Kennedy intentionally cut Acheson and Vice President Johnson out of the meeting at which he first tried out his decision.27 Once he had built consensus among McNamara, Bundy, Secretary of State Rusk, Treasury Secretary Dillon, Maxwell Taylor, and his brother, the attorney general, he subjected his program to formal approval from the entire National Security Council and Acheson. Although he had the firm support of his inner circle of advisers, this had been a very difficult decision for Kennedy. Since Khrushchev’s challenge at Vienna the world had been watching how he would react. Kennedy, who could be quite a pessimist, sensed that he did not have a lot of political capital either at home or abroad. “There are limits to the number of defeats I can defend in one twelve-month period,” he told his former Harvard tutor John Kenneth Galbraith.28
The administration told the European allies the gist of these decisions before Kennedy gave his speech. On July 20 letters from the president were delivered to Adenauer, de Gaulle, and Macmillan. The next day Rusk, who had flown from Washington to Paris, met with the French, British, and West German foreign ministers to discuss what Kennedy intended to do. The White House had not consulted with the Western Europeans before Kennedy made up his mind, but Washington wanted the Europeans to be willing to assist in the crisis that the Americans expected.
AS WASHINGTON debated its response to the Soviet ultimatum, Khrushchev headed south for his annual vacation at Pitsunda to think about his next step in the Berlin chess match. “[H]ere I work more fruitfully,” Khrushchev wrote, “because my attention is not diverted to routine matters of which I have plenty…. Here I can concentrate on the main things.”29 Hisdacha had been built with the leader’s comfort in mind. From its large windows and three balconies, he enjoyed a magnificent view of the Black Sea.30 To allow the portly Khrushchev a little exercise, a pool, a luxury practically unheard of in the country, was set next to the house.
By mid-July, however, there was little tranquility for him to find at this beautiful place. Most unsettling were the reports on the ever-increasing number of East Germans fleeing their country through West Berlin.31 In the first six months of the year a hundred thousand had left, twenty thousand of them in June alone. Since his ultimatum speeches of late June and early July, the numbers had become even more dramatic.32 The flow of East German refugees to West Berlin was now the heaviest it had been since October 1955. As Khrushchev had said to the Presidium in May, he knew that a disproportionate number were professionals, who would be difficult to replace.33 Even harder for him was the fact that these people were seeking better lives in the West because the standard of living in the GDR could not yet compete.34 “The question of whether this or that system is progressive ought to be decided in political terms,” said Khrushchev. “However, many people decide it in the pit of their stomach.”35
The news that reached the Soviet leader at Pitsunda from the United States was no more encouraging. Kennedy’s formal response to the Soviet aide-mémoire on Berlin finally arrived on July 18 and was a major disappointment. Calling the Soviet effort “a document which speaks of peace but threatens to disturb it,” the president in a message accompanying the U.S. response advised Khrushchev to reconsider the West’s proposals of 1959, which included free elections for a unified greater Berlin.36 There was no suggestion of negotiations or bold new offers. Washington instead called on the Kremlin “to reconsider its course.”
Around the third week of July intelligence reports that reached Khrushchev reinforced the impression that the White House was girding for a protracted crisis. Khrushchev later said that the most influential was one that predicted Washington intended to take advantage of the situation in East Germany. In 1953 the Eisenhower administration had declined to intervene to help the rioters in East Berlin who had launched a short-lived revolt against the East German regime. But Khrushchev, who was unsure that Kennedy really controlled his own government, gave credence to the possibility that this U.S. government might not be as cautious.37
From his protégé Aleksandr Shelepin, the chief of the KGB, Khrushchev learned on July 20 that NATO was preparing to deal with the Berlin matter as a military problem. Soviet sources in some Western European governments were reporting that NATO was united in its determination to prevent Moscow from signing a peace treaty with East Germany that would affect access rights to West Berlin. The KGB predicted that if Khrushchev went ahead with his plan, the West would “be ready to take steps that could threaten the security of the Soviet Union.” Evidence had reached Moscow of serious Western military planning to counter any attempt to isolate West Berlin. There was also intelligence indicating plans for political, economic, and other nonmilitary sanctions to put pressure on Moscow to desist.38
Khrushchev may have also received hints of the conventional buildup that Kennedy had outlined in his letters to the big three European leaders or that Rusk discussed in Paris with the foreign secretaries. Soviet penetration of those governments was impressive in the early 1960s. In May, for example, the Kremlin had received copies of papers delivered by the French government to NATO that outlined the various countries’ positions on the Berlin question.39 Similarly Presidium members were able to read copies of the West German ambassador’s correspondence with Bonn.40
Confronted with the rigid U.S. aide-mémoire and the related intelligence, Khrushchev decided that he would have to prepare for a much longer and tougher confrontation than anticipated. He had already canceled some military leaves and reapportioned funds to his Defense Ministry, but the situation in East Germany needed immediate attention. Ulbricht’s regime already seemed to be cracking under strain of this crisis, and now it seemed the international tension would probably last through the end of the year.
