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Stop ‘Em At
The 38th Parallel:
The Soviet Intervention In Korea
By Chris Oakley Part 9
November 1952-January 1953 November 9th, 1952--Egyptian president Muhammad Naghib, whose health has been steadily deteriorating since the assassination attempt against him nearly four months earlier, is rushed to a Cairo hospital after collapsing during a meeting with his top cabinet ministers. November 10th, 1952--25 Czech university students are arrested for treason after holding an anti-war demonstration outside the Soviet embassy in Prague. November 11th, 1952--At a Veterans’ Day speech in Philadelphia, Vice President-elect Richard Nixon gets a standing ovation from the largely conservative crowd when he tells them that the Anti-Communist Security Act will be enforced more vigorously under the incoming Eisenhower administration than they have been under the outgoing Truman presidency or would be if 1952 Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson had won the presidency. November 12th, 1952--Muhammad Naghib dies of heart failure; the CIA station chief in Jerusalem notes that one of the younger men in Naghib’s cabinet, a certain Gamal Abdel Nasser, appears to be gathering support for a dark horse bid to be chosen as Naghib’s successor in the presidency. November 14th, 1952--The commander-in-chief of the North Korean navy dies of a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by the stress of his duties; a post-mortem autopsy reveals he was also suffering from the onset of radiation poisoning. November 15th, 1952--Muhammad Naghib is laid to rest in a Cairo cemetery. That same day, coded dispatches from CIA field agents inside Egypt to the agency’s station chief in Tel Aviv confirm that Gamal Abdel Nasser is indeed making a serious bid for the Egyptian presidency. November 17th, 1952--In one of the worst outbreaks of internal violence Russia has seen in almost forty years, demonstrators and police clash at an anti-war protest march in Kharkov. November 18th, 1952--Gamal Abdel Nasser declares himself the new president of Egypt.
November 21st, 1952--Egyptian military forces loyal to Gamal Abdel Nasser crush an attempt by one of Nasser’s rivals to overthrow his government. The instigators of the uprising are hanged as a warning to his other potential foes. November 23rd, 1952--NATO bombers raid Communist bases north and west of the Polish city of Krakow. November 24th, 1952--Egyptian security forces arrest two dozen high-ranking army officers and civilian officials on suspicion of being linked to the abortive attempt to overthrow the newly installed Nasser regime. November 25th, 1952--The U.S. Supreme Court announces it will hear the ACLU’s suit regarding the Anti-Communist Security Act in February of 1953. November 27th, 1952--President-elect Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President-elect Richard Nixon travel to Inchon, South Korea as a gesture of support for the South Korean government; their visit is also intended as a fact-finding mission to gauge the progress of U.S. strategic operations in the Korean theater. November 29th, 1952--The inspector general for the Soviet armed forces high command gives CPSU First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev a sobering report as to the Soviet military’s overall manpower situation. His report concludes that even if a miracle happens to shift the tide of the fighting in Korea back in favor of the Communists, the Soviet armed forces’ available supply of trained combat personnel will likely be exhausted with 8-10 months. December 2nd, 1952--Seeking to preserve his nation’s strategic interests in Asia, Brezhnev orders the military draft expanded to include Soviet males below the age of 16 and over the age of 60. Previously both groups had been exempt from the draft; With the Soviet armed forces’ manpower stock continuing to steadily December 3rd, 1952--Just one day after Brezhnev issues his draft expansion decree, members of the New Awakening movement stage a series of anti-draft protests throughout the Soviet Union. NKVD agents arrest nearly 300 people during these rallies and subject fifty or so others to summary execution.
