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Eisenhower Concluded Neither U.S. Military Operations Nor Popular Uprisings Were Feasible in Soviet-Controlled Eastern Europe, Despite “Rollback” Rhetoric

President Dwight D. Eisenhower ruled out military intervention in Eastern Europe early in his administration, despite campaign rhetoric about rolling back world Communism, according to a U.S. Defense Department draft history published today by the National Security Archive.  Fear of provoking war with the Soviet Union drove the decision, the study finds, based on research in a variety of government and public sources. 

Short of direct intervention, U.S. options were frustratingly limited, according to the document, which focuses on the Eisenhower administration’s internal debates and the broader military dimensions of U.S. policy toward the region during the 1950s. Even as committed a cold warrior as CIA Director Allen Dulles ruefully concluded, “You don’t have civil uprisings in a modern totalitarian state ... you don’t revolt in the face of tanks, artillery and tear gas. Revolutions are now at the top . . . .”

Today’s posting covers the period leading up to the Hungarian revolt of 1956.  The author is Dr. Ronald D. Landa, formerly with the State Department's Office of the Historian and the Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  This is the second of three studies he prepared for the OSD during 2011 and early 2012.  They were declassified over the next few years, albeit with a number of passages left heavily excised.