At four o'clock in the morning on a Sunday in November 1956, the city of Budapest was awakened by the shattering sound of Russian tanks tearing the city apart. The Hungarian revolution — five brief, glorious days of freedom that had yielded a glimpse at a different kind of future — was over.

But there was a bridge at Andau, on the Austrian border, and if a Hungarian could reach that bridge, he was nearly free. It was about the most inconsequential bridge in Europe, but by an accident of history it became, for a few flaming weeks, one of the most important bridges in the world, for across its unsteady planks fled the soul of a nation....