by Ted Sorensen
He liked, moreover, the advice cabled from our embassy in Moscow that the Soviet mind was more likely to be impressed by substantial but quiet moves that did not panic our allies. Other Soviet experts also counseled that dramatic gestures would impress the Soviets less than a long-range build-up in our readiness. This was in keeping with Kennedy’s own philosophy: a decision to go all the way can afford to be low-key because it is genuine, while those who loudly flail about are less likely to frighten anyone. Fanfare at an early stage, added his intelligence advisers, would make the Soviets feel compelled to respond with a strong public posture and military measures of their own, and make their negotiating position more rigid.
Gradually the President brought McNamara, Rusk and others around to his view. The Defense Secretary agreed that a more gradual and orderly build-up could be achieved through a quick but quieter Congressional Resolution. On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 19, meeting at 3 P.M. with a small group of us in his living quarters on the second floor of the Mansion, the President put the finishing touches on his plan. After six weeks of intensive meetings, he stated each decision in firm, precise tones. The additional military budget requests would total $3.2 billion rather than $4.3 billion. The Congress would be asked to provide stand-by authority to call up the Reserves, rather than an immediate mobilization. Draft calls would be more than tripled, West Berlin would be readied, Allied agreement on economic sanctions would be sought, a temporary tax increase would be requested (this decision, as previously noted, was later reversed) and no declaration of national emergency would be proclaimed.
The same advisers and the President then met at 4 P.M. in the Cabinet Room with a larger group in a formal National Security Council session. The decisions just concluded were “decided” for the record. Acheson questioned caustically the changes in his recommendations; and to the delight of the President—who enjoyed an articulate clash—Secretary McNamara, who had been finally converted to these changes only the previous day, undertook their defense with equal fervor.
The President also decided, contrary to Acheson’s paper and the initially prevailing view among his advisers, that the West should “lean forward” on negotiations. Here again some of the Kremlinologists had been influential, suggesting that the Soviets would be impressed by firmness in our negotiating position, not by our staying away from all talks. Acheson counseled that Khrushchev would accept nothing reasonable and would interpret all offers as weakness. The United States, replied the President, cannot leave the diplomatic initiative to a Soviet-sponsored peace conference. “We do not intend to leave it to others,” he said later, “to choose and monopolize the forum and the framework of discussion.” His hopes for a world-wide propaganda campaign—on “self-determination” for West Berlin and on the contrast between the two Germanys—would surely fail if only the Soviets had a “peaceful” solution. He had no intentions of lulling the West into believing that a meeting at the negotiating table reduced all danger. But he did have hopes of persuading Khrushchev to postpone his treaty as long as alternatives were being actively explored.
Before Khrushchev could be presented with any agreed-upon new ideas, however, the West had to produce some new ideas and agree upon them—and neither had happened by mid-July. Indeed, the difficulty of finding any new ideas which could be sold to all concerned would remain throughout Kennedy’s term. The French were against all negotiations; the British were against risking war without negotiations; and the Germans, as their autumn elections drew nearer, were against both of these positions and seemingly everything else. The necessarily generalized passages dealing with diplomatic approaches were thus the weakest parts of the President’s July 25 TV address. Nevertheless, by underlining our willingness to talk “with any and all nations that are willing to talk, and listen, with reason”—our willingness “to remove any actual irritants in West Berlin [though] the freedom of that city is not negotiable”—and our willingness to submit the legality of our rights to “international adjudication” and our presence in West Berlin to a free vote among its people, he at least struck in a few moments more positive notes than he had been able to obtain in seven weeks from the American and Allied diplomats. Nevertheless, these were comparatively weak initiatives.
It was not, however, a weak speech. Its delivery was hampered by an overcrowded, overheated office. Its domestic economic references were out of place. Its civil defense references were out of perspective. But its basic message was firm and urgent without resort to threats or fear. I had completed the first draft over the weekend. All day Monday and Tuesday successive drafts were reviewed and revised by the President and his aides. General Taylor suggested the paragraph:
I hear it said that West Berlin is militarily untenable. And so was Bastogne. And so, in fact, was Stalingrad. Any dangerous spot is tenable if men—brave men—will make it so.
Murrow suggested the phrase: “We cannot negotiate with those who say, ‘What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.’” Bundy suggested passages recognizing “the Soviet Union’s historical concerns about their security in Central and Eastern Europe” and the “enormous losses…bravely suffered [by] the Russian people…in the Second World War.” Journalist Max Freedman suggested the basis for an eloquent peroration. I added a sentence used by the President in his July 19 meeting: “We do not want military considerations to dominate the thinking of either East or West.” The State Department added a reminder to our NATO Allies: “The solemn vow each of us gave to West Berlin in time of peace will not be broken in time of danger. If we do not meet our commitments to Berlin, where will we later stand?”
Finally, with all changes and clearances completed and coordinated along the lines of the President’s instructions, I took his reading copy for the 10 P.M. talk over to the Mansion around eight o’ clock. I found the President sitting up in bed, a hot pad behind his back, scribbling out a personal note with which to close.
