definitely happens is this. He doesn't fulfill any of these promises. He does bring back the secret police. He begins to crack down on dissidents within weeks. And above all, Kardar agrees to a Soviet plan to winkle Nodzta out of the Yugoslav embassy. He sends Tito a letter. And he says, look, if Nodzta and his friends come out, we will give them a safe conduct back to their families. So on the 22nd of November, Nodzta and co. leave the Yugoslav embassy and they get on this big bus. And to their horror, it turns out the bus has been organized by the KGB. They're driven to a military academy. They're told to get off the bus. And then they're flown to Romania. And in Romania, they're held under house arrest. Meanwhile, so we're now well into the autumn and winter of 1956. Kardar is coming under pressure from other communist governments. Can you crack down a bit more, please? Crack down harder. In fact, in January 1957, a load of other Warsaw Pact leaders visited Budapest and said, we've come here to show solidarity with you, but also to encourage you. Stamp out all dissent, please. So he does as he's encouraged. He bans non-communist parties. He bans workers' councils. He shuts down the Writers' Association. Oh, he's having a crack at the poets. He's having a crack at the poets, exactly. And he sets up new people's courts to try people for political offenses with the power of imposing the death penalty. And the most high-profile victim. No! I hate to break this to you. Not Nodz. Our old friend, Imre Nodz. Friend of the show. Oh, dear. He's for the chop, I'm afraid. So it was always thought that Kardar moved against him because he was under pressure from the Kremlin. But actually, in his book, Victor Sebastian makes the case that actually Kardar decided to get rid of him himself because Kardar thought, I will never be secure. Order and stability will never be entrenched as long as the Nodzster is out there inspiring people. With his charisma and his powers of oratory. So, in March 1957, Hungarian police traveled to Romania and they arrested Nodz and co. and they brought them all back to Budapest. Now, Kardar couldn't quite decide. He dithered for months. Couldn't decide what to do with Nodz. Nodz would not confess. He wouldn't admit that he'd done anything wrong. So a show trial was a bad idea. So eventually, they put him on trial behind closed doors for treason. The verdict, of course, is a foregone conclusion. And poor old Nodz is sentenced to death. And he gives a very good speech. So very dignified, moving. final statement why don't you read his final statement thomas since you're such a big fan of the man my sole solace is my conviction that sooner or later the hungarian people and the international working class will exonerate me of the grave accusations as a consequence of which i must sacrifice my life but i offer it willingly after all that has happened it has no value any longer i realize that there will be another imre nodge trial at which i shall be rehabilitated and three times as many people will come to my re-interment as went to reich's my only dread is that my eulogy will be given by those who betrayed me so i think you could if you'd done that in a different voice it would be really moving but it's quite moving i mean he's a you know he's he's a drab guy who has no powers of oratory whatsoever yeah but it's still moving he's a dogged and decent man who tried to do his best do you want me to give it a bit more zip no i think you've you've made your choice you've made a you've made your dramatic choice and you've got to own it i think it's great to have a drab uncharismatic figure yeah at the center of such dramatic events and i don't think it diminishes the pathos of his end hungarian listeners who are poised to write in and complain listen to what tom just said tom is saying that this terrible impression that he gave is actually to nod his credits and that just shows how much we value him yeah you know a lack of charisma in many ways is an appealing characteristic in a politician i think so kia starmer joins us on the show it's the charismatic politicians who are always the dangerous ones you're not wrong there so anyway notch and two of his colleagues were hanged on the 16th of june 1958 and they were buried face down in an unmarked grave very sad and there were some of 341 people executed in five years after 1956 as kardar tightened his grip there were 20,000 people imprisoned or interned tens of thousands of people lost their jobs and some were even deported to the soviet union and yet the paradox is that kardar did crack down and he did execute people and put people in prison and yet at the same time his version of communism was much more moderate than what had gone before so he's trying to win the hungarian people over he gives them pay increases he borrows a lot of money abroad to try to improve their living standards and by about 1962 so that's about five or six years after the revolution he's adopted a much more conciliatory line so for example you don't have to be a communist in hungary to hold a sort of senior administrative position and tom great news for you um in the first half remember i said all the um because of your gentry background or the massive handicaps under which your family would have to operate no more under kardar your middle-class children can go to university oh well i'm rallying to kardar then yeah i mean just to say i think i don't think i have a gentry background i don't have a gentry background i am after all of humble mining stock sure but you're not a marxist are you and kardar