When a Soviet officer finally reached the scene at 10:00 P.M., three hours after the Lightners had first reached Checkpoint Charlie, all he could do was apologize. The Soviet said the East German action “was a mistake and will be corrected.”58
The East Germans, however, had no intention of correcting the error. The next morning, to the surprise of the U.S. command in Berlin and Khrushchev in the Kremlin, the East German News Agency (ADN) announced that civilians crossing the Berlin sector border had to show identification cards.59 This new regulation cut across established four-power practice. Up to that point, so long as the vehicles they were riding in had military or government license plates, civilian representatives breezed into East Berlin. If Ulbricht’s goal had been to cause a U.S.-Soviet clash, he very nearly got his wish.
General Lucius Clay, Kennedy’s official representative in West Berlin since the wall went up, assumed that the new policy was the next phase in a Soviet strategy to squeeze the West out of Berlin. Although handpicked by Kennedy, Clay often operated on, in the words of one historian, “a totally different wavelength.”60
Clay had arrived in Berlin thinking he had a mandate to prevent the loss of any additional authority in Berlin to the Communists, whatever the risks this might entail. A day after the East Germans announced the new policy, he impatiently requested instructions from Washington to challenge it. Although Clay overestimated Moscow’s control of the situation at the border, he had an uncanny sense of the East Germans’ objectives. “I have always believed,” he wrote Secretary of State Rusk on October 23, “that the elimination of Allied rights in East Berlin is of great importance to [the] GDR and that every effort will be made to accomplish this objective before any negotiations take place.”61 Clay believed that Moscow had to be made to pay for the Vopos’ actions and suggested that the United States halt all efforts at negotiations with the Kremlin on the Berlin question until the Russians were prepared “to guarantee full maintenance of the present status quo.”
Clay had his admirers in the Kennedy administration, but generally there was concern in Washington that he might draw the two sides into armed conflict over the right to go to dinner and a show in East Berlin.62 Although wary of letting the situation at the border between East and West Berlin spiral out of control, the White House did authorize a series of daily probes by civilians accompanied by an armed escort to defend the right of Western allied diplomats to cross the sector boundary. U.S. M48 tanks were also deployed as a rear guard on the western side of Checkpoint Charlie during each effort.63 The first such probe took place on October 25, when armed military police escorted a car carrying official U.S. license plates just inside East Berlin after East German police tried to have the Americans in the car show their ID cards.64 Clay, however, wanted an even larger demonstration of U.S. impatience with the Soviets and their allies. He requested high-level approval of a “raid in force into the Eastern sector which would tear down parts of the wall on its return.” The White House was appalled. Rusk responded quickly to remind the general that “we had long since decided that entry into East Berlin [was] not a vital interest which would warrant determined recourse to force to protect and sustain.”65
It had been four days since the incident with the Lightners at the border, and Kennedy sensed that he and Khrushchev would have to intervene to prevent their local representatives from inadvertently causing a war. The same day that Clay’s request for armed escalation reached Washington, Kennedy employed two channels to convey his concerns directly to Moscow. While the State Department prepared instructions for Thompson, Kennedy asked his brother to resume his secret discussions with Bolshakov. The attorney general arranged a meeting with the GRU officer for five-thirty that evening, October 26.66
President Kennedy wanted Khrushchev to understand the larger implications of these border tensions, that they were derailing the ongoing process of altering the Western negotiating position on Berlin. He had Robert Kennedy tell Bolshakov directly that the White House was in the midst of hammering this out with its allies. This was an arduous process, and President Kennedy assumed it would take at least another four to six weeks. One reason for the delay, not one the attorney general mentioned to Bolshakov, was that Konrad Adenauer would have some influence over the final product, and he was not scheduled to be in Washington until late November.
