The No-Do 728A (Pro-Hungria) shows a familiar scene to us after the 1956 Hungarian revolution: charity event to help the refugees, and Hungary, which occupied and oppressed by the Soviet Army. Victims of the communism constitute a well-known symbol, but what about the counterpart? How did the official (socialist) propaganda reflect to Franco’s Spain and the revolution (in the contemporary term: counter-revolution) in that time? Franco’s appearances in the Hungarian press give a good example to describe the connections between propaganda, media and making the image of the enemy to form the public opinion. The main motive of my comment relates to the disorientation and manipulation process, made by the images of enemy and the possible truth beyond these – Inés Dussel’s latest article made an impressive analysis about this topic, in the context of another totalitarian regime. [1]
Ideology and indoctrination played a great role in the communist (or so-called really existing socialist) societies, we can call this kind of power like a Propaganda State. [2] This explained the enormous number of decrees and regulations, which showed the communists’ belief in words, educating the masses. The dominant Soviet and Eastern European propaganda used the image of the Other as the enemy of the peace loving socialist nations after WWII [3], in this case Franco was a prove to emphasise the counter-revolutionary concept that the revolt against communism organised from the Western Hemisphere and the former ruling classes of the Horthy Era (the latter had been interpreted as a pure fascist movement too, in the Hungarian communist historiography). First, I will analyse the construction of the Franco-image from the Hungarian journals after 1956, then the historical facts, connected to it.
What a Hungarian reader could knew about Franco
The press and mass media was under Party-control in the 1950’s, 1960’s Hungary, so an average reader could get a very selected and distorted view from the outside world. After 1956 the articles tried to explain the reasons of the revolution and turned it into the term of the counter-revolution, which defined the previous events as against the interests of the proletariat, the representing and ruling class of the socialist society (meanwhile, most of the participants were workers). The new Kádár-leadership had to found the responsible factors and created the four causes of 1956 (a narrative for decades):
- the Stalinist politics, Rákosi and Gerő,
- the right-wing communists (revisionists, like Imre Nagy),
- the counter revolutionary movement of the former fascist capitalists, originated in the pre-1945 Horthy Era, organised in the Western emigration;
- and the work of the international imperialism (the same activities made in Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam). [4]
From this perspective, we can understand, why Franco was associated with a first sight far and not matching list: according to the third and fourth factor, Dulles, Otto von Habsburg and Chiang Kai-shek were allied with Franco, for the same purpose.
After the concept was ready, this type of lists began to construct by politicians. First in a speech of György Marosán, the strong man of the Party in March 1957: Dulles, Franco, Otto von Habsburg and Chiang Kai-shek “are the enemies of the proletariat”, supported the counter-revolution to demolish the socialism in Hungary. [5] It existed another list, in a Ponomarjov article (he was the head of the Soviet Communist Party Public Relations Office with Foreign Communist Organisations), published in the Pravda: “The imperialist propaganda evaluated the Hungarian events (..) as «revolution», and representatives of the international reaction, including Chiang Kai-shek, Franco and Li Sin Man [Syngman Rhee] hailed to this…” [6] This group constituted authoritarian, anti-communist leaders, who interpreted like dictators, against their people and as the tools of the US imperialist policy. With mentioning Li Sin Man (South-Korea) and Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, the other China) the struggle became global between the capitalist and communist system, linked with the decolonisation process in the Third World. The next argument was the US connection: from Munich the Hungarian Nazis had got a radio broadcast (we don’t know if this sentence referred to it, but the CIA supported Radio Free Europe was in Munich too), and from Madrid the followers of Otto von Habsburg exhorted the Hungarian people to made Hungary a monarchy again, with the civil war. [7]
In an English radio news from Moscow to North-America, Boris Sashin made a detailed explanation about the Hungarian question, before the UN General Assembly session. A conspiracy theory was sketched: in Munich (again), September 1956, the Hungarian emigre leaders met the agents of the US and West-German Army to prepare for the counter-revolution. In a camp in South-Germany (Bavaria), near Traunstein, 11.000 men were ready to intervene in Hungary, when the “moment needed”. Here, “officers from Franco Spain and members of Hungarian fascist organisations trained people in guerrilla warfare under American supervision.” [8] Dulles (the US administration), fascist emigration and Franco’s Spain were on one side in this narrative, and caused the Hungarian uprising. An article from the East-German Berliner Zeitung echoed the conspiracy: the emigrants in the Traunstein-camp were Hungarian Germans, former SS-warriors, they were transported like ambulance squad through Austria (by airplanes and cars), their role was to instigate the German minority in Hungary to fought against the People’s Democratic Republic. [9] After these articles the official documentary book about the counter-revolution repeated word-by-word the idea of the training camp and the Spanish support [10] – but what can we discover when we look beyond the surface of the propaganda?
