A Thousand Days

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

  This meant that the United States would not give way and, if the Soviet Union persisted in its determination to destroy the freedom of West Berlin, we would be prepared to go to war, even to nuclear war. But, while Kennedy wanted to make this resolve absolutely clear to Moscow, he wanted to make it equally clear that we were not, as he once put it to me, “war-mad.” He did not wish to drive the crisis beyond the point of no return; and therefore, while reiterating our refusal to retreat, he rejected the program of national mobilization and sought the beginnings of careful negotiation. Ted Sorensen now prepared a draft for a Berlin speech along these lines, and Kennedy began to work it over. Then on the night of July 25 television cables were installed in the presidential office, and the President made his report to the people.

  “We cannot and will not permit the Communists,” Kennedy said, “to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force.” To be ready for any contingency, he would seek an additional $3.25 billion for the defense budget, call up certain reserve and National Guard units, procure new weapons and enlarge the program of civil defense. But, if our military posture had to be defensive, “our diplomatic posture need not be. . . . We do not intend to leave it to others to choose and monopolize the forum and the framework of discussion. We do not intend to abandon our duty to mankind to seek a peaceful solution.” We recognize, Kennedy said, the historical Russian concern about Central and Eastern Europe, and “we are willing to consider any arrangement or treaty in Germany consistent with the maintenance of peace and freedom, and with the legitimate security interests of all nations.” We were determined to search for peace “in formal or informal meetings. We do not want military considerations to dominate the thinking of either East or West. . . . In the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history.”

  The White House group rejoiced at the speech. But for some reason the press, playing up the military points and almost ignoring the passages about negotiation, made it appear a triumph for the hard line. In Russia Khrushchev read it, or affected to read it, in the same way. He happened at the moment to be at Sochi conferring with John J. McCloy about disarmament. On the day before the speech, he was in a jolly mood, comparing the exchange of diplomatic notes to kicking a football back and forth and adding that this would probably continue until a treaty was signed and the Soviet Union kicked a different kind of ball. The next day he told McCloy emotionally that the United States had declared preliminary war on the Soviet Union. It had presented an ultimatum and clearly intended hostilities. This confirmed, Khrushchev said, the thesis of his January speech that the capitalist world had lost confidence in its capacity to triumph by peaceful means. The President, he added, seemed a reasonable young man, filled with energy and doubtless wishing to display that energy; but, if war occurred, he would be the last President. However, Khrushchev concluded, he still believed in the President’s good sense. After thunderstorms, people cooled off, thought problems over and resumed human shape.

  The storms were apparently not quite over when Khrushchev replied in a televised broadcast on August 7. Though his tone was considerably higher-pitched than Kennedy’s, the two speeches none the less bore curious resemblances of the sort which led the President later to invoke the mirror metaphor in discussing Soviet pronouncements. Like Kennedy, Khrushchev was unyielding on his basic position. Like Kennedy, he talked about calling up reservists. Like Kennedy, he mused about the perils of nuclear war. Like Kennedy, he asked his adversaries to meet round the conference table, clear the atmosphere, “rely on reason and not on the power of thermonuclear weapons.”

  And so the crisis grew in the first weeks of August. Kennedy, having launched his military build-up, now tried to set his diplomatic offensive in motion. He had been pressing the State Department to prepare negotiating positions ever since the Hyannis Port meeting, but it was uphill work. This was in part because of the very genuine intellectual difficulty of devising a proposal. One day Dean Acheson, after hearing Chayes present the case for negotiation, challenged him to come up with a concrete formula: “You’ll find, Abe, that it just won’t write.” Now Acheson himself, in response to the President’s request, made his own recommendations. He suggested that the western foreign ministers be called together at the end of August to concert a stand. This could be followed by negotiations with the Soviet Union after the West German elections in September and lead to a four-power foreign ministers’ meeting after the 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in October. As for the content of our negotiating position, Acheson offered in effect a dressed-up version of the status quo.

  Acheson’s ideas were more helpful with regard to procedure than to substance. Moreover, his star was beginning to wane. He had disapproved of the conciliatory passages in the President’s speeches, and some of his characteristically slashing comments had got back to Kennedy, who regretted them, not because they were critical, but because he did not feel, any more than he had after the Bay of Pigs, that those involved in decisions should make their criticisms public. As for Acheson’s timetable, even this seemed a little slow. Bundy, McNamara and Maxwell Taylor all thought that the meeting of western foreign ministers should take place as soon as possible; and Kennedy agreed.

  Early in August, Rusk went to Paris to work out a negotiating strategy with his three western counterparts. The hope was to find enough agreement to justify inviting the Soviet Union to a four-power conference. The British wanted this, and the West Germans were more receptive than anticipated. But the Americans still had no solid position to propose, and the French remained flatly hostile to the whole idea. De Gaulle soon wrote to Kennedy that the opening of negotiations would be considered immediately as a prelude to the abandonment, at least gradually, of Berlin and as a sort of notice of our surrender. The Paris gathering consequently broke up without result. One wonders whether, if it had produced an invitation to Moscow to discuss the crisis, the Russians would have dared carry through the drastic action they were preparing for the next weekend.