Khrushchev decided to build a wall through the center of Berlin. This was in part a reaction to a suggestion from Ulbricht. On the eve of the Vienna summit the East Germans had communicated to Moscow that their immediate objective was to close the sectoral border through which so many East Germans were fleeing. This was more important to them in 1961 than a peace treaty.41 Khrushchev had long understood that this would have to be part of the peace agreement, but he was hesitant to proceed with this step before exhausting his negotiating strategy. He knew that a Berlin wall would be viewed as a provocation by the West and would therefore complicate all efforts to achieve a general settlement. He now thought he could no longer wait for the West to come around to a general settlement.
The decision to build the Berlin Wall was Khrushchev’s alone to make. He oversaw all aspects of the Soviet bloc’s strategy for settling the German question. Only he could decide to divorce border control measures from the larger effort of isolating West Berlin through a peace agreement. He therefore bore sole responsibility for the many lives that would be inalterably hurt by this decision.
Khrushchev had no moral qualms about separating millions of German families, some of whom, as it turned out, did not see one another for a decade. Although he reluctantly understood their motivations, he was just as dismissive of the thousands of East Germans who educated their children in West Berlin schools and of the tens of thousands of workers who worked for higher pay in West Berlin. They were not as reprehensible to him as the thieves, those he called economic criminals, that he had put to death in the Soviet Union. But the callousness of that recent decision could be seen in his treatment of the Berlin problem. For all his empathy for those who did not live as well as they should under communism, Khrushchev had no human feeling for those individuals who by their actions threatened his plans. It was this authoritarian blindness that prevented him from ever understanding the concept of human liberty.
Instructions were sent to the Soviet group of forces in Germany and the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs to work together on a plan for establishing control over “Greater Berlin,” including the boundary between the Eastern and Western sectors. “Exit or entry into West Berlin,” the plan specified, “would be outlawed for all citizens of the GDR, except for those with sp
ecial permits.”42 Approved by the chief of staff of the Soviet forces in Germany on July 21, the plan did not address political matters. On its face, it seemed designed to be part of the measures that would take effect once Khrushchev and Ulbricht signed the peace treaty that would transfer Moscow’s remaining responsibilities to East Germany. Of course it could be implemented earlier. All that was required was a political decision to build a wall.
Khrushchev wanted the formal decision to be made by the leaders of the Warsaw Pact in the first days of August. The Presidium had already decided in late June to arrange a meeting of the pact members on August 3 to discuss the Berlin situation. In the third week of July Gromyko drafted an agenda and prepared invitations for the meeting at which closing the Berlin sectoral border would be discussed.43 Khrushchev insisted on maximum secrecy; any leak to the West might provoke a preemptive strike. Only Ulbricht would be told the reason for the session beforehand. The other Warsaw Pact leaders would be told only when they arrived in Moscow on August 3. Khrushchev wanted the invitations to go out on July 26.44
THERE WAS A BUZZ in Washington on the morning of July 25. The New York Times predicted the speech would be Kennedy’s second inaugural address. “This one,” observed the Times’ James Reston, “will inaugurate a new flexible policy, not only for Berlin but for the whole ‘cold war’ front.”45 Rumors about this speech had been appearing in newspapers for days, and it was expected that Kennedy would meet Khrushchev’s threats with countermeasures that demonstrated the resolve of the United States.
Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy’s principal speechwriter, took the president’s reading copy up to him in the family quarters of the White House that morning and found him propped up in bed with a heating pad supporting his aching back. He was making some last-minute changes to the speech, adding a final, very personal note, in longhand. “When I ran for the Presidency of the United States,” he scribbled in his nearly illegible handwriting, “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 the 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 can do better. All of us, I know, love our country, and we shall do our best to serve it.”46 Sorensen took the changes and had them typed up.
The handwritten addendum was uncharacteristically confessional for a man who believed that leadership required cool detachment. The estimated fifty million television viewers and those listening on radio would be invited to peer through to the insecurities that Kennedy usually hid from almost all but a few family members. From the man who only six months earlier had spoken confidently of “bearing any burden,” there would be an admission of vulnerability. Yes, he would bear this burden, but it wasn’t going to be easy. No words ever spoken by this president, and there were many more in the crisis-filled years to come, would be as poignant.
