Kennedy returned to West Berlin at the end of the thirty-one-minute speech.
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 in Berlin, where will we later stand? If we are not true to our word there, all that we have achieved in collective security, which relies on these words, will mean nothing. And if there is one path above all others to war, it is the path of weakness and disunity.
Sorensen was upset that OaDonnell was underestimating the importance of the speechas emotive commitment to defend Berlin. As for its disregard for captive East Berlin and Eastern Europeans generally, Sorensen argued to OaDonnell that the speech was merely recognizing reality. The Russians did what they wanted anyway in their sector. Americans would be reluctant enough to accept a military buildup to safeguard two million West Berliners, but it would be expecting far too much of Americans to risk their lives for the lot of a million East Berliners caught on the wrong side of history.
OaDonnell suggested an easy fix. The president could simply omit the word aWesta in most of the places where it appeared before the word aBerlin.a After an hour of argument, Sorensen protested: aI canat monkey around anymore with the text of this speechathis speech has been churned through the mills of six branches of government. We have had copies back and forth for ten days. This is the final version. This is the policy line.
aThis is it.a The lunch ended on that note.
Sorensen had also pushed back similar protests from elsewhere inside the government. The so-called Berlin Mafia, the group of senior officials who had been following every comma and semicolon of the fragile Berlin standoff for years, felt that the president was committing heresy, essentially telling the Soviets they could ignore four-power agreements and do anything they wanted with their part of the city.
aThere was an aOh, my G.o.d!a feeling as one saw the language,a said the Austrian-born Karl Mautner, who served in the intelligence and research bureau of the State Department after having been posted to the American Mission in Berlin. Having fought during World War II with the 82nd Airborne at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, he was outraged at Kennedyas backsliding. aWe knew immediately what it meanta. We were undercutting our own position.a The emphasis on West Berlin appeared all the more intentional to the Soviets five days after the speech when, on July 30, Senator William Fulbright said on the ABC Sunday-morning television talk show Issues and Answers that the Soviets could reduce tensions in the Berlin Crisis best by closing the West Berlin escape hatch for refugees. aThe truth of the matter is, I think, the Russians have the power to close it in any case,a said Fulbright. aNext week, if they chose to close their borders, they could, without violating any treaty. I donat understand why the East Germans donat close their border because I think they have a right to close it.a Fulbrightas interpretation of the treaty was wrong, and he corrected himself in a statement to the Senate on August 4, saying that freedom of movement across Berlin was guaranteed by postwar agreements and that his TV interview had given aan unfortunate and erroneous impression.a That said, Kennedy never repudiated him, and McGeorge Bundy reported favorably to the president on Fulbrightas TV appearance by writing about aa variety of comment from Bonn and Berlin, including reference to the helpful impact of Senator Fulbrightas remarks.a The truth was that West Germans despaired at the comments, while East Germans were delighted at Fulbrightas suggestion. West Berlinas Der Tagesspiegel newspaper complained that the senatoras comment was potentially as encouraging for enemy action as Achesonas words had been before the Korean War, when he had declared that South Korea was outside Americaas defense perimeter. The Communist Party paper Neues Deutschland called Fulbrightas ideas arealistic.a Early in August, Kennedy mused about what was likely to happen next in Berlin during a stroll along the colonnade by the Rose Garden with Walt Rostow, an economist who was advising Kennedy. aKhrushchev is losing East Germany,a he said. aHe cannot let that happen. If East Germany goes, so will Poland and all of Eastern Europe. He will have to do something to stop the flow of refugees. Perhaps a wall. And we wonat be able to prevent it. I can hold the Alliance together to defend West Berlin, but I cannot act to keep East Berlin open.a MOSCOW.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1961.
On a sweltering Moscow morning, Ulbricht drove to his meeting with Khrushchev in a limousine whose windows were closed and curtained. Ulbricht had not announced his departure from Berlin for the emergency Warsaw Pact summit that day, and if he could avoid it, he did not want to be seen in public.
