Béla Király

From the longer English Wikipedia page [1] which has a list of his writings.

Dr. Béla Király (14 April 1912 – 4 July 2009) was a Hungarian army officer before, during, and after World War II. The Stalinists imprisoned him. After his release, he commanded the National Guard during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He was an academic historian in the United States. He returned to Hungary and was elected a member of Parliament of Hungary.

In 1951, the Mátyás Rákosi regime arrested him on charges of subversion, sedition and espionage. He was sentenced (January 15, 1952) to death by hanging. He spent years on death row. His wife had been detained by the ÁVH (State Security Authority; the political police) from August 1951 to August 1953. She divorced him in 1955. Then he learned his sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment at hard labor. In September 1956 the government paroled him and other political prisoners, a measure intended to soften public unrest.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 began shortly after his release from prison. He was weak and ill recovering from surgery, but escaped from the hospital to accept appointment as commander-in-chief of the military guard and military commander of Budapest.

He recognized his forces had no hope of victory over the Soviet army, but resented then Soviet ambassador Yuri Andropov's chicanery in concealing the imminent invasion. After the Soviet military intervention in Hungary, he fled to Austria and later the United States to avoid yet another death sentence, one unlikely to be commuted. He was, in fact, sentenced to death in absentia.

He earned graduate degrees at Columbia University. From 1964 he taught Military History at Brooklyn College, and became chairman of the history department. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1982.

From the Hungarian Wikipedia page [2].

Participation in the 1956 War of Independence 1956 . On 7 September, he was temporarily released, on 14 October [10] requesting his return from the Minister of Defense, István Bata. On October 21, a minor surgery was performed, and was treated in a hospital until October 28 during the Revolution , and was rehabilitated on October 31st . The president of the Revolutionary Army Commission and the Revolutionary Defense Commission , which was founded , and Imre Nagy appointed the military commander of Budapest at that time . He was commissioned to organize the new National Guard.

The Revolutionary Army Committee was formed on October 31 by representatives of the insurgents, the army, the police and the workers, with a view to creating a consolidated situation in preparation for the formation of a new coalition government. This committee made conceptual decisions to implement them by commanding an armed forces command . It was also desirable to organize units of freedom fighter according to the same rules. In order to carry out these tasks, a National Guard based on the '48 traditions was organized.

In the aftermath of fighting, he struggled with the attackers in the Nagykovácsi region: “On the night of November 10th, the units of the 97 th mechanized regiment were appointed to destroy the group in the forest near Nagykovácsi. The captured militiamen informed us that Béla Király left for the Austrian border. At the command of Marshal Konyev, a special group set off, headed by an experienced reconnaissance officer, Colonel II Scriptko to arrest Béla Király. However, Béla Király failed to find or arrest him. ” He left Hungary near Ják.

Béla Király memories of perceived suspected atomic bombing during the Soviet invasion mushroom cloud [ source? ] At Nagykovács, justifying his quick departure. In another interview he spoke, had to consider: if he stayed in the country, hanged, so he decided to save his life while leaving for Austria.

Views of '56

The ten point views are as follows (for more details, see Documents on Emigration 10th, No Yes, 260):

1. In 1956, sober patriots did not want a revolution but urged fundamental reforms.
2. The aim of the revolution was to formulate the most accurate in the 16 points of university youth, but it did not require the abolition of the communist regime. “But it is also true that the unanimous claim was to make a general, equal, secret vote. The Parliament thus formed would have been competent to declare the final form of government and society. It is possible, but likely, that if the country had not been deprived of its sovereign aggression from its independence in 1957, what would have happened in 1990 was "
3. The revolution won. Imre Nagy established a multi-party government that quickly consolidated the situation. Revolution is an internal affair, and armed aggression is an international affair. Although the Hungarian society is lagging behind the latter, it does not change the fact that the revolution has won.
4. The victory was won by the Hungarian youth.
5. The winning young people chose central management to ensure political consolidation. Following the example of '48, the fighting units were to be organized in the National Guard under a unified command.
6. The USSR began an armed intervention against our country from October 30 to October 31.
7. The declaration of neutrality on November 1 was a consequence of Soviet intervention, not a cause.
8. The entire Soviet bloc has moral responsibility for what happened.
9. The Soviet intervention was a war without war. It was a war with its purpose as it sought to overthrow the legitimate Hungarian government. And there was war in terms of its volume, as in the "Rotating Wind" operation, some 100,000 Soviet soldiers took part in about 2000 tanks. This war was a war between socialist countries, as the revolution program did not include the abolition of the socialist system.
10. The West and the United Nations recognized its truths after the revolution. Raymond Aron concluded his fate point essay entitled: "The Hungarian Revolution ... victory in defeat, will forever remain one of those rare events that will return the man himself faith and reminded ... the fate of the meaning, the truth." ( What is not a verb , 264)

From January 1957 he was a vice president of the Hungarian Revolutionary Council in Strasbourg . Anna Kéthly and József Kővágó testified about the revolutionary events before the United Nations Commission in New York . Between 1957 and 1966 he was a member of the Hungarian Committee under the presidency of Béla Varga.

From the Russian Wikipedia page [3]

In October 1956, became the military leader of the rebel forces in Budapest, who opposed the pro-Soviet regime . Since October 30 - Co-Chairman (along with Colonel Pal Maleter) of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Committee, which led the rebel formations. The committee’s activities were largely hampered by the rivalry between Maleter and Kiraly: each had subordinate parts to it, but many servicemen refused to obey both. While Maleter sought to contain the militants (in particular, he ordered 12 militants killed in the Corvin cinema), Kiraly, by contrast, was a supporter of radical actions against the supporters of the former regime (in fact, their lynching).

From October 31 - member (and actual leader) of the Revolutionary Defense Committee, military commander of Budapest. On November 1, he formed a rehabilitation commission, which returned to the army officers who were dismissed for political reasons.

From November 3 - Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, which was to become the core of the new Hungarian army. He led armed resistance to Soviet troops, entered on 4 November in Budapest. His headquarters was originally located in the outskirts of Budapest, then relocated to the town of Nagykovachi , where it was located on November 7-8. However, the superiority of the Soviet troops was obvious, and the majority of the Hungarian soldiers did not support Kiray, who was forced to flee to Austria from 9 to 10 November. In June 1958, he was sentenced to death in absentia in a closed trial of the “case of Imre Nagy and his accomplices”. He was deprived of Hungarian citizenship.