That is not, however, what the Soviets wanted, as Eisenhower soon learned. On December 1 Khrushchev met with Senator Hubert Humphrey, who was on a congressional visit to Moscow. Khrushchev devoted a full day to the senator, eager for him to return home with a clear message. In a session lasting over eight hours, Khrushchev’s emotions as usual swung between bellicose and cordial. Humphrey recalled that the Soviet leader “tried to frighten me” with talk of Soviet missile strength, but insisted later, “There will never be a war.” Khrushchev struck Humphrey as sincere but impulsive, “a man with no time to waste.” Humphrey observed Khrushchev’s mixture of pride, aggression, and insecurity, and reported to the State Department what he had learned. Khrushchev described Berlin as a “thorn,” a “cancer,” and “a bone in my throat.” If it could be removed, peace could soon follow. Berlin, he suggested, should be turned into a “free city” and perhaps turned over to the United Nations. It could be neutralized, as Austria had been. He also tossed out ideas for the prompt reunification of East and West Germany as one neutral nation. Spluttering and angry one moment, congenial the next, Khrushchev told Humphrey, “I like President Eisenhower. We want no evil to the U.S. or to free Berlin. You must assure the president of this.” Only a “madman or a fool,” Khrushchev insisted, would think of war between the superpowers.12
These observations clearly influenced Eisenhower, since they squared with his own belief that the USSR did not want to fight over Berlin. In sessions with his advisers in December and January, Eisenhower developed the strategy he would adopt toward Khrushchev. He would make it absolutely clear that the United States would not leave Berlin or allow any part of Berlin to come under the control of the East Germans. Using a poker analogy, he said there should be no ambiguity about America’s position: “In order to avoid beginning with the white chips and working our way up to the blue, we should place them on notice that our whole stack is in play.” The United States would respond “in a friendly tone,” however, and encourage negotiations. Eisenhower thought the foreign ministers of the four occupying powers should meet and discuss German matters, giving Khrushchev a means to save face and quietly back down.
Vice President Nixon, prophetically as it turned out, thought that perhaps what Khrushchev really wanted was a summit meeting with Eisenhower as a way to bolster his own prestige. If so, saber rattling over Berlin seemed an awkward way to ask for it. Ike called the Berlin problem a “can of worms,” but his usual inclination toward patience and moderation paid dividends here. He rejected the kind of provocative actions that the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed to favor, such as driving a heavily armed convoy down the Autobahn and daring the Russians to stop it. Ike would have none of that. He resented Soviet tactics, but he would much prefer talking to fighting.13
Arranging a meeting of the foreign ministers took a great deal of haggling and delicate maneuvering, and it fell to Harold Macmillan to speed things up. Macmillan had risen to prime minister in early 1957, taking over from the disgraced Anthony Eden. The Conservative Party had been badly tarnished by the Suez debacle, and Macmillan needed to notch a success to restore public confidence in the Tories. He hoped that he could improve his standing at home by playing the honest broker, a man who could ease the Berlin crisis first by getting a foreign ministers’ conference under way and then by arranging a great summit meeting of Khrushchev, Eisenhower, the newly installed French president Charles de Gaulle, and himself. A high-visibility summit that eased the anxieties of the cold war could deliver a great political boost to Macmillan and his Conservatives and pave the way to a general election victory in the fall of 1959.
In late February 1959 Macmillan, full of hope, traveled to Moscow to sound out the Soviets. The trip began well enough, as Khrushchev plied his British guests with caviar, salmon, excellent vodka, Russian brandy, ballet performances, and long late-night suppers. But then Macmillan discovered what all the other Westerners who engaged with Khrushchev learned: there were two Nikitas. The first was a rational statesman, ready to talk about peace, arms control, and coexistence. The other was the communist zealot, the prosecutor, the brawler who threw angry punches in every direction. After three inconsequential days of easy conversations and liquid lunches, Khrushchev gave a menacing speech, denouncing the Western powers for blocking progress on unifying Germany and resolving the Berlin matter. The idea of a foreign ministers’ meeting was a stalling tactic, he said, a sign that the Western states had no desire to solve their differences. He wanted action and demanded the Great Powers respond to his demands.
