Berlin 1961 (99 page)

Changing of the guard: Eisenhower gives pointers to the man who will become America’s youngest president the next day. (
Abbie Rowe/JFK Library
)

Walter Ulbricht in exile: The future East German leader got to know Khrushchev while in Soviet exile during World War II. Here Ulbricht and fellow German communist Erich Weinert (left and right, respectively) try to persuade soldiers to defect. (
Sovfoto
)

Khrushchev and Ulbricht at the 5th Congress of the Socialist Unity Party, East Berlin, 1958. (
Sovfoto
)

At the time of the Berlin crisis, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in his third term, was the first and still only elected leader of the Federal Republic of Germany. (
Library of Congress
)

“Der Alte” poses with orphans dressed as Snow White and two of her dwarfs as part of a two-day eighty-fifth birthday celebration in January 1961. (
Bundesarchiv
)

As an inaugural gift, Khrushchev released two captured U.S. airmen from Soviet prison. Here, JFK greets Captains Freeman B. Olmstead (second from left) and John McKone and their wives at a private reception. (
AP Photo
)

Kennedy with Dean Acheson, Truman’s secretary of state, whom he recruited for Berlin and NATO advice. (
AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons
)

A tale of two cities: East Berlin. Elderly women look out from apartment buildings pockmarked from World War II street battles. (
USIS/National Archives
)

A war-damaged store on Alexanderplatz stands in contrast to the propaganda sign in the background: “The stronger the German Democratic Republic, the more certain is peace in Germany.” (
USIS/National Archives
)

A tale of two cities: West Berlin. Nightlife on the Kurfürstendamm. (
USIS/National Archives
)

Fashionable West German women outside the Ku’damm’s most famous watering hole, the Café Kranzler. (
USIS
/
National Archives
)

February 11, 1961. President Kennedy convenes the first meeting of his Kremlin experts for a brainstorming session. Clockwise from left: Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson, Vice President Johnson, Ambassador-at-Large W. Averell Harriman, State Department adviser Charles Bohlen, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, JFK, and Soviet expert George Kennan. (
AP Photo/Harvey Georges
)