  4. THE WALL

  For the Berlin crisis was having its most spectacular effect in East Germany itself. The refugee exodus was growing every day; over thirty thousand fled to West Berlin in July alone. Toward the end of the month the East German regime imposed new measures intended to restrict the flight, but the effect was only to increase it. Escape was fast becoming an obsession.

  Remembering 1953, our embassy in Bonn began to report the possibility of a popular uprising in East Germany. In Washington a few people began to speculate about further communist countermeasures. Richard Rovere wrote in The New Yorker that Khrushchev had “the means at hand for ending the largest of his problems with West Berlin; the flow of refugees could be sealed off at any time.” In a television interview on July 30 Senator Fulbright remarked, “I don’t understand why the East Germans don’t close their border because I think they have a right to close it.” Early in August the President, strolling with Walt Rostow along the colonnade by the Rose Garden, observed that Khrushchev would have to do something internally to re-establish control over the situation—and that, if he did, we would not be able to do a thing about it. Eastern Europe was a vital interest for Khrushchev, and he could not stand by and let it trickle away. But it was not a vital interest for the United States. “I can get the alliance to move if he tries to do anything about West Berlin but not if he just does something about East Berlin.”

  On August 13, a few minutes after midnight, East German troops and police occupied most of the crossing-points on the East Berlin side of the dividing line, tore up the streets and installed roadblocks and barbed-wire barricades. Despite the presidential and other anticipations, the action caught the State Department and the CIA by surprise; evidently the test-of-will thesis had diverted attention too long from the local problems of East Germany. And it was at first hard to decide what the action meant. For—contrary to t
he later impression that on August 13 the East Germans built overnight a great wall, which the allies, if they had had any guts, should have promptly bulldozed down—a number of crossing-points remained open, the construction of a concrete wall did not begin till August 17, and movement between the sectors continued for several days after that. For all Washington could tell on the thirteenth, the intention might have been to control rather than to end the refugee flow; and this hardly was a reason for invading the eastern sector and thereby inviting retaliation and risking war.

  Yet the possibility remained that the intention might be far more sinister: that the Wall might represent the unfolding of an unalterable Soviet plan, based on a conviction of American irresolution, to drive the west out of Berlin. Kennedy, remarking that there was one chance out of five of a nuclear exchange, instantly mobilized the resources of government. These were grim days and nights. The Berlin Task Force went into continuous session. Rejecting some countermeasures, like cutting off interzonal trade, as too drastic and others, like changing the system of interzonal passes, as too trivial, it reached the somewhat impotent conclusion that accelerating the military build-up in the United States was the most effective response. The Task Force also drafted a formal protest. But it took four days—four interminable days so far as West Berlin was concerned—before the protest was delivered in Moscow.

  The apparent American passivity not unnaturally alarmed the West Berliners; and on August 16 Mayor Willy Brandt wrote Kennedy condemning the feeble western reaction and proposing a series of more stringent responses. He did not, however, suggest anything like the dispatch of troops into East Berlin to dismantle the barriers. Kennedy replied that the “brutal border closing” represented a Soviet decision which only war could reverse and that no one had supposed “that we should go to war on this point.” Nonetheless, Brandt’s letter, reinforced by cables from our Minister in Berlin, made it clear that some American reaction more specific than the general military build-up was necessary to sustain the morale of West Berlin. Kennedy therefore decided to send Vice-President Johnson to carry his answer to Brandt and at the same time to signify to the Russians that Berlin was an ultimate American commitment. He also ordered a battle group of 1500 men to move from West Germany to West Berlin.

  Adenauer in the meantime, except for political speeches in preparation for the September election, was relatively quiet. He did not even visit West Berlin, and, however bold he became as the situation receded, he did not at the time propose any form of direct action against the Wall. Publicly he emphasized that Bonn and the allies stood together and referred vaguely to a possible NATO embargo of the communist bloc. This was apparently campaign oratory; Bonn’s representatives never advanced the blockade as a formal proposal before the inter-allied bodies capable of recommending such action. Indeed, in the midst of the clamor, Adenauer held an affable and well-publicized conversation with Andrei Smirnov, the Soviet Ambassador, and even, in an evident effort to discourage uprisings in the Democratic Republic, cautioned the East Germans “not to undertake anything that could only worsen the situation and not make it better.” When the Vice-President stopped off at Bonn, the Chancellor pointed out to him that the only sign in the crowd inscribed “Action, Not Words” was borne by an old woman with whom, he said, he would personally wish neither. While he did write Kennedy on August 29 declaring that acquiescence in future acts of communist force in the manner of August 13 would be “out of the question,” he did not record even at this point basic disagreement with western policy toward the Wall. In subsequent messages to Kennedy, both Adenauer and Brandt urged the west to move more speedily toward negotiations with the Soviet Union.

