IN THE CIA’S inside language, closed societies were hard targets for the purposes of intelligence collection. Within the Soviet Union the Kremlin itself was the hardest target of all. At an off-the-record dinner with several journalists on November 18, Allen Dulles mentioned being puzzled at the public attacks on Bulganin that the agency was picking up in Moscow. Other than that, Dulles knew nothing about the struggle that was going on over the shape of Berlin policy or his opposite number’s future at the KGB.44 But because he assumed that Khrushchev would not risk war to get the Western powers out of West Berlin, the CIA chief was not too worried. James Reston, who attended the select gathering for the New York Times, noted that the key to Dulles’s lack of concern was the belief that “the Communists knew that a serious effort to block our traffic into West Berlin would merely unite the West and lead to trouble for the Communists.”45
The three key Western ambassadors in Moscow shared the CIA director’s view that Khrushchev was completely in charge of Berlin policy, though they were less sanguine about how far he would go. In the days following Khrushchev’s speech, the recently arrived U.S. ambassador, Llewellyn Thompson; the British ambassador, Sir Patrick Reilly; and the French ambassador, Maurice Dejean, shared notes on what they thought was happening. They had no idea that Mikoyan was working behind the scenes to undo the damage of Khrushchev’s pledge to junk the Potsdam Accord. What they did understand were the pressures behind Khrushchev’s outburst. At the very minimum, Khrushchev wanted to bolster the status of the GDR “in the face of the growing strength of the Federal Republic.”46 His major aim was to force a high-level summit where “re-unification, if discussed at all, would be discussed on his terms.” London shared the view of the ambassadors. For good measure, the analysts at the British Foreign Office correctly surmised the role of the nuclear debate in altering Soviet assumptions about the near-term consequences of their German strategy. “The prospect of nuclear armament of the Federal Republic was,” British diplomats informed their prime minister, “what may be giving a sense of urgency to Khrushchev’s effort at loosening the Western hold on the Federal Republic.”47
THE NEXT PRESIDIUM meeting on November 20 brought a qualified victory for Mikoyan over Khrushchev. The fragmentary records that we have of this meeting barely hint at how Mikoyan rallied the group to derail Khrushchev’s ten-day-old Berlin policy.48 In the days before the meeting Mikoyan appears to have used the issues of the treatment of Bulganin and the future of Serov to enlist the support of Mikhail Suslov and Yekaterina Furseva for a reappraisal of Khrushchev’s recent handling of the German question. Once the meeting started, Khrushchev unexpectedly found himself having to defend Serov and the recent public campaign against Marshal Bulganin.
With Khrushchev caught off guard by this criticism, Mikoyan moved to reconsider the Berlin policy. He later recalled dominating the proceedings by giving a long speech on the need to uphold the Potsdam Agreement.49 As a result, the “plan” that the Foreign Ministry had worked out in connection with the rash promise in Khrushchev’s Polish speech was voted down by the Kremlin.
Khrushchev’s proposal for unilaterally ending the Potsdam Accord was dead. And now there was nothing to replace it. As of November 20, despite public statements by Khrushchev and a promise to the Poles that the Potsdam Accord was over, the Soviet Union had to scramble to decide what it would be saying to the West and to the East Germans when asked what its new policy was.
Within hours of the Presidium meeting, Gromyko and his Germanists conceived a two-pronged approach to replace the Khrushchevite diktat on Potsdam.50 First, the Foreign Ministry would work on a new note to the Western powers that indicated both continued Soviet support for the Potsdam settlement and Khrushchev’s demand for change in the status of West Berlin and in the relationship between the occupying powers and the two German successor states. Second, the men decided to see what a back channel approach to Adenauer might bring.51 Despite mounting evidence that the old fox had deceived them on the nuclear issue, Soviet foreign policy specialists believed that perhaps something could be achieved by communicating privately with the West Germans. Older members of the Foreign Ministry recalled the years of cooperation between the Soviet Union and Germany in the 1920s. Although this was by no means Khrushchev’s or Ulbricht’s goal, there was still some belief in the ministry in the possibility of one day achieving a unified, neutral, possibly Communist Germany. At the very least it was hoped that by evoking that goal of a neutral Germany, Soviet officials might prod the West Germans into finding a way out of the Berlin deadlock. Before the day was out, Gromyko recommended to the Kremlin that the Austrians be used to pass a special message in this spirit to the West German ambassador, Hans Kroll.52 It is unclear if Khrushchev knew who Kroll was at that point, but that ignorance would not last long.
