Berlin 1961 (15 page)

In the days ahead of the February 11 meeting, Thompson was careful to provide a more nuanced and complex understanding of Khrushchev than he had done ahead of Kennedy’s State of the Union. He considered Khrushchev the least doctrinaire and best of all possible Soviet leadership alternatives. “He is the most pragmatic of the lot and is tending to make his country more normal,” wrote Thompson in the sparse language of the diplomatic cable. Pointing to Khrushchev’s Kremlin opposition, Thompson warned that the Soviet leader could disappear within Kennedy’s term “from natural or other causes.”

Regarding Berlin, Thompson cabled that the Soviets cared more about the German problem as a whole than they did about the fate of the divided city. Thompson said Khrushchev wanted above all to stabilize communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe, “particularly East Germany, which is probably the most vulnerable.” He said the Soviets were “deeply concerned with German military potential and fear West Germany will eventually take action, which will face them with the choice between world war and retreat from East Germany.”

Thompson conceded that no one could predict with any accuracy Khrushchev’s intentions regarding Berlin, but it was Thompson’s best judgment that the Soviet leader would try to settle the problem during 1961 due to increased pressure from the Ulbricht regime, which felt endangered by Berlin’s increased use as an escape route for refugees and as a base for Western spy and propaganda activities. Thompson said Khrushchev would be influenced on Berlin by other issues, ranging from what sorts of trade incentives Kennedy offered to the extent of domestic pressures on him. Thompson said Khrushchev “would be disposed not to bring matters to a head” on Berlin before German elections in September if Kennedy could give him some hope that real progress could be made thereafter.

In one cable after another, Thompson tried to provide a crash tutorial for the new administration on how to handle the Soviets regarding Berlin. He was also in competition with other voices, who were prescribing tougher measures against Moscow. Walter Dowling, the U.S. ambassador to West Germany, cabled from Bonn that Kennedy had to be sufficiently tough with the Soviets so that Khrushchev would see there was “no painless way for him to undermine the Western position in Berlin,” and that any attempt to do so held as many dangers for Moscow as it did for Washington.

In Moscow, however, Thompson was arguing that the Kennedy administration had to devise better nonmilitary methods to fight communism. He said the president had to ensure that the U.S. system worked well, had to be certain the Western alliance’s member states remained united, and through deeds needed to demonstrate to the developing world and newly independent former colonies that the future belonged to the U.S. and not the USSR. He worried about U.S. mistakes in Latin America at a time when the Chinese challenge was forcing the Soviets to rejuvenate their “revolutionary posture.”

“I am sure we would err if we should treat the Communist threat at this time as being primarily of a military nature,” he wrote in a cable that got particular traction in Washington. “I believe the Soviet leadership has long ago correctly appraised the meaning of atomic military power. They recognized major war is no longer an acceptable means of achieving their objectives. We shall, of course, have to keep our powder dry and have plenty of it, for obvious reasons.”

As if to counterbalance Thompson, Kennedy announced on February 9 that he was bringing out of retirement Harry Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, a hard-liner who was convinced from years of experience that one could counter the Kremlin only with a policy of strength. At Kennedy’s behest, one of America’s best-known hawks would lead the administration studies on Berlin, NATO, and the related issues of balancing conventional versus nuclear weapons in any future military contingencies with the Soviets. Though Acheson would not join the meeting convened two days after his appointment, he would soon provide the antidote to Thompson’s more accommodating stance.

The February 11 meeting would become typical of how the new president would reach decisions. He would bring together the top minds on an issue and then let them fire off sparks while he provoked them with probing questions. In making sense of it later in a top-secret account titled “The Thinking of the Soviet Leadership,” Bundy organized the subjects under four headings: (1) the general condition of the Soviet Union and its leadership; (2) Soviet attitudes toward the U.S.; (3) useful American policies and attitudes; and finally and most important, (4) how best Kennedy could enter negotiations with Khrushchev.