Moscow seemed serene compared with what Ulbricht faced back home. Tourist groups walked behind guides around Red Square. The dayas first sightseeing boats rode up the Moskva River beside men in kayaks out for morning exercise. Giant swimming pools were opening up in public parks. With school out, the city was filled with parents and their children.
Khrushchev and Ulbricht met to work out the final details for the border closure before approaching members of the Warsaw Pact for their approval. Ulbricht also wanted his allies to consider emergency economic support should the West respond with sanctions.
The two men had been closely tracking the preparatory work of their security services and military forces for most of the previous month, so there was no need to review each detail. Khrushchev said they together would aencircle Berlin with an iron ringa. Our forces must create such a ring, but your troops must control it.a The Soviets were sending an additional 4,000 soldiers to Berlin even as the two men talked. Khrushchev told Ulbricht he was also putting tanks on the border with West Germany, behind East German soldiersa positions.
The purpose of their meeting that morning was to finalize the timing. Khrushchev said he wanted to put off the signing of any peace treaty with Ulbricht until after the border closure. He was also unwilling to let Ulbricht take any action against access routes or air routes to West Berlin. Ulbricht agreed that although he still wished to sign a war-ending peace treaty with Moscow, that had become secondary to stopping the refugees and saving his country. Ulbricht told the Soviet leader he needed only two weeks to be ready to stop movement between East and West Berlin.
aWhen would it be best for you to do this?a asked Khrushchev. aDo it when you want. We can do it at any time.a Because of both the urgency of his refugee problems and the danger that plans could leak, Ulbricht wanted to move quickly. He suggested the night between Sat.u.r.day, August 12, and Sunday, August 13.
Noting that the thirteenth is considered an unlucky day in the West, Khrushchev joked that afor us and for the whole socialist camp it would be a very lucky day indeed.a Khrushchev, the builder of the Moscow Metro, wanted to hear more of the logistical details. How would Ulbricht deal with streets, which he had seen on his detailed map, where one side was East Berlin and the other West?
aIn those homes which have an exit to West Berlin, we will brick up the exit,a Ulbricht said. aIn other places, we will erect barriers of barbed wire. The wire has already been a.s.sembled. All of this can be done very quickly.a Khrushchev refused Ulbrichtas request that he call for an emergency economic conference to prepare necessary support for the East German economy. The Soviet leader feared that merely scheduling such a meeting might tip off the West to their plansa"and accelerate the refugee flow even further. Ulbricht would simply have to do his best to prepare.
He also wanted Ulbricht to be certain that all operations remained strictly within his own territory, aand not a millimeter morea into West Berlin. Every signal Kennedy had sent Khrushchev, from the Vienna Summit to his July 25 speech to Fulbrightas television statement, had been that he was on safe ground as long as all Soviet and East German actions were limited to Soviet bloc territory and in no way interrupted Allied rights of access to Berlin. In fact, his most recent conversation with U.S. Amba.s.sador Thompson had convinced him that Kennedy and Adenauer might even welcome the outcome. In a meeting two days earlier, he had told Ulbricht: When the border is closed, the Americans and West Germans will be happy. Thompson told me that this flight is causing the West Germans a lot of trouble. So when we inst.i.tute these controls, everyone will be satisfied. And beyond that, they will feel your power.
Without referring to the notion of a Berlin wall by name, Khrushchev asked the Warsaw Pact group to approve a border closure as impermeable as the one that had existed between East and West German territories since 1952. aWe propose that the Warsaw Pact states agree, in the interests of the cessation of the subversive activity, to implement control along the GDR borders, including the borders in Berlin, comparable to that existing along the state borders of the Western Powers.a The three-day Warsaw Pact meeting that followed gave Ulbricht some but not all of what he wanted. His socialist neighbors accepted the border closure without dissent, and they agreed to reposition their troops to back up the Soviet military. What Ulbrichtas allies would not provide, much to Khrushchevas consternation, was economic insurance. One Communist Party leader after the othera"Wladyslaw Gomulka of Poland, Antonn Novotn of Czechoslovakia, and Jnos Kdr of Hungarya"worried about how the West might retaliate economically against the whole bloc and spoke of their limited resources. Gomulka even wanted Ulbricht to consider helping him should there be a Western boycott of the entire bloc by redirecting goods that might normally be sold to the West. He worried about how exposed Poland would be to any Berlin blowback because of its large debt and trade with the West.
