Nikita Khrushchev summoned the U.S. amba.s.sador to Moscow, Tommy Thompson, to the Kremlin at ten a.m., or two in the morning in Washington, where President Kennedy had not yet returned to the White House from his inaugural revelry.
aHave you read the Inaugural Address?a Thompson asked. Khrushchev appeared weary to Thompson, as if he had spent the entire night awake. His voice was hoa.r.s.e.
Not only had he read the speech, Khrushchev said, but he would ask Soviet newspapers to print the entire text the following day, something no Soviet leader had done for any previous U.S. president. aIf they will agree to do so,a Khrushchev said with the satisfied chuckle of someone who knew Soviet editors did as he dictated.
Khrushchev then nodded to Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov, signaling that he should read Thompson the English version of an aide-mmoire that contained his inaugural gift for Kennedy: aThe Soviet Government, guided by a sincere desire to begin a new phase in relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S., has decided to meet the wishes of the American side in connection with the release of two American airmen, members of the crew of the RB-47 reconnaissance airplane of the U.S. Air Force, F. Olmstead and J. McKone.a Kuznetsov said the Soviets would also transfer to the U.S. the body of a third airman that had been recovered after the plane was shot down.
Khrushchev had carefully calculated precisely how and when to execute the offer, timing it on Kennedyas first day in office for maximum impact to demonstrate to the world his goodwill for the new administration. However, he would at the same time continue the incarceration of U-2 pilot Gary Powers, who, unlike the RB-47 fliers, had already been convicted of espionage and sentenced to ten years after a show trial in August. The cases couldnat have been more different in Khrushchevas mind. For him, the U-2 incident was an unforgivable violation of Soviet territory that had undermined him politically and humiliated him personally ahead of the Paris Summit. He would exact a higher price for Powers at another time.*
Back in November and just after Kennedyas election, when asked by an intermediary how the Soviet leadership could best pursue a afresh starta in relations, former U.S. Amba.s.sador to Moscow Averell Harriman had urged Khrushchev to release the airmen. In any case, Khrushchevas thoughts had been running in that direction. The pilots had served their electoral purpose. They could now play a diplomatic role in jump-starting a more positive U.S.a"Soviet relationship.
The aide-mmoire said Khrushchev wanted to aopen a new page in relations,a and that past differences should not interfere with aour joint work in the name of a good future.a Khrushchev said he would release the airmen as soon as Kennedy approved the draft Soviet statement on the matter and promised to prevent future aerial violations of Soviet territory and ensure the freed airmen would not be used for anti-Soviet propaganda. If Kennedy did not accept his terms, Khrushchev made clear he would try the two men on espionage chargesa"as he had done with Powers.
Thompson improvised a response without seeking instructions from Kennedy, whom he would not disturb during his first night in the Lincoln Bedroom. Thompson said he appreciated the offer, but the U.S. maintained that the RB-47 had been shot down outside Soviet airs.p.a.ce. The U.S. thus could not accept wording in the Soviet draft that amounted to a confession of a deliberate incursion.
Khrushchev was in a flexible mood.
aEach side is welcome to maintain its own view,a he said. The U.S. could make whatever statement it wished.
With that settled, Thompson and Khrushchev then engaged in one of their frequent exchanges on the merits of their respective systems. Thompson complained about a January 6 speech in which Khrushchev had portrayed the U.S.a"Soviet struggle as a zero-sum game of cla.s.s struggle around the world. Yet the two men tangled in an amicable manner that reflected an improved atmosphere of cooperation.
Khrushchev joked that he would cast his vote for Thompson to stay on as amba.s.sador under Kennedy, an extension Thompson wanted but had not yet received. The Soviet leader winked that he was unsure whether his intervention with Kennedy would be helpful.
Thompson laughed that he also had his doubts.
When Khrushchevas offer to release the airmen reached Kennedy, the new president was suspicious. He asked National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy whether he was amissing a trick.a After weighing the dangers, however, Kennedy concluded he could not pa.s.s up the opportunity to bring the American airmen home and show such dramatic results with the Soviets in the first hours of his presidency. He would take Khrushchevas offer.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent Thompson the presidentas positive response two days after Khrushchev made his offer.
