Berlin 1961 Part 15

The immediate threat to free men is in West Berlin. But that isolated outpost is not an isolated problem. The threat is worldwideaabove all it has now becomea"as never beforea"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.

President Kennedy in a special television address, July 25, 1961 Khrushchev is losing East Germany. 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 wonat be able to prevent it. I can hold the Alliance together to defend West Berlin, but I cannot act to keep East Berlin open.

President Kennedy to Deputy National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, several days later THE VOLKSKAMMER (PEOPLEaS CHAMBER), EAST BERLIN.

THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1961.

Mikhail Pervukhin, the Soviet amba.s.sador to East Germany, ordered his aide Yuli Kvitsinsky to track down Ulbricht immediately. aWe have a yes from Moscow,a Pervukhin said.

At age twenty-nine, Kvitsinsky was a rising star in the Soviet foreign ministry who had made himself invaluable to Pervukhin with his sound judgment and flawless German. He sensed the historic moment. After Khrushchev had scrutinized a much-improved map of Berlin from General Yakubovsky, the commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, the Soviet leader had concluded that Ulbricht was right: it would be possible to barricade Berlin.

Years later, Khrushchev would take full credit for the decision to build the Berlin Wall. aI had been the one,a he would write in his memoirs, awho thought up the solution to the problem which faced us as a consequence of our unsatisfactory negotiations with Kennedy in Vienna.a Yet the truth was that Khrushchev was merely giving Ulbricht the green light to proceed with a solution that the East German leader had sought as early as 1952 from Stalin. The Soviets would help shape, refine, and provide the crucial military guarantees for the operationas success, but it was Ulbricht who had driven the outcome with his constant badgering, and it would be Ulbrichtas team that would work out all the details.

Khrushchev would tell the West German amba.s.sador to Moscow, Hans Kroll, aI donat want to conceal from you that it was I who in the end gave the order. Ulbricht had pressured me for a long time and in the last months with increasing vehemence, but I donat want to hide myself behind Ulbrichtas back.a Khrushchev then joked with Kroll that Ulbricht was far too thin anyway for that purpose. aThe wall will disappear again someday, but only when the reasons for its construction disappear,a Khrushchev told Kroll.

Khrushchev had agonized over the decision; he knew the cost would be great to socialismas global reputation. aWhat should I have done?a he had asked himself. aYou can easily calculate when the East German economy would have collapsed if we hadnat done something soon against the ma.s.s flight. There were, though, only two kinds of countermeasures: cutting off air traffic or the Wall. The former would have brought us to a serious conflict with the United States which possibly could have led to war. I could not and did not want to risk that. So the Wall was the only remaining option.a After Khrushchev relayed his decision to East Berlin, Kvitsinsky tracked down Ulbricht at the Peopleas Chamber, where he had been attending a session of East Germanyas rubber-stamp unicameral parliament, whose decisions, like most everything else in the country, followed his dictate.

Pervukhin told a satisfied Ulbricht that he had Khrushchevas green light to begin practical preparations for closing the Berlin border, but that he must operate under the greatest of secrecy. aFor the West, the action must be carried out quickly and unexpectedly,a Pervukhin said.

In stunned silence, the two Soviets listened to Ulbricht as he recited without emotion each minute detail of what was already a meticulously constructed plan.

The only way to close such a border rapidly enough, Ulbricht said, and with sufficient surprise, was to use barbed wire and fencinga"and a ma.s.sive amount of it. He knew precisely where he would get it and how he would bring it to Berlin without alerting Western intelligence agencies. Just before he shut the border, he would bring the metro and the elevated trains to a complete stop, he said. He would put up an unbreakable gla.s.s wall at the main Friedrichstra.s.se train station, through which the greatest amount of cross-Berlin traffic pa.s.sed, so that East Berliners could not board West Berlina"bound trains to escape the shutdown.

The Soviets should not underestimate the difficulty of the border closing, Ulbricht told Pervukhin. He would act in the early hours of a Sunday morning, when traffic across the border would be far less and many Berliners would be outside the city. The 50,000 East Berliners who worked in West Berlin during the week as so-called Grenzgnger, or aborder crossers,a would be home for the weekend and thus caught in Ulbrichtas trap.

