Berlin 1961 Part 13

The president said that either Khrushchev did not believe the U.S. was serious or the situation was so aunsatisfactorya to him that he believed he needed this adrastic action.a Kennedy said he would see British Prime Minister Macmillan in London on his way home and would have to tell him that he was faced with the unhappy alternative of accepting a Soviet fait accompli on Berlin or confrontation. Kennedy said he had the impression that Khrushchev was leaving him with the only alternatives of conflict or capitulation.

Khrushchev suggested that in order for Kennedy to save face, U.S. and Soviet troops could be maintained in Berlin not as occupation forces but subject to East German control and registered with the United Nations. aI want peace,a Khrushchev said. aBut if you want war, that is your problem. It is not the USSR that threatens with war, it is the U.S.a Kennedyas extension of their meeting wasnat going well. aIt is you, and not I, who wants to force a change,a the president protested, avoiding Khrushchevas provocative use of the word awar.a It was as if two teenage boys with nuclear sticks were arguing over who was trying to pick a fight with whom.

aIn any event,a said Khrushchev, athe USSR will have no choice but to accept the challenge. It must respond and it will respond. The calamities of a war will be shared equallya. It is up to the U.S. to decide whether there will be war or peace.a Kennedy, he said, could tell this to Macmillan, de Gaulle, and Adenauer.

Khrushchev said his decision on Berlin was airrevocablea and afirma: a peace treaty with East Germany by December with all its consequences on Allied control of West Berlin, or an interim agreement that would lead to the same outcome.

aIf that is true, itas going to be a cold winter,a said Kennedy.

For all the power of Kennedyas single-sentence summation, he got even that wrong. His troubles would come much earlier.

BERLIN.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 4, 1961.

While Khrushchev and Kennedy engaged in angry exchanges about the possibility of war in Berlin, Berliners themselves were out in droves on the first sunny, dry weekend after a month of rain. They were riding in cars and on motor scooters, in the elevated train and subway, heading for Berlinas many parks and lakesides to swim, sail, play, and enjoy the sun.

The Berlin newspapers were calling it abeautiful summit weather,a and the consensus was that a meeting of the two leaders controlling their fate was more likely than not to reduce tensions. Berliners from both sides of the city filled West Berlinas cinemas in the evening to see the latest releases: Spartacus, with its four Oscars; Ben-Hur, with Charlton Heston; and The Marriage-Go-Round, with James Mason and Susan Hayward. The film ads reminded East Berliners that their soft East marks would be accepted in a one-to-one exchange for entrancea"the best bargain in town.

In the East, Walter Ulbricht was weathering a bread shortage and was out with the people celebrating the communist youth organizationas Childrenas Day. With little news from the Vienna Summit, the papers were filled with photographs and accounts of the two wivesa joint Vienna outings.

Fewer refugees registered during the Vienna Summit weekend than at any time for the last many years, because East Germans were holding out hope that the Vienna talks would bring a change for the better.

When asked what he expected from the talks, Ulbricht said he was adopting a wait-and-see att.i.tude. Mayor w.i.l.l.y Brandt told his citizens, aOur good cause is in good hands with President Kennedya. The best we can hope for is that some of the misunderstandings that might give rise to new threats and dangers in the future are cleared up.a VIENNA.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 4, 1961.

Having just threatened him with war, Khrushchev smiled broadly as he bid farewell to a frowning, sh.e.l.l-shocked Kennedy on the Soviet emba.s.syas steps. Photographers caught their contrasting moods for the next dayas papers.

Khrushchev knew he had won the day, even if he could not yet know the consequences. He would recall later that Kennedy alooked not only anxious, but deeply upsetaLooking at him, I couldnat help feeling sorry and a little bit upset myself. I hadnat meant to upset him. I would have liked very much for us to part in a different mood. But there was nothing I could do to help hima. As one human being toward another, I felt bad about his disappointmenta.

aPolitics is a merciless business,a Khrushchev concluded.