would have wanted to appeal to you because he said in 1962 i want to appeal to hundreds of thousands of people who are not marxists but who respect our party and our government for having created a legal order and a normal atmosphere in the country so is is hungary then the best place to be in the 60s do you think yes 60s 70s 80s apart from yugoslavia hungary is definitely the most liberal of the communist countries so kardar's ethos his slogan his most famous saying those who are not against us are with us that's a great slogan which is you know basically you don't have to be a communist you don't have to like it but as long as you don't do anything it's fine and we'll look after you and this is the ethos tom of something called goulash communism yeah great so if you like goulash you're laughing so basically what this involves if you're hungarian you have to accept the communist party's monopoly of power and you have to accept the alliance of the soviet union and if you just accept those two things you know the party's not going to repress you particularly or i'm not going to force you to live the sort of gray drab life that you might get somewhere else so you can go to church you can travel to the west you have a bit more freedom there's a bit more free speech you have more washing machines than other people in the warsaw pact so it always comes back to washing machines so right up until the late 1980s when this all fell apart hungary was known as the happiest barracks in europe because of its more liberal regime so is this being a terrible story of failure and misery not necessarily so i mentioned brian cartledge and his massive history of hungary is massive history of hungary is called the will to survive and it's all about kind of hungarian resilience and he sees the as a sort of landmark in that story it's actually something to be proud of rather than as a failure i mean it sounds like it was successful if you yeah you're getting your goulash and well it basically gives you you've had a terrible time hungary's had a terrible history in the first half of the 20th century you know fascism the holocaust occupation all of this and this is something even though it lost it gives the hungarians something to be proud of they've been able to wave their national flag sing their hymns they've they've rediscovered what cartilage calls their national self-respect and actually the big loser from all this is not hungary the big loser is soviet communism because the hungarian revolution you know you were saying was it a turning point this deals an irreparable blow to the moral image of soviet communism so until even in the 1950s there were people who said you know stalin was an aberration actually you know don't forget it was the red army who won the second world war communism is still the best hope for a more equal kind of future all of this kind of thing but after 1956 and communist parties across europe and indeed america intellectuals walk out and they say i can't stomach this you know the soviet repression of the hungarian revolution was the final straw so people like e.p thompson the great historian in britain italo calvino in italy even jean-paul saar who was usually wrong about absolutely everything condemned the soviet invasion of hungary and said that just shows the soviet union for what they are so i think up till 1956 there were loads of left-wing idealists who were still idealizing the soviet union romanticizing it but after 1956 never again eric hobsbawm does doesn't he i think eric hobsbawm does but of course the reason that's so well known is that eric hobsbawm is an outlier in staying loyal to the party when so many other people say this is intolerable this is too much yeah and i mentioned that guy peter fryer the reporter for the daily worker he wrote a brilliant book all of which is online called hungarian tragedy and in the conclusion to that book he writes as follows he says we british communists who visited hungary did not admit even to ourselves the truth about what was taking place there we defended tyranny with all our heart and soul this is before 56 but now he says we should admit what soviet communism has meant for eastern europe hypocrisy without limit medieval cruelty dogmas and slogans devoid of life or meaning national pride outrage poverty for all but a tiny handful of leaders who lived in luxury well i think he's being harsh on the middle ages there to be honest when is he writing that 1956 1956 right he's saying you know we have pretended that this was great and actually let's be honest it's terrible and uniquely in the history the rest is history i'm going to give the last word to the new york times so the new york times said the hungarians have put a lot of pressure on the people of hungary and they've put a lot of pressure put a brand upon communism as a philosophy of life and government from which it can never recover and amazingly for once the new york times was right well the new york times is often right i mean it does it runs excellent profiles of british historians it does it does it's always right when it does that yeah so thank you dominic that was that was tremendous um and is there a a sporting angle on this story perhaps featuring a wolverhampton yes so a lot of people have said a lot of people may may be saying i'd like to hear more about hungary and i'd like to hear it from somebody who leans even more into mad hungarian names than dominic did it's such a man is he is he part of your contact book he is and he's also part of yours so he's a man you play cricket with he is the world's