1953 | Political Events
Political Events
Yugoslavia adopts a new constitution January 12 and elects Marshal Tito 2 days later as first president of a Yugoslav Republic (see 1948). Tito will work to resolve differences between Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, and Montenegrins.
Former German field marshal Karl R. von Rundstedt dies at Hanover February 24 at age 77.
Gen. Walter Bedell Smith resigns as CIA director February 26 and is succeeded by Watertown, N.Y.-born lawyer Allen W. (Welsh) Dulles, 60, who has been Smith's deputy since August 1951 and will head the agency until November 1961.
Josef Stalin dies March 5 at age 73, 4 days after being stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage in his apartment at the Kremlin. Having ruled the Soviet Union with an iron hand since 1928, he is succeeded as chairman of the Council of Ministers by World War II aircraft and tank production chief Georgi Maximilianovich Malenkov, 51, who will head the USSR until 1958. Marshal Klimenti E. Voroshilov, now 72, will serve as president until 1960. Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, 54, is dismissed July 10 and shot as a traitor December 23; Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, 58, is named first secretary of the Communist Party.
Sick and disabled Korean War prisoners are exchanged following Stalin's funeral but hostilities soon escalate.
Czechoslovakia's president Klement Gottwald dies of pneumonia at Prague March 14 at age 56, having caught a chill at Stalin's funeral. He has imposed a Soviet-style government on the country, had about 180 party officals executed after rigged trials, and is succeeded by Premier Antonín Zápotocky, 68, who will hold the position until his death in 1957.
Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, 48, is elected Secretary-General of the UN March 31 and will hold the post until his death in 1961.
The Battle of Pork Chop Hill 50 miles north of Seoul rages from April 16 to 18, pitting Gen. Arthur Trudeau's U.S. 7th Division against Gen. Peng Dehuai's (Peng Te-huai's) Chinese communist forces, who have seized the non-strategic hill to test UN resolve. Nine U.S. artillery battalions fire 77,349 ronds in the 2-day battle, and the Chinese are driven off with heavy loss of life (U.S. casualties are also heavy, but less so).
U.S. planes bomb North Korean dams in May, flooding rice fields; President Synghman Rhee releases North Korean prisoners of war June 18 in a move to stall peace talks, 60,000 Chinese attack July 13 and 45,000 UN troops under the command of Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, now 51, counterattack 2 days later, but an armistice signed July 27 at Panmunjom near the 38th parallel ends a 3-year conflict that has left both sides in ruins (New York lawyer Arthur [Hobson] Dean, 55, of Sullivan & Cromwell has negotiated for 7 weeks on behalf of the United States and UN at the Panmunjom talks). North Korean and Chinese casualties (dead and wounded): 1,540,000; UN casualties: 344,227, including 36,914 U.S. dead, 103,284 wounded. Some 2 million Korean civilians, North and South, have been killed, thousands left homeless, and a state of war between the two countries will continue to exist for more than 50 years.
North Korean MiG-15 pilot No Kum-Sok flies his plane into Kimpo Air Base September 21 and turns over his top-secret Russian fighter plane to the Americans, who have offered a $100,000 reward for a MiG-15 (defector Kum-Sok has been unaware of the reward but receives it anyway). Communist forces have lost 954 aircraft in the course of the war, 827 of them MiG-15s (U.S. F-86 Sabres have downed 792 of the MiGs flying in "MiG Alley" south of the Yalu River to stop the MiGs from attacking UN bombers and fighter bombers from bases in China; only 78 Sabres have been lost). Test flights conducted at Okinawa and in the United States reveal that the MiG-15 is not supersonic. The Kremlin orders development of a new generation of aircraft with a speed of up to Mach 2 and a service ceiling of 20,000 meters (see MiG-21, 1959).
Philippines president Elpidio Quirino loses his bid for reelection to his secretary of defense, former schoolteacher and wartime guerrilla leader Ramon Magsaysay, 45, who has reformed the army and constabulary, gained peasant support, and defeated the communist-led Huk movement. Backed by the Nacionalista Party (even though he is a Liberal) and by former president Carlos P. Romulo, who has organized a third party, Magsaysay will serve until his death in 1957, establishing a reputation for incorruptibility, but the vested interests that control the legislature will thwart his efforts to pass land-reform measures.
Ethel Rosenberg and her husband, Julius, are executed at Sing Sing Prison June 19 for transmitting U.S. atomic secrets to Soviet agents (see 1951); a new series of U.S. atomic tests begins in the Nevada desert.
The U.S. Department of Justice tells Charlie Chaplin that he cannot re-enter the United States until he can satisfy the Immigration Office that he is not a dangerous and unwholesome character. Now 64 and still a British subject, the actor-producer joins the long list of motion picture people blacklisted because of alleged communist sympathies and "subversive, un-American" opinions.
Sen. Robert A. Taft (R. Ohio) dies of cancer at New York July 31 at age 63; Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright (ret.), of a cerebral thrombosis at San Antonio, Texas, September 2 at age 70; U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of a heart attack at Washington, D.C., September 8 at age 63 after 7 years as head of the court. He is succeeded as chief justice September 30 by former California governor Earl Warren, now 62, who will preside until his retirement in 1968.
Publisher's wife and former playwright Clare Boothe Luce, now 49, takes office March 3 as U.S. ambassador to Italy (but see 1954).
The USSR explodes a hydrogen device August 12 and elevates physicist Andrei Sakharov to full membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advances the hands on its "Doomsday Clock" to 2 minutes before midnight (see 1949); in years to come the hands will be set at times varying from 3 minutes (1984) to 17 minutes (1991) before midnight as apprehensions of a nuclear holocaust wax and wane.
