Note the two guards on either side of the gates -- on the inside. They know what's coming!

Not the best way to do this. Make the announcement with the gates closed, get everyone organized, transport arranged (because I doubt these camps are near major population centers), and make it more like a mustering out than a liberation.

That would presume that an orderly mustering is in the best interests of a cornered government.

Having swarms of desperate, hungry and justifiably furious rats, swarming back into cities, where the other carnies have no doubt been taking over their vacant homes, is only to the advantage of the government.

I disagree (somewhat). The essential function of any government is control. Good governments only try to control damaging and disruptive behavior, while bad governments try to control more than that (usually to the benefit of those running the government).

Reimagine your scenario, but instead of the rats making their own way back into the cities tired and without resources they've been fed, are rested from a ride in a bus or truck, and have some essential materials -- and maybe even have acquired a weapon or two. Add in that the vehicles brought them to the cities faster, so there's less time between the general announcement and their arrival.

I'll give you furious, and maybe desperate, but hungry, no. Who wants to eat stringy starving rat meat? They've probably been eating more, though almost certainly not better, than they did outside.

I'm not comfortable attributing it to either incredible incompetence or Machiavellian plotting; my vote is for just not caring enough to do it right, by whatever definition of 'right' you choose.

Like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

Guards in the tower: Oh, that will be fun. - You think they make it? - 10 bucks they get overrun. - You on it.

allright. what do you think? Will the 2 guys who are running away from the horde make it or not?

They'll get trampled, and their corpses eaten by the starving rats in the back, who can't move as fast. ^^

It makes me wonder what happened inside the camps before this moment. Were the still gathering rats, or had harvesting begun? How many of them saw someone they knew or loved dragged off? What were the final moments like for those that were pulled out and taken to slaughter? Something tells me their end was not a painless one.

Gentlepreds, use tanks to open the damned doors, then stay in your heavily armored and hopefully "rat resistant" (Cause Herman's proved ain't nothin rat proof) vehicle and wait out the oncoming flood

He should've waited with the good news AFTER organising his rats.
Saves the hassle of running from a stampede.

It was an orderly row... Considering that an unorderly row is pretty much a riot.

Bonus Multiplier: The suddenly disempowered guard, cartoon-tip-toeing away from the gates.

Really it was actually more organised than I thought it would be.

The second frame of this page reminds me of a real life incident a few years ago where an East German border security officer, instructed to stop the slim trickle of East Germans from passing through his sector of the border fence/barriers into West Germany (some daily limit had been reached) and he said “No”.

Other guards along the border took their lead from him and also began saying “no”, disobeying their standing orders to keep their own people imprisoned inside their own country.

The trickles soon became streams, and the streams became rivers, and the rivers … well the flood of free back-and-forth travel between the two parts of their own country was the beginning of the end for the oppressive government of East Germany, leading to the reunification of Germany.

And it all started with just one brave soldier/person standing up and saying “No”.

Actually, it started with the Soviet Union's bankruptcy and loss of percieved ability to re-invade Germany. The rest followed more or less naturally. Had the guard tried to do this earlier, he would simply have disappeared into the Gulag.

The Communist SU’s bankruptcy and collapse had been advancing on it like a cancerous disease since its occupation of East Europe began showing signs of collapsing (Hungarian Uprising, Czech Spring, and Poland’s successful Solidarity movement).

While at any other time the German policeman’s “No” would indeed not have even been noticed, but he, like a certain Corsican lieutenant a century or so earlier, unknowingly made his act of rebellion at the historically right moment when the overlord country was financially and militarily strained by foreign and domestic problems.

Communist Soviet Union lost its ability to re-invade Germany (to support her client-state East Germany) due to the undeniable geographical problem (even for the vaunted Red Army) of there being an “unfriendly” quasi-independent Poland between itself and the German border.

The SU could have militarily dealt with any military resistance Poland might have offered with its superior technology and numbers, but a thuggish military action and follow-up occupation (both of which would have added to the SU‘s already wobbly financial situation), could have been the signal for restive client-states across the Soviet Union to make their grab for independence in a “Now or Never” attempt while the Red Army was dealing with the German-Polish “Problem“.

As the President in your story would realize, “Realpolitik” dictates accepting a small loss with good grace over a humiliating total unraveling of an “empire”.

The Twentieth Century has proved that, even in peacetime, empires are just too expensive to maintain.

Minor point: the Hungarian revolt was more than thirty years before the Velvet Revolution; the signs of collapse were pretty much invisible then. Or even in retrospect, I'd say.