BORN IN 1898 in Deutsch-Piekar, Hans Kroll grew up in a small town a mile away from the border between Wilhelmine Germany and Imperial Russia. As a young boy he fished on the river that divided the two empires. The first words of Russian he learned were shouted by fishermen on the other shore. Years later Kroll recounted these boyhood memories to explain the almost mystical concept of Russia that he developed early on and the drive that led him to learn as much about that country as he could.53
Kroll joined the German Foreign Ministry in the difficult years after the defeat in World War I. He himself had been badly wounded fighting the Allies in France. After his recovery he worked for the commission that oversaw the plebiscite in his native province of Upper Silesia, which would determine whether it would join the newly independent Poland or stay with the much-diminished Germany created by the Versailles Treaty. Despite a majority vote for staying with Germany, the people of Kroll’s province were forced by the victorious great powers to accept a division of their region. The experience traumatized the young Kroll. “This was a clear breach of a promise,” he wrote, “an offensive deceit of the population of that area and a mockery of self-determination.”54 It also propelled him into the German foreign service, where at twenty-two he became the youngest attaché. Three years later Kroll was sent to the German Embassy in Moscow.
He served two years in Moscow in the 1920s and soon acquired a solid command of Russian, working with Russians and Volga Germans as a representative of the German Foreign ministry’s foreign trade division. These were the years of the Rapallo Agreement. In 1923 the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union had signed treaties establishing cooperation. Both pariahs of the international system, the countries saw value in very close cooperation, despite differences in political ideology. Germany was eager to circumvent the restrictions on the size of its military established by the Versailles Treaty, while Moscow was interested in expanding trade. Even though a very junior diplomat, Kroll was invited to witness the lively discussions between the German ambassador and the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, many of whom spoke German. Despite the worldliness of some of the Bolsheviks, the differences in outlook between Moscow and Berlin meant that this was not an easy relationship. Nevertheless, Kroll came to understand the advantages for Germany of a good relationship with the East. This sense of the value of an Eastern policy never left him. Thirty years later it drew the attention of Konrad Adenauer, who thought that Bonn needed in Moscow a representative who spoke Russian and might also have the ability to get the Soviet leadership to speak frankly.
ALTHOUGH NOT in formal session, the Presidium chiefs approved the Foreign Ministry’s suggestions of drafting a new note to the other occupying powers and making the secret approach to the West Germans through the Austrians.55 On November 22 Gromyko went himself to the Austrian ambassador, Baron Nicholas von Bischoff, to ask this special favor. He wanted the Austrian to understand that Moscow doubted the West Germans would interpret a direct approach as anything other than propaganda in these tense times. As an alternative, the Kremlin hoped to use Bischoff, who was a “respected channel.” Gromyko asked that the question, Why is West Germany taking nuclear weapons from the
United States? be the first that Bischoff put to Kroll. The Austrian was also to raise the issue of West Germany’s unwillingness to have relations with East Germany. Finally, Gromyko pressed on Bischoff the most important message he had. “Convey to your colleague the West German ambassador,” said the Soviet note that Bischoff was handed to read confidentially, “that the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany could lead to the resolution of the entire German problem.” Bischoff said he would carry out this service. Promising not to inform his embassy or anyone else, Baron von Bischoff wasted no time in contacting Hans Kroll.56
