Berlin 1961 (46 page)

On July 13 in the Cabinet Room, Secretary Rusk used Acheson’s own words to soften the approach, quoting a part of his friend’s paper that spoke of keeping early steps as low-key as possible. “We should try to avoid actions which are not needed for sound military purposes and which would be considered provocative,” he said.

With Vice President Johnson’s backing, Acheson had pushed back. He believed that if, as his friend Rusk argued, one left the call-up of reserves to the end, “we would not affect Khrushchev’s judgment of the shape of the crisis any more than we could do so by dropping bombs after he had forced the issue to the limit.”

Bundy had left those in the room four alternatives: (1) Proceed with all possible speed with a substantial reinforcement of U.S. forces; (2) Proceed with all measures not requiring the declaration of a national emergency; (3) Proceed with a declaration of national emergency and all preparation, except a call-up of reserves or guard units; or (4) Avoid any significant military buildup for the present on the grounds that this was a crisis more of political unity and will than of military imperative.

The president listened as his senior officials debated the options. But the first time he showed his own hand was before the TV audience. In a meeting of the National Security Council’s smaller Steering Group, he had said there were only two things that mattered to him: “Our presence in Berlin, and our access to Berlin.”

Acheson had grown so frustrated with what he considered the drift in policy during July that he told a small working group on Berlin, “Gentlemen, you might as well face it. This nation is without leadership.”

At the second key NSC meeting, at four p.m. on July 19, the Acheson plan died a quiet death after an exchange between its author and Defense Secretary McNamara. Acheson wanted a definite decision of the group to declare a national emergency and begin the call-up of reserves no later than September. McNamara preferred not to commit yet, but wanted it understood that Kennedy could declare an emergency later and call up larger ground reserves “when the situation required.”

Acheson had held his ground, arguing McNamara’s course wasn’t sufficiently energetic or concrete.

Kennedy had kept the discussion going until it gradually became clear to Acheson that the commander in chief didn’t have the stomach for a full mobilization. Acheson eventually approved the McNamara approach, which would give the secretary of defense the more flexible timetable he wanted so as not “to have a large reserve force on hand with no mission.” However, deployment would be rapid in the event of a deepening crisis.

Ambassador Thompson wasn’t in the room, but he had helped win the day with cables from Moscow that argued Kennedy would impress the Soviets more by keeping the Allies together around substantial military moves than by dividing them over excessive ones. Thompson’s logic was that a longer-term buildup in readiness would have more impact than dramatic, immediate, publicity-getting gestures. Kennedy’s intelligence advisers also argued that too strong a public posture would only prompt Khrushchev to become even more rigid and more likely to take military countermeasures of his own.

The outcome was that on July 25 the president did not declare a national emergency but said he would seek congressional standby authority to triple the draft, call up reserves, and impose economic sanctions against Warsaw Pact countries in the case of a Berlin blockade. Kennedy told the NSC meeting that a national emergency was “an alarm bell which could only be rung once,” and that taking the Acheson course would only convince the Soviets not of U.S. determination but of “our panic.”

Acheson had argued in favor of a national emergency because it would have impressed both the Soviets and his U.S. opponents of the gravity of the situation while enabling the president to call up one million reserves and extend terms of service.

Kennedy, however, was determined not to overreact, partly because he wished to rebuild Allied confidence in his leadership after he had so badly botched the Bay of Pigs. He also reckoned that he was in for a long series of confrontations with the Soviets and thus worried about a premature escalation to address what he thought might be “a false climax” in the confrontation. The president wanted to keep some powder dry.

So Kennedy called for $3.454 billion in new spending for the armed forces, almost exactly equal to Khrushchev’s announcement, though lower than the $4.3 billion Acheson had originally sought. The increase would nevertheless bring the combined defense spending increase under Kennedy to $6 billion. He wanted an increase in the Army’s authorized strength from 875,000 to 1 million. The U.S. would prepare a new Berlin airlift capability and a further capacity to move six additional divisions to Europe by Khrushchev’s December deadline for a peace treaty.

