Part 26 (1/2)

MID-AUGUST 1962.

A year after President John F. Kennedy acquiesced to the communist construction of the Berlin Wall, two dramas occurring five thousand miles apart ill.u.s.trated the high cost of one of the worst inaugural-year performances of any modern U.S. president.

The first scene unfolded on August 17 under the spotlight of a Berlin summer sun just minutes after two in the afternoon, when eighteen-year-old bricklayer Peter Fechter and his friend Helmut Kulbeik began their sprint toward freedom across the so-called death strip, the no-manas-land that lay before the Wall. The first of thirty-five police shots came after the two had squirmed through an intermediary barrier of barbed wire. Two bullets pierced Fechteras back and stomach as he watched his more agile friend leap to freedom over strands of barbed wire that adorned the barrieras crown. Fechter collapsed at the base of the wall, where he lay in a quivering fetal position with his arms folded across his chest, his left shoe half off and the white of his ankle showing. For most of an hour, his failing voice cried out for help as his life bled out through multiple wounds.

At the same time and more than an ocean away, Soviet s.h.i.+ps had begun landing secretly at eleven different Cuban ports with the makings of a Soviet nuclear missile force of sufficient range and potency to obliterate New York City or Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. On July 26, the Soviet freighter Maria Ulyanova, named for Leninas mother, had docked in the port city of Cabaas as the first of eighty-five Soviet s.h.i.+ps that would make 150 round-trips in the following ninety days. They were transporting combat forces and the components for some twenty-four medium-range and sixteen longer-range launchers, each of which would be equipped with a nuclear warhead and two ballistic missiles.

Back in West Berlin, police and news reportersa”standing atop ladders to get a better view over the Walla”tracked and photographed Fechteras bitter end. U.S. troops in battle dress stood by, following orders that they not a.s.sist would-be refugees unless they had already escaped communist territory. A gathering crowd of West Berliners screamed their protests, condemning the East Germans as murderers and the Americans as cowards. A U.S. military police lieutenant told one of the onlookers, aItas not my problem,a an expression of resignation that would spread among outraged West Berliners through the next dayas newspapers.

For their part, East German border guards balked at hauling away the dying victim, needlessly fearful that they would be shot by American troops. Only after Fechteras body went limp and the East Germans exploded smoke bombs to cover their work did a border patrol carry away the corpse. Still, a photographer captured a tableau oddly reminiscent of the removal of Jesus from the cross. Appearing the following day on the front page of the Berliner Morgenpost, it showed three helmeted police, two of them with tommy guns, holding Fechter aloft with his arms splayed and his wrists bloodstained.

Fechteras murder snapped something inside West Berliners. The following day, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, protesting American impotence as angrily as they did communist inhumanity. Their acc.u.mulated feelings of anger and frustration produced what New York Times correspondent Sydney Gruson called an aalmost unbelievable scenea of West Berlin police firing water cannons and tear gas to prevent their own people from storming the Wall. Wrote Gruson: aMore than any single event since the wall was built, Peter Fechteras lonely and brutal death has made the West Berliners feel a sense of helplessness in the face of the creeping encroachment being worked so subtly by the Communists.a Meanwhile, over Cuba, CIA aerial photography by mid-August had captured the intensive Soviet maritime activity, given the volume of the deliveries and the sloppiness of execution. Soldiers unloaded vessels at night with streetlights doused and then forwarded s.h.i.+pments over dirt roads in camouflaged vehicles that were so long, troops had to knock down peasant homes to negotiate the turns. Frontline commandersa”when not waging war on mosquitoes, heat, or monsoonsa”communicated their steady progress back to Moscow through couriers to avoid U.S. electronic intercepts.

On August 22, the CIA alerted the White House that as many as 5,000 Soviet personnel had arrived on more than twenty vessels with large quant.i.ties of transport, communication, and construction equipment. CIA a.n.a.lysts said the speed and magnitude of this influx of Soviet personnel and matriel to a nona”Soviet bloc country was aunprecedented in Soviet military aid activities; clearly something new and different is taking place.a The missiles themselves would not arrive for another two months, however, and Americaas spy services for the moment concluded that Moscow was likely augmenting Cubaas air defense system.