Novotn warned Ulbricht that he should not count on him for foodstuffs, because of his countryas problems with agricultural production. As Czechoslovakia had a greater share of its trade with the West than any other Warsaw Pact country, he feared his country would suffer most in the aftermath of any Berlin action. Kdr complained that the potential economic impact of an East German border closure had not been discussed among Soviet allies earlier, particularly as his country relied on trade with the West for nearly a third of its economya"and a quarter of that amount was with West Germany.
Khrushchev fumed: I think we must help the GDR. Let us, comrades, perceive this better, deeper and more keenlya. Now, comrades, we will all help the GDR. I will not say who of you will help most. All must help and must help more. Let us look at it this way: if we do not now turn our attention to the needs of the GDR and we do not make sacrifices, they cannot endure; they do not have enough internal strength.
aWhat would it mean if the GDR was liquidated?a Khrushchev demanded to know from the leaders sitting before him. Did they want the West German army on their borders? By strengthening East Germanyas position, awe strengthen our position,a he said, frustrated at seeing how little solidarity existed within his bloc. In an alliance where most members felt little threatened by the West but were increasingly dependent upon it economically, Khrushchevas arguments did not convince them.
When fellow communist leaders asked Khrushchev why he didnat worry more about American military response, Khrushchev told them the West had reacted far less resolutely than he had feared thus far to his escalating pressures and rhetoric. The U.S., he said, had aproved to be less tough than we a.s.sumeda regarding Berlin. Khrushchev said it was true the adversary still acould show himself, but we can already say now that we expected more pressure, but so far the strongest intimidation has been Kennedyas speech.a Khrushchev told his allies it was his view that the U.S. was abarely governed,a and that the U.S. Senate reminded him of the medieval Russian princ.i.p.ality of Novgorod, where the boyars ashouted, yelled and pulled at each otheras beards; thatas how they decided who was right.a He even spoke nostalgically of the time when the American secretary of state was John Foster Dulles, who although anticommunist provided amore stabilitya for the U.S.a"Soviet relationship. As for Kennedy, Khrushchev said he afelt for himahe is too much of a lightweight for both Republicans and Democrats.a Khrushchev was confident his weak and indecisive adversary would not respond in any meaningful way.
Ulbricht returned home as the countdown began for the most important day of his lifea"and that of his country. But first he would have to weather a final skirmish with the East German proletariat.
Ulbricht and Kurt Wismach Lock Horns.
OBERSPREE CABLE WORKS, EAST BERLIN.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1961.
With less than forty-eight hours to go before launching his operation, Walter Ulbricht nevertheless kept a routine appointment with laborers of the Oberspree Cable Works in the southern part of East Berlin. Some 1,500 laborers gathered in a giant hall, wearing work overalls and wooden shoes that protected them against electrocution and molten metal. Some climbed up the struts of cranes for a better view; others sat atop twelve-foot-high cable rollers.
Reporting that he had just returned from Moscow, Ulbricht told his crowd, aIt is imperative that a peace treaty be signed without delay [between East Germany] and our glorious comrade and ally, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.a In a combative voice, he said, an.o.body can stop socialisma. Not even those who have fallen into the clutches of the slave-traders.a He said the cost to the East German economy of the refugee flight, which he called aflesh trade and kidnappings,a was two and a half billion marks a year. aEvery citizen of our State will agree with me that we must put a stop to such conditions.a Kurt Wismach, who at first appeared to Ulbricht to be just another one of the workers, boiled inside as he listened to what he considered the usual communist double-talk. Imbued with a false sense of strength as he sat far above Ulbricht on a roll of cables, he began to applaud derisively and at length after each of Ulbrichtas statements. It seemed that nothing could stop Wismachas hands from clapping nor his voice from shouting into the silence of the hall around him.
aEven if I am the only one to say it: Free elections!a he screamed.