Most striking, but entirely unnoticed by the media, was the speech’s mention seventeen times of
West
Berlin, continuing the president’s regular addition of the qualifier “West.” Kennedy was repeating his message to Khrushchev in Vienna that the Soviets were free to do what they wanted with the city’s eastern portion as long as they didn’t touch the western part.

Just the previous day at lunch, one of the top officials of the U.S. Information Agency, James O’Donnell, had complained to speechwriter Ted Sorensen about the emphasis on “West” Berlin in a final draft of the speech. O’Donnell’s opinion mattered, since he was a Kennedy family friend and veteran Berlin hand who as a conquering soldier had been the first non-Soviet to examine the interior of Hitler’s bunker. He had written a book about Hitler’s final days and had then lived through the Berlin blockade as a
Newsweek
correspondent. His standing was such that he had written a memo for candidate Kennedy on the four-power agreements regarding Berlin.

Sorensen had proudly shown the draft of the July 25 speech to O’Donnell, arguing that “even hard-liners” like him would like it. Yet the more closely O’Donnell scrutinized it, the more he was taken aback by the unilateral concessions it contained. The speech spoke of Kennedy’s willingness to remove “actual irritants” in West Berlin while declaring that “the freedom of that city is not negotiable.” According to Ulbricht, those “irritants” included West Berlin’s lively and free media, the American radio station RIAS, the freedom with which Western militaries and intelligence agencies were operating, and—most important—the ability of East Germans to cross the open border and seek refuge.

Another paragraph recognized “the Soviet Union’s historical concern about their security in Central and Eastern Europe, after a series of ravaging invasions, and we believe arrangements can be worked out which will help to meet those concerns, and make it possible for both security and freedom to exist in this troubled area.”

What could Kennedy have meant by that? O’Donnell wondered, not knowing that this built on similar language Kennedy had privately used in Vienna. Was he buying into Moscow’s complaints about resurgent German militarism? Was he ceding forever to the Soviets the captive countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary?

But nothing troubled O’Donnell more than repetitive references exclusively to “West” Berlin’s security. That could only have been an intentional message that, in O’Donnell’s view, gave the Soviets a free hand in East Berlin, though the city technically remained under four-power rule.

Kennedy’s speech told Americans, “The immediate threat to free men is in West Berlin.” He used the visual teaching aid of a map for the American people to show West Berlin as an island of white in a sea of communist black. Said Kennedy:

For West Berlin, lying exposed 110 miles inside East Germany, surrounded by Soviet troops and close to Soviet supply lines, has many roles. It is more than a showcase of liberty, a symbol, an island of freedom in a communist sea. It is even more than a link with the Free World, a beacon of hope behind the Iron Curtain, an escape hatch for refugees.

West Berlin is all of that. But above all it has now become—as never before—the great testing place of Western courage and will, a focal point where our solemn commitments stretching back over the years since 1945, and Soviet ambitions now meet in basic confrontation. The United States is there; the United Kingdom and France are there; the pledge of NATO is there—and the people of Berlin are there. It is as secure, in that sense, as the rest of us—for we cannot separate its safety from our own…we have given our word that an attack upon that city will be regarded as an attack upon us all.

Kennedy returned to West Berlin at the end of the thirty-one-minute speech.

The solemn vow each of us gave to West Berlin in time of peace will not be broken in time of danger. If we do not meet our commitments in Berlin, where will we later stand? If we are not true to our word there, all that we have achieved in collective security, which relies on these words, will mean nothing. And if there is one path above all others to war, it is the path of weakness and disunity.

Sorensen was upset that O’Donnell was underestimating the importance of the speech’s emotive commitment to defend Berlin. As for its disregard for captive East Berlin and Eastern Europeans generally, Sorensen argued to O’Donnell that the speech was merely recognizing reality. The Russians did what they wanted anyway in their sector. Americans would be reluctant enough to accept a military buildup to safeguard two million West Berliners, but it would be expecting far too much of Americans to risk their lives for the lot of a million East Berliners caught on the wrong side of history.

