Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth / by Frederick Kempe. New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, 2011. 579
The Iron Curtain had indeed fallen across Europe, as Sir Winston Churchill famously declared in a 1946 speech. Eastern Europe was cut off from the West, politically, militarily and physically. Only in one spot did the curtain remain porous: Berlin.
Berlin was divided into four sectors, under control of the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Although the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) had been formed in 1949, and had political control over West Berlin, the four powers retained military units in their sectors.
East Germany, by contrast, had only been granted sovereignty by the Soviet Union in 1953, as the German Democratic Republic (DDR, in German). In practical terms, though, East Germany was still very much controlled by the Soviet Union.
When John Kennedy took office as President in January 1961, he was perceived by Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, as being young, ignorant and weak-willed. Certainly, Kennedy’s actions during the attempted overthrow of the Castro junta in Cuba by Cuban exiles only bolstered Khrushchev’s view.
Yet, Frederick Kempe writes, the Berlin crisis of 1961 was not so much a stand-off between two superpowers as a struggle between the leaders of the two Germanies. Walter Ulbricht, a Communist who had served in the Soviet Union during the war, was the leader of East Germany.
He proved himself willing to hold an extremely hard political line, going even faster and further in collectivization and state-control initiatives than Joseph Stalin thought wise. Under Khrushchev, he faced a particularly difficult situation: A large and growing flight of East German workers to the West. Ideology aside, the economics were against Ulbricht. Workers could find higher salaries, better working conditions, better living conditions, and more economic freedom in West Germany than in the East.
At the rate refugees were leaving, East Germany could theoretically be completely stripped of all its workers within two years.
By contrast, Konrad Adenauer was a liberal democrat who had founded the Christian Democratic Union after the war and had led that party – and his country, as Chancellor – since 1949. His goals were the development and stability of West Germany and eventual reunification with the East.
In the early summer of 1961, Ulbricht decided that he had to act to stem the flight of workers from the DDR. Against the wishes of Khrushchev (if Ulbricht was willing to defy Stalin before, standing up against Khrushchev was not a stretch), the East German leader began to punish with beatings and imprisonment anyone who showed an inclination to “desert” the workers’ paradise. Still, the steady drain to the West continued. Only an actual physical barrier, Ulbricht decided, would solve the problem.
Secretly stockpiling the necessary materials in advance, the wall began to go up just after midnight on August 13, 1961. Initially consisting of strands of barbed wire strung across main streets leading to West Berlin, a wall of brick and concrete blocks, topped with more barbed wire, was built.
The reaction from Berliners, West and East, was immediate. Panicked by what was obviously a quickly-closing door of opportunity, East Berliners (and East Germans from across the country) began to take great risks to cross the border while they still could. West Berliners watched and gave what aid they could. Unfortunately, the reaction from the West German and American governments was not as immediate.
Adenauer, fearful of risking the opportunity for eventual hoped-for unification, made no move to protest the wall. President Kennedy and his State Department seemed equally unwilling to “provoke” the Soviets (not understanding that it was Ulbricht, not Khrushchev, who was the driving force behind the action).
As East Germans continued to find ways to cross over to the West, even leaping from the windows of buildings along the path of the wall, Ulbricht upped the ante. Despite Khrushchev’s objections, he gave a “shoot to kill” order to the border guards, resulting in several horrendous incidents in which unarmed civilians were gunned down just yards before they reached freedom.
When the U.S. government did finally react, it did so weakly. Retired Army general Lucius D. Clay (who oversaw the Berlin Airlift during the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in 1948) was sent to Berlin in late September. Despite Clay’s urging to actively challenge the wall by exercising the right of free access across occupation zones, as required by treaty, President Kennedy refused.
Even though Kennedy did visit West Berlin in June 1963 (during which he gave his famous speech, including the line, Ich bin ein Berliner) it was far too late. The Berlin Wall was an accomplished fact. For the next 28 years, it stood as a symbol of oppression and the economic and moral bankruptcy of the Soviet system. It was not until the evening of November 9, 1989, in a spontaneous, popular and peaceful uprising, that the people of Berlin finally tore down the wall.
Berlin 1961 provides an important, detailed history of the origin of the Berlin Wall, providing information not previously available. Kempe, who was a writer, columnist, and editor for the Wall Street Journal, brings a fresh perspective and insight into this important event.