When I ran for the Presidency of the United States, I knew that this country faced serious challenges, but I could not realize, nor could any man realize who does not bear the burdens of this office, how heavy and constant would be those burdens…. In these days and weeks I ask for your help, and your advice. I ask for your suggestions, when you think we could do better. All of us, I know, love our country, and we shall all do our best to serve it. In meeting my responsibilities in these coming months as President, I need your good will, and your support and, above all, your prayers.
It was a somber close for a somber speech—a speech more somber, in fact, than the American people were accustomed to accept, more somber than any previous Presidential speech in the age of mutual nuclear capabilities. “West Berlin has now become,” he said,
the great testing place of Western courage and will, a focal point where our solemn commitments…and Soviet ambitions now meet in basic confrontation.
We cannot and will not permit the Communists to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force. For the fulfillment of our pledge to that city is essential to the morale and security of Western Germany, to the unity of Western Europe, and to the faith of the entire free world…. It is as secure…as the rest of us, for we cannot separate its safety from our own…We will at all times be ready to talk, if talk will help. But we must also be ready to resist with force, if force is used upon us. Either alone would fail. Together, they can serve the cause of freedom and peace….
To sum it all up: we seek peace, but we shall not surrender. That is the central meaning of this crisis, and the meaning of your government’s policy. With your help, and the help of other free men, this crisis can be surmounted. Freedom can prevail, and peace can endure.
Khrushchev, as he later wrote Kennedy, regarded the speech as belligerent. He had previously increased the Soviet military budget and put on his old uniform to talk loudly about destroying the aggressors. Yet he professed—to John McCloy in a private talk and to Kennedy in their later correspondence—to be angry at the increases in the
American military budget and the reinforcements sent to West Berlin. He called these moves military hysteria. Inwardly he may well have been angry that Kennedy was not backing down, and that the West had failed, as he had also failed, to come forward with any new negotiating proposals. His own prestige had been heavily engaged—by pressures from the East German and other Eastern European regimes to stabilize German frontiers and remove the Berlin “splinter,” and by pressures from the more militant voices within the Communist camp to make good on his vow to “rebuff” those violating East German sovereignty.
Seeking to exploit disunity in the West, Khrushchev that summer had alternated between reasonable and intimidating postures, talking menacingly one day about the “shambles” in which a nuclear war over Berlin would leave Western Europe, suggesting sweetly the next day that token American and Russian troops could stay in West Berlin under a UN solution, then warning on another day that Italian orange groves, Greek olive orchards and the Acropolis would be destroyed if the West forced a war.
In mid-August a crisis within the crisis came dangerously close to the flash point. The Communists had for some years, over Western protest, gradually increased the legal—and in some cases physical—barriers between West and East Berlin, including temporary closings of most crossing points, special traffic and entry permits and a prohibition against West Berliners working in East Berlin. Sensing that they were gradually becoming imprisoned, East Germans and East Berliners poured increasingly across the dividing line between East and West Berlin, the principal hole in the Iron Curtain. By the summer of 1961 some 3.5 million had left their homes and jobs for the refugee centers and airports of West Berlin, draining the already depressed East German economy of its lifeblood and dramatizing to all the world their choice of freedom over Communism. In August, as the fear of war or more repression increased, the daily flow of refugees rose from the hundreds to the thousands. Khrushchev’s response on August 13—due possibly in part to Kennedy’s speech and to De Gaulle’s veto of four-power negotiations, but certainly due primarily to the hemorrhage of East German manpower—was the Wall.
The Berlin Wall—sealing off the border between the two cities with a high, grim barrier of concrete and barbed wire, separating families and friends, keeping East Germans in, free Germans out and Western access to East Berlin on a more limited basis—shocked the free world. Kennedy promptly turned to his aides and allies for advice; but there was little useful they could say in such a situation.
All agreed that the East German regime had long had the power to halt border crossings, was bound to do it sooner or later and had at least done so before the West could be accused of provoking it. All agreed also that the Wall—built on East German territory, the latest and worst in a twenty-three-year-long series of such actions in the Soviet-administered zone—was illegal, immoral and inhumane, but not a cause for war. It ended West Berlin’s role as a showcase and escape route for the East, but it did not interfere with the three basic objectives the West had long stressed: our presence in West Berlin, our access to West Berlin and the freedom of West Berliners to choose their own system. Not one responsible official—in this country, in West Berlin, West Germany or Western Europe—suggested that Allied forces should march into East German territory and tear the Wall down. For the Communists, as General Lucius Clay later pointed out, could have built another, ten or twenty or five hundred yards back, and then another, unless the West was prepared to fight a war over extending its area of vital interest into East Berlin. Nor did any ally or adviser want an excited Western response that might trigger an uprising among the desperate East Berliners—that would only produce another Budapest massacre.
