Berlin 1961 (73 page)

A little less than a decade after the Berlin border closure, in May 1971, East German leader Walter Ulbricht resigned and was replaced by Erich Honecker, the man he had assigned to lead the Berlin Wall project. Honecker resigned a month before the Wall that he had constructed collapsed. He died of cancer in 1994, exiled in Chile, having been indicted but not tried on charges that included ordering border guards to shoot his own country’s citizens if they tried to escape.

But in Berlin in 1961, their fates were cast in a city whose name would come to embody the central ideological and geopolitical struggle of the second half of the twentieth century. Ultimately, the story would end well, but only because in Cuba Kennedy would reverse the perilous course he had set the previous year in Berlin.

What Kennedy could not undo was the Wall that had risen as he passively stood by, which for three decades and perhaps for all of history would remain the iconic image of what unfree systems can impose when free leaders fail to resist.

Acknowledgments

My association with Berlin began in the womb.

My mother, Johanna Schumann Kempe, was born on January 30, 1919, in the Pankow district of what would later become communist East Berlin. She immigrated with her family to America in 1930, three years before the beginning of the Third Reich. She often told me how she, as a teenager, returned to Berlin in 1936 to watch Adolf Hitler host the Olympic Games, where his “master race” won the most medals but was upstaged by black U.S. athlete Jesse Owens, whose four golds were so enthusiastically cheered by Berliners. My mother brought back a souvenir photograph book, which still stands in my bookcase as a reminder of Berlin’s many dramas.

Like most Berliners, my mother was extraordinarily proud of her origins. Berliners consider themselves a breed apart from their fellow Germans. My mother insisted Berliners were more free-spirited and flexible than other Germans, and more witty and worldly.

Given my father’s more provincial German pedigree, he suffered under my mother’s notions about Berliners’ exceptionality. Born on May 21, 1909, in the provincial Saxon village of Leubsdorf, he grew up in Kleinzschachwitz near Dresden before immigrating to the United States in 1928. What unified my mother, a schoolteacher, and my father, a baker, was that they were both raised in parts of Germany that would fall under Soviet occupation after World War II. The rise of the Berlin Wall in 1961 severed our extended family; I remember my parents sending large Christmas packages every year to relatives in East Germany, filled with goods they couldn’t buy themselves. One of my great regrets is that my parents would both die a year before they could see the Berlin Wall collapse of its own oppressive weight in 1989.

So, first and foremost, I am indebted to my mother and father, without whom this book would never have been written. I learned from them about Berlin’s significance as the dividing line between the free and unfree worlds. It was my parents who instilled in me an indignation both toward those who imposed and those who tolerated the oppressive system that encased seventeen million of their fellow Germans (and, by association, tens of millions of other East Europeans) behind Berlin’s concrete walls, barbed wire, watchtowers, and armed guards.

There is also plenty of other thanks to go around. My gratitude again goes to Neil Nyren, my four-time editor at Putnam, who was crucial at every stage of this project, from the development of the concept to the final tweaks. His deft touch and creative eye much improved this manuscript’s narrative. Thanks also to one of the world’s most gifted agents, Esther Newberg, who along with Neil quite properly steered me away from less promising projects and toward this one.

Thanks go as well to the enormously creative Ivan Held, president of Putnam; Marilyn Ducksworth and her publicity team; and the remarkable group under Meredith Dros, including Sara Minnich, who put together the enhanced e-book. Special thanks go to John Makinson, dear friend of so many years, and Penguin visionary. His advice was always wise.

I owe much to the many chroniclers who preceded me in capturing portions of this history. I have provided a comprehensive bibliography for the reader that lists the many texts I studied over more than six years of research and reporting. But it is nonetheless appropriate to list those who influenced my understanding most: Hope Harrison and Mario Frank, on Walter Ulbricht and his relationship with Khrushchev; Hans Peter Schwartz and Charles Williams, on Adenauer; Strobe Talbott and his remarkable work on Khrushchev’s memoirs; and Michael Beschloss, Robert Dallek, Christopher Hilton, Fred Kaplan, Timothy Naftali and Aleksandr Fursenko, Robert Slusser, Jean Edward Smith, W. M. Smyser, Frederick Taylor, Theodore Sorensen, and Peter Wyden, who all have contributed important work. Two books that focus squarely on August 1961, by Norman Gelb and Curtis Cate, are of particular merit, as they were written by witnesses with great proximity to events of the time.

Despite all that good work, it still struck me that none of these books had put together all the pieces that had contributed to the historic occurrences around Berlin 1961. My goal was to produce a readable, authoritative narrative for both the expert and the general reader that would investigate all the available historical accounts and combine those with more recently declassified materials in the United States, Germany, and Russia.

To take on that challenge, my thanks go above all to the talented and resourceful Nicholas Siegel, my research assistant during the most crucial period of this project. Thanks also to Roman Kilisek, whose careful, thorough, painstaking work in the later stages was invaluable. I am deeply grateful to Natascha Braumann and Alexia Huffman, my personal assistants, who contributed richly to the book itself while also brilliantly managing the executive office of the Atlantic Council. A tip of the hat is also due many others who provided valuable research along the way: Milena Brechenmacher, Bryan Hart, Petra Krischok, Maria Panina, and Dieter Wulf. Susan Hormuth’s expert photo research helped unearth unique material for the book and its various electronic incarnations—and Natascha again played a crucial role in making sense of mountains of material. Thanks as well to Maryrose Grossman and Michelle DeMartino at the John F. Kennedy Library, and to William Burr at the National Security Archive.