The Soviet leader could guess what U.S. hard-liners would argue when they discovered how poorly Kennedy had performed. aWeave always said the Bolsheviks donat understand the soft language of negotiations,a Khrushchev reckoned they would say. aThey understand only power politics. They tricked you; they gave your nose a good pull. You got a good going-over from them, and now youave come back empty-handed and disgraced.a After seeing off Kennedy at the airport, Austrian Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky visited with Khrushchev. aThe President was very gloomy at the airport,a said Kreisky. aHe seemed upset, and his face had changed. Obviously the meeting did not go well for him.a Khrushchev said he had also noticed Kennedyas sour mood and told Kreisky that Kennedyas problem was that he astill doesnat quite understand the realignment of forces, and he still lives by the policies of his predecessorsa"especially as far as the German question is concerned. Heas not ready to lift the threat of world war which hangs over Berlin. Our talks were helpful in that they gave us a chance to sound each other out and get to know each other. But thatas all, and itas not enough.a With the two days of meetings so fresh in his mind, Khrushchev recounted for Kreisky much of his dialogue with Kennedya"knowing Kreisky would pa.s.s word of his triumph to other European leftists, including Berlin Mayor w.i.l.l.y Brandt.

In contrast to Kennedy, Khrushchev left Vienna in as unhurried a manner as he had arrived. While the Soviet leader joined a dinner given in his honor by the Austrian government, Kennedy licked his wounds en route to London.

Kennedy was brutally honest about his poor performance.

As he drove away from the Soviet emba.s.sy with Secretary Rusk in his black limo, with presidential and American flags fluttering on its wings, he banged the flat of his hand against the shelf beneath the rear window. Rusk in particular had been shocked Khrushchev had used the word awara during their acrimonious exchange, a term diplomats avoided and invariably replaced with any number of less alarming synonyms.

Despite all the presidentas pre-summit briefings, Rusk felt Kennedy had been unprepared for Khrushchevas bullying brutality. The extent of Viennaas failure would not be as easy to measure as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. There would be no dead exile combatants in a misbegotten landing area who had risked their lives in the expectation that Kennedy and the United States would not abandon them. However, the consequences could be even bloodier. Confirmed in his suspicions of Kennedyas weakness, Khrushchev might engage in just the sort of amiscalculationa that could lead to nuclear war.

Kennedy carried with him to London and Prime Minister Macmillan the aide-mmoire that detailed the Soviet demands for a German settlement within six months, aor else.a If the Soviets made it public, as Kennedy had to a.s.sume they would, his critics would accuse him of having walked into a Berlin trap in Vienna that he should have seen coming.

Kennedy wanted to vent, but how did he play the outcome of the meeting to a media entourage that had become such an extension of himself? Did he spin it as an amiable exchange, as he had instructed his Soviet expert Bohlen to do in his planned press briefings?

No. Kennedy decided to leave behind in Vienna his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to brief the journalism industryas top reporters about the summitas asombera outcome. Before leaving, the president would meet privately in a room at the amba.s.sadoras residence with New York Times writer James aScottya Reston. He told OaDonnell he wanted to get across to Americans athe seriousness of the situation, and the New York Times would be the place to do it. Iall give Scotty a grim picture.a Still, he was not yet convinced Khrushchev would deliver on his Berlin threat. Perhaps de Gaulle was right when he said Khrushchev would bluff and bl.u.s.ter and continue to delay on Berlin as he had thus far. aAnybody who talks the way he did today and really means it would be crazy, and Iam sure heas not crazy,a Kennedy told OaDonnell, not feeling very certain about that at all.

At age fifty-two, the Scottish-born Reston had already won two Pulitzer Prizes and was perhaps the most influential and most broadly read journalist in Was.h.i.+ngton. He was dressed in his usual tweed and bow tie and was chewing his briar pipe while Kennedy debriefed him under ground rules that he would neither quote the president nor mention their private meeting.

Kennedy wore a hat pulled low on his forehead as he sunk into the sofa. It would be one of the most candid sessions ever between a reporter and a commander in chief.

Having an exclusive from Kennedy on the Vienna Summit with 1,500 other reporters out jockeying for access was a coup of some significance for Reston in the new TV age that he so despised. It would be made all the more meaningful by what Kennedy would tell him in a darkened room behind closed blinds so as to conceal their meeting from other reporters.

aHow was it?a asked Reston.