Ulbricht looked up at the worker and snapped back. aNow just a moment!a he shouted. aWeare going to clear this up right away!a Wismach shouted back at the leader whom millions so feared: aYes, and weall see which is the right way!a Ulbricht shouted up at him and then turned to take in all those seated and standing in the hall around him. aFree elections! What is it you want to elect freely?aThe question is put to you by the people!a By then Wismach spoke with the courage of a man who had gone too far to reverse himself. aHave you the slightest idea what the people really think?a he yelled, seeing that most of his coworkersa hands were frozen at their sides. No one was coming to his support.
Ulbricht waved his hands and barked back that it had been Germanyas free elections in the 1920s and 1930s that had brought the country Hitler and World War II. aNow I ask you: Do you want to travel along this same road?a aNein, nein,a shouted a vocal minority of party loyalists in the crowd. With each additional reb.u.t.tal from Ulbricht and his request for the crowd to support him, this group shouted more encouragement to the communist leader.
Other workers who might have sided with Wismacha"likely the majoritya"remained silent. They realized that to do otherwise would expose them to whatever retribution their vocal fellow laborer would a.s.suredly face.
aThe one lonely heckler thinks he shows special courage!a Ulbricht bellowed. aHave the courage to fight against German militarism!a The party faithful cheered their leader again.
aWhoever supports free elections supports. .h.i.tleras generals!a a red-faced Ulbricht shouted.
The crowd applauded one last time as Ulbricht stormed out.
The next day, party disciplinarians interrogated Wismach on, among other matters, his possible membership in Western flesh-trading and spy agencies. He was required to write a statement retracting his outburst, and he had to accept a pay cut and a demotion that could only be reversed through hard work and apolitical awareness.a Wismach left East Berlin as a refugee a few days later with his wife and child. He would be among the last to pa.s.s so easily.
14.
THE WALL: SETTING THE TRAP.
The GDR had to cope with an enemy who was economically very powerful and therefore very appealing to the GDRas own citizensa. The resulting drain of workers was creating a simply disastrous situation in the GDR, which was already suffering from a shortage of manual labor, not to mention specialized labor. If things had continued like this much longer, I donat know what would have happened.
Premier Khrushchev, explaining in his memoirs his decision to approve the Berlin border closure In this period we are entering, it will be shown whether we know everything and whether we are firmly anch.o.r.ed everywhere. Now we must prove whether we understand the politics of the party and are capable of carrying out its orders.
Erich Mielke, chief of East German secret police, providing final instructions on August 12, 1961 COMMUNIST PARTY HEADQUARTERS, EAST BERLIN.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1961.
Like a veteran stage producer preparing for the performance of a lifetime, Walter Ulbricht rehea.r.s.ed every scene with his lieutenants in the last crucial hours before his August 13 curtain call. His drama, code-named aOperation Rose,a would play for one night only. He would have no second chance to get it right.
No detail was too small for Ulbrichtas attention nor that of the man he had deputized to direct the show, Erich Honecker, the Central Committeeas chief for security matters. At age forty-eight, Honecker had two qualities that had recommended him: unquestioned loyalty and unmatched organizational capability.
With his combed-back, graying hair and Mona Lisa smile, Honecker had come a long way from his days as the young, handsome communist rabble-rouser who had spent a decade in Hitleras jails during the 1930s. He knew his operation could catapult him past rivals to become the front-runner for Ulbrichtas eventual succession. It also could save German socialism. Failure would cost him his career and perhaps his country.
Honeckeras final checklist was as long as it was precise.
He needed to know whether his people had purchased sufficient quant.i.ties of barbed wire to wrap around West Berlinas entire ninety-six-mile circ.u.mference. To avoid suspicion, Honeckeras team had distributed the barbed-wire orders among a number of innocuous East German purchasers and they, in turn, had negotiated with several different manufacturers in both Great Britain and West Germany.