Ulbricht said he would share the details with only a handful of his most trusted lieutenants: Politburo security chief Erich Honecker, who would direct the operation; State Security chief and thus secret police chief Erich Mielke; Interior Minister Karl Maron; Defense Minister Heinz Hoffmann, and Transportation Minister Erwin Kramer. Ulbricht said he would entrust only one individual, his chief bodyguard, to hand-deliver regular updates on preparations to Pervukhin and Kvitsinsky.

THE WHITE HOUSE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1961.

Just one day after Ulbricht received Khrushchevas go-ahead for his bold plan, Kennedyas special a.s.sistant Arthur Schlesinger was scheming to slow adviser Dean Achesonas own rush to action.

Having won the Pulitzer Prize at age twenty-seven for his book The Age of Jackson, Schlesinger was the Kennedy court historian who also engaged in random troubleshooting. His sudden focus on Berlin came as a response to what he considered his own poor performance during the run-up to the Bay of Pigs operation. Schlesinger had been alone among the presidentas closest advisers in opposing the invasion, but he reproached himself for failing ato do more than raise a few timid questionsa while military commanders and the CIA lobbied Kennedy to approve action. Schlesinger had limited his dissent to a private memo that had warned Kennedy: aAt one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary goodwill which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world.a Schlesinger was determined not to make the same mistake twice. He considered the Acheson plan for Berlin to be every bit as foolhardy as the Bay of Pigs blueprint. So Schlesinger asked two people who had significant influence with Kennedy to draft an alternative. One was State Department legal adviser Abram Chayes, a thirty-nine-year-old law scholar who had led the team that drafted Kennedyas 1960 Democratic Convention platform. The other was thirty-eight-year-old White House consultant Henry Kissinger, a rising star who had shaped Kennedyas thinking on nuclear issues with his book The Necessity of Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy. Kissinger had supported New York Governor Nelson Rockefelleras effort to win the Republican nomination for president in 1960, but he was working through Harvard colleagues to gain influence in the Kennedy White House.

When Kennedy first drafted Acheson into service the previous February, Schlesinger had concluded that the president was merely trying to get a broader mixture of views. Now Schlesinger feared that Kennedy would adopt Achesonas hard-line approach to Berlin as policy if no one provided him with an alternative. UN Amba.s.sador Adlai Stevenson was equally troubled by Achesonas growing influence. aMaybe Dean is right,a Stevenson told Schlesinger. aBut his position should be the conclusion of a process of investigation, not the beginning.a Schlesinger wanted to combat Achesonas effort to convince the president that aWest Berlin was not a problem but a pretexta for Khrushchev to test the general will of the U.S. and its new president to resist Soviet encroachment.

Schlesinger worried that athe thrust of Achesonas rhetoric, and especially of his brilliant and imperious oral presentations,a would fix the debate around the idea that the Soviets had aunlimited objectivesa in reigniting the Berlin Crisis. Yet those who knew Moscow best, Thompson and Averell Harriman, a former amba.s.sador to Moscow, felt Khrushchevas game might be limited to Berlin alone and thus should be played quite differently. Although the State Department was divided over Achesonas tough approach, Schlesinger was distraught that no one was framing the other side of the debate because Rusk awas circ.u.mspect, and no one quite knew where he stood.a The British government had leaked its softer line to the Economist magazine, which had reported, aUnless Mr. Kennedy takes a decisive grip on the wheel, the West is in danger of bypa.s.sing one possible line of compromise after another until it reaches a dead end, where neither it nor Russia has any choice except between ignominious retreat and nuclear devastation.a Schlesinger felt he had to move fast or lose all influence, as atalk of war mobilization under the proclamation of national emergency contained the risk of pus.h.i.+ng the crisis beyond the point of no return.a He worried about repeating the prelude to the Bay of Pigs crisis, where a bad plan had gained unstoppable momentum because no one had opposed it or presented an alternative choice.

He was determined to prompt a showdown on Berlin before it was too late.

On July 7, just after a lunch meeting with Kennedy on another issue, Schlesinger handed the president his Berlin memo and asked that he look it over en route to Hyannis Port that afternoon. The timing was good, as the president would meet with senior officials there the next day on Berlin. Kennedy said he preferred to read Schlesingeras thoughts right away, because Berlin was his most urgent problem.