Upon first reflection, there would seem to be little to connect the public killing of a teenage bricklayer in East Berlin and the clandestine arrival of Soviet troops and missile launcher parts in Cuba. Yet, taken together, they dramatically symbolized the two most significant aftershocks of Kennedyas mishandling of the events surrounding Berlin in 1961: The first would be longer-lasting: the freezing in place of the Cold War division of Europe for three more decades, with all of its human costs. The Wallas construction not only stopped East Germanyas unraveling at a time when the countryas viability was in doubt; it also condemned another generation of tens of millions of East Europeans to authoritarian, Soviet-style rule with its limits on individual and national freedom.

The second aftershock would be more immediate: the Cuban Missile Crisis in late 1962 with its threat of nuclear war. Though history would celebrate Kennedy for his management of the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev would not have risked putting nuclear weapons in Cuba at all if he had not concluded from Berlin in 1961 that Kennedy was weak and indecisive.

The world now knows what President Kennedy did not envision at the time: that the Berlin Wall would fall in November 1989, that Germany and Berlin would be unified a year later in October 1990, and that the Soviet Union itself would collapse a year after that, at the end of 1991. Given the Cold Waras happy ending, it has been tempting for historians to give Kennedy more credit than he deserves for that outcome. By avoiding undue risk to stop the Berlin Wallas construction, their argument goes, Kennedy prevented war and set the stage for Germanyas eventual unification, for the liberation of the Soviet blocas captive nations, and for the enlargement of a free and democratic Europe.

However, the recorda”informed by new evidence and a closer examination of existing accounts and doc.u.mentsa”demands a less generous judgment. Two-time National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft correctly notes in this bookas foreword, aHistory, sadly, does not reveal its alternatives.a But it does provide unmistakable clues. We will never know whether a more resolute Kennedy could have brought an earlier end to the Cold War. Whatas beyond dispute, however, is that Kennedyas actions allowed East German leaders to stop just the sort of refugee flow that would be the countryas undoing twenty-eight years later. The facts also make clear that Kennedyas actions in 1961 were never motivated primarily by a desire to keep West Berlin free.

During his first year in office, Kennedy was not focused on rolling back communism in Europe, but instead was trying to stop its spread to the developing world. Regarding Berlin, he was most concerned about avoiding instability and miscalculations that would lead to nuclear war. Unlike his predecessors, Presidents Eisenhower and Truman, he was dismissive both of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his dreams of German unification.

Perhaps the best judge of Kennedyas poor showing in 1961 was the president himself. He was privately candid about his mishandling of the Bay of Pigs crisis and the Vienna Summit. When, on September 22a”more than a month after the border closurea”Detroit News journalist Elie Abel sought Kennedyas cooperation for a book he wished to write on Kennedyas first year in office, the president responded, aWhy would anyone want to write a book about an administration that has nothing to show for itself but a string of disasters?a It was a refres.h.i.+ng expression of self-awareness about a year that had been marked by Kennedyas inconsistency, indecision, and policy failure.

Though Kennedyas election campaign had focused on fresh ideas and the urgent need for change, when it came to Berlin, he was more focused on maintaining the fragile status quo. He believed that one should only address the more intractable Berlin situation after a confidence-building process of negotiations on a nuclear test ban agreement and other arms control matters.

Then, in the first days of his administration, Kennedy failed to seize the best opportunity that would be available to him for a breakthrough in relations due to an amateuras misreading of Khrushchevas signals. The Soviet leader had demonstrated a new willingness to cooperate with the U.S. through a series of unilateral gestures that included the release of captured U.S. airmen on the morning after Kennedyas inauguration. Instead, Kennedy decided that Khrushchev was escalating the Cold War to test him, a conclusion he had reached largely by overinterpreting the harsh rhetoric of a routine speech delivered to rally party propagandists.

