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Kennedy and the Berlin Wall: A Hell of a Lot Better than a War

Ever since I served in the U.S. Mission in Berlin during the 1960–1963

Berlin Wall crisis, I have wanted to write this book about President John

F. Kennedy and the Berlin Wall. But I have waited until I could get

answers to my own questions about what really happened in Moscow,

Washington, Vienna, and elsewhere.

I knew and could remember quite clearly what happened on the

ground in Berlin. I was the last person to drive into East Berlin across

Potsdamer Platz before the Wall went up and one of the last to drive

through the Brandenburg Gate. I then served General Lucius D. Clay

while he was Kennedy’s personal representative in Berlin. I later returned

to Berlin often, especially during the months before and the days after the

Wall came down.

We now know much more than I or anybody else could possibly have

known at the time. Many Soviet and East German documents came open

after the fall of those regimes. The John F. Kennedy Library and the State

Department have declassified tens of thousands of pertinent U.S. documents.

Officials on all sides have published memoirs. For example, we can

now tell much more clearly:

Why Nikita Khrushchev launched his Berlin ultimatum

Why he combined his Berlin and Cuban threats

How Kennedy hoped to negotiate about Berlin

How Kennedy grew during the crisis

How Henry Kissinger advised Kennedy to handle Berlin

How Kennedy’s and Khrushchev’s allies complicated and even stymied

their policies

How General Lucius Clay advised Kennedy, and what Kennedy’s staff

thought of Clay

How Kennedy had to worry about more than a Soviet threat

Why Kennedy really made his dramatic “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in

June 1963

That Kennedy ended the Cuban standoff as he had ended one in

Berlin

How Clay thought Kennedy might have avoided the Cuban crisis

Newly declassified documents at the Kennedy Library have been especially

valuable. They show Kennedy’s leadership style in more detail

than has been known to date, and they also reveal more about Kennedy

through the Berlin prism than one can learn from almost any other

source. Those documents also reflect Clay’s and Kissinger’s thinking as

well as the attitudes of Kennedy’s advisers and staff. Those documents

and new biographies also show the views of such other Western leaders

as West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, French president Charles

de Gaulle, and British prime minister Harold Macmillan. They show how

those leaders tried to pull Kennedy in different directions, for the Berlin

crisis cannot be fully understood as only a Washington-Moscow show.

By the time of his visit to Berlin, Kennedy worried more about his

allies than about Khrushchev. Khrushchev himself had to pay more

attention to East European attitudes than we knew at the time. Khrushchev’s

thoughts about Kennedy and Berlin before and after the summit

in Vienna have become clearer through his own writings, through Sergei

Khrushchev’s thoughtful biography of his father, and through the work

of Western experts over the last five years. I have spoken to most of the

authors of those books to help flesh out a picture.

These materials enable us now to have a better idea of the Berlin Wall

crisis itself and of Kennedy’s and Khrushchev’s decisions. They make a

new book about the crisis necessary to help us understand the Cold War,

the Kennedy presidency, American as well as European history, and the

conduct of diplomacy under pressure. I have tried to pull all the new information

into a single coherent picture in one volume. I have not tried to go

into detail, concentrating instead on the essentials of what happened.

I began my research and writing on this book with a generous grant

from the Woodrow Wilson International left for Scholars. I completed

it while at the left for German and European Studies at Georgetown

University. I also received a grant from the Kennedy Library in Boston

to conduct research there. Talks with American, German, Russian, and

other experts filled in the remaining gaps. I did some final editing while

serving as the Henry A. Kissinger Scholar at the Library of Congress.

These sources have enabled me to combine the role of scholar with

that of participant. At times I have written from my perspective at the

U.S. Mission in Berlin and as assistant to General Clay. At other times

I have written on the basis of my research. Often I have written from a

combination of both. My role in the crisis has helped me to give other

sources their appropriate weight.

I want to express my appreciation to the many persons who helped

my research or provided support. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to

Lee Hamilton, the president and director of the Wilson left, who

generously invited me to work there on the manuscript for this book. I

also want to thank Christian Ostermann of the Cold War International

History Project at the Wilson left; Samuel Wells, the director of

European studies at the Wilson left; and Janet Spikes, the principal

librarian.

For my research on Kennedy himself and on the American side of

the Berlin crisis, I thank Sharon Kelly, Helen Desnoyers and Steven

Plotkin of the Kennedy Library; Ted Sorensen, Kennedy’s counselor and

speechwriter; Thomas Hughes, Kennedy’s and Dean Rusk’s director for

intelligence and research; Michael Maccoby of the Harvard Crimson; Jean

Edward Smith, General Clay’s biographer; as well as Ernest Nagy, Arthur

Day, and Lucian Heichler, who served with me in Berlin.

For sensitive intelligence information showing the links between the

Cuban and Berlin crises, I thank John Mapother, who served in Berlin

at the time. Gregory Cumming of the Nixon Library helped to confirm

my recollections of Richard Nixon’s visit to East Berlin. I also had valuable

talks with Henry Kissinger, who served as a part-time consultant to

Kennedy

For the German view of the crisis, I thank Willy Brandt, Egon Bahr,

Hans-Peter Schwarz, Horst Teltschik, Lothar Loewe, and Karl Kaiser, all

of whom gave me insights into crucial and diverse elements of German

thinking, as well as Hans Peter Mensing, who made Adenauer documents

available. I also thank Heinz Weber, who helped Kennedy to prepare

his 1963 Berlin speech and then interpreted it for the crowd, and who

straightened out some misunderstood points on that speech. The late

Robert Lochner offered valuable comments about Kennedy’s frustrating

efforts to speak German. All of them played different but important roles

in my research and writing.

I thank Hope Harrison and Vladislav Zubok for the careful research

they have conducted on Soviet and East German documents and for the

advice they gave me. I thank Andreas Daum who did the definitive study

on Kennedy’s 1963 visit and speech in Berlin.

For my understanding of Khrushchev, I thank Alexander Akalovsky,

who served as interpreter for Kennedy’s summit with Khrushchev and

who briefed me on unreported points regarding Khrushchev’s language

and behavior during the summit; Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev’s

son; and Sergo Mikoyan, the son of Anastas Mikoyan. All of them

helped clarify some important points. These persons are responsible for

such contributions as this volume can make to the study of the Kennedy

presidency and of Berlin.

Much of the source material for this book came from personal conversations

between 2006 and 2008. I have cited these conversations to the

best of my memory. And, I am, of course, responsible for any flaws.

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