In the meantime, Khrushchev had served up a menu of other unilateral conciliatory gestures. As promised, Pravda and Izvestia ran the full, uncensored text of Kennedyas inaugural address, including even the parts Khrushchev did not like. Khrushchev reduced the jamming of Voice of America radio. He would allow five hundred elderly Soviets to join their families in the U.S., he approved the reopening of the Jewish theater in Moscow, and he gave the green light for the creation of an Inst.i.tute for American Studies. He would allow new student exchanges and would pay honoraria to American writers for their pirated and published ma.n.u.scripts. The state and party media reported in a celebratory chorus on the Soviet peopleas agreat hopesa for improved relations.
Thompson saw how delighted Khrushchev was at having taken the initiative in U.S.a"Soviet relations. What he didnat antic.i.p.ate was how quickly Kennedy would come to dismiss Khrushchevas gestures, partly on the basis of a misreading of one of Thompsonas own cables.
It would be the first mistake of the Kennedy presidency.
NEW STATE DEPARTMENT AUDITORIUM, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1961.
Even as the thirty-fifth president of the United States prepared to trumpet the release of the U.S. airmen at the triumphant first press conference of his five-day-old presidency, he had also received new information from Moscow that made him question Khrushchevas true motivations. Eager to be useful to Kennedy, Amba.s.sador Thompson, in a cable designed to prepare the president for his first media encounter, had drawn attention to the inflammatory language of a secret Khrushchev speech on January 6: aI believe the speech should be read in its entirety by everyone having to do with Soviet affairs, as it brings together in one place Khrushchevas point of view as Communist and propagandist. If taken literally, [Khrushchevas] statement is a declaration of Cold War and is expressed in far stronger and more explicit terms than before.a What Thompson failed to tell Kennedy and his superiors was that there was nothing at all new in what Khrushchev had said. The Soviet leaderas so-called secret speech was little more than a belated briefing to Soviet ideologists and propagandists on the conference of eighty-one Communist Parties the previous November. The Kremlin had even published a shortened version two days before Kennedyas inauguration in the party publication Kommunist, though that had gone unnoticed in Washington. Khrushchevas call to arms against the U.S. in the developing world was less an escalation of the Cold War, as Thompson suggested, than it was the result of a tactical agreement with the Chinese to prevent a diplomatic breakdown. Lacking that context, Kennedy concluded Khrushchevas words were agame changing.a He thought he had found the clue to unlock, to paraphrase Churchill, the enigma inside the riddle of Khrushchev.
Kennedyas interpretation of the speech was prompting him to devalue and distrust all of Khrushchevas conciliatory gestures.
The president had initially responded to Khrushchevas moves with positive signals of his own. The U.S. had lifted a ban on Soviet crabmeat imports, it had resumed civilian aviation talks, and it had ended U.S. Post Office censoring of Soviet publications. Kennedy had also ordered his most senior military officers to tone down their anti-Soviet rhetoric.
Beyond that, President Kennedy was learning from his initial intelligence briefings that Moscow wasnat as threatening an adversary as the candidate Kennedy had said it was. He had learned in ever greater detail how wrong his charges had been that the Soviets had created a amissile gapa in Moscowas favor.
Yet none of that altered Kennedyas conviction that Khrushchevas speech was profoundly revealing and aimed quite personally at him. Though that shift in thinking would significantly color his State of the Union message in five daysa time, Kennedy was not yet ready to volunteer his shifting thoughts on Khrushchev at his press conferencea"and no one asked. Reporters had not antic.i.p.ated much news that day, since it was a sufficient sensation that Kennedy was hosting the first presidential press conference ever to be broadcast live on television and radio across the nation. It was a dramatic departure from Eisenhoweras practice of recording his press conferences and then releasing them only after careful editing.
Given the unprecedented media demand to attend, Kennedy staged the gathering in the newly built State Department auditorium, a cavernous amphitheater that the New York Times called aas warm as an execution chamber,a with its deep well between the presidentas raised podium and the reporters. He saved the news from Moscow for the last of three prepared announcements. The Times would report the next day that a low whistle of astonishment rose from the room when Kennedy said two RB-47 fliers, who had been imprisoned and interrogated for six months, already were en route home from Moscow by air.