Macmillan, deeply shocked by this mercurial behavior, told Khrushchev at the tail end of a long and alcohol-fueled luncheon, “If you try to threaten us in any way, you will create the Third World War. Because we shall not give in, nor will the Americans.” At this Khrushchev leaped to his feet and shouted, “You have insulted me!,” and stormed out. That evening Khrushchev mocked the failed British invasion of Egypt and bullied Macmillan. He meant to have his way over Berlin, he said, whatever the Western nations did. Khrushchev then abandoned his guest, letting him visit the country like a wayward tourist and paying him little heed. Macmillan’s mission looked like an epic failure. At one point he collapsed physically and had to be hauled off to bed by his staff. This rebuff from the ever-unpredictable Khrushchev highlighted the real risks of personal diplomacy.14
And then, true to his nature, Khrushchev tried to salve the wounds he had inflicted on the British prime minister. At the very end of Macmillan’s visit, Khrushchev quite suddenly agreed to the foreign ministers’ meeting as a stepping-stone to a summit of world leaders. He also withdrew his six-month “clock” for the Berlin ultimatum he had issued in November. Macmillan could go back to London with some good news: the Soviets would negotiate a way out of the Berlin crisis. Having battered and bullied Macmillan and demonstrated his willingness to fight, Khrushchev now seemed happy to offer an olive branch. He had displayed his unique if crude negotiating style, which began with shouting and verbal assaults and proceeded toward compromise.15
III
Eisenhower and Foster Dulles observed Macmillan’s Soviet diplomacy with growing dismay. They were appalled at the Englishman’s willingness to put up with Khrushchev’s bullying, a cardinal sin in the prestige-centered cold war. Eisenhower wondered “how long Britain needs to be slapped in the face” before it stood up to this sneering, ill-mannered man. Ike told his chief advisers and congressional leaders that he would never tolerate that kind of treatment. The Soviets respected only firmness and strength. Resorting again to a poker analogy, he said the communists always bluffed big, but then backed off. “The question is whether we have the nerve to push our chips into the pot.” Eisenhower had no hesitation, since “appeasement means disaster.” But “if we stand firm . . . the Soviets will back down.” A world-class poker player, Ike knew how to read his opponents.16
This determination to defy Soviet bullying and never tolerate the slightest sign of disrespect explains the very tense and emotional argument between Eisenhower and Macmillan in late March, when the prime minister came to Washington for private consultations. Macmillan arrived expecting congratulations for having gotten Khrushchev to agree to negotiation instead of war over Berlin. Instead he found his American friends cool indeed.
Eisenhower took Macmillan to Camp David for the weekend of March 20–21, and in the brisk spring air of the Catoctin Mountains the two men had a serious and tough exchange. Macmillan believed he was on the cusp of winning a great coup: a summit meeting of leaders to discuss Germany. But he found that Eisenhower deeply resented Macmillan’s effort to manipulate the United States into agreeing to talks in response to Soviet threats. Ike told Macmillan that “he would not go to a meeting under circumstances which made it appear that he had his hat in his hand.” If the foreign ministers met first and made serious progress on the issues of Berlin, German unification, disarmament, and so on, then a summit could be arranged. But until the Soviets showed good faith and a willingness to co
mpromise, he would hear no talk of a summit.17