Schlesinger had calculated correctly that nothing would get Kennedyas attention faster than a credible warning that the president was in danger of repeating his mistakes in Cuba. Kennedy had joked after the debacle that Schlesingeras cautionary memo on Cuba would alook pretty gooda when the historian got around to writing his book on the administration. He then added a word of warning: aOnly head better not publish that memorandum while Iam still alive.a In his anti-Acheson memo, Schlesinger reminded Kennedy that the Cuban fiasco was a result of aexcessive concentration on military and operational problemsa in the preparatory stage while underestimating the political issues.

Though Schlesingeras paper praised Acheson for aa.n.a.lyzing the issues of last resort,a he worried that the former secretary of state was defining the issue ato put it crudely as: are you chicken or not? When someone proposes something which seems tough, hard, put-up-or-shut-up, it is difficult to oppose it without seeming soft, idealistic, mushya.a He reminded the president that his Soviet expert Chip Bohlen believed that nothing could help discussion of the Soviets more than eliminating the adjectives aharda and asofta from the language of the debate.

aPeople who had doubts about Cuba,a said Schlesinger, in a clear reference to himself, asuppressed those doubts lest they seem asoft.a It is obviously important such fears not constrain free discussion of Berlin.a The president read the memo carefully. He then looked at his friend with concern. He agreed that Achesonas paper was too narrow and that aBerlin planning had to be brought back into balance.a He tasked Schlesinger to expand on his memorandum immediately for use the following day in Hyannis Port.

Schlesinger worked against the clock, since Kennedyas helicopter would lift off from the White House lawn at five p.m. With only two hours remaining before the presidentas departure, Chayes and Kissinger, the lawyer and the political scientist, dictated as Schlesinger edited while typing furiously. By the time Schlesinger ripped the final version from his typewriter, he had something that raised a series of questions about the Acheson paper and suggested new approaches. It said: The Acheson premise is substantially as follows: Khrushchevas princ.i.p.al purpose in forcing the Berlin question is to humiliate the U.S. on a basic issue by making us back down on a sacred commitment and thus shatter our world power and influence. The Berlin crisis, in this view, has nothing to do with Berlin, Germany, or Europe. From this premise flows the conclusion that we are in a fateful test of willsaand that Khrushchev will be deterred only by a demonstrated U.S. readiness to go to nuclear war rather than to abandon the status quo. On this theory, negotiation is harmful until the crisis is well developed; then it is useful only for propaganda purposes; and in the end its essential purpose is to provide a formula to cover Khrushchevas defeat. The test of will becomes an end in itself rather than a means to a political end.

The three men then listed the issues that they believed Acheson had overlooked.

aWhat political moves do we make until the crisis develops?a The memo argued, aIf we sit silent or confine ourselves to reb.u.t.ting Soviet contentions,a Khrushchev would keep the initiative and put Kennedy on the defensive, making him look rigid and unreasonable.

aThe [Acheson] paper indicates no relations.h.i.+p between the proposed military action and larger political objectives.a The memo argued, in language intended to shock, that Acheson adoes not state any political objective other than [preserving] present access procedures for which we are prepared to incinerate the world.a It thus argued, aIt is essential to elaborate the cause for which we are prepared to go to nuclear war.a aThe paper covers only one eventualityathe Communist interruption of military access to West Berlin.a Yet, the memo argues, aactually, there is a whole spectrum of hara.s.sments, of which a full-scale blockade may well be one of the least likely.a aThe paper hinges on our willingness to face nuclear war. But this option is undefined.a The three men counsel Kennedy, whom they already knew was troubled by his war options: aBefore you are asked to make the decision to go to nuclear war, you are ent.i.tled to know what concretely nuclear war is likely to mean. The Pentagon should be required to make an a.n.a.lysis of the possible levels and implications of nuclear warfare and the possible gradations of our own nuclear response.a The memo attacked Acheson for addressing himself aalmost exclusively to the problem of military accessa to Berlin. However, military traffic was only 5 percent of the whole, while 95 percent consisted of supplies for the civilian population. It noted that East Germany was already in full control of this civilian traffic, which it ahas gone to surprising lengths to facilitate.a It noted that civilian traffic was most essential to the U.S. objective of preserving West Berlinas freedom.