Bohlen was surprised to discover that Kennedy, after having spoken so stridently in his State of the Union, possessed so few prejudices about the Soviet Union. “I’ve never heard of a president who wanted to know so much,” said Bohlen. Kennedy had little interest in the arcane subtleties of Soviet doctrine but instead wanted practical advice. “He saw Russia as a great and powerful country and we were a great and powerful country, and it seemed to him there must be some basis upon which the two countries could live without blowing each other up.”

The men arrayed before him differed fundamentally in their views about Moscow. Bohlen worried that Kennedy underestimated Khrushchev’s determination to expand world communism. Kennan had doubts about whether Khrushchev was really in charge. He said the Soviet leader confronted “considerable opposition” from Stalinist remnants who opposed negotiation with the West, and thus Kennedy needed to deal with the “collective.” Thompson argued that although the government was a collective enterprise, it was increasingly one of Khrushchev’s making. He thought only grave failures in foreign affairs or agricultural production could threaten Khrushchev’s political control. There he saw problems, as Khrushchev could be facing a third successive year of bad harvests.

Thompson argued that the U.S. “hope for the future” was the evolution of Soviet society into one that was more sophisticated and consumer-driven. “These people are becoming bourgeois very rapidly,” he said. Based on long conversations with Khrushchev, Thompson argued that the Soviet leader was trying to buy time to allow the Soviet economy to progress in that direction. “For this he really wants a generally unexplosive period in foreign affairs.”

For that reason, Thompson said, Khrushchev badly wanted an early meeting with the president. Though he had responded to the U-2 incident as a blow to his pride, prompting him to cut off communication with the White House, Khrushchev now was eager to move forward again. Thompson thought Kennedy should be open to such a meeting, since Khrushchev’s foreign policy relied so much on his personal interaction with counterparts.

Others in the room were more cautious, wondering what value could come from meeting with a Soviet leader who was calling the U.S. “the principal enemy of mankind.” Bohlen opposed Khrushchev’s suggestion that the meeting should take place during a UN session, “because the Soviet leader cannot resist a rostrum.” Harriman reminded Kennedy that protocol required he meet first with his allies.

Whatever the timing, Kennedy made increasingly clear to the men in the room that he wanted the meeting with Khrushchev. He felt he could unlock the potential of his presidency only once he had met with the Soviet leader. As he had told his aide and longtime friend Kenneth O’Donnell, “I have to show him that we can be just as tough as he is. I can’t do that sending messages to him through other people. I’ll have to sit down with him, and let him see who he’s dealing with.” Beyond that, other countries—including close U.S. allies—were acting cautiously on crucial issues until they saw how Kennedy and Khrushchev came to terms.

Kennedy told the group he wanted to avoid a full-fledged “summit,” which he interpreted as something that was necessary only when the world was threatened by war or when leaders were ready to sign off on major agreements that lower-level officials had precooked. What he wanted was a personal, informal meeting to get a firsthand impression of Khrushchev and thus better make judgments about how to deal with him. Kennedy wanted to open up wide channels of communication with the Soviets to prevent the sort of miscalculation that had led to three wars in his lifetime. Nothing worried him more in the nuclear age than this threat of miscalculation.

“It is my duty to make decisions that no adviser and no ally can make for me,” he said. To ensure that those decisions were well-informed, said Kennedy, he needed the sort of in-depth, personal knowledge he could get only from Khrushchev. At the same time, he also wanted to present U.S. views to the Soviet leader “precisely, realistically, and with an opportunity for discussion and clarification.”

Ten days later, on February 21, the same group of experts and senior officials assembled again, and by that time all had agreed that Kennedy should put pen to paper and invite Khrushchev to meet. Khrushchev had floated the possibility of a March get-together in New York around a special UN disarmament session. To head off that option, Kennedy would suggest a spring meeting in a neutral European city, either Stockholm or Vienna. When he hand-delivered Kennedy’s letter in Moscow, Thompson would explain to Khrushchev that the president needed the time before then to consult with allies.

