Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Frederick Kempe
Language: English
Pages: 608
ISBN: 0425245942
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In June 1961, Nikita Khrushchev called Berlin "the most dangerous place on earth." He knew what he was talking about.
Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, which would divide the world for another twenty-eight years. Then two months later, and for the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, one overzealous commander-and the tripwire would be sprung for a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat.
On one side was a young, untested U.S. president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster and a humiliating summit meeting that left him grasping for ways to respond. It would add up to be one of the worst first-year foreign policy performances of any modern president. On the other side, a Soviet premier hemmed in by the Chinese, East Germans, and hardliners in his own government. With an all-important Party Congress approaching, he knew Berlin meant the difference not only for the Kremlin's hold on its empire-but for his own hold on the Kremlin.
Neither man really understood the other, both tried cynically to manipulate events. And so, week by week, they crept closer to the brink.
Based on a wealth of new documents and interviews, filled with fresh-sometimes startling-insights, written with immediacy and drama, Berlin 1961 is an extraordinary look at key events of the twentieth century, with powerful applications to these early years of the twenty-first.
Includes photographs
Pnin (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)
Siberia: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination)
Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Commander in Europe, headquartered in Heidelberg. Then there was a third line to NATO Commander General Lauris Norstad in Paris. Watson’s orders came from all three, and they were rarely consistent. There were also times, like the night of August 12–13 and the following morning, when all those channels fell mostly silent. Watson’s instinct in such times of doubt was to stand whatever ground he occupied and hope for the best. For weeks, his instructions from the Pentagon had more often than not
garden plots or forestland. Without divulging his plans to U.S. superiors or communist authorities, on September 21, at a few minutes before eleven a.m., Clay flew to Steinstücken aboard a military helicopter, with two other helicopters protecting his flanks. He delivered the community two things it lacked: a TV set and hope. A large crowd quickly surrounded his chopper as it landed in a grassy field. At Clay’s request, the mayor met with him at Restaurant Steinstücken, the village’s only dining
Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983, 26; Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, 474. None of that dampened: Aleksei I. Adzhubei, Krushenie illiuzii. Moscow: Interbuk, 1991, 235; Nikolai Zakharov, “Kak Khrushceve Ameriku Pokarial,” in Argumenty I Fakty, no. 52 (2004), 12; Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, 471. By September 26, only a week into: New York Times, 09/26/1960. Khrushchev was determined to use: Robert Divine,
rising numbers threatened to destabilize the region. Fleshing out his plan, Thompson proposed as confidence-building measures the reduction of Western covert activities conducted from Berlin and the shutting down of RIAS, the U.S. radio station that beamed reports into the Soviet zone from West Berlin. Even if Khrushchev rejected such a U.S. offer, Thompson argued that the simple act of making it would allow Kennedy to win over public opinion and thus make it more unpalatable for Khrushchev to
permanent existence of East Germany. Otherwise, Khrushchev insisted, West Germany would drag NATO into a war aimed at unifying Germany and restoring its prewar eastern frontier. Lippmann took mental notes while his wife scribbled down the conversation verbatim. Both tried to remain sober by pouring out the considerable amounts of vodka and Armenian wine that Mikoyan served them into a bowl the Soviet leader had provided them in an act of mercy. Time and again, with Kennedy as his intended