Giving the speech proved to be just as difficult as writing it. Although the broadcast had been delayed until 10:00 P.M., when at least children on the East Coast would be asleep, the heat of a July day in Washington still hung heavily that night. Air conditioners in the early 1960s were especially noisy contraptions, and the president’s television producers thought they had to turn down the only source of cool air in the Oval Office. Journalists covering the speech described the room as being “like an oven.” Television viewers, who had no idea of the temperature their president was enduring, concluded that Kennedy’s frequent mopping of his brow reflected tension, thus heightening the effect of the speech.47 “[West Berlin] has now become—as never before—” Kennedy told the American people, “the great testing place of Western courage and will, a focal point where our solemn commitments…and Soviet ambitions now meet in basic confrontation.”48 Then, if there were any doubt that Kennedy was ready for this test, he added, “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.”49
“KENNEDY HAS DECLARED preliminary war on the Soviet Union,” Khrushchev barked at John J. McCloy.50 Khrushchev had invited McCloy, Kennedy’s special adviser on disarmament, to Pitsunda so that he could respond immediately and personally to the much-anticipated U.S. response. McCloy was well known to Khrushchev as a charter member of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. A former deputy secretary of war under Franklin Roosevelt, McCloy had served Harry Truman as U.S. high commissioner in occupied Germany. But McCloy had not come to the Soviet Union in mid-July 1961 to discuss Germany; he was leading a State Department delegation to discuss arms control when he received the unexpected invitation to see Khrushchev on July 25. McCloy was therefore the first Westerner to experience the heat of Khrushchev’s displeasure at Kennedy’s Berlin speech.
Although McCloy had no inkling of this, the speech redoubled Khrushchev’s determination to install the wall before the Americans made any move. On July 26 Khrushchev instructed the Soviet ambassador in East Berlin to tell Ulbricht that in his judgment “we have to use the tension in international relations now to circle Berlin in an iron ring. This must be done before concluding a peace treaty.”51 Khrushchev explained that the international situation had brought about this 180-degree shift in his opinion on taking a unilateral measure to stop the flow of refugees. This would be a joint operation. “Our troops will create this ring; but your forces will control it,” he had his ambassador tell Ulbricht. To ease any concerns the East German leader might have about the Soviet Union’s resolve in the especially tense days that were sure to follow the building of a wall, Khrushchev instructed Ambassador Pervukhin to assure him that “we are approaching this question seriously and if this drags us into war, there will be war.”
Ever the engineer, Khrushchev was interested in the details of how this barrier would be built. He instructed Pervukhin to send him the plans recently worked out by the East Germans and the Soviet Army and to ask Ulbricht for an estimate of how long the entire operation would take. He also wanted to see what Ulbricht planned to say at the Warsaw Pact meeting.52 Khrushchev wanted the East German leader to take the lead at the session in explaining to the other leaders why this iron ring was necessary.
Khrushchev received the response from Ulbricht the next day. It was pithy and enthusiastic. “This is the solution!” Ulbricht exclaimed.53 He went on to assure the Soviet government that once the decision had been made it would take a mere eight days to prepare all the measures required to initiate the closure of the border between East and West Berlin and to tighten the control around all Berlin. Khrushchev was especially concerned about the transit systems—the S-Bahn and the subway—that crossed the sector boundaries. The East Germans assured him that closing those down would take only between four and five weeks.54 The first day guards would be posted at all the crossing points, and over time they would be replaced by physical barriers.
AFTER MCCLOY’S DEPARTURE from Pitsunda on July 26, Khrushchev had spent a few days touring farms in the Ukraine before returning to Moscow on July 31 to see Ulbricht. The East German leader was due to arrive in Moscow before the other Warsaw Pact leaders so that he and Khrushchev could plan their strategy. Although Ulbricht was relieved, his old concerns about the Western reaction to any East German and Soviet provocation had returned. As he had in November 1960, the German worried about a Western economic blockade.
The Kremlin had anticipated this problem.55 Even before Khrushchev returned to Moscow, Mikoyan and Gromyko drafted a proposal for countermeasures should the West impose an economic blockade on East Germany. They suggested that East Germany retaliate by preventing all nonmilitary transportation from West Berlin to West Germany. This would be “a blow to West German firms that obtained manufactured products from West Berlin but would not interfere with the operation of West Berlin industry or the supply of food to the population.”56 Another suggested form of action came from the KGB chief, Shelepin, who on July
29 proposed a series of measures around the world that “would favor dispersion of attention and forces by the United States and its satellites, and would tie them down during the settlement of a German peace treaty and West Berlin.”57 In particular, Shelepin advocated assisting revolutionary movements in Latin America to distract Washington.
These recommendations, if accepted, would mark a major shift in how Khrushchev competed with U.S. power in the third world. Up to now the Kremlin had not created any national liberation movements and had been reluctant to sponsor revolutionaries who preferred armed rebellion to creating socialism through political subversion. Among the KGB’s recommendations was a plan to work with the Cubans and the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), to sponsor revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. The FSLN was itself to be built up so that it had a credible chance of overthrowing the Nicaraguan dictator Anastas Somoza.58
On August 1 Khrushchev and the Presidium accepted the KGB plan to distract the United States by “creating a hotbed of unrest” in Latin America. It was evidence less of new thinking about the third world than of an almost desperate desire to chip away at U.S. resolve in the Berlin crisis. Khrushchev was kept informed of the planning in Latin America. Shelepin reported to him that the KGB was funneling a modest amount of money to the FSLN and exercising influence over the movement through three confidential contacts—PIMEN, GIDROLOG, and LOT. In this way, the KGB gave the FSLN ten thousand U.S. dollars to buy weapons and subsequently recruited twelve Nicaraguan students in Mexico City to train for operations against the Somoza regime.59
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