Berlin 1961 (98 page)

October 25. The showdown begins. Three jeeps with armed U.S. military police escort an American automobile into East Berlin at the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint. (
UPI/National Archives
)

One of several American tanks is brought up to Checkpoint Charlie. (
USIS/National Archives
)

Soviet tanks from an American tank gunner’s viewpoint. (
dpa/National Archives
)

Spectators lining the Friedrichstrasse. (
U.S. Army Signal Corps/National Archives
)

U.S. Army tanks, in the foreground, face off against Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie. (
AP Photo
)

August 1962. A year after the border closing, eighteen-year-old Peter Fechter is shot in the back by communist border police and lies bleeding to death for more than an hour before his corpse is retrieved. The incident causes widespread protests in West Berlin. (
UPI
/
National Archives
)

June 26, 1963. Kennedy, Brandt, and Adenauer stand in an open car as they drive past half a million cheering Berliners, en route to the president’s historic speech. (
U.S. Army Signal Corps/National Archives)

“Ich bin ein Berliner.”
(
Robert Knudsen/JFK Library
)

Master and mentor: Joseph Stalin stands with Moscow Communist Party boss Nikita Khrushchev in 1936 at the Shchelkovo aerodrome. (
Sovfoto
)

Khrushchev with President Dwight Eisenhower, Nina Khrushchev, and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in 1959. (
ITAR-TASS
/
Sovfoto
)

Khrushchev waves to a Los Angeles crowd during a 1959 trip to the U.S., the first state visit ever of the Soviet Union’s premier. (
Frank Bauman/Library of Congress
)

Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph Kennedy in 1938, flanked by sons Joe Jr. and John, in Southampton, England. (
President’s Collection/JFK Library
)