Presidential Predicaments – III. JFK: Berlin. Again.
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In early June, two months after the disastrous covert action in Cuba that was anything but covert now, President Kennedy met with the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna. It was their first meeting and, it goes without saying, a “summit meeting.” In Vienna, the two leaders would “size each other up.” That’s what the primary purpose of the meeting was said to have been.
Nikita Khrushchev decided to talk tough to the new young president who’d had such a disastrous beginning in Cuba. Khrushchev was, of course, a supporter of fellow-Communist Fidel Castro whose country had been invaded in the covert action by the Cubans we had trained and equipped.
Khrushchev wanted us to get out of Berlin. Berlin was a city inside Communist East Germany that had been the capital of Nazi Germany. After World War II, East Germany had been given to the Soviets, but Berlin had been divided up among the four victorious allies, us, France, the UK, and the Soviet Union.
The Soviets had quickly found that this was not a good arrangement. East Germans were coming into the parts of Berlin controlled by the Western European countries, asking to stay. Not a good look for the Communists.
In 1948, during Truman’s administration, Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union, had set up a blockade around Berlin. Truman and his advisors gave thought to agreeing to leave what seemed an untenable situation, but in the end had mounted an amazing airlift that had broken the blockade. It showed what we could do, it was said, if we put our minds to it.
At the summit with JFK in Vienna, Khrushchev delivered an “ultimatum.” That means “final demand.” He said the rest of us had to be out of Berlin by December 31 or he would set up a blockade around the city as Stalin had, or just sign it over to the East Germans and let them do what they wanted.
One thing that was different this time was that by now the Soviet Union had atomic weapons. Another thing was President Eisenhower’s New Look policy. If Khrushchev blockaded Berlin again, and we decided again that we were going to stay there, might it lead to an armed conflict with the Communists that this time would lead to the execution of Eisenhower’s “massive retaliation” with nuclear weapons that had been put in place to respond to any act of Soviet aggression? Our retaliation with nuclear weapons would surely lead to a Soviet retaliation on us with the ICBMs they now had. And also on Western Europe with the many more Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles they had now in Eastern Europe.
On July 25, six weeks after the summit with Khrushchev, JFK made a tough speech about Berlin. He said he’d called up some reserves for possible use there. He also said that here at home we should all be digging out underground fallout shelters. I was in college in Massachusetts. Did Amherst College have a fallout shelter? If it did, I hadn’t heard about it. Anyway, would those shelters do the trick against the hydrogen bombs the Soviets had? I had my doubts. I wasn’t the only one.
Three weeks after JFK’s speech, on August 13, the East Germans started building a wall between their part of Berlin and the parts of the city occupied by the rest of us-- France, the UK and the U.S. The wall also wasn’t a good look for the Communists. Especially since it was a wall to keep their people in, not to keep others out.
But would that be enough for the Soviets? Would that be the end of this business about Berlin? Would it now stop being a place that might cause nuclear war to break out?
In any case, JFK seemed now to have made it clear to Nikita Khrushchev that he couldn’t be pushed around. Would that get us to a better place? Make nuclear war less likely? Was it that simple?