Kennedy hoped Khrushchev would realize that it was in his interest to help his American counterpart during this difficult period. “[T]he Soviet and Western sides should avoid any actions in Germany or Berlin that could lead to sad incidents, similar to those that had happened recently; and which could only complicate for the U.S. the process of agreement with its allies,” explained the attorney general to Bolshakov. “If Khrushchev would give similar instructions to his forces, [President] Kennedy would do the same.”67
It is unlikely that Khrushchev received this report from Bolshakov before the situation in Berlin took its most serious turn since the construction of the wall. The next morning, October 27, ten Soviet tanks rolled along the Friedrichstrasse and positioned themselves in front of Checkpoint Charlie in anticipation of the daily U.S. armed probe. Although the East Germans had started these border tensions, the U.S. probes had provoked a Soviet counterreaction.
When the U.S. probe arrived at the checkpoint, American and Soviet tanks found themselves staring at each other across the sector boundary. The scene made for dramatic photographs, which were then carried by all of the world’s newspapers. Because the tanks on the eastern side bore no identifying markings, which the Soviets had intentionally removed, the local CIA station sent a representative to the area to determine the nationality of the tank drivers.68 As Clay had expected, they all were Soviets.
Kennedy saw little advantage in getting his ambassador out of bed in Moscow, where it was already early the next morning, to make a run to the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Earlier on October 27 Thompson had been to the ministry to complain about the tensions in the divided city and had not elicited much of a reaction. The situation in Berlin was now heating up too quickly to wait for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to get Khrushchev’s attention. Kennedy had called Clay after dinner for an update and been told that the number of Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie had grown to thirty.69 After hearing this, the president for the second time in two days sent his brother to see Bolshakov.
The attorney general and the Soviet agent met at 11:30 P.M., Washington time, on October 27. “The situation in Berlin has become more difficult,” Robert Kennedy explained.70 “Today our ambassador met with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, who refused our declaration regarding the recent incidents that have occurred in Berlin. It is our opinion that such an attitude is not helpful at a time when efforts are being made to find a way to resolve this (i.e. the Berlin) problem.” Once again on behalf of the president Robert Kennedy asked the Kremlin for a period of four to six weeks without headlines about Berlin: “It seems to us that it is incumbent on both sides to take the necessary measures to establish a period of relative moderation and calm over the course of the next 4–6 weeks. One more refusal of our declarations could have a negative effect on future developments.”71
Bolshakov rushed from this meeting to cable the message to Moscow, where it was already approximately 7:00 A.M., October 28. The message was received at GRU headquarters and may well have been the cause of Khrushchev’s next move, though no trace of the cable has been found in Kremlin archives. What is clear, however, is that sometime before 11:30, Moscow time, that same morning, Khrushchev decided to withdraw his tanks from the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint. “I knew Kennedy was looking for a way to back down,” he explained a few days later. “I decided therefore that if I removed my tanks first, then he would follow suit; [and] he did.”72
The Soviet withdrawal from the border confrontation exacerbated Ulbricht’s sense of abandonment. The East German was in Moscow, attending the Twenty-second Party Congress, while the tense standoff occurred at Checkpoint Charlie. On October 27
Ulbricht had sent a special message from Moscow to stiffen the backs of his colleagues in East Berlin.73 He told them to continue requiring identification from Western military personnel in civilian clothing. The day after the Soviets backed down from the tank confrontation, Ulbricht did not hide his disappointment from his colleagues at home, though he initially avoided attacking the Soviets directly. Instead he criticized the East German Defense Ministry for not having placed antitank barriers at Checkpoint Charlie in time to have prevented U.S. tanks from approaching the border.74
Ulbricht did not wait much longer to share his disappointment directly with Khrushchev. On October 30 he sent Khrushchev a formal document that laid out the reasons why the Soviet leadership had been wrong to cancel the push for a German peace treaty at the party congress. The wall had not solved East Germany’s fundamental economic problems. In fact, to the extent that closing the border had forced the movement of industries that were close to the border and led to increased defense expenditures, the GDR’s economy was now in an even greater mess. “The nonconclusion of a peace treaty in this year,” he explained, “and the exacerbation of relations between the two German states threatens the economic plan of the GDR of 1962.”75
Ulbricht argued that he needed to establish East German sovereignty through a series of gradual faits accomplis. He asked Khrushchev not only to bless the unilateral actions that had led to the tensions at Checkpoint Charlie but also to consider issuing a warning to Washington that the U.S. Army did not have the right to send military patrols along the autobahn. Step by step he would acquire more control over the access routes to Berlin without ever forcing the West to consider going to war. Four days after sending this document, Ulbricht met with Khrushchev to make his case in person.
