Berlin 1961 (24 page)

Home wanted to shift the Americans from their focus on military contingencies to consideration of potential openings for Berlin talks with the Kremlin. He argued that Khrushchev had made only one public commitment that limited his room for maneuver, and that was to end Berlin’s occupation status. Lord Home believed Khrushchev “could get off this hook” if the Allies signed a treaty that would leave the status quo in place for a period of ten years or so, but that over time this would alter Berlin’s status.

“Khrushchev is not on a
hook
,” Acheson shot back, “and thus does not have to be taken off one.”

Acheson had no patience for what he considered British spinelessness toward Moscow. He sharply reminded Home that Khrushchev “is not legalistic. Khrushchev is pushing to divide the Allies. He is not going to make any treaty that would help us. Our position is good as it is and we should stick by it.” Acheson worried that even consideration of signing a treaty with East Germany, which would serve only Soviet interests, “will undermine the German spirit.”

The tension between Home and Acheson infused the room.

After an awkward silence, Rusk agreed with Acheson that any talk about accepting such a treaty would be “starting down a slippery slope.” He said the U.S. had to make clear it was in Berlin as a result of war, and not “by the grace of Khrushchev.” The U.S., Rusk insisted to the British, was a great power that would not be driven out of Berlin.

Home warned his American friends of the public opinion consequences in the West if Khrushchev openly proposed what might seem a reasonable change in Berlin’s legal status and the West failed to put forward any alternative approach. Western presence had to be put on a new legal basis, he argued, as the current “right of conquest” justification for Berlin occupation was “wearing thin.”

Perhaps, Acheson fired back again at Home, “it is our power that is wearing thin.”

Much the same group reconvened the next morning, although mercifully for the British, Acheson was absent on a mission. However, his spirit remained in the room. President Kennedy wanted to know from his U.S. and British experts why Khrushchev had not acted on Berlin thus far. What made him hold off?

“Was it the danger of the Western response?” he asked.

Lord Home said he thought Khrushchev “wouldn’t lay off much longer.”

Ambassador Charles E. “Chip” Bohlen agreed. The State Department’s leading Soviet specialist, who had been ambassador to Moscow from 1953 to 1957, believed the rising Chinese challenge and “strong importunities from the East Germans” were forcing Khrushchev into a more militant position. It wasn’t that the Soviets cared so much about Berlin, Bohlen insisted, but that they had concluded its loss could lead to the unraveling of their entire Eastern empire.

Kennedy brought the discussion back to Acheson’s paper. If Khrushchev had been contained by the threat of a military confrontation with the West, Kennedy said, “we should consider how to build up this threat. On Berlin, we have no bargaining position. Thus we ought to consider, as Mr. Acheson suggested yesterday, how to put the issue to Khrushchev as bluntly as possible.”

With the return of Acheson’s ghost, the group gamed Khrushchev’s next likely move and the West’s potential response. The British didn’t see how talks could be avoided, while most of the U.S. contingent doubted their utility. Kennedy’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, David Bruce, a former intelligence officer who had been Eisenhower’s ambassador to West Germany, said that the United States could not cede its few remaining rights in Berlin. “We cannot disregard the consequences that would flow in Central Europe and in West Germany from weakening on Berlin,” he said.

As his meetings with Kennedy neared an end, Macmillan was dissatisfied. He still did not know, he said, at what point the West “would break” and take action against Russian moves on Berlin. Without such a clear line, he feared that Kennedy could be drawn into a war he didn’t want, over far too little cause—and might then drag Britain into the hostilities.

Differing with Acheson, Kennedy responded that he believed it was the nuclear deterrent effect that “keeps the Communists from engaging us in a major struggle on Berlin.” Thus, he said, it was necessary to keep the fact of that deterrent “well forward.”

Macmillan, however, wondered what would happen in West Germany after Adenauer died—whether the Berlin game might be lost to the Soviets under a less resolute leader. “Sooner or later, say in five or ten years, the Russians might try to offer the West Germans unity in return for neutrality,” he ventured, repeating Britain’s stubborn doubts about German reliability.