A couple of hours later the two were having lunch together. Bischoff reported to his German colleague what the Soviet foreign minister had told him. He even exceeded the Soviets’ instructions. He had prepared a personal handwritten note, which he handed Kroll, beseeching Bonn to take advantage of this opportunity for direct negotiations with Moscow to prevent a conflict in the heart of Europe. Kroll agreed that a peace treaty with Moscow was “the first step” that would open the way to future moves toward peace and stability in Central Europe. He promised to fight “like a lion” for a German peace treaty. However, he did not indicate any divergence of opinion from that of his government. Instead he believed that the West German position on having the four powers settle the issue first was already quite nuanced in that it allowed for East and West German “experts” to participate in any peace commission. It was Kroll’s personal view that these experts would interact and thereby create the bases for reunification.57
As Gromyko’s initiative was working its way to Adenauer, the Soviet Foreign Ministry put finishing touches on the new diplomatic note. Neither Khrushchev nor Mikoyan got all that he had hoped for, as the note reflected a position in the middle of their divergent opinions. Potsdam was put on life support, rather than executed. Although the West would be told that Moscow considered the occupation zones null and void, Moscow promised to wait six months, until late May, before acting on this situation unilaterally. It is hard to imagine an ultimatum as a compromise position for any government, but this is what the Kremlin was left with after Khrushchev’s initial proposal for a more radical approach had been rejected.
The most significant change was not in the timetable for action. It was in the new proposal that Moscow would make on the future of West Berlin, something that Khrushchev had originally intended to leave to the East Germans. The new diplomatic note proposed that with the ending of the occupation regime West Berlin become a demilitarized free city, in effect a city-state linked neither to NATO nor to the Warsaw Pact. Free cities did not have a tradition of lasting very long before being gobbled up by their neighbors. This had been the fate of prewar Danzig and postwar Trieste. But the Soviet Foreign Ministry came to believe that this proposal would satisfy the Western commitment to a non-Communist West Berlin while assuring that NATO forces would have to leave the city.
Khrushchev probably had a hand in drafting the free city proposal as the Foreign Ministry was scrambling to create a new German policy. A former Soviet diplomat later claimed to have witnessed the meeting in the second half of November at which Khrushchev unveiled his idea. Characteristically Gromyko was about to read a draft diplomatic note when Khrushchev stopped him cold. “This doesn’t matter,” intoned the Soviet leader, “listen to what I have to say—the stenographer is taking notes. If it coincides with what you have written there—good—and if not, throw your notes into the waste basket.” He then outlined his free city idea. When he came to the end, he was so pleased with himself that he slapped his knee and exclaimed, “Ha, they will really be thrown in the West, they will say, Khrushchev, that son of a bitch, has now thought up a ‘free city.’”58 Whether this anecdote is accurate or not, Khrushchev immediately embraced the idea of proposing a free city of West Berlin. He was convinced that the West would view this as a serious concession to its interests.59
It is even more likely that Khrushchev was directly involved in the decision to limit the ultimatum to six months, rather than a year or longer. He was certainly keeping an eye on the progress of Operation Atom as he reluctantly put his stamp on the revised diplomatic strategy for Germany. Sometime in late November or early December Soviet missile troops, members of the Seventy-second Engineering Brigade, were transported to the bases north of Berlin. The missiles themselves were not yet in East Germany, but they and the nuclear warheads were expected to arrive early in the new year. The entire complex, which was to include twelve R-5m missiles with three-hundred-kiloton nuclear warheads, would be operational by May 1959.60
There is good reason to believe the Presidium never formally reconsidered Operation Atom in light of the debate over Khrushchev’s German strategy. Malin, who later noted with care the decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, left no record of any Presidium discussion of this deployment in November or December 1958. Nor has evidence of a Presidium resolution to proceed with the missile deployment turned up in the top secret Kremlin files for Berlin in 1958. Historian Hope Harrison, the preeminent scholar of Soviet-East German relations, could not find any evidence in East German files of this deployment or that Ulbricht was ever told about it.61 The deployment proceeded along the lines of the 1955 decision, which assumed the Soviet Union did not require East German approval because of its occupation rights.