What followed was Kennedyas alarmist State of the Union speech. With considerable hyperbole, Kennedy told the nation what he had learned in less than two weeks in office that had prompted him to alter the far more cautious tone of his inaugural speech: Each day, the crises multiply. Each day, their solution grows more difficult. Each day, we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger. I feel I must inform the Congress that our a.n.a.lyses over the last ten days make it clear that, in each of the princ.i.p.al areas of the crisis, the tide of events has been running outa”and time has not been our friend.

The iconic moment for Kennedyas first-year indecisiveness came with the Bay of Pigs debacle in April, when the president neither canceled an operation that had been sp.a.w.ned in the Eisenhower administration nor gave it the resources required for success. From that point forward, Kennedy rightly worried that Khrushchev had concluded he was weak, particularly given the Soviet leaderas more resolute response to the Hungarian uprising of 1956. As Kennedy told columnist James Reston after the Soviet leader had mauled him at the Vienna Summit, Khrushchev athought 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. He just beat the h.e.l.l out of me,a he told Reston. aIave got a terrible problem.a After Khrushchevas threat in Vienna to unilaterally change Berlinas status by yearas end, Kennedy countered with escalated rhetoric, increased defense spending, greater troop readiness, and a review of military contingencies, including the U.S. nuclear response plan. Yet he was always a step behind the Soviets. When East German forces with Soviet backing closed the Berlin border on August 13 with such remarkable speed and efficiency, the U.S. and its allies seemed to have been caught flat-footed.

Accounts from the period suggest Kennedy was caught entirely by surprise. However, upon closer scrutiny, it is clear not only that Kennedy antic.i.p.ated some Soviet action similar to what followed, but also that he helped write the script for it. Kennedy privately responded with relief rather than outrage, opting neither to disrupt the border closure when he had the chance nor punish his communist rivals with sanctions. He famously told aides, aItas not a very nice solution, but a wall is a h.e.l.l of a lot better than a war.a The consistent message he had sent Khrushcheva”directly in Vienna and indirectly thereafter through public speeches and back-channel messagesa”was that the Soviet leader could do whatever he wished on the territory he controlled as long as he didnat touch West Berlin or Allied access to the city.

As Kennedy told White House economic adviser Walter Rostow several days before the border closure, aKhrushchev 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 slow 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.a On August 13, 1961, Khrushchev and Ulbricht could act with relative confidence that Kennedy would not respond as long as they remained within the guardrails he himself had established. Probably for that reason they constructed the Wall in its entirety not directly on the border but safely a few paces back in East Berlin. Disdainful of German unification aspirations and willing to accept the existing European balance of power, Kennedy was driven by the mistaken hope that by making the Soviets feel more secure in Berlin, he would increase the chances for fruitful negotiations on a wider range of issues. Instead, as the Cuban crisis would later show, Kennedyas inaction in Berlin only encouraged greater Soviet misbehavior.

Scholars have long wondered whether Kennedy provided even more explicit approval in advance for the Berlin Wallas construction. If such communication occurred, it likely would have come during the regular meetings of the presidentas brother Robert and Soviet intermediary Georgi Bolshakov, the Soviet military intelligence agent who had established himself as the secret conduit between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Bobby would later apologize for failing to keep a record of those conversations. Bolshakovas own available account sheds no light on his talks with Bobby just before or after the border closure, and Kremlin and Soviet intelligence archives that could provide clues remain closed.

In spite of that, however, the resemblance is so striking between the course Kennedy had endorsed and what the Soviets and East Germans executed as to be more than coincidental. Kennedy provided Khrushchev greater lat.i.tude for action in Berlin than any of his predecessors had done. The decla.s.sified transcripts of their Vienna Summit detail the de facto deal Kennedy was willing to strike: He would give Khrushchev a free hand to seal Berlinas border in exchange for a guarantee that the Soviets would not disrupt West Berlinas continued freedom or Allied access to the city. Senior U.S. officials who would read the Vienna transcripts later would be shocked by Kennedyas unprecedented willingness to recognize the postwar division of Europe as permanent in the interest of achieving stability. As Kennedy told Khrushchev on the first day of their Vienna talks, aIt was crucial to have the changes occurring in the world and affecting the balance of power take place in a way that would not involve the prestige of the treaty commitments of our two countries.a The next day Kennedy would extend this line of argument more explicitly to Berlin, repet.i.tively restricting Americaas commitment to aWest Berlina and not to all of Berlin as his predecessors had. Kennedy drove home that distinction publicly on July 25 in a live, televised speech whose message of retreat to Khrushchev over Berlin was so clear that it unsettled U.S. policy-makers who had so carefully crafted the language of diplomacy since World War II.