aWorst thing in my life,a said Kennedy. aHe savaged me.a Reston jotted in his notebook: aNot the usual bulls.h.i.+t. There is a look a man has when he has to tell the truth.a Kennedy, deep in the sofa next to Reston, said Khrushchev had violently attacked him on American imperialisma"and that head turned particularly aggressive on Berlin. aIave got two problems,a he told Reston. aFirst, to figure out why he did it, and in such a hostile way. And second, to figure out what we can do about it.a Reston rightly concluded in his New York Times report, which carefully protected the confidentiality of his Kennedy meeting, that the president awas astonished by the rigidity and toughness of the Soviet leader.a He called the meeting acrimonious, and rightly said that Kennedy left Vienna pessimistic on issues across the board. In particular, the president adefinitely got the impression that the German question was going to be a very near thing.a Kennedy told Reston that, because of the Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev athought that anyone who was so young and inexperienced as to get into that mess could be taken. And anyone who got into it and didnat see it through had no guts. So he just beat the h.e.l.l out of mea. Iave got a terrible problem.a Kennedy had conjured up a quick a.n.a.lysis of the dangers this posed and how he had to deal with them. aIf he thinks Iam inexperienced and have no guts, until we remove those ideas we wonat get anywhere with him. So we have to act.a He told Reston that among other things he would increase the military budget and send another division to Germany.

On the flight to London, Kennedy called OaDonnell to his cabin, wanting to vent some more but out of hearing range of Rusk, Bohlen, and the others on Air Force One. Despair had already darkened the mood so much throughout the plane that Kennedyas Air Force liaison G.o.dfrey McHugh compared it to ariding with the losing baseball team after the World Series. n.o.body said very much.a Kennedy had started his presidency determined to put Berlin on a back burner. Yet now it threatened to blow up in his face. He was overwhelmed by fear that the matter of preserving certain West German and Allied rights in West Berlin could start a nuclear war.

aAll wars start from stupidity,a Kennedy said to OaDonnell. aG.o.d knows Iam not an isolationist, but it seems particularly stupid to risk killing a million Americans over an argument about access rights on an Autobahn in the Soviet zone of Germany, or because the Germans want Germany reunified. If Iam going to treat Russia with a nuclear war, it will have to be for much bigger and more important reasons than that. Before I back Khrushchev against the wall and put him to a final test, the freedom of all Western Europe will have to be at stake.a Those who had worked so hard to brief Kennedy ahead of the summit were most disappointed of all, particularly members of Amba.s.sador Thompsonas staff, who saw that most of their advice had been ignored. One of them, Kempton Jenkins, would reflect later that it had been athe golden opportunity for [Kennedy] to be charming, to have Jackie charm Khrushchev, and then have Kennedy come in and say, aNow look, I want to say this perfectly straight. Get your b.l.o.o.d.y hands off Berlin or weall destroy you.aa They were terms Khrushchev would have understood. The U.S. had such nuclear superiority that Kennedy did not need to take the Vienna beating. Jenkins, who closely examined the transcripts later, regretted Kennedy anever dida deliver a tough message to Khrushchev: aHe was constantly talking about: Weave got to find a way out. What can we do to rea.s.sure you? We donat want you to distrust our motives. Weare not aggressive.a The president had further confirmed Khrushchevas growing impression he could be easily outmaneuvered, and from that point forward Khrushchev would act more aggressively in the conviction that there would be little price to pay.

Kennedyas predecessors had defended West Berlin so resolutely partly in hopes of eventually breaking communist control of East Germany, and to support the West German governmentas claim to the city as the future capital of a unified country. Kennedy believed in none of that and wanted to avoid failure in Berlin because he thought that withdrawal there could turn West Germany against the U.S. and Britain, and would likely lead to a breakup of NATO.

Speaking with OaDonnell en route to London, Kennedy expressed a surprising sympathy for Khrushchevas predicament in Berlin. He knew that the Soviet problem was an economic one, and that West Berlinas thriving capitalism was draining East Germany of its talent.

aYou canat blame Khrushchev for being sore about that,a he told OaDonnell.