Ike’s stubborn attitude shattered Macmillan. All the work he had done appeared to be in jeopardy. He said that World War I broke out in 1914 because of the failures of the leaders of that era to meet and talk; Britain had then paid a terrible price and lost a million young men. (Macmillan himself had fought in France and been wounded three times.) To that Eisenhower gave a sharp rejoinder: on the eve of World War II the world leaders had met at Munich, and those discussions had done nothing to avoid war. Invoking the dreaded legacy of appeasement, Eisenhower would not be associated with any deal that came as a result of a threat. Macmillan said surely negotiation was better than nuclear war. Eisenhower replied that he would not surrender to blackmail. He would not be “dragooned” by Soviet threats and compelled to parley. “We don’t escape war by surrendering on the installment plan,” said the president. Though under pressure, he refused to bend. Macmillan, deflated and mournful, retreated to his woodsy cabin for the night.18
Eisenhower had made his point, and the next morning Macmillan joined the president in writing a letter to Khrushchev that made the Western position plain: if the foreign ministers, meeting in the summer of 1959, made enough progress on the thorny questions of German policy, then a summit meeting might be held in the fall of 1959. On March 30 Khrushchev accepted the deal. It was a victory for Eisenhower. He would make any future meeting of heads of state dependent upon Soviet good behavior. Both Macmillan and Khrushchev, who wanted to hold a high-level meeting right away, would have to be patient. Ike had reestablished his dominance over world affairs and found a way to defuse the Berlin crisis without showing any sign of bending under pressure. He insisted on America’s rights in Berlin while leaving open the door to diplomatic discussions. Khrushchev backed down; Ike held firm. Negotiations on Berlin and Germany could move ahead, but on Eisenhower’s timetable.19
This success in lowering the heat over Berlin was clouded by unsettling news. John Foster Dulles was dying. In February he had gone to Walter Reed for another operation on his cancerous intestines. Ann Whitman noted in her diary that the postoperation report was “not good”: “The doctors feel there is no use attempting another operation—they are going to give him radiation every other day.” The president, who, Whitman wrote, “did not dwell on death” and was rarely shaken by the loss of friends, was “hard hit.” He even mused about dying and seemed in a funk at the prospect of losing his closest adviser.20
Eisenhower visited Dulles regularly at Walter Reed, spoke to him on the telephone, and continued to rely on his advice. But Dulles’s condition grew steadily worse. On April 11, 1959, his brother, Allen, told Eisenhower the end seemed near. He was in “severe pain,” despite heavy use of sedatives, and “his spirits have also been declining.” Allen then produced a letter for the president containing the secretary of state’s resignation. Foster recommended that he be replaced by Christian A. Herter, his undersecretary. A well-heeled, moderate Republican who had served 10 years in Congress and five years as governor of Massachusetts, Herter had been acting secretary during the last stages of Dulles’s illness. He was a mild-mannered gentleman, almost crippled by severe arthritis, and not nearly as hawkish as Dulles. Ike seemed reluctant to face the fact that Dulles was dying and said he would not “rush to a decision in the matter” of replacing him. But Dulles had made up his mind. On April 15 Eisenhower announced to the press that Dulles would resign his post. On May 24 he died.
Eisenhower took the loss hard, for although he often had to restrain the secretary’s more aggressive instincts, he relied on and trusted Dulles and knew that Dulles’s loyalty was complete and unbending. The two men formed a powerful team, and they could be found together commiserating over a drink at the end of each workday. Without Dulles, and now without Sherman Adams, George Humphrey, Herbert Brownell, Robert Cutler—the whole team that had so cheerfully and optimistically joined Eisenhower in Washington in January 1953—Ike felt alone, his time in office running out.21
IV
Having eased tensions over Berlin, Eisenhower began quietly to revive his earlier idea about a rapprochement with Moscow, perhaps even involving a trip to the Soviet Union. Naturally such a trip had to be carefully prepared. It could never appear that Eisenhower was asking to be received by the Soviets, as Macmillan had done. But if Eisenhower played his cards right, he might get an opportunity to launch his own gesture of personal diplomacy and end his presidency on a high note.