Two weeks before the Berlin border closure, on July 30, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman William Fulbright said of the Berlin border on national television: aThe truth of the matter is, I think, the Russians have the power to close it in any casea. Next week, if they chose to close their borders, they could, without violating any treaty. I donat understand why the East Germans donat close their border, because I think they have a right to close it.a With that, the Arkansas senator had said publicly what Kennedy was thinking privately. The president did nothing to repudiate him, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy privately told Kennedy that he considered Fulbrightas words ahelpful.a Without any countervailing presidential statement, Khrushchev concluded that Fulbright had delivered a deliberate signal, and he said as much both to East German leader Walter Ulbricht and visiting Italian President Amintore Fanfani. aWhen the border is closed,a Khrushchev told Ulbricht, athe Americans and West Germans will be happy. [U.S. Amba.s.sador to Moscow Llewellyn] Thompson told me that this [refugee] flight is causing the West Germans a lot of trouble. So when we inst.i.tute these controls, everyone will be satisfied. And beyond that, they will feel your power.a aYes,a replied Ulbricht, aand we will have achieved stability.a It was the one thing that unified Ulbricht, Khrushchev, and Kennedy: the desire for East German stability.

Throughout 1961, Berlin was an unwanted, inherited problem for Kennedy, and never a cause that he wished to champion. Speaking from the steaming waters of his giant golden bathtub in Paris during a break in his talks with de Gaulle, Kennedy complained to aides Kenny OaDonnell and Dave Powers, aIt seems silly for us to be facing an atomic war over a treaty preserving Berlin as the future capital of a unified Germany when all of us know that Germany will probably never be reunified.a On the plane to London after the Vienna Summit, Kennedy again complained to OaDonnell, aWe didnat cause the disunity in Germany. We 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.a If establis.h.i.+ng the Cold Waras terms for another three decades was the powerful long-term outcome of Berlin 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the most significant short-term aftershock. In the minds of Kennedy and Khrushchev, the Cuban and Berlin situations were inextricably linked.

Critics called Khrushchevas scheme to put nuclear missiles in Cuba a reckless gamble, but from the Soviet leaderas perspective it was a calculated risk based on what he knew of Kennedy. At the end of 1961, he told a group of Soviet officials that he had learned Kennedy would do almost anything to avoid nuclear war. aI know for certain,a he had said, athat Kennedy doesnat have a strong background, nor, generally speaking, does he have the courage to stand up to a serious challenge.a Regarding Cuba, he told his son Sergei that Kennedy awould make a fuss, make more of a fuss, and then agree.a Despite all his first-year setbacks, Kennedy remained so willing to provide Khrushchev concessions to reach a Berlin deal that a proposal he made in April 1962 triggered a significant clash with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. What Kennedy called a aPrinciples Papera proposed an aInternational Access Authoritya that would transfer control of access to Berlin from the four powers to a newly created body through which the Soviets and East Germans could block entry by anyone they wished. All Kennedy sought in return was Kremlin acceptance of continued Allied military presence and rights in West Berlin.

The doc.u.ment so directly lifted Soviet language that in a copy pa.s.sed by Was.h.i.+ngton to Moscow, the drafters had underscored sections to show what they had borrowed. Beyond that, the paper dropped any mention of German reunification as an eventual goal to be achieved through free elections, which had previously been a nonnegotiable point with Moscow. Never had U.S. proposals so closely resembled Soviet positions or strayed so far from those of Adenauer. At first, Kennedy provided Adenauer only one day for response to a draft. He extended that to forty-eight hours only after angry West German protests.