Though he had just been beaten up by Khrushchev, Kennedy directed his venom against Adenauer and his Germans, who continually complained he wasnat tough enough with the Soviets. He was not about to go to war over Berlina"though that was precisely what postwar agreements obligated him to do. aWe didnat cause the disunity in Germany,a he told OaDonnell. aWe arenat really responsible for the four-power occupation of Berlin, a mistake neither we nor the Russians should have agreed to in the first place. But now the West Germans would like us to drive the Russians out of East Germany.a Kennedy complained, aItas not enough for us to be spending a tremendous amount of money on the military defense of Western Europe, and particularly on the defense of West Germany, while West Germany becomes the fastest-growing industrial power in the world. Well, if they think we are rus.h.i.+ng into a war over Berlin, except as a last desperate move to save the NATO alliance, theyave got another thing coming!a As their plane descended to London, the president told OaDonnell that he doubted Khrushchev, afor all his shouting,a would actually do what he threatened. But Kennedy was also going to be careful not to provoke the Soviet into a rash countermove in response to a sudden U.S. military action. aIf weare going to have to start a nuclear war,a he said, aweall have to fix things so it will be started by the President of the United States, and n.o.body else. Not by a trigger-happy sergeant on a truck convoy at a checkpoint in East Germany.a LONDON.

MONDAY MORNING, JUNE 5, 1961.

British Prime Minister Macmillan immediately sensed Kennedyas anguisha"both the physical pain in his back and the psychological torment from his meeting with Khrushchev.

While they talked, U.S. officials in crisis mode fanned out across Europe to brief key allies on what amounted to a new Soviet ultimatum. Rusk in Paris visited with de Gaulle and NATO. State Department officials Foy Kohler and Martin Hillenbrand flew to Bonn to brief Adenauer.

The British prime minister called off the formal morning meeting planned with the presidenta"aForeign Office and all thataa"and instead invited him up to his private quarters at Admiralty House, as 10 Downing Street was closed for repairs. They sat for nearly three hours on their own, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:25 p.m., an hour longer than had been scheduled, during which Macmillan mostly listened while feeding Kennedy sandwiches and whiskey. They then reconvened with Foreign Secretary Lord Home until 3:00 p.m. Their talks that day would help shape Kennedyas closest, most trusting relations.h.i.+p with a foreign leader. He liked the elder Britas dry wit, deep intelligence, and nonchalance about the most serious matters.

aFor the first time in his life,a Macmillan would recall later, regarding the Vienna Summit, aKennedy met a man who was impervious to his charm.a The president appeared to him arather stunneda"abaffleda would perhaps be faireraimpressed and shocked.a Macmillan saw that Kennedy had been overwhelmed by Khrushchevas ruthlessness and barbaritya"rather like meeting Napoleon aat the height of his power for the first time,a or like Neville Chamberlain atrying to hold a conversation with Herr Hitler.a Macmillan told Kennedy that the simple position for the West to take awould be to say that the Russians could do what they liked about a treaty with the DDR [East Germany], but the West stood on their rights and would meet any attack on these with all the force at their command.a Kennedy said it was precisely that threat which had stopped Soviet action to that point. Unfortunately, he said, Khrushchev perceived the West as weaker after recent events in Laos and aelsewhereaa"a euphemism for Cuba. After all, even in 1949 when the West had a nuclear monopoly, it had not been prepared to force its way into West Berlin, and the Russians knew that they were now relatively stronger than they were twelve years earlier, said Kennedy.

Lord Home feared Khrushchev was being forced into action over Berlin due to his difficulties with the East German refugees and related problems with other satellites. Khrushchev amight feel that he had to find a way of stopping this,a he said. Once Khrushchevas new aide-mmoire on Berlin was made public, Lord Home said it would put the West in an uncomfortable position, aas on the face of it, it appears fairly reasonable.a Kennedy wanted help from the British in composing a speech that he would deliver the next day in Was.h.i.+ngton. It would need to state Khrushchevas views, strongly reaffirm Western commitment to West Berlin, and restate Berlinersa right of free choice about their future. The truth, said Macmillan, was that awhatever might be happening in other parts of the world, in Berlin the West was winning. It was a very poor advertis.e.m.e.nt for the Soviet system that so many people should seek to leave the Communist paradise.a Kennedy and Macmillan agreed to step up military and other contingency planning on Berlin with an emphasis on what the West should do (1) if the Russians signed a treaty with East Germany, (2) if after the signing of a treaty, civilian supplies were interrupted, and/or (3) Western military supplies were interfered with. Home wanted Kennedy to present counterproposals to the Soviets on their aide-mmoire. Kennedy disagreed, fearing a proposal for Berlin negotiations might appear yet another asign of weakness.a While flying back to the U.S., Kennedy sat in his shorts with his top aides sitting around him. His eyes were red and watery, betraying how dead tired he felt. His back was throbbing in paina"though even Kennedy would never know how much his illnesses and the concoctions he took against them had impaired his Vienna performance. He shook his head, stared down at his feet, and at one point hugged his bare legs, muttering about Khrushchevas unbending manner and what dangers might follow.