  Though Johnson is said to have felt a little gloomy over the prospect of going to West Berlin, he performed his mission superbly. His speech, with its invocation of the Declaration of Independence and its pledge of American lives, fortunes and sacred honor, was cleared personally by the President. Johnson delivered it with genuine and convincing emotion. There was a weekend of anxiety in Washington while the 1st Battle Group, 8th Infantry, rolled down the Autobahn to West Berlin. Similar troop movements had often taken place in the past, but no one could be sure that the Russians might not try to stop this one. However, the column proceeded without interference, and the Vice-President greeted the troops when they arrived. Johnson returned deeply moved to Washington. His visit was a turning point in relieving Berlin’s crisis of confidence. Then on August 30 Kennedy appointed as his personal representative in West Berlin General Lucius Clay, remembered from the early postwar days as the great symbol of western protection. These steps, expressing the clear American determination to honor the allied guarantees, revived the spirit of West Berlin.

  The Wall remained, a shabby obscenity straggling across the face of the city. In retrospect it seems to have been a defensive rather than an aggressive action. It represented a solution, at considerable political cost, of the problem which, more perhaps than anything else, had led Khrushchev to reopen the Berlin question earlier in the year. By stanching the blood-flow from East Germany, the Wall secured the most immediate Soviet interest in Berlin. Kennedy’s determination to rebuild the military power of the west had shown Khrushchev that he could not obtain his maximum objectives by bluff. Now the Wall, by achieving his minimum objective, released him from the necessity of forcing the issue to a showdown.

  5. THE CRISIS FADES AWAY

  This was not, however, fully perceived at the time. It is hard now to recall the forebodings of the late summer of 1961, to evoke again the pessimism that shrouded the government. George Kennan came back from Belgrade for a few days early in August. “I am expendable, I have no further official career, and I am going to do everything I can to prevent a war,” he said to me one afternoon with great earnestness. “. . . We both know how tenuous a relation there is between a man’s intentions and the consequences of his acts. There is no presumption more terrifying than that of those who would blow up the world on the basis of their personal judgment of a transient situation. I do not propose to let the future of mankind be settled, or ended, by a group of men operating on the basis of limited perspectives and short-run calculations. I figure that the only thing I have left in life is to do everything I can to stop the war.”

  These were strange, moody days. Khrushchev told Drew Pearson of his admiration for John Foster Dulles, and this seemed to portend new Soviet experiments in brinksmanship. The Wall was followed on August 24 by an angry Soviet note accusing the west of using the air corridors to import “revanchists, extremists, saboteurs and spies” into Berlin and on August 30 by the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing (in the face of Khrushchev’s statement to Kennedy at Vienna that he would not test until we did). When Rusk commented to the President on September 5 that Moscow was showing little interest in negotiation, Kennedy replied grimly, “It isn’t time yet. It’s too early. They are bent on scaring the world to death before they begin negotiating, and they haven’t quite brought the pot to boil. Not enough people are frightened.” In this atmosphere, I found myself writing friends abroad, “I feel more gloomy about international developments than I have felt since the summer of 1939.”

  Given this apparent Soviet desperation, the White House group regarded it as more urgent than ever to speed the military build-up and at the same time to exhaust every diplomatic recourse before Armageddon. On August 14, the day after the first crossing-points were closed, Bundy reported to the President unanimity in his immediate staff for the view that we should take a clear initiative for negotiation within the next week or ten days. The possibility of a revolt in East Germany constituted a further argument for seizing the initiative. The State Department, he added, was more cautious about American action, preferring to keep things within the four-power process. Bundy, doubting whether new ideas would come out of the four-power discussions and noting that we were making very slow headway toward a clear position, suggested that a public deadline might be the only way to galvanize the lumb
ering machinery into action.

  Rusk now proposed that the foreign ministers coming to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting might work out a time and place; and Kennedy thought this a good plan. But the machinery continued to creak. “I want to take a stronger lead on Berlin negotiations,” Kennedy finally wrote the Secretary on August 21. We must make it plain to our allies that we plan to issue an invitation to negotiations before September 1; they can then come along or stay behind. As for our negotiating position, the Acheson paper was a good start, but more work remained to be done. In this and in succeeding letters and meetings, Kennedy, almost despairingly, threw out a wide variety of specific ideas in the hope of prodding the Department to action.

  In a few days Rusk announced that negotiation with the Soviet Union would definitely take place after the General Assembly convened in mid-September. The problem remained of producing a western, or even an American, position. Rusk wanted to match the Soviet revival of its 1958 position by dusting off the essentials of the western 1959 response—reunification of Berlin and Germany on the basis of free elections, and so on. Obviously each side would reject the other’s cherished formula; then Moscow could sign its separate treaty, the East Germans would begin checking papers on the Autobahn, the American military posture would discourage interference with access, and things would simmer down to tacit agreement on the status quo. Some of us at the White House, on the other hand, clung to the hope of a real negotiation which might lead, we thought, if at the price of hard bargaining with Bonn, to a new status for West Berlin, new guarantees of western presence and access and perhaps a general arrangement for central European security.