The memo argued that Acheson ignored sensitivities inside NATO. aWhat happens if our allies decline to go along?a It was unlikely the Allies would support Achesonas idea of sending troops up the Autobahn to break a blockade through a ground probe, which de Gaulle had already opposed. aWhat about the United Nations? Whatever happens, this issue will go into the UN. For better or for worse, we have to have a convincing UN position.a Seldom had such an important doc.u.ment been composed so rapidly. Schlesinger typed quickly to keep up with the unfolding thoughts of his brilliant co-conspirators. With an eye on the clock, he created a section called aRandom thoughts about unexplored alternatives.a It listed in rat-a-tat fas.h.i.+on what questions the president should be exploring beyond those Acheson had provided.

Most of all, the men wanted to ensure that all questions and alternatives were asystematically brought to the surface and canva.s.seda before rus.h.i.+ng forward with the Acheson plan. The unsigned Schlesinger paper suggested that the president consider withdrawing the Acheson paper from circulation altogether. The danger of Achesonas thoughts leaking, the memo argued, was greater than the danger to full discussion from a more limited distribution.

Oblivious to the fact that Khrushchev had already decided his course on Berlin, U.S. officials in Was.h.i.+ngton were engaged in a behind-the-scenes bureaucratic war against Dean Acheson. Although written quickly, the Schlesinger-inspired memo was thorough, even including ideas about which new individuals should be brought into the process to dilute the power of Acheson. It suggested, among others, Averell Harriman and Adlai Stevenson.

It was the revenge of the so-called SLOBsa"the Soft-Liners on Berlin.

The Schlesinger memo concluded by suggesting that one of its authors drive the process. aIn particular, Henry Kissinger should be brought into the center of Berlin planning,a it said. It would be one of the opening acts for a man who would over time become one of the most effective foreign policy infighters in U.S. history.

At the same time, Kennedy was also hearing doubts about existing nuclear war planning regarding Berlin from Defense Secretary McNamara and National Security Advisor Bundy. In his own memo ahead of the Hyannis Port meeting, Bundy complained about the adangerous rigiditya of the strategic war plan. It had left the president little choice between an all-out attack on the Soviet Union or no response at all. Bundy suggested that McNamara review and revise it.

THE WHITE HOUSE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1961.

Henry Kissinger spent only a day or two each week in Was.h.i.+ngton working as a White House consultant, commuting from his post at Harvard University, but that had proved sufficient to put him at the center of the struggle to shape Kennedyas thinking on Berlin. The ambitious young professor would happily have worked full-time for the president; that, however, had been blocked by his former dean and now D.C. boss, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.

Though Kissinger had mastered the art of flattering his superiors, Bundy was more immune to it than most. Along with the president, Bundy regarded Kissinger as brilliant but also tiresome. Bundy imitated Kissingeras long, German-accented discourses and the rolling of the presidentas eyes that accompanied them. For his part, Kissinger would complain that Bundy had put his considerable intellectual talents to athe service of ideas that were more fas.h.i.+onable than substantial.a Kissinger biographer Walter Isaacson concluded that their differences were a matter of cla.s.s and style: the tactful, upper-cla.s.s Bostonian condescending to the brash German Jew.

Still, being so near the center of American power was a new and heady experience for Kissinger, and an early introduction to the White House infighting that would be such a part of his extraordinary life. Born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Frth, Bavaria, in 1923, he had fled n.a.z.i persecution with his family, arriving in New York when he was fifteen. Now he was advising Americaas commander in chief. While Bundy had labored to keep him at armas length from Kennedy, Kissinger was now reaching him through another Harvard professor, Arthur Schlesinger, who was deploying him against Acheson.

Kissinger had none of Achesonas historic place or access to the Oval Officea"and at age thirty-eight was thirty years Achesonas juniora"but his thirty-two-page aMemorandum for the Presidenta on Berlin was an audacious attempt to one-up the former secretary of state. It landed on Kennedyas desk just before he departed for Hyannis Port to work on developing his approach to Berlin. Though Kissinger was much more hard-line on Moscow than Schlesinger, he felt it would be foolhardy for Kennedy to embrace Achesonas complete dismissal of diplomacy as one available avenue.