U.S. authorities charge atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in December with having communist sympathies and with possible treason. Now 49, Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project's scientific team that built the 1945 atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan but has opposed building a hydrogen bomb (see 1954).
Former Spanish prime minister Dámaso Berenguer, conde de Xauen, dies at Madrid May 19 at age 79.
René Coty is elected president of France on the 13th ballot December 23 to succeed Vincent Auriol. Now 71, Coty will remain in office until early 1959. World War I flying ace René Fonck has died at Paris June 18 at age 59.
Former British governor general of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Sir Reginald Wingate dies at Dunbar, East Lothian, January 28 at age 91. Britain and Egypt agree February 12 on self-determination for Sudan (see 1951). President Naguib resigns in February, but civilian and military pressures force him to resume the office that he assumed last year (see 1954).
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers conspire with British agents to overthrow Iran's nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and return Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi to power (see 1951). Mossadegh's chief of staff gets wind of the plot and rushes troops to defend the prime minister, the shah flees to Baghdad, but a mob incited by the CIA and led by a giant thug ousts Mossadegh, and the shah regains power August 19 through a coup engineered and financed by the CIA and British Intelligence, allegedly to prevent a Soviet takeover (see 1955).
French authorities in Morocco deport the sultan Muhammad V in August, first to Corsica, then to Madagascar (see 1951), but the UN Security Council declines September 4 to respond to an Arab call to intervene in Morocco's dispute with France (see 1955).
Israel draws censure from the United Nations October 15 for heavy reprisals against border raids from Jordan.
Saudi Arabia's ibn Saud dies at at-Taif November 9 at age 73. He founded the kingdom in 1926, saw it renamed Saudi Arabia in his honor 6 years later, initiated the search for petroleum that made his kingdom rich, and has watched the vast wealth of the kingdom corrupt the austere religious principles to which he has dedicated his life. He is succeeded by his Kuwaiti-born son, 51, who will reign ineptly until 1964 as Saud ibn Abdul Aziz.
Norodom Sihanouk seizes all government buildings in a bid for complete independence after French colonial officers sign protocols May 9 giving Cambodia "full sovereignty" in military, judicial, and economic matters (see 1951). Paris-born Col. Christian (Marie Ferdinand de la Croix) de Castries, 51, is placed in charge of defending Dien Bien Phu (Dien-bienhu) in December, he is promoted to brigadier general, and the French start building a huge entrenched camp in an effort to retain Vietnam and Cochin China; Castries was captured by the Germans in 1940, escaped the following year from a prisoner-of-war camp, and served with the Allies in North Africa, Italy, and southern France; his 250,000-man army faces a communist army only half as large (but see 1954).
A 10-year campaign for independence of Kenya from Britain begins in East Africa. A court convicts Jomo Kenyatta and five other Kikuyu April 8 of masterminding the Mau Mau terrorist effort (see 1952); Kenya's Supreme Court quashes the conviction July 15, and the East African Court of Appeals sustains the ruling September 22, but colonial administrators in the next few years will place more than 100,000 Africans in detention camps, 2,000 Kikuyu loyal to the British crown will be murdered before the colonial government regains control, and 33 Europeans will die before Jomo Kenyatta is banished in 1961 (see 1963).
Colombia's military ousts President Laureano Eleuterio Gómez in the country's first such coup d'état since the 19th century after a 3-year administration in which he has antagonized all elements of society with his attempts to impose fascism, fomenting a rural rebellion with repressive measures that terrorized Protestants, tied the hands of the judiciary, and thwarted the press (see 1950). Gómez flees to Spain and is succeeded by Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, whose harshly repressive and incompetent administration will continue until 1957 as he and his daughter Maria Eugenia Rojas try to end La Violencia and stimulate the economy, appealing to the masses and making efforts to redress their grievances against the country's elite.
Cuban lawyer Fidel Castro Ruiz, 27, organizes a rebel force to unseat the dictatorship of Gen. Fulgencio Batista (see 1952). He leads about 160 men in a rash, ill-equipped attack on the Moncada military barracks at Santiago de Cuba July 26 in hopes of gaining popular support for his cause, but most of the men are killed and Castro himself is arrested. The archbishop of Santiago intercedes in his behalf, his life is spared, but he is placed on trial, convicted, and sentenced to a 15-year prison term after writing a speech that contains the phrase, "I will be absolved by history" (borrowed from Hitler's Mein Kampf). Castro and his brother Raul will be released under terms of a political amnesty in 1955 and travel to Mexico, where they will continue their campaign to oust the Batista regime (see 1956).
Britain grants British Guiana (later Guyana) a new constitution, and voters elect their first prime minister by democratic balloting. Sugar plantation foreman's son Cheddi (Berret) Jagan, 35, gave up his dentistry practice to become a union activist and 3 years ago established the country's first modern political party (the People's Progressive Party), with help from his Chicago-born wife, Janet (née Rosenberg), now 32, and (Linden) Forbes (Sampson) Burnham, now 30. He wins the election but his program of radical socioeconomic reform produces strikes and demonstrations that lead British authorities late in the year to suspend the new constitution, remove Jagan from office, and send in troops to thwart consolidation of what they view as a pro-communist government (see 1957).
Gen. George C. Marshall voyages to Norway in December aboard the S.S. Andrea Doria to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. In his acceptance speech at Oslo he notes the anomaly of giving the prize to a soldier, says he knows "a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war," and observes that while the "maintenance of peace in the present hazardous world situation does depend in very large measure on military power, together with allied cohesion," "the maintenance of large armies for an indefinite period is not a practical or a promising basis for policy. We must stand together strongly for these present years . . . but we must, I repeat, must find another solution."