The Ulbricht-Khrushchev meeting of November 2, 1961, was a tough, bitter encounter that shook Khrushchev to the core.76 The Soviet leader did not like most of Ulbricht’s suggestions and hated his attitude. Khrushchev wanted Berlin to be grateful to him for the wall, which he now considered a victory of adroit Soviet policy. “Could we have closed the border sooner than August 13?” he asked Ulbricht. “No…the adversary could have carried out countermeasures,” was the reply, “but by the time of August 13 he was already worn out.” Khrushchev was now insisting that the ultimatum had been all about getting the wall. He had never made this argument before to Ulbricht. It also served Khrushchev’s purposes to blame the East Germans for making it impossible for him to sustain the crisis through the signing of a peace treaty. “You see we know what they are preparing for—for an economic block-ade. Really would that then be easier for you?” Khrushchev’s point was that he could not force the Berlin issue given the risk that the West would impose a crippling embargo on trade with East Germany.
Ulbricht refused to accept any blame for Khrushchev’s decision to end the ultimatum short of a peace treaty. But the East German was not Khrushchev’s equal, and the Soviet leader let him know it in no uncertain terms. When Ulbricht said that he did not know how to explain Soviet tactics to the East German public, Khrushchev told him that he did not care what he said to his own people. “All I want to know now,” he said, “is what we will say to each other. I don’t agree with those who argue that the longer the signing of the peace treaty is delayed, the worse will be the economy of the GDR. It is an old conversation that we are having: So long as the GDR does not free itself from economic dependence on West Germany, Adenauer will without fail [push you around].”
Khrushchev tried to beat Ulbricht into submission. When the East German explained that without West German goods “we will not fulfill the plan,” Khrushchev told him that the Soviet Union had to sell $450 millions’ worth of gold at the London gold exchange to acquire the hard currency that East Germany could use to buy what it needed from West Germany. “This is impossible, this is an irrational policy,” protested Khrushchev. “We live independently, neither the dollar, the pound nor the mark controls us. And here the GDR cannot make it and we must provide gold to London….”
The Soviet record of this tough meeting does not mention if Ulbricht ever stood up to leave.77 Khrushchev’s bullying was relentless. The nearest the meeting came to the breaking point was when Khrushchev absentmindedly admitted that Soviet and East German interests were not the same in this crisis. For Khrushchev the only peace treaty that mattered was one that removed NATO from West Berlin. Sensing that Ulbricht just wanted a signed piece of paper, he yelled at his recalcitrant ally, “[A] Peace Treaty would provide no political advantage…. Of course, for propaganda purposes, but otherwise not. It is [however] advantageous for the GDR.”
With this, Ulbricht blew his top. Bitterly he said, “OK, then all is clear.” Khrushchev knew that he had lost a point to the East German and pressed for an explanation of Ulbricht’s riposte. “What is clear? Go ahead explain what is clear and what is not clear.” Ulbricht would not give him the satisfaction of a response.
Khrushchev said nothing about the ongoing negotiations with Kennedy or any expectation that he might return to the struggle for a peace treaty. Ulbricht was his subordinate and should be satisfied with at least getting the wall. Khrushchev believed his secret diplomacy with the Americans was so important that he refused to permit Ulbricht to increase the harassment on the Western allied military personnel in Germany. The only concessions he threw to the East German were some suggestions for tightening civil controls at the border. “I am for order,” Khrushchev said. “Let them then see that running away is impossible.” But the rest of what Ulbricht wanted was too provocative.