Kissinger worried that Kennedyas aides, and perhaps the president himself, might be naive enough to be tempted by Khrushchevas afree citya idea, under which West Berlin would fall under United Nations control. Kissinger was also concerned about Kennedyas distaste for the great Adenauer, and the presidentas belief that the Westas long-standing commitment to eventual German unification, through free elections, was fanciful, and should be negotiable. Kennedy, Kissinger feared, didnat sufficiently realize that inattention to Berlin could breed a crisis for the Atlantic Alliance that would hurt U.S. security interests far more than any deal with Moscow could justify.

So Kissinger put his warning to Kennedy in unmistakable terms: The first task is to clarify what is at stake. The fate of Berlin is the touch stone for the future of the North Atlantic Community. A defeat over Berlin, that is a deterioration of Berlinas possibility to live in freedom, would inevitably demoralize the Federal Republic. Its scrupulously followed Western-oriented policy would be seen as a fiasco. All other NATO nations would be bound to draw the indicated conclusions from such a demonstration of the Westas impotence. For other parts of the world, the irresistible nature of the Communist movement would be underlined. Coming on top of the Communist gains of the past five years, it would teach a clear lesson even to neutralists. Western guarantees, already degraded in significance, would mean little in the future. The realization of the Communist proposal that Berlin become a afree citya could well be the decisive turn in the struggle of freedom against tyranny. Any consideration of policy must start from the premise that the West simply cannot afford a defeat in Berlin.

Regarding unification, Kissinger warned Kennedy that abandoning traditional U.S. support would demoralize West Germans, making them doubt their place in the West. It would at the same time encourage the Soviets to increase their pressure on Berlin, as they would conclude that Kennedy already was acutting [his] losses.a Instead, Kissinger suggested that Kennedyas response to Khrushchevas increasing of Berlin tensions awith respect to German unification should be offensive and not defensive. We should use every opportunity to insist on the principle of free elections and take our stand before the United Nations on this ground.a He warned Kennedy that he should not take West Berlin morale for granted, as U.S. leaders had done since the beginning of the Berlin Crisis in November 1959. aWe should give them some tangible demonstration of our confidence to maintain their hope and courage,a he wrote.

It concerned Kissinger all the more that Kennedy didnat have a credible military contingency plan for a Berlin crisis. In any conventional conflict, Kissinger argued, the U.S. would be overrun by Soviet superiority, and he doubted that Kennedy would ever engage in a nuclear war over Berlinas freedom. His paper captured all of those ideas in clearer, more strategic form than any other doc.u.ment that had reached the White House until that time.

A cover note for the Kissinger memo, written by Bundy, said: aHe and [White House officials Henry] Owen and [Carl] Kaysen and I all agree the current strategic war plan is dangerously rigid and, if continued without amendment, may leave you very little choice as to how you face the moment of thermonuclear truth. In essence, the current plan calls for shooting off everything we have in one shot, and it is so constructed as to make any more flexible course very difficult.a Kissinger advised Kennedy that his only course in the tense days ahead, should the Soviets maintain their aggressive post-Vienna position on Berlin, would be to make any unilateral Soviet action appear too hazardous to the risk-averse Khrushchev. aIn other words, we must be prepared to face a showdown,a he said. Kissinger dismissed the arguments of some in the administration that Kennedy should make Berlin concessions to help Khrushchev in his domestic struggles against more dangerous hard-liners ahead of his October Party Congress. aKhrushchevas domestic position is his problem, not ours,a he said, adding that only a strong Khrushchev could be conciliatory, and that was not what Kennedy was facing.

What concerned Kissinger most was the apparent Kennedy course of doing nothing about Berlin and waiting for a Soviet move, which, he argued, was the riskiest approach. aWhat may seem watchful waiting to us may appear as insecurity [to Khrushchev],a Kissinger said. Prophetically, he indicated that such an approach would tempt Moscow to prompt a crisis at the moment of amaximum difficultya for the U.S., causing a situation in which the world would come to doubt Kennedyas determination.

