Kennedy: The Classic Biography (108 page)

The President sought therefore to fill that gap with a rapid build-up of combat troops in Central Europe—with a contingent large enough to convince Khrushchev that our vital interests were so deeply involved that we would use any means to prevent the defeat or capture of those forces. This required a force large enough to prevent any cheap and easy seizure of the city by East German guards alone, which would weaken our bargaining power—and large enough to permit a true “pause,” a month instead of an hour before choosing nuclear war or retreat, time to bring up reserves, to demonstrate our determination, to make a deliberate decision and to communicate at the highest levels before the “ultimate” weapons were used.

Only in this way, Kennedy was convinced, could Khrushchev be dissuaded from slowly shutting off West Berlin. Such a commitment, moreover, would bolster Western will with a reminder that Americans were there to stay. And if Khrushchev were counting on Allied disunity and timidity in the face of a nuclear threat, a similar increase in ground forces by other Western nations, he argued (they did not all listen), would increase the nuclear credibility of NATO as a whole.

The precise nature and numbers of this build-up are discussed in the next chapter. Except for a military-civilian dispute over whether economic and political action should precede any major military response, and some Air Force grumbling over being given a nonnuclear role, there was in the summer of 1961 little disagreement within the administration over the necessity of this approach. There was internal agreement also on the steps needed to improve the dangerously rigid military contingency plans, to strengthen the readiness of West Berlin with stockpiled supplies and airlift preparations and to use economic sanctions against East Germany if access were cut off. But there was sharp disagreement within the administration as well, and it centered on two interrelated issues: (1) whether the President should declare a national emergency; and (2) whether a prompt offer to negotiate should accompany the military build-up. Dean Acheson, in his final report, had recommended an affirmative answer to the first question and a negative answer to the second; and his view initially prevailed in the Departments of Defense and State.

Khrushchev will be deterred, argued Acheson, only if he believes the United States is sufficiently serious about Berlin to fight a nuclear war—and he does not believe that now. While a conventional force build-up would, however paradoxically, contribute to that impression, we could not risk Khrushchev’s believing that we were limiting ourselves to a conventional war. A declaration of national emergency would enable the President to call up one million Reserves, extend terms of service, bring back dependents from Europe, and impress our allies, our citizens and, above all, Mr. K., with the gravity with which we regarded the situation. Increasing draft calls alone, added General Lemnitzer, could not produce enough trained men before the end of the year.

But to rebuild Allied confidence in his leadership after the Bay of Pigs, said Kennedy, he could not afford to overreact. A national emergency declaration was an ultimate weapon of national alarm and commitment. Such declarations, he reasoned, could not be frequently declared or easily rescinded; and without underestimating the seriousness of the Berlin threat, it might be better to await an actual Soviet treaty or move against access. Khrushchev’s ability to turn the pressure off and on in Berlin and a half-dozen other spots required the United States to prepare a long-haul global effort, not constant “crash” programs for what might be, he said, “a false climax.” The foreign aid, space and domestic measures required for that long haul would be endangered by the extensive new budget and tax requests envisioned in the national emergency declaration.

He liked, moreover, the advice cabled from our embassy in Moscow that the Soviet mind was more likely to be impressed by substantial but quiet moves that did not panic our allies. Other Soviet experts also counseled that dramatic gestures would impress the Soviets less than a long-range build-up in our readiness. This was in keeping with Kennedy’s own philosophy: a decision to go all the way can afford to be low-key because it is genuine, while those who loudly flail about are less likely to frighten anyone. Fanfare at an early stage, added his intelligence advisers, would make the Soviets feel compelled to respond with a strong public posture and military measures of their own, and make their negotiating position more rigid.