FOR ALL HIS bluster, the meeting with Ulbricht had weakened Khrushchev’s self-confidence. He resented the East German demands—he had been East Germany’s stalwart ally in the Kremlin for years—but he knew that Ulbricht had a reason to be annoyed about how the Berlin affair had turned out. The East Germans had warned Khrushchev not to start a crisis over Berlin in 1961 unless he was willing to see it through to the signing of a peace treaty. Yet with his October 17 statement at the Twenty-second Party Congress, it was clear that the Soviet Union had effectively given up on getting a peace treaty in 1961.
A few days after the tense discussion with Ulbricht, Khrushchev prepared an unusually candid letter for President Kennedy about the Berlin issue.78 “Dear Mr. President, I am writing not to argue with you or to try to play better the next fall-back position as diplomats call it.” He wanted Kennedy to understand that despite the suspension of the ultimatum, the Kremlin still regarded the achievement of a peace treaty and the end of NATO’s special rights in West Berlin as an issue of the highest importance.
“Those who cling to the occupational regime in West Berlin would like, evidently, the Soviet Union to assume the responsibilities of traffic policemen securing continuous and uncontrolled transportation of military goods of the Western powers into West Berlin.” He went on to complain that the West Germans used West Berlin as a staging point for subversive operations into East Germany. He concluded by reminding Kennedy that the German Democratic Republic could not forever be denied its right to regulate the access routes to West Berlin, all of which ran through or over its territory.
Amid this recitation of old positions, Khrushchev revealed to Kennedy the irreducible minimum for him. No agreement would be acceptable that permitted free air corridors to West Berlin. Unbeknownst to Kennedy, the air corridors had been the principal point of debate between Khrushchev and Mikoyan, his only vocal Kremlin foreign policy critic in 1961. Mikoyan had not regarded the continued existence of the air corridors as a deal breaker. Khrushchev saw the problem differently. Once West Berlin became a free city, Western planes would not be permitted to fly directly into it. They would be required to land and take off at a nearby airfield in East Germany to allow the East Germans to process the passengers and to check the plane’s cargo. Plaintively Khrushchev wrote, “[This] cannot be considered as [a] worsening of the conditions of access to West Berlin.”
Khrushchev also decided to convey to his Am
erican adversary the difficult political situation that he had placed himself in. He had suspended the Berlin crisis without getting anything in return from the United States. “If you have something else to propose—also on the basis of a peaceful settlement—we would willingly exchange opinions with you. But if you insist on the preservation of the inviolability of your occupation rights I do not see any prospect. You have to understand, I have no ground to retreat further, there is a precipice behind.”
The language was not threatening. Khrushchev was in no way renewing the threat he had only recently rescinded. In an odd and unprecedented way he was appealing for Kennedy’s help in solving his Berlin problem. At the party congress Khrushchev had suspended the public bullying of the West for a new deal for Berlin in 1961. In this letter he seemed to be suspending his private bullying of Kennedy as well. For a moment, at least, Khrushchev was gambling that diplomacy would achieve what threats could not in Berlin.
CHAPTER 17
MENISCUS
IN THE FALL OF 1961 a dramatic shift took place in the balance of power in the Cold War. In terms of brute force, military and economic, the United States and its allies were as far ahead of the Soviet bloc as they had always been. What changed was the balance of influence, the factor nineteenth-century imperial historians called sway and modern political scientists refer to as soft power. Khrushchev’s self-inflicted wound over Berlin had an ever-widening ripple effect on the credibility of Soviet power. On one side of the ledger, it led to increased U.S. confidence; on the other, it stirred skepticism and doubt among Moscow’s most significant socialist allies.
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