Thus far, none of their Western business partners had sounded an alarm. Honecker saw no evidence that Western intelligence agencies had any clue about what was about to transpire. A sales order was a sales order. Leninas prediction came to mind: aThe capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.a In this case, the capitalists were peddling at bulk discounts barbed wire with which the communists would enclose their own people. To avoid any diplomatic backlash, Honeckeras people had removed hundreds of British and West German manufacturer labels from the barbed wire and burned them.
East German teams and their Soviet advisers had mapped every meter of the twenty-seven-mile-long internal border that ran through the city center between West and East Berlin and the remaining sixty-nine miles that separated West Berlin and the East German countryside. They noted precisely what peculiarities faced them on each stretch of the border.
On July 24, Honeckeras deputy, Bruno Wansierski, a fifty-six-year-old party technocrat and trained carpenter, had updated his boss on the ma.s.sive construction project it was his job to oversee. To conceal its purpose, Wansierskias report was innocuously labeled: aOverview of the Scope of the Engineering Operations on the Western Outer Ring of Berlin.a Those who would read the doc.u.ments later would compare their precision to n.a.z.i blueprints for building and operating concentration camps. Though Ulbrichtas project was less murderous, its execution would be no less cynically exacting.
With only three weeks until the target date, Wansierskia"director of the Department for Security Questions of the Socialist Unity Partyas Central Committeea"complained that he still lacked sufficient supplies for nearly two-thirds of the task. After taking inventory of aall available materials,a he reported that he was short some 2,100 concrete pillars, 1,100 kilograms of metal cramps, 95 fathoms of timber, 1,700 kilograms of connecting wire, and 31.9 tons of mesh wire. Most problematic, he lacked 303 tons of barbed wire, the projectas most essential raw material.
Furious activity had filled all the supply gaps in the two weeks since Wansierskias report. By August 9, Ulbricht was satisfied that everything was in place. Dozens of trucks had already transported hundreds of concrete uprights secretly from Eisenhttenstadt, an industrial town on the Oder River near the Polish border, to a stockpile at a police barracks in the Berlin district of Pankow and several other locations.
Several hundred police from across East Germany had a.s.sembled at the vast State Security Directorate compound at Hohenschnhausen on East Berlinas outskirts. Many were constructing wooden sawhorses, known in German as aSpanish riders,a that would form the first physical street barriers. They hammered in nails and hooks from which others would string the barbed wire while wearing thousands of pairs of specially ordered protective gloves.
Ulbricht was equally painstaking in determining which army and police units would be deployed. Beginning at 1:30 a.m., their first task would be to form a human chain around West Berlin to stop any spontaneous escape attempts or other acts of resistance until construction brigades could raise the first physical barriers. For this, Ulbricht would deploy only his most trusted forces: border police, reserve police, police school cadets, and crack troops known as factory fighting militia, organized around workplaces.
Plans for each small section of the border detailed how they would operate. For example, Border Police Commander Erich Peter planned to deploy precisely ninety-seven officers at the cityas most important crossing point on East Berlinas Friedrichstra.s.se. That would produce the required density for that point of one man per square meter. His plan dictated that a further thirty-nine officers there would construct the initial barrier of barbed wire, concrete posts, and sawhorses.
Regular army soldiers would form the second line of defense and would, in an emergency, move up to fill in any breaches in the forward line. The mighty fail-safe power of the Soviet military would stand back in a third ring, which would advance only if Allied forces disrupted the operation or East German units collapsed.
Ulbrichtas lieutenants were just as meticulous in how they planned ammunition allocations, distributing it in sufficient quant.i.ties for the task but in a manner that was designed to avoid any reckless shooting. At the most sensitive border points, police units would be issued two five-bullet clips of blanks that would be loaded into their carbines in advance. They would have instructions to shoot the blanks as a warning should East Berliners or West Berliners rush them in a rage. Should the blanks fail in their purpose, police would have a further three clips of live ammunition in reserve. These they would load and fire only with the approval of commanding officers.