Gradually the President brought McNamara, Rusk and others around to his view. The Defense Secretary agreed that a more gradual and orderly build-up could be achieved through a quick but quieter Congressional Resolution. On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 19, meeting at 3
P.M.
with a small group of us in his living quarters on the second floor of the Mansion, the President put the finishing touches on his plan. After six weeks of intensive meetings, he stated each decision in firm, precise tones. The additional military budget requests would total $3.2 billion rather than $4.3 billion. The Congress would be asked to provide stand-by authority to call up the Reserves, rather than an immediate mobilization. Draft calls would be more than tripled, West Berlin would be readied, Allied agreement on economic sanctions would be sought, a temporary tax increase would be requested (this decision, as previously noted, was later reversed) and no declaration of national emergency would be proclaimed.

The same advisers and the President then met at 4
P.M.
in the Cabinet Room with a larger group in a formal National Security Council session. The decisions just concluded were “decided” for the record. Acheson questioned caustically the changes in his recommendations; and to the delight of the President—who enjoyed an articulate clash—Secretary McNamara, who had been finally converted to these changes only the previous day, undertook their defense with equal fervor.

The President also decided, contrary to Acheson’s paper and the initially prevailing view among his advisers, that the West should “lean forward” on negotiations. Here again some of the Kremlinologists had been influential, suggesting that the Soviets would be impressed by firmness in our negotiating position, not by our staying away from all talks. Acheson counseled that Khrushchev would accept nothing reasonable and would interpret all offers as weakness. The United States, replied the President, cannot leave the diplomatic initiative to a Soviet-sponsored peace conference. “We do not intend to leave it to others,” he said later, “to choose and monopolize the forum and the framework of discussion.” His hopes for a world-wide propaganda campaign—on “self-determination” for West Berlin and on the contrast between the two Germanys—would surely fail if only the Soviets had a “peaceful” solution. He had no intentions of lulling the West into believing that a meeting at the negotiating table reduced all danger. But he did have hopes of persuading Khrushchev to postpone his treaty as long as alternatives were being actively explored.

Before Khrushchev could be presented with any agreed-upon new ideas, however, the West had to produce some new ideas and agree upon them—and neither had happened by mid-July. Indeed, the difficulty of finding any new ideas which could be sold to all concerned would remain throughout Kennedy’s term. The French were against all negotiations; the British were against risking war without negotiations; and the Germans, as their autumn elections drew nearer, were against both of these positions and seemingly everything else. The necessarily generalized passages dealing with diplomatic approaches were thus the weakest parts of the President’s July 25 TV address. Nevertheless, by underlining our willingness to talk “with any and all nations that are willing to talk, and listen, with reason”—our willingness “to remove any actual irritants in West Berlin [though] the freedom of that city is not negotiable”—and our willingness to submit the legality of our rights to “international adjudication” and our presence in West Berlin to a free vote among its people, he at least struck in a few moments more positive notes than he had been able to obtain in seven weeks from the American and Allied diplomats. Nevertheless, these were comparatively weak initiatives.

It was not, however, a weak speech. Its delivery was hampered by an overcrowded, overheated office. Its domestic economic references were out of place. Its civil defense references were out of perspective. But its basic message was firm and urgent without resort to threats or fear. I had completed the first draft over the weekend. All day Monday and Tuesday successive drafts were reviewed and revised by the President and his aides. General Taylor suggested the paragraph:

I hear it said that West Berlin is militarily untenable. And so was Bastogne. And so, in fact, was Stalingrad. Any dangerous spot is tenable if men—brave men—will make it so.

Murrow suggested the phrase: “We cannot negotiate with those who say, ‘What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.’” Bundy suggested passages recognizing “the Soviet Union’s historical concerns about their security in Central and Eastern Europe” and the “enormous losses…bravely suffered [by] the Russian people…in the Second World War.” Journalist Max Freedman suggested the basis for an eloquent peroration. I added a sentence used by the President in his July 19 meeting: “We do not want military considerations to dominate the thinking of either East or West.” The State Department added a reminder to our NATO Allies: “The solemn vow each of us gave to West Berlin in time of peace will not be broken in time of danger. If we do not meet our commitments to Berlin, where will we later stand?”