Kennedy lied that he had promised nothing in return to Khrushchev for the airmenas release. The truth was that he had agreed to Khrushchevas demand to extend the ban on spy flights over Soviet territory and, once the airmen landed, to keep them away from the media. Kennedy radiated calm self-satisfaction. His first public encounter with the Soviets had ended well. His statement contained much the same language he had cabled to Khrushchev: aThe United States Government was gratified by this decision of the Soviet Union and considers that this action of the Soviet Government removes a serious obstacle to improvement of Soviet-American relations.a But among friends and advisers, Kennedy was growing so fixated on the January 6 Khrushchev speech that he would read loudly and frequently from a translated version he carried around with hima"at Cabinet meetings, at dinners, and in casual conversationsa"always requesting comments afterward. Thompson had advised Kennedy to distribute the speech to his top people, and Kennedy did so, instructing them to aread, mark, learn and inwardly digesta Khrushchevas message.
aYouave got to understand it,a he would say time and again, aand so does everybody else around here. This is our clue to the Soviet Union.a The text spoke of Kremlin support for awars of liberation or popular uprisingsaof colonial peoples against their oppressors across the developing world.a It declared that the Third World was rising in revolution and that imperialism was weakening in a ageneral crisis of capitalism.a In one of the lines Kennedy most liked to quote, Khrushchev said, aWe will beat the United States with small wars of liberation. We will nibble them to exhaustion all over the globe, in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.a Referring to Berlin, Khrushchev promised he would aeradicate this splinter from the heart of Europe.a With its timing just ahead of his inauguration, Kennedy falsely concluded that Khrushchevas policy shift was designed specifically to test him and thus required a response. Thompson had fed that thinking in his advice to the president on how to handle potential media questions. aSolely from a tactical point toward the Soviet Union,a Thompson had said, ait might be advantageous for the President to take the line that he cannot understand why a man who professes to wish to negotiate with us publishes a few days before his inauguration what amounts to a declaration of Cold War and determination to bring about the downfall of the American system.a It was true enough that the Soviets and Chinese had agreed on a more active and militant policy toward the developing world. Then Secretary of State Christian A. Herter had told President Eisenhower that the communist gathering sounded aa number of danger signals which the West would do well to heed, such as a call for the strengthening of the might and defense capability of the entire socialist camp by every means.a Herter, however, dismissed the ritual call for a continuation and intensification of the Cold War as anothing new.a Eisenhower had heard so much similar bl.u.s.ter from Khrushchev during his presidency that he had shrugged off this latest version. Lacking this experience and overly confident in his own instincts, Kennedy magnified what Eisenhower had dismissed. He thus overlooked the most important point of the communist gathering, and one that would have been far more helpful to understanding Khrushchevas predicament than his rhetoric. Herter had told Eisenhower that what was most significant was the unprecedented measure of success the Chinese had achieved in challenging Soviet leadership of world communisma"despite four months of Moscowas lobbying to contain Maoas views.
Kennedyas first miscue in office regarding the Soviets had several sources. Thompsonas cable had played a role. Kennedy was also drawn instinctively to a more hawkish approach to the Soviets due to the popularity of such a course among American voters, his fatheras anticommunist influence, and his search for a rallying cause around a presidency he had promised would be aa time for greatness.a His personal take on history had also played a role. His senior honors thesis at Harvard, published in July 1940, had been about British appeas.e.m.e.nt of the n.a.z.is at Munich. Playing on his hero Churchillas book While England Slept, he had called it Why England Slept.
Kennedy would not be caught napping.
The president was seeking a great challenge, and Khrushchev seemed to be providing it. His administration had not formally reviewed its policy toward the Kremlin nor held a major policy meeting on how to deal with Khrushchev. Despite that, Kennedy was sharply altering course from his inaugural speechas studied ambiguity toward the Soviets ten days earlier to the drafting of one of the most apocalyptic State of the Union messages ever delivered by an American president.