In a separate note to Schlesinger, Kissinger later said, aI am in the position of a man sitting next to a driver heading for a precipice who is being asked to make sure the gas tank is full and the oil pressure adequate.a Frustrated with being at the fringes of decision making, he worried that Kennedyas White House wanted him only for brainstorming purposes, not as someone whose advice would be taken. He eventually resigned in October, having concluded that his ideas would not be taken seriously.

HYANNIS PORT, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

SAt.u.r.dAY, JULY 8, 1961.

President Kennedy was displeased.

It was fine to drop the ball on Laos or even Cuba. Neither was decisive for the United States or his place in history. But this was Berlina"the central stage for the worldas defining struggle! He repeated this fact several times to advisers as he expressed his dismay that while Moscow was charging ahead on Berlin, they had yet to respond even to Khrushchevas aide-mmoire delivered in Viennaa"even though it had been more than a month since the summit. The news from the Soviet Union that morning was bad. Khrushchev had announced he would rescind plans to reduce the Soviet Army by 1.2 million men and would enlarge his defense budget by a third, to 12.399 billion rublesa"an increase of roughly $3.4 billion. Speaking before graduates of Soviet military academies, Khrushchev said that he believed a new world war over Berlin was not inevitable, but he nevertheless told his countryas soldiers to prepare for the worst.

Soviet troops roared their approval.

Khrushchev told them his measures were in response to news reports that President Kennedy would ask for an additional $3.5 billion for his defense budget. With that, the Soviet leader was abandoning his insistence on putting general economic investments ahead of the military budget and increasing missile forces at the expense of troop numbers. aThese are forced measures, comrades,a he said. aWe take them because we cannot neglect the Soviet peopleas security.a Kennedy was livid that Newsweek had published details of the Pentagonas top-secret Berlin contingency planning, which apparently had been the basis for Khrushchevas response. Kennedy was so upset by the leak that he ordered the FBI to investigate its source.

Khrushchev had responded to the Newsweek article as if it were a declaration of Kennedyas policy. Realizing that London was the weakest Allied link on Berlin, Khrushchev had summoned British Amba.s.sador Frank Roberts to his box at the Bolshoi Ballet for a dressing-down during a break in a performance by the famous British prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn. Khrushchev scorned British resistance to Soviet goals in Berlin as futile. He told Roberts that six hydrogen bombs would be aquite enougha to destroy the British Isles, that nine would annihilate France, and that the Kremlin could respond a hundredfold to any new division that the West could sc.r.a.pe up. Knowing he was singing from Prime Minister Macmillanas song sheet, he said, aWhy should two hundred million people die for two million Berliners?a In Hyannis Port, Kennedy scolded Secretary Rusk, who sat in his usual business suit on the fantail of the Kennedysa fifty-two-foot speedboat, the Marlin, for having failed to come up with an answer to Khrushchevas Berlin ultimatum. While the president fumed, the First Lady dropped into the ocean to water-ski, and Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor joined Kennedyas friends Charles Spalding and his wife for hot dogs and chowder.

When Rusk explained that the text had been delayed by the need to clear it with the Allies, Kennedy exploded that it wasnat the Allies but the U.S. president who carried the burden on Berlin. Inspired by the Schlesinger memo, he ordered Rusk to give him a plan for negotiations on Berlin within ten days. The president then turned on the State Departmentas Soviet expert, Chip Bohlen, a former amba.s.sador to Moscow: aChip, whatas wrong with the G.o.dd.a.m.ned department of yours? I can never get a quick answer, no matter what question I put to them.a Martin Hillenbrand, head of the State Departmentas German desk, would later insist that a draft of the reply to the Soviet aide-mmoire had actually been produced promptly. But after ten days, State had discovered that the White House had misplaced it. So special a.s.sistant Ralph Dungan had the State Department send over a new draft. However, a White House official locked it up in a safe before going on a two-week leave, and he had not left behind the combination. At the same time, NATO allies were also stuck in the slow grinding of their own response.

While fingers a.s.sessing blame were pointing in various directions, an agitated Kennedy demanded that the Pentagon give him a plan for non-nuclear resistance in the case of a Berlin confrontation. It should be significant enough, he said, to prevent a Soviet advance and give the president time to talk to Khrushchev and avoid the rush to nuclear exchange. aI want the d.a.m.n thing in ten days,a Kennedy said.