Adenauer no longer could conceal his disgust with Kennedy. He protested to Paul Nitze, the U.S. a.s.sistant secretary of defense who visited him in Bonn, that if Kennedyas principles went forward, West Berlin would not have sufficient moving vans for all those who wished to flee the city. He then shot off a brusque note to Kennedy that said, aI have considerable objections against some of these proposals. I ask you most urgently, my dear Mr. President, to call an immediate pause to these proceedingsa.a A leak of the paper, almost certainly blessed by Adenauer, created such an uproar that commentators on both sides of the Atlantic attacked Kennedy for engaging in retreat while his adversaries continued to gun down would-be refugees, hara.s.s Allied soldiers, and further reinforce their Wall. Kennedy was forced to withdraw his proposal. Most humiliating of all, an emboldened Khrushchev was in the process of rejecting Kennedyas principles anyway because they did not include a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Khrushchev was playing for larger stakes.

Even as he put in place his Cuban operation, on July 5, 1962, he countered with his most detailed proposal yet to Kennedy to end what he labeled the aWest Berlin occupation regime.a Under his plan, United Nations police forces would replace Allied troops. They would be drawn from the existing three Western powers but also from neutral states and two Warsaw Pact countries. Through gradual cuts to this contingent of 25 percent per year, after four years West Berlin would have no remaining foreign forces of any kind. Kennedy rejected that proposal two weeks later, on July 17, but every step of the way Khrushchev continued to move his Berlin strategy forward even as he secretly finalized his Cuban plans.

The Soviet militaryas high-seas operation to Cuba was so large in scale that Khrushchev had to have a.s.sumed that Kennedy and his intelligence services would discover it, but that the president would lack the will to stop the missile deployments.

On September 4, Kennedy told select members of Congress that the CIA had determined the Soviets were helping Castro build up his defense capabilities. That evening, Kennedy issued a press statement that said much the same, and warned Khrushchev athe gravest issues would arisea if the U.S. found evidence of Soviet combat troops or offensive capability. The tone and commitment to respond was far more resolute than Khrushchev had antic.i.p.ated.

Two days later, on September 6, Khrushchev flew a surprised Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, who had been in Russia visiting electrical plants, to meet with him at his Black Sea retreat at Pitsunda. He explored with Udall what s.h.i.+ft in domestic politics might be providing Kennedy a new backbone even while he repeated his conviction that Kennedy was fundamentally weak. aAs a president he has understanding,a Khrushchev told Udall, abut what he does not have is couragea”courage to solve the German question.a With his Cuban operation far advanced, Khrushchev told Udall, aSo we will help him solve the problem. We will put him in a situation where it is necessary to solve ita. We will not allow your troops to be in Berlin.a Khrushchev told Udall that to avoid damaging Kennedy in the November elections, he would not press the issue until afterward. Without any reference to Cuba, he told Udall that the Sovietsa enhanced position of strength had already changed the balance of power: aItas been a long time since you could spank us like a little boya”now we can swat your a.s.s.a War over Berlin, Khrushchev said, would mean that with athe s.p.a.ce of an houra there would be ano Paris and no France.a On October 16, 1962, with most of the Cuban launchers already in place, Khrushchev told Foy Kohler, who was Thompsonas successor as amba.s.sador to the USSR, that he wanted to meet with the president at the UN General a.s.sembly session in New York during the second half of November to talk about Berlin and other issues. By then, the Soviet leader would have significantly s.h.i.+fted the strategic balance, giving Moscow for the first time a capability of reliably hitting the U.S. with nuclear weapons. That, in turn, would leave him in a better position either to negotiate or impose the Berlin solution he wanted. Khrushchev told his new amba.s.sador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that Berlin remained athe primary issue in Sovieta”American relations.a As Khrushchev would recall later: My thinking went like this: If we installed the missiles secretly, and then the United States discovered the missiles after they were poised and ready to strike, the Americans would think twice before trying to liquidate our installations by military means. I knew that the United States could knock out some of our installations, but not all of them. If a quarter or even a tenth of our missiles surviveda”even if only one or two big ones were lefta”we could still hit New York, and there wouldnat be much of New York left. I donat mean to say everyone in New York would be killeda”not everyone, of course, but an awful lot of people would be wiped outa. And it was high time that America learned what it feels like to have her own land and her own people threatened.

