Part 15 (1/2)

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.