I owe much to colleagues at my former employer, the
Wall Street Journal
, and at the Atlantic Council of the United States, where I now work. Thanks in particular go to my former
Wall Street Journal
boss, Paul Steiger, and to Jim Pensiero, who made it possible for me to write this book. At the Atlantic Council, our always wise Chairman Emeritus Henry Catto and then President Jan Lodal encouraged me to continue this project. I owe a particular thanks to General Brent Scowcroft, one of America’s most extraordinary individuals, and to Virginia Mulberger, a woman of unique judgment and character, for their friendship, inspiration, and support. Throughout this project, I have benefited from the wise counsel of Richard Steele.

I have had the remarkable luck to serve as Atlantic Council President and CEO under two chairmen who are among this country’s finest leaders and mentors: Senator Chuck Hagel and General Jim Jones. Senator Hagel, our current chairman, embodies the consistent, principled, bipartisan leadership the United States so badly needs. All Americans have profited from forty-two years of General Jones’s remarkable public service, most recently as President Obama’s national security advisor.

Special thanks to Walter Isaacson for his early encouragement of this project. Thanks to the many Americans and Berliners who shared their stories, and to David Acheson for providing access to his father’s correspondence. I’m grateful to Vern Pike for sharing his still-unpublished manuscript about his days in Berlin.

No project of this sort happens without friends and family. Pete and Maria Bagley provided kindness and support that can never be repaid. My dear friends Pete and Alex Motyl offered crucial organizational and editing suggestions that improved the manuscript significantly.

In adulthood as in childhood, I rely for ballast on my sisters Jeanie, Patty, and Teresa, and I thank them for their encouragement and understanding when this project took time that might have been spent with them. We are bound by a common heritage as first-generation Americans.

This book is quite properly dedicated to my wife, Pam, who has been my extraordinary friend, partner, editor, and counselor through every early-morning hour, every weekend day, and every vacation week spent on this project. Throughout it all, our remarkable daughter, Johanna Natalie (aka “Jo-Jo”), named for the Berliner who brought me into this world, sustains our happiness with her infectious joy and boundless curiosity. I can’t wait to show her Berlin.

Notes

SOURCES

The sources for the facts, quotes, and reenactment of crucial meetings and episodes in this text are many and varied—in English, German, and Russian. They include declassified documents, manuscript collections, oral histories, interviews, memoirs, diaries, recordings, and media reports of that time. I have carefully cited all relevant sources in the endnotes and bibliography. Some of this material was not available to or used by earlier chroniclers, and thus it has allowed me to provide a more accurate and more complete account. Many important potential documents are still classified or unavailable, so the telling of this history will be even more complete over time. I and other authors will then be able to expand upon what is in these pages, and I will also provide any new insights at the websites berlin1961.com and fredkempe.com.

To improve readability, I have added articles and other connecting words, such as “the,” “a,” and “and,” to my quotations from State Department and other government cable traffic; these had been left out at that time for reasons of brevity. I have also taken the liberty of using as direct quotes citations from these cables when it was apparent the note-taker was quoting a specific person’s words. In some cases—and the accounts of the Robert Kennedy–Georgi Bolshakov meetings are a good example—I have had to rely on accounts that were only partial and left a great many questions open. In these cases, I have used my best judgment while citing what sources were available in the endnotes.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

(See the bibliography for full citations and locations.)

AVP-RF: Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Russkoi Federatsii (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives)

BstU: Behörde der Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der Ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik

CWIHP: Cold War International History Project

DDEL: Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

DNSA: Digital National Security Archive

FRUS: Foreign Relations of the United States (U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian)

GRU: Archive of the Main Intelligence Administration of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

HSTL: Harry S. Truman Presidential Library

JFKL: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

MfS: Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit

OH:
Oral History

RGANI: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History)

SAPMO-BArch: Stiftung Archive der Parteien und Massenorganisationen im Bundesarchiv

SED Archives, IfGA, ZPA: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland Archives, Institut für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Zentrales Parteiarchiv

TsK KPSS: Declassified Materials from CPSU Central Committee Plenums

TsKhSD: Tsentr Khraneniia Sovremmenoi Dokumentatsii (Soviet Central Committee Archive)

TsAmo: Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads’ kykh ob’ednan’ Ukrainy (Central Archive of Ministry of Defense, Podalsk, Russian Federation)

ZAIG: Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR

FOREWORD

“Berlin was the worst moment of the Cold War”:
Interview with Professor William Kaufmann, 08/30/1996, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

INTRODUCTION

“Who possesses Berlin”
: Antony Beevor,
Berlin: The Downfall 1945
. New York: Viking, 2002, 139; quoting Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO) 233/2356/5804, 320–321.

“Berlin is the most dangerous place”:
William Taubman,
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004, 407.

Undaunted by the damp:
Russian State Archive for Contemporary History (RGANI), 5/30/367, Bl. 179–182, Bericht des Verteidungsministeriums an das ZK der KPdSU über die Situation in Berlin und in der DDR, 28.10. 1961; Matthias Uhl,
Krieg um Berlin? Die sowjetische Militär- und Sicherheitspolitik in der zweiten Berlin-Krise 1958 bis 1962
. Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, 146–147.

Reporting from the scene:
Daniel Schorr, Schorr Script Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Berlin, October 27, 1961.

The situation was sufficiently tense:
Interview with Adam Kellett-Long, October 15–16, 2008.

“The scene is weird, almost incredible”:
Daniel Schorr, Schorr Script Collection, Berlin, October 27, 1961.

Rumors swirled through the crowd
: Norman Gelb,
The Berlin Wall—Kennedy, Khrushchev, and a Showdown in the Heart of Europe.
New York: Dorset Press, 1986, 256; Interview with Vern Pike, November 17, 2008; RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) radio reports, October 25–28, 1961; retrieved from Chronik-der-Mauer.de.