Berlin 1961 (45 page)

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 “cutting [his] losses.” Instead, Kissinger suggested that Kennedy’s response to Khrushchev’s increasing of Berlin tensions “with 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.” 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. “We should give them some tangible demonstration of our confidence to maintain their hope and courage,” he wrote.

It concerned Kissinger all the more that Kennedy didn’t 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 Berlin’s freedom. His paper captured all of those ideas in clearer, more strategic form than any other document that had reached the White House until that time.

A cover note for the Kissinger memo, written by Bundy, said: “He 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.”

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. “In other words, we must be prepared to face a showdown,” 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. “Khrushchev’s domestic position is his problem, not ours,” 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. “What may seem watchful waiting to us may appear as insecurity [to Khrushchev],” Kissinger said. Prophetically, he indicated that such an approach would tempt Moscow to prompt a crisis at the moment of “maximum difficulty” for the U.S., causing a situation in which the world would come to doubt Kennedy’s determination.

In a separate note to Schlesinger, Kissinger later said, “I 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.” Frustrated with being at the fringes of decision making, he worried that Kennedy’s 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, MASSACHUSETTS
SATURDAY, 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 Berlin—the central stage for the world’s 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 Khrushchev’s aide-mémoire delivered in Vienna—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 rubles—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 country’s 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. “These are forced measures, comrades,” he said. “We take them because we cannot neglect the Soviet people’s security.”

Kennedy was livid that
Newsweek
had published details of the Pentagon’s top-secret Berlin contingency planning, which apparently had been the basis for Khrushchev’s 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 Kennedy’s policy. Realizing that London was the weakest Allied link on Berlin, Khrushchev had summoned British Ambassador 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 “quite enough” 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 scrape up. Knowing he was singing from Prime Minister Macmillan’s song sheet, he said, “Why should two hundred million people die for two million Berliners?”

In Hyannis Port, Kennedy scolded Secretary Rusk, who sat in his usual business suit on the fantail of the Kennedys’ fifty-two-foot speedboat, the
Marlin
, for having failed to come up with an answer to Khrushchev’s Berlin ultimatum. While the president fumed, the First Lady dropped into the ocean to water-ski, and Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor joined Kennedy’s 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 wasn’t 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 Department’s Soviet expert, Chip Bohlen, a former ambassador to Moscow: “Chip, what’s wrong with the goddamned department of yours? I can never get a quick answer, no matter what question I put to them.”

Martin Hillenbrand, head of the State Department’s German desk, would later insist that a draft of the reply to the Soviet aide-mémoire had actually been produced promptly. But after ten days, State had discovered that the White House had misplaced it. So special assistant 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 assessing 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. “I want the damn thing in ten days,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy told his advisers to provide him with new options beyond the current choice between “holocaust or humiliation.”

LINCOLN BEDROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, 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 o’clock 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 Ambassador Menshikov was telling anyone in Washington 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, “Will you take this down. I want to add it to the speech I am giving tonight.” 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 assert 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 president’s 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
burden
—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 Constitution 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 couldn’t 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, “Will you type this up and give it to me when I come over?”

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 Lincoln’s 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 Acheson’s 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.