The President was nevertheless convinced that some response was required—not to threaten the Communists for their blatant admission of failure but to restore morale among the shocked and sickened West Berliners. Our contingency plans had been prepared for interference with our access to West Berlin, not emigration from the East. Our intelligence estimates, although recognizing that the Communists would have to control their loss of manpower, had offered no advance warning of this specific move. Kennedy thus had to improvise on his own; and meanwhile crucial time—too much time—went by.
Finally, to test Communist intentions and demonstrate our own, he dispatched an additional contingent of fifteen hundred American troops down the Autobahn, riding in armored trucks through the East German checkpoints to West Berlin. Obviously fifteen hundred more troops could not hold the city against a direct Soviet attack, he said, but “the West Berliners would benefit from a reminder of [our] commitment…at this time,” and the Soviets would recognize the troops as “our hostage to that intent.” It was his most anxious moment during the prolonged Berlin crisis, his first order of American military units into a potential confrontation with Soviet forces. Postponing his usual weekend change of scenery to the Hyannis Port White House, he kept his military aide in constant touch with the convoy’s commander. When the first group of sixty trucks turned unimpeded into West Berlin, he felt that a turning point in the crisis had been reached.
Simultaneously he dispatched Vice President Johnson to address the people of West Berlin, to rally their hope and their will, and to restate this nation’s commitment in the language (personally approved by the President) of our most solemn pledge: “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.”
Accompanying Johnson—and returning to West Berlin shortly thereafter for a prolonged stay as Kennedy’s personal emissary—was retired General Lucius Clay, a hero to West Berliners. Clay had been in command in 1947 when a Soviet land blockade of West Berlin had required a massive Western airlift. A constant spur to Allied effort and a beloved symbol to West Berliners, Clay’s presence was highly valued by the President despite his tendency to be something of an alarmist in his private cables, sometimes hinting he might resign unless his requests were granted. “He’s a conservative Republican doing a good job on a thankless assignment and staying publicly loyal under a Democratic administration,” remarked the President. While he was not always happy with Clay’s failure to distinguish our “vital rights” in West Berlin from our grievances in East Berlin, he nevertheless fully understood the General’s tendency at times to act without waiting for unanimity in his instructions from Washington, General Norstad and Allied representatives in Berlin.
The basic objective of the military, the Johnson and the Clay missions was to rekindle hope in West Berlin. Its spirit had been damaged by the Wall, its role altered, its future as the ultimate capital of a reunited Germany darkened. Khrushchev predicted that it would soon be a dying, withering city. Many Westerners as well saw little prospects of inducing new industry and labor to locate there or even inducing its present residents to remain. Some urged its complete incorporation into West Germany; but Kennedy felt that that would close out all hope of ever reuniting the city, and merely provoke the Soviets into further acts with no real gain for the West. Instead, starting with these three missions, a major effort was made under Walt Rostow to maintain and increase the viability of West Berlin—to enhance its economic, educational and cultural roles—to attract young families, new investments and world understanding. That effort succeeded, and in the years that followed West Berlin not only survived but flourished.
The Wall, however, remained—and it was an ugly source of tension. At one stage Western and Soviet tanks and troops faced each other across the barricade until the Soviets drew back. American tests of our rights to enter East Berlin—and to ignore Red warnings about keeping Westerners one hundred meters away from the Wall in West Berlin—were all successful. But no one knew when either side, convinced that the other would back down, might precipitate a situation from which neither could back down. The Soviet resumption of nuclear testing in September added to the atmosphere of belligerence.
Rapidly building Western ground troop strength (although never to the level desired, because of the failure of our allies to increase their forces proportionately), d
rastically revising the Berlin contingency plans to permit a wider choice of response, the President speculated as to when the great confrontation would come, when a Soviet-German peace treaty would be signed and when a move would be made to cut off access. But the confrontation never came. The December, 1961, deadline passed without any treaty. Slowly, imperceptibly, the tides of crisis receded. From time to time they would rise suddenly again, with an incident at the Wall or on the access routes. The most serious was a deliberate Soviet test in the early months of 1962 on the air corridors from West Germany to West Berlin. Chaff was dropped to upset our radar, Soviet planes buzzed our own, and the Soviets seemed to be trying in every way possible to harass the Alliance into disunity and defeat. But under the revised contingency plans and the cool leadership of General Norstad, all flights proceeded, fighter aircraft were added, and Communist bloc nations were warned that stoppage would bar their planes from NATO countries. In time the intereference ended, and the tides of crisis once more receded.
They receded in part, we must assume, because Khrushchev recognized more clearly that turning access over to the East Germans was a highly dangerous venture—and in part because the ending of East German emigration eased the pressure on him for immediate action. But they also receded because Kennedy finally succeeded in getting his side ready to talk as well as fight, in changing the East-West confrontation to one of words instead of weapons. “Winston Churchill,” observed the President, “said it is better to jaw, jaw than war, war, and we shall continue to jaw, jaw and see if we can produce a useful result…. That [is] the purpose…in calling up 160,000 men [and] adding billions of dollars to our defense budget…not to fight a nuclear war.”