Kennedy told his advisers to provide him with new options beyond the current choice between aholocaust or humiliation.a LINCOLN BEDROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

TUESDAY, JULY 25, 1961.

In the late afternoon, President Kennedy retreated to his bedroom to read through the speech he would give at ten oaclock that evening to a national television audience. It was the first time Kennedy would use the Oval Office for such a purpose, and workmen had been there all day, laying cables and wires.

Kennedy knew how high the stakes had become. At home, he had to reverse a growing impression of foreign policy weakness, which made him politically vulnerable. After mishandling Cuba and Vienna, he also had to convince Khrushchev that he was willing to defend West Berlin at any cost. His problem: Khrushchev had stopped believing Kennedy would fight for Berlin, as Soviet Amba.s.sador Mens.h.i.+kov was telling anyone in Was.h.i.+ngton who would listen. At the same time, however, Kennedy wanted Khrushchev to know he remained open to reasonable compromise.

Kennedy soaked in a hot bath to ease his inescapable back pain. He then ate his supper alone from a tray, as he often did. Midway through the meal, he phoned his secretary Evelyn Lincoln and said, aWill you take this down. I want to add it to the speech I am giving tonight.a He then began dictating: Finally, I would like to close with a personal word. When I ran for the President of the United States I knew that we faced serious challenges in the Sixties, but I could not realize nor could any man who does not bear this responsibility know how heavy and constant would be its burdens.

The United States relied for its security in the late Forties on the fact that it alone had the atomic bomb and the means of delivery. Even in the early Fifties when the Soviet Union began to develop its own thermonuclear capacity we still had a clear lead in the means of delivery, but in the very recent years the Soviet Union has developed its own nuclear stockpile and has also developed the capacity in planes and missiles to deliver bombs against our country itself.

Lincoln scribbled furiously in shorthand as Kennedy continued to dictate, the words falling into perfect sentences and paragraphs.

This means that if the United States and the Soviet Union become engaged in a struggle in which these missiles are used, then it could mean the destruction of both of our people and our country.

What makes this so somber is the fact that the Soviet Union is attempting in a most forceful way to a.s.sert its power, and this brings them into collision with us in those areas, such as Berlin, where we have longstanding commitments. Three times in my lifetime, our country and Europe have been involved in wars, and on both sides in each case serious misjudgments were made which brought about great devastation. Now, however, through any misjudgments on either side about the intentions of the other, more devastation could be rained in several hours than we have seen in all the wars in our history.

Knowing the gravity of the presidentas words, Lincoln concentrated on getting each one of them right. She felt the moment of history, and heard the pain in the voice of the man carrying its burdena"a word he used several times in the speech and increasingly each day.

As President and Commander-in-Chief, therefore, and as Americans, you and I together move through serious days. I shall bear the responsibility of the Presidency under our Const.i.tution for the next three-and-one-half years. I am sure you know that I shall do the very best I can for our country and our cause.

Like you, I have a family which I wish to see grow up in a country at peace and in a world where freedom endures.

I know that sometimes you get impatient and wish we could make some immediate action that would end our perils, but there is no easy and quick solution. We are opposed by a system which has organized a billion people and which knows that if the United States falters, their victory is imminent. Therefore, we must look to long days ahead, which if we are courageous and persevering can bring us what we all desire. I ask therefore in these days your suggestions and advice. I ask your criticisms when you think we are wrong, but above all, my fellow citizens, I want you to realize that I love this country and shall do my best to protect it. I need your good will and support and above all your prayers.

Evelyn Lincoln couldnat remember when the president had ever added so much to the end of a speech just a couple of hours before its delivery.

Kennedy said to his secretary, aWill you type this up and give it to me when I come over?a The president arrived at the Oval Office at 9:30 p.m. to test the height of the chair behind his desk and the lighting. He asked Evelyn Lincoln if he could inspect his dictation and then took it into the Cabinet Room, where he sat and scribbled revisions and made cuts, tightening it but not removing any of its anguish. When it was time to go before the cameras, he came into Lincolnas office and asked for a hairbrush and went into her washroom to make certain every strand was in place.