Franco’s help to Hungary
Beside the charity activities, there was some basis of the conspiration: Luis Carrero Blanco offered 100.000 volunteers (armed men) to Ferenc Marosy, a former ambassador of the Hungarian Kingdom (before 1945) to support the revolution. After 4 November 1956 Otto von Habsburg orientated Marosy to write a letter to Franco and asked airplanes to transmit weapons to Hungary, against the Soviet intervention. [11] Artajo, the Foreign Minister visited Cabot Lodge, the American UN representative, to inform the US government, that Spain could send army forces to Hungary – the US officials rejected the proposal, because they didn’t want an armed conflict with the Soviets. [12] From an emigre memoir, the American refuse was related to the airplanes: they denied to let using the planes by the Spanish Army, although Franco already assigned the former head of the Blue Division and the Minister of Defense as the leader of the future air and parachute forces to the Hungarian mission. [13]
Based on the available facts, it seems that Franco’s help and the camp was only a plan and intention, which became reality only in the propaganda, not independently by the insurgents itself: for example, a Hungarian army officer (former leader in the Horthy Era, during WWII) suggested to bomb the Soviet Army, then fly to Munich ask the help of NATO or further to Spain and Franco. [14] Illusions and truth intertwined to give possible argumentation to the repressing communist regime in Hungary, justified the imprisonments and executions.
Lajos Somogyvári (University of Pannonia, Hungary)
References
[1] Dussel, Inés, Truth in Propagandistic Images. Reflections of an Enigmatic Corpus (Westerbork, 1944). Historia y Memoria de la Educación, no. 8. 2018, 59-95. [2] Kenez, Peter, The Birth of the Propaganda State. Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. [3] Baraniecka-Olszewska, Kamila, “Performing the New Enemy: Images from the Cold War in the Communist Polish Newspaper Trybuna Robotnicza”, in War Matters: Constructing Images of the Other (1930s to 1950s), ed. Dagnosław Demski, Liisi Laineste and Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2015, 277. [4] “Az MSZMP Ideiglenes Központi Bizottságának 1956. decemberi határozata (1956. December 5.)” [Decree of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party Temporarily Central Committee (5 December 1956)], in A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt határozatai és dokumentumai (1956-1962) [Decrees and documents of the HSWP between 1956-1962], ed. Vass Henrik and Ságvári Ágnes, Budapest: Kossuth, 1973, 13-23. [5] György Marosán, Az imperializmus elleni harc legfontosabb fegvyere [The strongest weapon against imperialism]. Népszabadság, 28 March 1957, 4-5. [6] Ponomarjov, “A nemzetközi reakció támadó terveinek kudarca” [Failure of the offense of the international reaction]. Békés megyei Népújság, 6 January 1957, 2. [7] István Kende, “Nem lehet semmiféle gátlásunk” [“We should not have inhibitions”]. Népszabadság, 24 March 1957, 9. [8] Details of Hungarian plot exposed. Boris Sashin commentary, 24 August 1957. Retrieved from: 26 September 2018, http://storage.osaarchivum.org/low/f7/84/f784c33a-53ec-413c-9810-2dfcef9e0f85_l.pdf [9] István, Bolgár, Ami az Ötös Bizottság jelentéséből kimaradt [What missed from the report of the UN Committee]. Magyar Nemzet, 8 September 1957, 4. The fake ambulance was a well-known gossip in that time Hungary. [10] Ellenforradalmi erők a magyar októberi eseményekben IV. [Forces of the counter-revolution in the Hungarian events in October. Volume IV]. Budapest: Magyar Népköztársaság Minisztertanácsa Tájékoztatási Hivatala, 1957, 30. [11] János Sáringer, Magyarország és Spanyolország a követi jelentésekben [Hungary and Spain in the diplomatic files]. Aetas, Vol. 18. No. 2. 2003, 205. [12] László, Borhi, Franco és az 1956-os magyar forradalom [Franco and the Hungarian revolution in 1956]. História, Vol. 20. No. 9-10. 1998, 60-62. [13] Antal, Radnóczy, A magyar katonai emigráció története, 1945-1990 [The history of the Hungarian military emigration, 1945-1990]. Hadtörténelmi Közlemények, Vol. 111. No. 3. 1998, 739. [14] Dezső, Iván, A magyar néphadsereg légiereje 1956 októberében – novemberében [The Hungarian Air Force in October, November 1956]. Hadtörténelmi Közlemények, Vol. 102. No. 2. 1989, 209.
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