O’Donnell suggested an easy fix. The president could simply omit the word “West” in most of the places where it appeared before the word “Berlin.” After an hour of argument, Sorensen protested: “I can’t monkey around anymore with the text of this speech…this speech has been churned through the mills of six branches of government. We have had copies back and forth for ten days. This is the final version. This is the policy line.

“This is it.”

The lunch ended on that note.

Sorensen had also pushed back similar protests from elsewhere inside the government. The so-called Berlin Mafia, the group of senior officials who had been following every comma and semicolon of the fragile Berlin standoff for years, felt that the president was committing heresy, essentially telling the Soviets they could ignore four-power agreements and do anything they wanted with their part of the city.

“There was an ‘Oh, my God!’ feeling as one saw the language,” said the Austrian-born Karl Mautner, who served in the intelligence and research bureau of the State Department after having been posted to the American Mission in Berlin. Having fought during World War II with the 82nd Airborne at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, he was outraged at Kennedy’s backsliding. “We knew immediately what it meant…. We were undercutting our own position.”

The emphasis on
West
Berlin appeared all the more intentional to the Soviets five days after the speech when, on July 30, Senator William Fulbright said on the ABC Sunday-morning television talk show
Issues and Answers
that the Soviets could reduce tensions in the Berlin Crisis best by closing the West Berlin escape hatch for refugees. “The truth of the matter is, I think, the Russians have the power to close it in any case,” said Fulbright. “Next week, if they chose to close their borders, they could, without violating any treaty. I don’t understand why the East Germans don’t close their border because I think they have a right to close it.”

Fulbright’s interpretation of the treaty was wrong, and he corrected himself in a statement to the Senate on August 4, saying that freedom of movement across Berlin was guaranteed by postwar agreements and that his TV interview had given “an unfortunate and erroneous impression.” That said, Kennedy never repudiated him, and McGeorge Bundy reported favorably to the president on Fulbright’s TV appearance by writing about “a variety of comment from Bonn and Berlin, including reference to the helpful impact of Senator Fulbright’s remarks.”

The truth was that West Germans despaired at the comments, while East Germans were delighted at Fulbright’s suggestion. West Berlin’s
Der Tagesspiegel
newspaper complained that the senator’s comment was potentially as encouraging for enemy action as Acheson’s words had been before the Korean War, when he had declared that South Korea was outside America’s defense perimeter. The Communist Party paper
Neues Deutschland
called Fulbright’s ideas “realistic.”

Early in August, Kennedy mused about what was likely to happen next in Berlin during a stroll along the colonnade by the Rose Garden with Walt Rostow, an economist who was advising Kennedy. “Khrushchev is losing East Germany,” he said. “He cannot let that happen. If East Germany goes, so will Poland and all of Eastern Europe. He will have to do something to stop the flow of refugees. Perhaps a wall. And we won’t be able to prevent it. I can hold the Alliance together to defend West Berlin, but I cannot act to keep East Berlin open.”

MOSCOW
THURSDAY, AUGUST
3, 1961

On a sweltering Moscow morning, Ulbricht drove to his meeting with Khrushchev in a limousine whose windows were closed and curtained. Ulbricht had not announced his departure from Berlin for the emergency Warsaw Pact summit that day, and if he could avoid it, he did not want to be seen in public.

Moscow seemed serene compared with what Ulbricht faced back home. Tourist groups walked behind guides around Red Square. The day’s first sightseeing boats rode up the Moskva River beside men in kayaks out for morning exercise. Giant swimming pools were opening up in public parks. With school out, the city was filled with parents and their children.

Khrushchev and Ulbricht met to work out the final details for the border closure before approaching members of the Warsaw Pact for their approval. Ulbricht also wanted his allies to consider emergency economic support should the West respond with sanctions.