Bohlen told Macmillan that he thought the time was past when West Germans would take “the bait of neutrality.” The Soviets as well, he said, could no longer afford to let socialism go down the drain in East Germany. Bruce argued that the larger issue for the moment was that East German refugees were “weakening all that goes to make up the normal life of a state,” with 200,000 leaving in 1960, and some 70 percent of those from vital age groups.

A final internal memorandum on the meeting papered over the two sides’ dispute. It noted that both the U.S. and the UK expected an escalation of the Berlin Crisis in 1961, that they agreed the loss of West Berlin would be catastrophic, and that they believed the Allies needed to make clearer their seriousness over Berlin to the Soviets. The document also called for intensified planning of military contingencies.

In the brisk spring sunshine of the White House Rose Garden, Kennedy stood by Macmillan and read a one-page joint statement that spoke of a “very high level of agreement on our estimate of the nature of the problems which we face.” It glossed over the considerable disagreements with mushy language, saying that the two men agreed on “the importance and the difficulty of working toward satisfactory relations with the Soviet Union.”

Macmillan had achieved little with Kennedy. What he gained was that Kennedy had endorsed Britain’s efforts to join the Common Market as part of his “Grand Design,” a crucial voice of support given French opposition. The two men also had further built a personal bond through two long, private talks.

Despite that, Macmillan had failed in many of his most important aims. Kennedy had opposed Britain’s efforts to get China into the United Nations, and had made it clear that, unlike Eisenhower, he did not intend to use Macmillan as an intermediary with Moscow. Most important, the Americans planned to convene a summit with a Soviet leader for the first time on European territory without inviting their British or French allies to participate. It seemed Kennedy had clearly bought Acheson’s line that London was too soft on Berlin.

British officials surprised the Americans by leaking to their home press that the Kennedy–Macmillan talks were “rough, touchy,” in many ways inconclusive, and certainly more difficult than the communiqué suggested.

And much worse was to follow.

8

AMATEUR HOUR

The European view was that they were watching a gifted young amateur practice with a boomerang, when they saw, to their horror, that he had knocked himself out. They were amazed that so inexperienced a person should play with so lethal a weapon.

Dean Acheson on President Kennedy’s handling of the Bay of Pigs debacle, June 1961

I don’t understand Kennedy. Can he really be that indecisive?

Premier Khrushchev to his son Sergei after the Bay of Pigs

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY, APRIL
7, 1961

I
t was Washington’s first warm spring day, the perfect temperature for President Kennedy’s walk through the White House Rose Garden with Dean Acheson. Kennedy had suggested the stroll, explaining to Acheson that he sought urgent advice. Though Kennedy was in shirtsleeves, Acheson remained his usual formal self in jacket and bow tie. In his only compromise with the weather, Acheson removed his bowler hat and carried it under his arm.

Truman’s former secretary of state expected Kennedy to quiz him on his ongoing NATO or Berlin projects, as he was leaving the next day for Europe to brief the Allies on his progress. Instead, Kennedy said he had another, more pressing matter in mind. “Come on out here in the garden and sit in the sun,” the president said, directing Acheson to a wooden bench, then settling down beside him. “Do you know anything about this Cuba proposal?”

Acheson conceded he did not even know there was a Cuba proposal.

So Kennedy sketched out the plan that he said he was considering. A force of 1,200 to 1,500 Cuban exiles—soldiers who had been trained by the CIA in Guatemala—would invade the island. They would be supported by the air cover of B-26 bombers, also flown by exiles. The idea was that once the exiled Cubans established a beachhead, as many as 7,000 insurgents and other Castro opponents already on the island would rise up in revolt. Without requiring the use of American troops or aircraft, the U.S. would remove Fidel Castro from power and replace him with a friendly regime. The plan had been hatched by the Eisenhower administration, but it had been revised in Kennedy’s early weeks. It was supported throughout by U.S. intelligence equipment, trainers, and planners.