Kennedy told his secretary Evelyn Lincoln that he wanted to get some rest to prepare himself for a busy day in Was.h.i.+ngton. He asked her to file away safely the cla.s.sified doc.u.ments that he had been scouring. As she worked, she came upon a slip of paper on which Kennedy had scrawled two lines: I know there is a G.o.da"and I see a storm coming; If He has a place for me, I believe I am ready.

Lincoln did not know what to make of the paper, but it worried her. She could not know that Kennedy had written down from memory a partial quote from Abraham Lincoln, speaking to an Illinois educator in the spring of 1860 regarding his determination to halt slavery. The note was likely not about inviting deatha"Evelyn Lincolnas interpretationa"but rather about recognizing a calling.

Bobby sat with his brother upon his return. Tears were running down the presidentas cheeks, produced by a mixture of the stress he was feeling and the decisions ahead. Bobby would recall later that he had anever seen my brother cry before about something like this. I was up in my bedroom with him and he looked at me and said, aBobby, if nuclear exchange comes, it doesnat matter about us. Weave had a good life, weare adults. We bring these things on ourselves. The thought, though, of women and children peris.h.i.+ng in a nuclear exchange. I canat adjust to that.aa Journalist Stewart Alsop, a longtime friend of the president, had seen Kennedy on his London visit at Westminster Cathedral during the christening of the newborn child of Stanislaw Radziwill, whose third wife was Jacqueline Kennedyas younger sister, Lee Bouvier. It was a grand affair, attended by the prime minister and all the Kennedy family. The president coaxed Alsop into a corner and talked to him for fifteen minutes about all he had just been through. aI had the sense that the thing had come to him as a very great shock, which he was beginning to adjust to.a Alsop had considered the Bay of Pigs to be the moment that had acured any illusions that Kennedy had about the certainty of successa after a life in which he had experienced very few failures. Alsop considered Vienna a more serious moment because of the difference between Cubaas lesson that one can fail at a very big thing and the prospect of another failure that could lead to nuclear war.

Kennedy had been in office four months and sixteen days, but Alsop believed it was in Vienna that he truly became the American commander in chief. He had confronted there the brutal nature of his enemy and the reality that Berlin would be their battleground.

aAfter that was when he really began to be president in the full sense of the word,a Alsop believed.

EAST BERLIN.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1961.

East German leader Walter Ulbricht could hardly believe his good fortune as he was briefed on the Vienna talks by Mikhail Pervukhin, the Soviet amba.s.sador to East Germany. He grew all the more satisfied as he received further details from leading officers of the Soviet High Commission in Karlshorst, with whom he spoke at the end of almost every day.

The previous three days and nights of military exercisesa"bringing together his National Peopleas Army with their Soviet counterpartsa"had demonstrated that Ulbricht was ready militarily for whatever the West might throw at him when Khrushchev finally acted on Berlin. Ulbrichtas soldiers had impressed Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and Andrei Grechko, commander of all Warsaw Pact forces, who considered the exercise sufficiently important to oversee it themselves. East German soldiers had proved themselves to be far more disciplined in the field than Soviet officers had antic.i.p.ated.

As Ulbricht ended one of his routine twelve-hour days, he was satisfied as his chauffeur drove him to his new home at Wandlitz, some twenty miles northeast of Berlin on the edge of a thick forest. Ulbricht had not felt so optimistic in months, perhaps years, as his chauffeur drove him past the neat gardens and stuccoed villas of the Pankow district.

Pervukhin had delivered to him a copy of the Soviet aide-mmoire that Khrushchev had pa.s.sed to Kennedy in Vienna. Many of Ulbrichtas ideas regarding Berlinas future, stubbornly repeated in numerous letters over many months, had made it into Khrushchevas official language. Pervukhin told Ulbricht that Moscow would go public with the doc.u.ment in two days.

Ulbricht was confident this time that Khrushchev would not be able to walk away from his Berlin ultimatum. Khrushchev was also getting tougher on Germany in other respects. Foreign Minister Gromyko had lodged an angry protest with the British, French, and U.S. emba.s.sies in Moscow about Chancellor Adenaueras decision for the first time to schedule a plenary meeting in West Berlin of the Bundesrat, the upper house of the West Berlin parliament, on June 16. He called the move a amajor new provocationa against all socialist states.