On February 27, Bundy instructed the State Department in the president’s name to prepare a report studying the Berlin problem. The report should deal with the “political and military aspects of the Berlin crisis, including a negotiating position on Germany for possible four-power talks.”

That same evening, Thompson arrived in Moscow with President Kennedy’s letter. It had taken the ten weeks of transition after Kennedy’s election and first month of his presidency before Kennedy had been ready to respond to Khrushchev’s multiple attempts to gain an audience and his several gestures aimed at improving relations.

But by the time Thompson phoned Foreign Minister Gromyko to arrange a time to deliver the long-sought Kennedy response, Khrushchev was no longer interested. The Soviet leader had to resume his agricultural tour of the Soviet Union, Gromyko said, and thus could not receive Thompson either that evening or the next morning before his departure. Gromyko’s frosty tone could not have transmitted Khrushchev’s snub more clearly.

Thompson protested to Gromyko about the importance of the letter he carried. He said he would “go anywhere at any time” to see Khrushchev. Gromyko replied that he could guarantee neither the place nor the time. Thompson’s extension as ambassador had been based in no small part on his vaunted access to Khrushchev, so he was sheepish as he reported the situation back to Washington.

Khrushchev delivered a speech the following day in Sverdlovsk that reflected his surly mood: “The Soviet Union has the most powerful rocket weapons in the world and as many atomic and hydrogen bombs as are needed to wipe aggressors from the face of the Earth,” he said.

It was a long way from his New Year’s toast about Kennedy’s presidency as “a fresh wind” in relations. Kennedy’s misreading of Khrushchev’s intentions and the Soviet leader’s angry response to perceived slights had undermined a brief opportunity to improve relations.

Thompson would have to fly to Siberia to try to prevent matters from turning even worse.

And in Germany itself, things were not going any better.

5

ULBRICHT AND ADENAUER: UNRULY ALLIANCES

Whatever elections show, the age of Adenauer is over…. The United States is ill-advised to chase the shadows of the past and ignore the political leadership and thinking of the generation which is now coming of age.

John F. Kennedy on West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in
Foreign Affairs,
October 1957

West Berlin is experiencing a growth boom. They have increased wages for workers and employees more than we have. They have created more favorable living conditions…. I am only saying this because we need to deal with the real situation and draw its consequences.

Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party, in a meeting with the Politburo, January 4, 1961

H
istory would record that Walter Ulbricht and Konrad Adenauer were the founding fathers of two opposing Germanys, men whose striking differences, both personal and political, would come to define their era.

In the first weeks of 1961, however, one important similarity drove their actions: Both leaders fundamentally distrusted the men upon whom their fates depended—Nikita Khrushchev in the case of Ulbricht and John F. Kennedy for Adenauer. In the year ahead, nothing mattered more to the German leaders than managing these powerful individuals and ensuring that their actions did not undermine what each German considered his legacy.

At age sixty-seven, Ulbricht was a cold, introverted workaholic who avoided friendships, distanced himself from family members, and pursued his strict, Stalinist version of socialism with a relentless focus and an unwavering distrust of others. “He was not much liked in his youth and that didn’t improve as he grew older,” said Kurt Hager, a lifelong fellow communist campaigner who would become the party’s chief ideologist. “He had not the slightest understanding of jokes.”

Small in stature and cramped in demeanor, Ulbricht regarded Khrushchev as ideologically inconsistent, intellectually inferior, and personally weak. Though the West posed many threats, nothing endangered his East Germany more immediately than what he considered Khrushchev’s wavering commitment to protecting its existence.

For Ulbricht, the lesson of World War II—which he had spent primarily in Moscow exile—was that, when given a choice, Germans had become fascists. Determined never to allow his countrymen that sort of free will again, he placed them within the unyielding guardrails of his repressive system, enforced by a secret police system that was both more sophisticated and more extensive than Hitler’s Gestapo. His life’s purpose was the creation and now the salvation of his communist state of 17 million souls.