In 1958 the Operation Atom deployment reflected Khrushchev’s thinking about the political role of nuclear weapons. A year earlier he had revealed to his colleagues a curious belief in the possibility of using threat to achieve peace. In an otherwise gray discussion of a Soviet disarmament proposal, he had used an odd turn of phrase to explain why the tougher the proposal, the better. “The purpose,” he said “is to give a rebuff, to steer to détente.”62 For most statesmen, the concepts of rebuff and détente were mutually exclusive. Not for Khrushchev. This was peasant logic. Scare your opponent enough, and he will give you what you want. As Khrushchev gave his preliminary approval to offering the free city concept as a concession to the West, he understood that the Soviet military was prepared for a tough standoff if diplomacy failed.
The Presidium did not wait to hear from Ambassador Kroll or Chancellor Adenauer directly before approving the new note with the reference to a free city of Berlin on November 24.63 It had been two weeks since Khrushchev had vowed to announce a new policy, and there was a sense that something had to be sent to the West. Approval of the note meant that Mikoyan and Gromyko had bought some time for diplomacy. The goal of these negotiations was first to create a free state of West Berlin, which would be demilitarized and guaranteed by the United Nations. Eventually West and East Germany might be able to draw this city-state into a loose confederation that would allow each of the components to retain its existing political character.
The unintended consequence of this policy compromise was that it left the Soviets in a much weaker position than they had been when they used pressure tactics to keep the Turks out of Syria in 1957 or the Anglo-Americans out of Iraq just four months before. Those threats had been designed to deter immediate military intervention altogether. Here the Soviets were attempting to use the threat of action in six months to compel the West to make concessions to Soviet power right now. If the Western allies sat still, the Soviets faced an unpleasant choice between taking military action themselves or backing down.
The note, ultimately sent on November 27, was the unloved product of a Kremlin power struggle, the result of a disagreement between Mikoyan and Khrushchev over the appropriate risks to take to force the West to accept Khrushchev’s conception of an acceptable German settlement. This hastily conceived compromise strategy proved to be a major burden for the Soviets in the coming years.
Word of the dramatic meeting on November 24 eventually leaked out to Marshal Bulganin, who was no longer permitted to attend. He knew of Mikoyan’s opposition to Khrushchev’s rash Berlin initiative and of course was sympathetic to Mikoyan’s position on his own status in the Soviet hierarchy. Seeing Mikoyan in the corridors after th
e meeting, Bulganin called out, “You won!”64
EISENHOWER WAS BRIEFED on the Soviet note only a few hours after it was received by his ambassador in Moscow. It was the morning of November 27, and the president was relaxing at his farm near the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He took the news calmly. It was really much better than he had expected. Three days earlier Secretary of State Dulles had reported high tension in military circles in Washington. “[E]veryone is stirred up,” he wrote, “the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] want to do something fast and quick and [General Lauris] Norstad wants us to fight our way through.”65 The Pentagon had feared that Khrushchev’s next step would be action, a more forceful version of the Babelsberg incident on November 14. Although there was a deadline, this new diplomatic note spoke of negotiations. After the briefing Eisenhower called Dulles and received the good news that the British had also steadied their nerves. The prime minister had repudiated a think piece that had been circulating in the British Foreign Office after the Babelsberg incident that called for early recognition of the German Democratic Republic. The memo had come to the attention of the Americans and worried them almost as much as the uncertainty of Khrushchev’s next move.66
As for Khrushchev’s suggestion of turning West Berlin into a free city, Eisenhower told the secretary of state that he was not opposed to the concept in principle so long as it applied to all of Berlin, including the Soviet sector, which was now the capital of the German Democratic Republic. Eisenhower didn’t say it, but he assumed Ulbricht and Khrushchev would never agree to that. Dulles shared the presidential calm. Neither man thought that any emergency action was required. Khrushchev had given the allies six months. The tension might eat away at him as much as it would them.67
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