After badgering Khrushchev for so long, Ulbricht wrote a letter that day to the Soviet leader that dripped with ingratiating sentiment. aWe warmly thank the [Communist Party] Presidium and you, dear friend,a he said, afor the great efforts which you are undertaking for the achievement of a peace treaty and the resolution of the West Berlin issue.a Ulbricht wrote that he not only fully agreed with the wording of the ultimatum, but that he also embraced Khrushchevas summit performance and his representation of the Communist Party, the Soviet government, and the socialist camp.

aThis was a great political accomplishment,a he wrote.

Yet Ulbricht also realized much of what had been accomplished had come due to his pressure, and he was not about to let up now. He spent much of the letter complaining about growing West German arevanchisma that threatened them both. The West German Economics Ministry had threatened to repeal its trade treaty with East Germany should a peace treaty be concluded. The cost to the East German economy would be great, as it would then be treated aas a foreign state, which would have to pay for its daily purchases in West Germany in foreign currencya it did not have.

Ulbricht told Khrushchev that Adenauer and other West German officials were lobbying neutral countries to reduce the rights of East German consulates and trade offices. Adenauer was also trying to prevent East German partic.i.p.ation in the next Olympic Games.

Ulbricht was most concerned with preventing any further procrastination now that Khrushchev seemed fully focused on Berlin. aComrade Pervukhin informed us here that you would find it useful if a consultation of the first secretaries [of Communist Parties of the Soviet bloc] would take place as soon as possible.a Ulbricht said he thus had taken the liberty of appealing to leaders of Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria to gather on July 20 and 21 to adiscuss preparations for a peace treaty.a Ulbricht wanted the entire socialist bloc to circle around him. aThe goal of this meeting,a he said by way of instruction to Khrushchev, ashould be an agreement on the political, diplomatic, economic and organizational preparation, and also measures for the coordination of radio and press agitation.a MOSCOW.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1961.

Upon Khrushchevas return to Moscow from Vienna, he ordered multiple copies of the summit minutes to be produced and distributed among friends and allies. He wanted his proficient handling of Kennedy to be known far and widea"particularly among his critics at home and abroad. He had the papers marked aTop Secret,a but he circulated them to a broader audience than was usual for such doc.u.ments. One copy went to Castro in Cuba, though he was not yet considered a member of the socialist camp. Among the eighteen nations for distribution were also the noncommunist countries of Egypt, Iraq, India, Brazil, Cambodia, and Mexico. A senior Soviet would brief Yugoslaviaas Josip Broz t.i.to.

Khrushchev was acting like the victor, wanting everyone to relive the champions.h.i.+p match with him. He followed his tough line in Vienna with a harder and more dictatorial line at home, blaming rising Soviet civil discontent, vagrancy, crime, and unemployment on too much liberalization, sounding increasingly like his own neo-Stalinist critics. He also reversed reforms of the judicial system a.s.sociated with his de-Stalinization.

aWhat liberals youave become!a he shot at Roman Rudenko, chief public prosecutor, as he criticized laws that were too soft on thieves, whom he thought should be shot.

aNo matter how you scold me,a said Rudenko, aif the law does not provide for the death penalty, we canat apply it.a aThe peasants have a saying: aGet rid of the bad seeds,aa Khrushchev responded. aStalin had the correct position on these issues. He went too far, but we never had any mercy on criminals. Our fight with enemies should be merciless and well directed.a Khrushchev pushed through changes that increased the use of the death penalty, grew the size of police units in the KGB, and reversed many of the liberalizing trends he himself had introduced.

While Kennedy headed home, worrying about what to tell America, Khrushchev was at the Indonesian emba.s.sy celebrating the sixtieth birthday of the countryas visiting leader, Sukarno.

The band struck up dance tunes out on the emba.s.syas lawn as various party leaders, including President Leonid Brezhnev and First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, at Khrushchevas urging, got up to join a folk dance. Diplomats and prominent Russians kept time with rhythmic hand-clapping. Among the dancers was Prince Souvanna Phouma of Laos.