greatest football writer jonathan wilson and jonathan wilson has written the definitive history of hungarian football using football as a lens through which to understand all kinds of interesting things and to understand all kinds of interesting things and to understand about hungarian history so jewish hungarians coffee houses the holocaust the cold war all of this kind of stuff is there in his tremendous book and we have done a bonus series with jonathan wilson exploring really two stories one is the mighty magyars football team of the 1950s the greatest football team of the time and what happened to them and how they were affected by the hungarian revolution but also how their most celebrated opponents so that the the honved team played a very famous match in 1954 against then the greatest team in the world the greatest club side in the world the champions of the world some would say which was wolverhampton wanderers and in doing so they invented europe so this bonus series explores these incredible issues and only club members can get that treat can get that treat yeah incredible scenes and you went on location didn't you we did to budapest and to wolverhampton and to molyneux absolutely i - Unbelievable. - The glamor, the exotic glamor. of it all incredible okay so next time this um past series we featured the british and the french teaming up and yeah launching a disastrous military expedition and we have featured the russians behaving badly and i'm delighted to say that in our next series the same themes will be reappearing um but in a slightly more aristocratic ambiance because we are going to be looking at the charge of the light brigade lord cardigan lord lucan lord raglan there are a lot of lords there's a lot of disastrous blunders um it's all going to kick off uh and it's going to be great fun so the crimean war we're focusing very much on the charge of the light brigade okay which is the most glamorous incident in the in the crimean war and it's a total debacle but a glorious debacle and club members will be able to get all four episodes on monday and if you're not a club member then go to the rest of history.com but for now thank you dominic thanks everyone for listening bye-bye bye-bye ulcerative colitis and crohn's disease symptoms don't pause for the moments that matter that's why understanding your treatment options matters discover what's possible with trimphia guselka map trimphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with cancer and it's a medicine used to treat adults with cancer and it's a medicine used to treat adults with cancer and it's a medicine used to treat adults with cancer and it's a medicine used to treat adults with cancer moderately to severely active crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur before treatment get checked for infections and tuberculosis tell your doctor if you have an infection flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine talk to your doctor and explore what's possible or call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more about trimphia and visit trimphiaradio.com to learn more about trimphiaradio.com to learn more about trimphiaradio.com to learn more about trimphiaradio.com prize picks packs are here rip digital packs and get real basketball football and pokemon cards sell cards instantly for cash or ship them home sell cards instantly for cash or ship them home sell cards instantly for cash or ship them home prize picks packs gives everyone the opportunity prize picks packs gives everyone the opportunity prize picks packs gives everyone the opportunity to pull the one of one cooper flag rookie card to pull the one of one cooper flag rookie card to pull the one of one cooper flag rookie card worth eight million dollars and the pikachu worth eight million dollars and the pikachu worth eight million dollars and the pikachu illustrator card worth 2.8 million dollars illustrator card worth 2.8 million dollars in plus eligible areas terms of in plus eligible areas terms of in plus eligible areas terms of plaque elect responsibly this holiday all plaque elect responsibly this holiday all plaque elect responsibly this holiday all plans even unlimited are just fifteen plans even unlimited are just fifteen plans even unlimited are just fifteen dollars a month a holiday deal this good dollars a month a holiday deal this good dollars a month a holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously obviously deserves an enormously obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song like all i want expensive holiday song like all i want expensive holiday song like all i want right okay we can afford that you know right okay we can afford that you know right okay we can afford that you know forget the music budget we're gonna stick forget the music budget we're gonna stick forget the music budget we're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain with whatever's in the public domain with whatever's in the public domain give it a try at mintmobile.com give it a try at mintmobile.com give it a try at mintmobile.com switch upfront payment of 45 dollars switch upfront payment of 45 dollars switch upfront payment of 45 dollars for three months 90 for six months or for three months 90 for six months or for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra month equivalent taxes and fees extra month equivalent taxes and fees extra new customer offer for initial plan term new customer offer for initial plan term new customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms when network is busy see terms