Despite these preparations, the speech would be given by a perspiring and tense president in an overheated office. To improve the sound quality, technicians had shut down the air-conditioning, although temperatures that day had hit a high of 94 degrees. The office would be made all the more uncomfortable by the lights of seven news cameras and the body heat of some sixty people who jammed in to witness the historic moment.

Kennedy stepped briefly outside to mop his face and lip before returning to his desk just seconds before he spoke to a national and global audience. Under lights that made reading his recently altered text difficult, he would trip over a few lines and deliver others less eloquently than usual. But few listeners noticed. His stirring, tough rhetoric masked the series of compromises he had agreed to in the previous days that had considerably weakened the Acheson plan.

Kennedy had pulled back from Achesonas call for a declaration of national emergency, he had decided against immediate mobilization of troops, and he had reduced the increase in defense spending. In the seventeen days between his Hyannis Port meetings and the July 25 speech, the SLOBs had methodically chipped away at the Acheson approach as the workings of the U.S. foreign policy structure turned almost entirely to Berlin, including two crucial National Security Council meetings on July 13 and 19.

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

With Vice President Johnsonas backing, Acheson had pushed back. He believed that if, as his friend Rusk argued, one left the call-up of reserves to the end, awe would not affect Khrushchevas 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.a 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 Councilas smaller Steering Group, he had said there were only two things that mattered to him: aOur presence in Berlin, and our access to Berlin.a Acheson had grown so frustrated with what he considered the drift in policy during July that he told a small working group on Berlin, aGentlemen, you might as well face it. This nation is without leaders.h.i.+p.a 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 awhen the situation required.a Acheson had held his ground, arguing McNamaraas course wasnat sufficiently energetic or concrete.

Kennedy had kept the discussion going until it gradually became clear to Acheson that the commander in chief didnat 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 ato have a large reserve force on hand with no mission.a However, deployment would be rapid in the event of a deepening crisis.

Amba.s.sador Thompson wasnat 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. Thompsonas logic was that a longer-term buildup in readiness would have more impact than dramatic, immediate, publicity-getting gestures. Kennedyas 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 aan alarm bell which could only be rung once,a and that taking the Acheson course would only convince the Soviets not of U.S. determination but of aour panic.a 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 aa false climaxa 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 Khrushchevas 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 Armyas 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 Khrushchevas December deadline for a peace treaty.

Most striking, but entirely unnoticed by the media, was the speechas mention seventeen times of West Berlin, continuing the presidentas regular addition of the qualifier aWest.a Kennedy was repeating his message to Khrushchev in Vienna that the Soviets were free to do what they wanted with the cityas eastern portion as long as they didnat touch the western part.

Just the previous day at lunch, one of the top officials of the U.S. Information Agency, James OaDonnell, had complained to speechwriter Ted Sorensen about the emphasis on aWesta Berlin in a final draft of the speech. OaDonnellas 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 Hitleras bunker. He had written a book about Hitleras 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 OaDonnell, arguing that aeven hard-linersa like him would like it. Yet the more closely OaDonnell scrutinized it, the more he was taken aback by the unilateral concessions it contained. The speech spoke of Kennedyas willingness to remove aactual irritantsa in West Berlin while declaring that athe freedom of that city is not negotiable.a According to Ulbricht, those airritantsa included West Berlinas lively and free media, the American radio station RIAS, the freedom with which Western militaries and intelligence agencies were operating, anda"most importanta"the ability of East Germans to cross the open border and seek refuge.

Another paragraph recognized athe Soviet Unionas 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.a What could Kennedy have meant by that? OaDonnell wondered, not knowing that this built on similar language Kennedy had privately used in Vienna. Was he buying into Moscowas complaints about resurgent German militarism? Was he ceding forever to the Soviets the captive countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary?

But nothing troubled OaDonnell more than repet.i.tive references exclusively to aWesta Berlinas security. That could only have been an intentional message that, in OaDonnellas view, gave the Soviets a free hand in East Berlin, though the city technically remained under four-power rule.

Kennedyas speech told Americans, aThe immediate threat to free men is in West Berlin.a 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 becomea"as never beforea"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 therea"and the people of Berlin are there. It is as secure, in that sense, as the rest of usa"for we cannot separate its safety from our ownawe have given our word that an attack upon that city will be regarded as an attack upon us all.