Sukarno himself took Khrushchevas wife, Nina, onto the dance floor. Khrushchevas post-Vienna high was infecting everyone. The Soviet leader took a baton at one point to lead the orchestra and told jokes throughout the evening. When Sukarno said he would want new Soviet loans in exchange for letting Khrushchev direct the band, the Soviet leader opened his coat, pulled out his pockets, and showed they were empty.

aLook, he robs me of everything,a he said to the crowdas laughter.

Watching Mikoyan sway expertly, Khrushchev joked that his number two only kept his job because the party Central Committee had ruled that he was such a fine dancer. No one had seen Khrushchev so carefree since before the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the 1957 coup attempt against him.

When Sukarno said he wanted to kiss a pretty girl, Khrushchevas wife searched the crowd before settling on a reluctant partner, whose husband was at first unwilling to make her available.

aOh, please come,a said Nina. aYou only have to kiss him once, not twice.a So the girl gave the Indonesian leader his kiss.

Yet the enduring memory of the evening was when Sukarno drew Khrushchev to the dance floor for an awkward pas de deux. They danced a bit hand in hand before the euphoric Khrushchev performed solo. Khrushchev described his dance style as that of aa cow on ice,a heavy, uncertain, and with unsteady feet.

But on this occasion Khrushchev bent down and kicked his legs out, Cossack style. The heavyset Soviet leader looked unusually light on his feet.

12.

ANGRY SUMMER.

The construction workers of our capital are for the most part busy building apartment houses, and their working capacities are fully employed to that end. n.o.body intends to put up a wall.

Walter Ulbricht, at a press conference, June 15, 1961 Somehow he does succeed in being a President, but only in the appearance of one.

Dean Acheson, writing to President Truman about his work on Berlin for President Kennedy, June 24, 1961 The issue over Berlin, which Khrushchev is now moving toward a crisisais far more than an issue over that city. It is broader and deeper than even the German question as a whole. It has become an issue of resolution between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., the outcome of which will go far to determine the confidence of Europea"indeed, of the worlda"in the United States.

Dean Acheson, in a report on Berlin for President Kennedy, June 29, 1961 HOUSE OF MINISTRIES, EAST BERLIN.

THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1961.

Walter Ulbrichtas decision to summon West Berlina"based correspondents to a press conference on his communist side of the border was so unprecedented that his propagandists did not even know how to go about inviting the reporters.

The problem was that Ulbricht had cut off all telephone trunk lines between the cityas two parts in 1952. So Ulbrichtas people had to dispatch a special operations team across the border, armed with rolls of West German ten-pfennig coins and a West Berlin press a.s.sociation members.h.i.+p list. Working from public telephone booths, they called Western correspondents one by one with a terse message: aPress conference. Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic Ulbricht. House of Ministries. Thursday. Eleven oaclock. You are invited.a Three days later, some three hundred correspondentsa"roughly half of them representing each side of the citya"crowded into a huge banquet hall where Hermann Gring had once entertained officers of the Third Reichas Air Ministry. A huge hammer and compa.s.s, the East German national symbol, rose triumphantly behind the stage where the n.a.z.i eagle and swastika had once stood.

By the time Ulbricht marched in, the room was already uncomfortably warm and stuffy from the combination of reportersa body warmth, the hot day outside, and the lack of air-conditioning. Beside him was Gerhard Eisler, the legendary communist who ran East Germanyas broadcasting operations. Known to correspondents as East Germanyas Goebbels, he looked out at the crowd through small eyes magnified by thick bifocals. Though convicted as a Soviet spy in the U.S., he had jumped bail in 1950 and dramatically escaped New York aboard a Polish steamer before making his way to the newly created East Germany. Western reporters whispered to each other what they knew about Eisler.

Mutual Broadcasting Network correspondent Norman Gelb soaked in the atmosphere. He had never seen Ulbricht so close up, and he wondered how this short, una.s.suming, tight-lipped gray man with the shrill voice and rimless gla.s.ses had survived so many Soviet and East German power struggles. Though his neatly trimmed goatee gave him an intended resemblance to Lenin, Gelb thought Ulbricht looked more like an aging office manager than a dictator.

Timed to coincide with Khrushchevas first public report on the Vienna Summit in Moscow, Ulbrichtas long opening statement disappointed correspondents who had come expecting something of historic consequence. Ulbrichtas purpose in organizing the extraordinary meeting only grew clearer after he began taking questions, two or three at a time, which he answered with long lectures that made follow-ups impossible.