Finally, with all changes and clearances completed and coordinated along the lines of the President’s instructions, I took his reading copy for the 10
P.M.
talk over to the Mansion around eight o’ clock. I found the President sitting up in bed, a hot pad behind his back, scribbling out a personal note with which to close.

When I ran for the Presidency of the United States, I knew that this country faced serious challenges, but I could not realize, nor could any man realize who does not bear the burdens of this office, how heavy and constant would be those burdens…. In these days and weeks I ask for your help, and your advice. I ask for your suggestions, when you think we could do better. All of us, I know, love our country, and we shall all do our best to serve it. In meeting my responsibilities in these coming months as President, I need your good will, and your support and, above all, your prayers.

It was a somber close for a somber speech—a speech more somber, in fact, than the American people were accustomed to accept, more somber than any previous Presidential speech in the age of mutual nuclear capabilities. “West Berlin has now become,” he said,

the great testing place of Western courage and will, a focal point where our solemn commitments…and Soviet ambitions now meet in basic confrontation.

We cannot and will not permit the Communists to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force. For the fulfillment of our pledge to that city is essential to the morale and security of Western Germany, to the unity of Western Europe, and to the faith of the entire free world…. It is as secure…as the rest of us, for we cannot separate its safety from our own…We will at all times be ready to talk, if talk will help. But we must also be ready to resist with force, if force is used upon us. Either alone would fail. Together, they can serve the cause of freedom and peace….

To sum it all up: we seek peace, but we shall not surrender. That is the central meaning of this crisis, and the meaning of your government’s policy. With your help, and the help of other free men, this crisis can be surmounted. Freedom can prevail, and peace can endure.

Khrushchev, as he later wrote Kennedy, regarded the speech as belligerent. He had previously increased the Soviet military budget and put on his old uniform to talk loudly about destroying the aggressors. Yet he professed—to John McCloy in a private talk and to Kennedy in their later correspondence—to be angry at the increases in the American military budget and the reinforcements sent to West Berlin. He called these moves military hysteria. Inwardly he may well have been angry that Kennedy was not backing down, and that the West had failed, as he had also failed, to come forward with any new negotiating proposals. His own prestige had been heavily engaged—by pressures from the East German and other Eastern European regimes to stabilize German frontiers and remove the Berlin “splinter,” and by pressures from the more militant voices within the Communist camp to make good on his vow to “rebuff” those violating East German sovereignty.

Seeking to exploit disunity in the West, Khrushchev that summer had alternated between reasonable and intimidating postures, talking menacingly one day about the “shambles” in which a nuclear war over Berlin would leave Western Europe, suggesting sweetly the next day that token American and Russian troops could stay in West Berlin under a UN solution, then warning on another day that Italian orange groves, Greek olive orchards and the Acropolis would be destroyed if the West forced a war.

In mid-August a crisis within the crisis came dangerously close to the flash point. The Communists had for some years, over Western protest, gradually increased the legal—and in some cases physical—barriers between West and East Berlin, including temporary closings of most crossing points, special traffic and entry permits and a prohibition against West Berliners working in East Berlin. Sensing that they were gradually becoming imprisoned, East Germans and East Berliners poured increasingly across the dividing line between East and West Berlin, the principal hole in the Iron Curtain. By the summer of 1961 some 3.5 million had left their homes and jobs for the refugee centers and airports of West Berlin, draining the already depressed East German economy of its lifeblood and dramatizing to all the world their choice of freedom over Communism. In August, as the fear of war or more repression increased, the daily flow of refugees rose from the hundreds to the thousands. Khrushchev’s response on August 13—due possibly in part to Kennedy’s speech and to De Gaulle’s veto of four-power negotiations, but certainly due primarily to the hemorrhage of East German manpower—was the Wall.