Acheson did not hide his alarm. He said that he hoped the president wasn’t serious about such a crazy scheme.

“I don’t know if I’m serious or not,” Kennedy said. “But this is the proposal and I’ve been thinking about it, and it is serious in that sense. I’ve not made up my mind but I’m giving it very serious thought.”

In truth, the president had already given the plan his go-ahead almost a month earlier, on March 11, 1961. He had signed off on the last details on April 5, just two days before his conversation with Acheson. He had altered only two important aspects, having moved the landing place to allow for a less spectacular invasion, and ensuring that there was a suitable airfield nearby for tactical air support. Otherwise, “Operation Mongoose” was much the plan that the Eisenhower administration had passed down to Kennedy.

Acheson said he would not “need to phone Price Waterhouse” to determine that Kennedy’s 1,500 Cubans were no match for Castro’s 25,000 Cubans. He told Kennedy such an invasion could have disastrous consequences for America’s prestige in Europe and for relations with the Soviets over Berlin, where they likely would respond with their own aggression.

Yet it was precisely because of Berlin that Kennedy wanted there to be no obviously American assets involved. He wanted to avoid giving the Soviets any pretext to do something similarly disruptive in Berlin.

The two men talked awkwardly for a little longer before Acheson left the Rose Garden without having exchanged a word with the president about anything other than Cuba. As he left for Europe, Acheson dismissed the Cuban matter from his mind, as “it seemed like such a wild idea.”

He was confident wiser minds would prevail.

RHÖNDORF, WEST GERMANY
SUNDAY, APRIL
9, 1961

West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s concerns about how to manage his relationship with Kennedy had grown so great that he summoned his friend Dean Acheson to meet with him in Bonn to talk strategy before his visit to the U.S. a few days later.

Legions of Germans were out for Sunday walks on pathways under the flowering fruit trees beside the Rhine River as Adenauer, in a less leisurely manner, sped by them with Acheson in his Mercedes from the airport to his home. The chancellor savored high-speed drives in the well-engineered German cars that had become such an export hit, and Acheson held tightly to his seat as Adenauer’s driver accelerated to keep pace with a lead jeep.

A soldier sat in the jeep’s open back, providing directions with outstretched paddles. If the soldier extended a paddle out to his right, it was a sign to Adenauer’s driver that he was going to pass traffic by driving up over the sidewalk. If he pointed one up to the left, it meant the driver would scatter oncoming traffic as he passed to that side. Acheson smiled grimly at Adenauer and noticed that “the old man was just having a wonderful time.”

A small group of Adenauer’s neighbors had gathered to applaud the legendary political couple’s arrival at the chancellor’s home in the Rhine-side village of Rhöndorf. The eighty-five-year-old Adenauer looked to the zigzag stairway heading up the hill about a hundred feet from the street to his door and said to his sixty-seven-year-old guest, “My friend, you are not as youthful as you were the first time we met, and I must urge you not to take these steps too fast.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Chancellor,” Acheson replied, smiling. “If I find myself wearying, may I take your arm?”

Adenauer chuckled. “Are you teasing me?”

“I wouldn’t think of doing so.” Acheson smiled. The good-natured banter was an elixir for Adenauer’s troubled spirit.

Acheson spent much of the day calming an Adenauer whom he found “worried to death—just completely worried” about Kennedy. Adenauer’s greatest concern was that Kennedy was scheming to make a peace deal behind his back with the Russians on any number of issues that would sell out German interests and abandon Berliners. He worried as well about the rise of a new hostility among Americans toward Germans after years of postwar healing, inflamed by the shocking revelations of William Shirer’s newly published book,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
, and the imminent trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel.

Beyond that, Adenauer said, he was disturbed by reports that the Kennedy administration was shifting its deterrence strategy from its overwhelming reliance on nuclear weapons to the relatively new notion of “flexible response.” That would involve a greater emphasis on conventional weaponry in all military contingencies regarding Berlin. Though such a policy change could have significant impact on West German security, the Kennedy administration had neither consulted nor briefed Adenauer or other West German counterparts.