On the second line of defense, soldiers of the National Peopleas Army would be armed with submachine guns and limited quant.i.ties of live ammunition. To avoid accidents, the soldiers would not preload their guns but instead keep the ammo inside satchels attached to their belts. Ulbrichtas insurance policy was that the most trusted units would be fully armed from the outset: the First Motorized Rifle Division, some factory militia, and two elite Wachregimentena"guard units that specialized in internal securitya"one from the army and the other attached to the Stasi (Staatssicherheit), the State Security Ministry.
From the moment that police and military units received their first orders at 1:00 a.m., all East Berlin streetlights would be doused and they would have thirty minutes under the moonlight to close the border with their human chain. They would have a further 180 minutes to put up barriers around the city, including the complete closure of sixty-eight of the existing eighty-one crossing points to West Berlin. That would leave only a manageable thirteen checkpoints for East German police to monitor the following morning.
At precisely 1:30 a.m., East German authorities would shut down all public transportation. They would prevent all trains arriving from West Berlin from unloading pa.s.sengers at Friedrichstra.s.se, the main Easta"West station. At key crossings that would never reopen, teams equipped with special tools would split train tracks. Still other units would unroll and place the barbed wire while an additional eight hundred transport police beyond the usual staffing would man stations to dissuade unrest.
If all went well, the whole job would be done by six a.m.
Ulbricht cleared the final language for the official statement that he would circulate in the early hours of August 13 to all corners of East Germany and throughout the world. He would blame his action on the West German governmentas asystematic plans for a civil wara that were being executed by arevenge-seeking and militaristic forces.a The statement said the asole purposea of the border closure was to provide East German citizens security from these nefarious forces.
From that point forward, East Germans would be allowed to enter West Berlin only with special pa.s.ses issued by the Interior Ministry. After ten daysa time, West Berliners again would be allowed to visit East Berlin.
Ulbricht had not overlooked a single detail. Those who knew him best had seldom seen him so calm and content.
SOVIET EMBa.s.sY, EAST BERLIN.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, AUGUST 9, 1961.
Without emotion, Ulbricht walked Soviet Amba.s.sador Pervukhin through his final preparations. aComrade Cella Ulbricht, so nicknamed in his younger years for his organizational skill, was in his element. He spoke without notes, as he had committed every aspect to his legendary memory. Despite the operationas many moving parts, he still saw no sign that Western intelligence services either suspected what was about to happen or were planning countermeasures. Pervukhin would report to Khrushchev that the operation could proceed on the agreed-upon timetable.
Khrushchev received the news with resignation and determination. The refugee exodus had reached the monstrous proportions of 10,000 refugees weekly and more than 2,000 on many individual days. The Soviet leader would recall later how he had agonized about the decision to go ahead. aThe GDR had to cope with an enemy who was economically very powerful and therefore very appealing to the GDRas own citizens. West Germany was all the more enticing to East Germans because they all spoke the same languagea. The resulting drain of workers was creating a simply disastrous situation in the GDR, which was already suffering from a shortage of manual labor, not to mention specialized labor. If things had continued like this much longer, I donat know what would have happened.a Khrushchev had been forced to choose between an action that said nothing good about communism and a failure to act that might have prompted the crumbling of his western front. aI spent a great deal of time trying to think of a way out. How could we introduce incentives in the GDR to counteract the force behind the exodus of East German youths to West Germany? How could we create conditions in the GDR which would enable the state to regulate the steady attrition of its working force?a He knew that critics, aespecially in bourgeois societies,a would say the Soviets had locked down East German citizens against their will. People would claim that athe gates of the Socialist paradise are guarded by armed troops.a But Khrushchev had concluded the border closing was aa necessary and only temporary defect.a Still, the Soviet leader remained certain none of this trouble would have been necessary if Ulbricht had more effectively tapped athe moral and material potential that would someday be harnessed by the dictatorship of the working cla.s.ses.a But that was Utopia, and Khrushchev had to deal with the real world.