Of all Khrushchevas moves linking Cuba and Berlin during this period, perhaps none was as telling as the Soviet construction of an aboveground oil pipeline across East Germany to fuel Soviet troop deployments to the West German border. The pipelines would send an unmistakable message to Kennedy that Khrushchev would be willing to go to war in Berlin over any Cuban pushback. Said Khrushchev: aThe Americans knew that if Russian blood were shed in Cuba, American blood would surely be shed in Germany.a Kennedyas words and actions during the thirteen days of the Cuban crisis, from October 16 to 29, underscored his conviction that Khrushchevas Cuba and Berlin strategies were interlinked. From the beginning, he suspected that Khrushchevas Cuban strategy was ultimately aimed at winning Berlin, the Soviet leaderas greater priority. Thus, Kennedy told the Joint Chiefs: Let me just say a little, first, about what the problem is, from my point of view. First, in general, I think we ought to think of why the Russians did this. Well, actually, it was a rather dangerous but rather useful play of theirs. We do nothing and they have a missile base there with all the pressure that brings to bear on the United States and our prestige. If we attack Cuban missiles, or Cuba in any way, that gives them a clear line to take Berlin, as they were able to do in Hungary under the Anglo war in Egypt [the Suez Crisis]. We would be regarded as the trigger-happy Americans who lost Berlin. We would have no support among our allies. We would affect the West Germansa att.i.tude towards us. And [people would believe] that we let Berlin go because we didnat have the guts to ensure a situation in Cuba. After all, Cuba is five or six thousand miles from them. They donat give a d.a.m.n about Cuba. But they do care about Berlin and about their own security.

Kennedyas decision to take a harder line with the Soviets over Cuba in 1962 than he had done regarding Berlin in 1961 had at least three motivations. First, the perils were greater to the U.S., as the danger was closer to home. Second, the domestic politics of mishandling Cuba were more dangerous to Kennedyas reelection chances than they had been regarding faraway Berlin. Finally, Kennedy had at long last learned that his demonstrations of weakness had only encouraged Khrushchev to test him further. The Soviet leader had brazenly misled him, saying that he was postponing Berlin talks in deference to U.S. elections when he was merely buying time to put his missiles in place.

Kennedy drove home the Berlin connection again when he informed British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of the photographic proof of the missiles in a secret teletype message that was received in London on October 21 at 10:00 p.m. He wrote: I recognize fully that Khrushchevas main intention may be to increase his chances at Berlin, and we shall be ready to take a full role there as well as in the Caribbean. What is essential at this moment of highest test is that Khrushchev should discover that if he is counting on weakness or irresolution, he has miscalculated.

Kennedy repeated his Berlin concern to Macmillan in a second message a day later, just a few hours before his historic television address informing Americans of the danger, demanding the Soviets remove the missiles, and introducing a naval quarantine of Cuba. aI need not point out to you the possible relation of this secret and dangerous move on the part of Khrushchev to Berlin,a he said.

In 1962, Kennedy also rejected the advice of the so-called SLOBs, the Soft-Liners on Berlin. Amba.s.sador Thompson, who had returned from Moscow to the State Department, wanted Kennedy to stop military traffic to Berlin during the Cuban showdown so as not to provoke the Kremlin, a notion the president rejected. National Security Advisor Bundy wondered whether some deal was possible under which one could trade Berlin for the missiles. Kennedy refused that as well, not wanting to be the president who lost Berlin.