Fortunately a test case soon presented itself. For some time Nixon too had been hoping to make a trip to the Soviet Union. He had already done a great deal of international travel. Much of it was arduous and demanding, as when he traveled 18,000 miles across Africa in the spring of 1957. Some of his travels caused embarrassment, especially his ill-fated eight-nation tour of Latin America in 1958. In most of the nations he visited on that trip, Nixon met with loud opposition, placards, and stone-throwing protestors. In Caracas, Venezuela, his motorcade was attacked by an angry mob wielding lead pipes and stones. Nonetheless such journeys raised Nixon’s international profile. Burnishing his credentials for his 1960 presidential run, he thought a trip to Moscow could help him look like a world statesman.22
The opening of the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow, slated for midsummer 1959, provided the perfect occasion for Nixon to visit. A common feature of international cultural diplomacy of the 1950s, such exhibitions served as public advertisements for the commercial and technical achievements of the given nation. The Soviet Union was set to open a major display of its own scientific prowess in June in New York City. Nixon saw his opportunity. On April 4, 1959, he discussed the idea of going to Moscow with Foster Dulles as he sat by his bedside in Walter Reed. Dulles gave the trip his blessing, and the president approved as well. Two weeks later Eisenhower announced that Nixon would lead a delegation to the USSR to cut the ribbon of the American exhibition. Nixon spent the spring and summer preparing for his trip, devouring briefing books, meeting with officials across Washington, seeking insight from men like Hubert Humphrey, Averell Harriman, and Harold Macmillan, all of whom had recently met with Khrushchev. He was determined to make his encounter with Khrushchev a personal success.23
It soon became clear, though, that Eisenhower did not want to delegate the role of globe-trotting statesman to his vice president. Well before Nixon left for his trip, Eisenhower began to plan an exchange of visits with Khrushchev. Dulles had long opposed any such personal diplomacy, on the grounds that a meeting with Khrushchev would help the Soviets more than the United States. But Dulles was no longer by Ike’s side, cautioning him about the perils of appeasement. In mid-June Eisenhower discussed with his advisers, and with the British ambassador, the tendering of an invitation to Khrushchev to come to the United States. On July 8 Ike told Christian Herter that “if we are ever to break the log jam” with the Soviets, an exchange of visits might do the trick. “We would like to negotiate” with the USSR, Ike insisted, but not “with a gun pointed at our head.” Herter, less cautious and suspicious than Dulles, cheered the plan. “There is a feeling worldwide,” he stated, “that no one in the world other than President Eisenhower would have so much influence” in reaching for world peace.24
At the president’s direction the senior staff now prepared a confidential invitation to Khrushchev. Robert Murphy, the veteran diplomat, approached Frol Kozlov, the Soviet deputy prime minister, who was in New York to preside over the Soviet exhibition, and asked him to convey a message to Khrushchev “in the strictest confidence.” Murphy passed Kozlov a sealed envelope containing an invitation from Eisenhower. The visit, Eisenhower wrote, would be merely a personal discussion—not a negotiation—at the presidential retreat, Camp David, and could include a tour of the United States. The president expressed his hope that such a meeting would breathe new life into the ongoing discussions over Germany and arms control and pave the way to a larger summit of world leaders. Khrushchev received the invitation with “joy,”
according to his son Sergei. He was flattered; he also saw the political advantages of being treated as an equal of the United States.25
On July 21, the day before Nixon departed on his journey to Moscow, the Soviet ambassador brought to the White House Khrushchev’s eager reply. He accepted the invitation and returned the compliment by asking Eisenhower to be his guest in the Soviet Union. They agreed to keep the invitations quiet until after Nixon had completed his trip. Eisenhower and Khrushchev, each in his own way, needed this high-profile meeting of Great Power leaders. It would augment their personal prestige, ease the cold war, and quite possibly cement their respective legacies. By the time Nixon landed in Moscow on July 23, 1959, for his tour of the USSR, his trip had become little more than a curtain-raiser for the historic Khrushchev-Eisenhower encounter.26
Nixon made the most of his moment on the world stage. He first met with Khrushchev in the Kremlin on July 24, where the Soviet leader began their conversation by vehemently criticizing the passage by Congress of a law proclaiming the third week in July “Captive Nations Week,” a piece of cold war posturing that denounced the Soviet subjugation of Eastern Europe and the suppression of religious and political freedom. Nixon tried to explain that Congress was independent of the Executive, but Khrushchev saw the resolution as provocative propaganda. Khrushchev remained in an argumentative mood for most of the 10-day visit. When Nixon toured the American exhibit in Moscow with Khrushchev at his side, the two men held an impromptu exchange in front of a new American video camera that caught the leaders on tape. They also engaged in a boastful “debate” about the standard of living in their two countries as they stood in front of a model American kitchen, assessing the latest appliances. On a memorable trip down the Moscow River on a 25-foot motor launch, Khrushchev mocked Nixon’s assertion that the people of the communist bloc lived under slavery by shouting to startled picnickers and bathers, “Are you captives? Are you slaves?” He roared with laughter as they replied “Nyet, nyet!” Nixon duly reported back to Eisenhower the details of his visit, which, he wrote with Nixonian embellishment, “can only be described as an extraordinary experience.”27
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