He knew that East Germany, along with the Soviet Unionas other Eastern European satellites, had ayet to reach a level of moral and material development where compet.i.tion with the West is possible.a He had to be honest with himself: There was no way to improve the East German economy rapidly enough to stem the flow of refugees and stop the collapse of East Germany in the face of such overwhelming West German material superiority.
The only option was containment.
EAST BERLIN.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1961.
Less than thirty-six hours before the operation was to begin, Soviet war hero Marshal Ivan Konev sat down for his first meeting with Ulbricht. To ensure discipline and success, Khrushchev had dispatched him to lead all Soviet forces in Germany, replacing General Ivan Yakubovsky, who he would slot in as his deputy. Khrushchevas move was rich in symbolism. One of the great men of Soviet history was heading to Berlin for a return engagement.
At age sixty-three, Konev was a tall, brutal, energetic man with a cleanly shaven bald head and wicked blue eyes with a knowing twinkle. During World War II, after having liberated Eastern Europe, his troops had swooped into the German capital from the south and conquered the n.a.z.is, together with the soldiers of Marshal Zhukov, in the b.l.o.o.d.y Battle of Berlin of May 1945. For his heroics, he had won six Orders of Lenin, was twice recognized as aHero of the Soviet Union,a and had then served as the Warsaw Pactas first commander.
Most appropriate for the task at hand, he had led the Soviet military crackdown in Budapest in 1956 that resulted in deaths of 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops. Some 200,000 Hungarians had fled the country as refugees. Given Konevas past behavior toward Germans, Khrushchev also knew he would not shrink from the bloodiest decisions.
Near World War IIas end, Konev had pursued a German division in retreat to the small Soviet town of Shanderovka. After surrounding the town to prevent the escape of German soldiers who had taken shelter there in a blizzard, head firebombed his enemies. His T-34 tanks then crushed under their tracks the evacuating German troops that his soldiers had failed to machine-gun down. The story went that his Cossack cavalry had then butchered the last survivors with their sabers, even cutting off arms that had been raised in surrender. His men killed some 20,000 Germans.
Khrushchev had taken a risk in sending such a high-profile military commander to East Germany just a few days before an ostensibly secret operation. On the previous afternoon, General Yakubovsky had contributed to the provocative move by inviting the military liaison officers representing the three Western Allies in Berlin to meet his previously unannounced successor.
aGentlemen, my name is Konev,a the general had said to them in a gravelly voice. aYou may perhaps have heard of me.a Konev savored the surprised look on the Western Alliesa faces as his statement was translated into their three languages by their three interpreters. aYou are of course accredited to the commander in chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany,a he said. aWell, I am now the commander in chief, and it is to me that you will be accredited from here on out.a He asked the liaison officers to inform their commanders of the change and the fact that his friend General Yakubovsky would serve as his deputy.
He asked if any of the three had questions. Initially speechless, the U.S. and British officers awkwardly conveyed the greetings of their commanders. The French officer, however, said he could not do the same because his commander was unaware either of Konevas presence or his a.s.sumption of command.
aAs one soldier to another,a Konev said, smiling to the French officer, alet me tell you this, so that you can repeat it to your general. I have always reminded my officers that a commander should never be taken by surprise.a Given what would follow, the theater was rich.
Konev lacked specific orders on how to respond should Western powers respond more aggressively than expected to the border closure. Khrushchev trusted his ruthless commander to make the right decision. Acting as Ulbrichtas direct superior, Konev reminded the East German leader that success required two nonnegotiable aspects. While closing the border, he said, East German units at no point could be allowed to disrupt the ability of West Berliners or the Western Allies to move by air, road, or rail to and from West Germany.
Second, said Konev, the operation had to be as fast as the wind.
Khrushchev had constructed the plan so that aour establishing of the border control in the GDR didnat give the West either the right or the pretext to resolve our dispute by war.a To achieve that, Konev considered speed essential to create a fait accompli, to ensure the loyalty of East German forces, and to dissuade any trigger-happy American commander from improvising. A rapidly executed operation could also demonstrate to the West the impossibility of reversing the facts that communist troops would establish on the ground.
THE VOLKSKAMMER, EAST BERLIN.