For all his newfound resolve, however, Kennedy opposed his militaryas suggestion of an attack on the Cuban bases, in no small part due to concern about a Soviet t.i.t-for-tat military retaliation in Berlin. At one point General Curtis E. LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, protested Kennedyas unwillingness to strike by saying, aThis is almost as bad as the appeas.e.m.e.nt at Munich.a LeMayas argument: aIf we donat do anything to Cuba, theyare going to push on Berlin and push real hard because theyave got us on the run.a Kennedy told the Executive Committee, the body he had created from his National Security Council to handle the crisis, that he worried even a quarantine could prompt a corresponding Soviet blockade of Berlin. The president appointed a subcommittee of that group, chaired by Paul Nitze, to wrestle with Berlin-related issues. He even lined up General Lucius Clay to return to Berlin if needed to coordinate U.S. actions.

In his October 22 speech to the nation, Kennedy publicly warned Khrushchev on Berlin: aAny hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committeda”including in particular the brave people of West Berlina”will be met by whatever action is needed.a With that, Kennedyas Berlin Crisis had moved to Cuba.

In his meeting with U.S. Amba.s.sador to London David Bruce on the evening of Kennedyas speech, Prime Minister Macmillan worried: aWas it not likely that Khrushchevas real purpose was to trade Cuba for Berlin? If he were stopped, with great loss of face, in Cuba, would he not be tempted to recover himself in Berlin? Indeed, might not this be the whole purpose of the exercisea”to move forward one p.a.w.n in order to exchange it for another?a For his part, Kennedy worried to Macmillan that Khrushchev might preemptively take military action in Berlin that would require a proportionate U.S. response against Cuba. aThatas really the choice we now have,a he wrote. aIf [Khrushchev] takes Berlin, then we will take Cuba.a Instead, Khrushchev backed down in Cuba once challenged by a decisive Kennedy, exactly as General Clay had predicted he would a year earlier in regard to Berlin. When Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vasili Kuznetsov suggested a diversionary strike on Berlin to Khrushchev, the Soviet leader warned him, aKeep that sort of talk to yourself. We donat know how to get out of one predicament, and you [want to] drag us into another?a Khrushchev also rejected Amba.s.sador Dobryninas idea of responding to Cuba through the afirst stepa of closing ground routes to Berlin. aFather considered any action in Berlin to be unduly dangerous,a Khrushchevas son Sergei would recall later, insisting that anot for a momenta did he consider a nuclear strike on the U.S. After Kennedyas speech, Khrushchev began to withdraw Soviet troops from the West German border so that it would be clear he had no intention of escalating the conflict.

All that said, Kennedy was never as uncompromising in Cuba as it appeared to the U.S. public. On October 27, the presidentas brother Bobby and Dobrynin reached an agreement that the U.S. would withdraw its Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey. When Khrushchev mentioned the concession the following day in a letter to Kennedy, Bobby returned the letter to the Soviets and denied that such a trade had been made. But Khrushchev considered the Turkey retreat crucial to his agreement.

Nevertheless, Kennedy had even won over his biggest Allied critics. De Gaulle famously told Kennedyas emissary Dean Acheson, who had been sent to brief him during the crisis, that he did not need to see the proof of spy photographs from aa great nationa in order to support Kennedy. Adenauer said he would throw his lot behind Kennedy even if the U.S. found it must bomb or invade Cuba. aAbsolutely, the missiles must go,a he said, thereafter bracing his country for a Berlin blockade or even a nuclear exchange. Tellingly, Kennedy rejected the dovish Macmillanas offer to mediate with Moscow and call a summit on Cuba, which he felt would be disastrous for Berlin. aI donat know quite what we will discuss at the meeting,a Kennedy said, abecause heall be back with the same old position on Berlin, probably offering to dismantle the missiles if weall neutralize Berlin.a Most surprised of all by Kennedyas demonstration of strength was Khrushchev himself, who had bet so much against it. General Clay suggested to diplomat William Smyser that the Cuban Missile Crisis never would have occurred had it not been for Khrushchevas perception of Kennedyas weakness, and Clay believed as well that the threat to Berlin only receded once Kennedy made it clear he would no longer tolerate Moscowas bullying.