December 8th, 1952--In the most devastating Israeli air strike of the Golan War, IAF warplanes bomb a number of key military and political targets in Damascus and in the process knock out the Syrian capital’s largest airfield. A military academy cadet named Hafez el-Assad becomes a heroic martyr to his countrymen during the air raid when he commandeers a Syrian anti-aircraft battery and downs two Israeli fighters attempting to strafe the Syrian army general staff’s headquarters before succumbing to a bullet wound in the side of his neck. December 11th, 1952--NATO reconnaissance planes operating in Polish airspace detect possible enemy troop movements somewhere southeast of the ruins of Warsaw. December 12th, 1952--Hafez el-Assad is laid to rest in one of the most elaborate funeral processions the Middle East has seen in a generation; in his honor, one of Damascus’ major streets will subsequently be renamed el-Assad Boulevard. December 14th, 1952--U.S. and NATO combat jets begin a massive wave of air strikes against suspected Communist troop positions southeast of the ruins of Warsaw. December 17th, 1952--25,000 Romanian troops cross the border into Hungary to assist Red Army occupation forces in crushing the Hungarian anti-Soviet rebellion. December 19th, 1952--U.N. ground forces in China attack PLA infantry strongpoints near the town of Liaoyuan. December 20th, 1952--Chinese Communist infantry and artillery detachments hit the U.N. right flank near Liaoyuan. December 23rd, 1952--Two North Korean air force officers are executed on suspicion of treason after sending a memo to their superiors openly critical of the Kim Il Sung regime’s air war strategy. December 24th, 1952--In his annual Christmas Eve homily at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Pius XII urges the Communist and NATO blocs to end the fighting in Europe and work towards more peaceful solutions to the political and social differences that exist between them. The alternative to this, warns the Pontiff, is “a world in ruins”. December 27th, 1952--Hungarian rebels clash with Romanian troops southeast of Budapest. December 28th, 1952--The North Korean air force’s third-highest scoring fighter ace defects to the U.N. side, touching off what CIA Far East analysts call as “a crisis of confidence” in every sector of the North Korean military. December 30th, 1952--The American Cancer Society publishes a sobering report on the incidence of radiation poisoning cases among U.S. service personnel fighting in Europe; according to the report, one out of every five U.S. military people on active duty in the European theater has been exposed to fallout as a consequence of the repeated use of nuclear weapons by both sides in the war between NATO and the Soviet Union. The report’s main authors project that within the next 12-18 months the frequency of cancer and leukemia cases among servicemen in Europe will at least double. A similar increase is projected for servicemen who are posted to the Korean/Chinese theater. December 31st, 1952--World War II hero Marshal Georgi Zhukov is recalled from his station as regional commander for the Odessa military district and appointed to take charge of the faltering Soviet expeditionary force in the Korean/Chinese theater. January 1st, 1953--Three Soviet bombers sent to attack Tokyo are intercepted by U.S. Air Force fighter jets en route to the city; two of the bombers are shot down over the Japanese countryside, while the third ditches in the Pacific Ocean. Initial reports on the third bomber’s flight path just before it went down spark a rumor its nuclear bombs were prematurely released, triggering a brief temporary evacuation of the metropolitan Tokyo area. January 3rd, 1953--The Polish Communist prime minister and his cabinet hastily evacuate Krakow after receiving word that NATO ground forces are about to enter the city. January 4th, 1953--NATO regular troops and Polish anti-Communist partisans assume control of Krakow. January 7th, 1953--U.N. occupation forces in northern Korea are put on full alert after Allied intelligence sources advise the U.N. expeditionary force headquarters in Inchon that Communist sympathizers among the Korean population may be getting ready to launch an uprising against U.N. and ROK authorities. January 8th, 1953--Marshal Zhukov launches a five-pronged attack against one of the weaker points of the U.N. battlefront in southern China. Although the first wave of the assault doesn’t achieve quite as much as Zhukov had hoped it would, it does gain one important victory for the Communist side: under the relentless pressure of combined Soviet and Chinese tanks and artillery, U.N. ground troops are forced to finally pull out of Tunghua, which in turn compels General MacArthur to scrap plans for a deeper push into northern China. January 10th, 1953--In one of his meetings with his transition team before his inauguration, President-elect Dwight Eisenhower directs his top military advisors to draft a theoretical plan for the deployment of U.S. military forces into Hungary to aid the rebels in that country against Red Army occupation troops. January 13th, 1953--Soviet advance troops pull to within 25 miles of the Yalu River.
To Be Continued
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