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Hungarian Revolution; Memories of 1956 (Robert Whealey, USA, 10/24/16 4:24 am)

I was discharged from the American Army in Stuttgart, Germany on 26 October 1956 and hitchhiked to Oxford with an MA in hand. Lois had preceded me,and rented a flat near St Johns College. During the year, I met Salvador de Madariaga and Raymond Carr to continue studying the Spanish Civil War. Also I took four seminars at St. Anthony's College.  They concerned Soviet Studies, Middle East Studies and the Far East. In the Soviet seminar, twenty students had opportunities to interview recent student refugees from Budapest.

My fourth seminar was a written paper on the Habsburg Monarchy. I also wrote a 15-page tutorial for Raymond Carr. We did not agree on a proposed title for my DPhil dissertation. He was thinking of writing his book, which was latter published on the Spanish 19th-century origins of the Civil War. I introduced Carr to Stanley Payne's unpublished thesis.

Conclusion: I returned to Ann Arbor to complete my PhD in diplomatic history. Second, Eisenhower war the best Republican elected since Herbert Hoover. On both Egypt and Hungary, Eisenhower demonstrated his anti-imperial tendencies.

JE comments:  It's a small world after all.  Madariaga was also a huge intellectual influence on our founder, Ronald Hilton. And of course, Stanley Payne is a faithful WAISer.  Stanley made a generous contribution to WAIS just a few weeks ago.

Might we say that Eisenhower had his fill of war before he became president? Eugenio Battaglia (23 October) took Ike to task for offering nothing more than moral support to the Hungarians in '56. What else could he reasonably have done?

Robert:  Could you give us some details of that fateful hitchhiking trek, Stuttgart to Oxford?  It was exactly sixty years ago, during very interesting Postwar times.

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