Kennedy began by listing all the U.S. domestic challenges, from seven months of recession to nine years of falling farm income. aBut all these problems pale when placed beside those which confront us around the world.a Reading language he had scribbled himself onto a final draft, he said: aEach day, the crises multiply. Each day, their solution grows more difficult. Each day, we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger. I feel I must inform the Congress that our a.n.a.lyses over the last ten days make it clear that, in each of the princ.i.p.al areas of the crisis, the tide of events has been running outa"and time has not been our friend.a Though new intelligence provided him during those intervening ten days had shown him that China and the Soviet Union were increasingly at loggerheads, he insisted, based on the January 6 speech, that both ahad forcefully restated only a short time agoa their ambitions for aworld domination.a He asked Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ato reappraise our entire defense strategy.a Kennedy could not have more obviously linked himself rhetorically to his heroes Churchill and Lincoln in this perceived hour of danger. Churchill had said, aSure I am of this, that you only have to endure to conquer.a Lincolnas Gettysburg Address had framed the Civil War as one that was testing whether aa nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equalacan long endure.a Placing himself directly in the same crosshairs of history, Kennedy told the Congress and the nation: aBefore my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure.a It was memorable rhetoric based on a false understanding.
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.
MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 1961.
Khrushchev was still waiting for an answer to his multiple pleas for an early summit with Kennedy when the presidentas State of the Union address delivered him the first of several perceived indignities. Two days later, Khrushchev suffered what he considered the further humiliation of watching Kennedyas America test-launch its first Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.
Four days after that, McNamara shamed Khrushchev againa"while at the same time embarra.s.sing the White Housea"by dismissing as afolly,a during a Pentagon press briefing, Khrushchevas declaration that he was expanding his missile superiority against the U.S. In both missile technology and overall striking potential, the U.S. still enjoyed a considerable edge. McNamara said the two countries had about the same number of missiles in the field, and though he didnat mention the U.S. superiority of 6,000 warheads to about 300 for the Soviets, he nevertheless had publicly called Khrushchevas bluff.
After his failed negotiation track with Eisenhower in 1960, Khrushchev had taken significant political risk in openly praising Kennedyas election, freeing the airmen, offering other gestures, and reaching out to the new president for an early summit. Kennedyas dismissive response, his ICBM test launch, and McNamaraas statement reinforced the charges of Khrushchevas enemies that he was naive about American intentions.
On February 11, Khrushchev returned earlier than scheduled from a trip to Soviet farming regions for an emergency Presidium meeting, where his rivals called for a policy shift to address what they regarded as new American militancy.
The Soviet leader had to rethink his approach. He had failed in his desire to meet with Kennedy before the new president could establish his course toward Moscow. The Soviet leader could not afford to appear weak after Kennedyas startling State of the Union. Khrushchev immediately altered his tone toward Kennedy and his administration, replacing it with aggressive talk about Soviet nuclear capabilities. The Soviet media shifted course as well.
The Kennedy-Khrushchev honeymoon had ended before it had begun. Misunderstandings were souring the relationship between the worldas two most powerful men before Kennedy had even chaired his first meeting on Soviet policy.
CABINET ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
SAt.u.r.dAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1961.
Twelve days after his State of the Union, Kennedy called together his top Soviet experts for the first time to lay the groundwork for administration policy. He had placed the horse firmly behind the cart.
He would not be the first or last newly elected U.S. president to be forced through a speaking schedule to set a policy direction before a formal policy review. Though the administration was only twenty days old, those who attended the meetinga"representing both a tougher and more accommodating policy toward Moscowa"realized Khrushchevas early gestures and Kennedyas tough response had already set a lurching train in motion that they now hoped to steer.
The long-awaited meeting would provide insight into both Kennedyas hunger for knowledge and his continued indecision about how to deal with Khrushchev, irrespective of his speechas apparent clarity. The president had summoned to the Cabinet Room Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, U.S. Amba.s.sador to Moscow Thompson, and three former amba.s.sadors to Moscow: Charles aChipa Bohlen, who continued as the State Departmentas resident Russia expert; George Kennan, Kennedyas new amba.s.sador to Yugoslavia; and Averell Harriman, whom Kennedy had made aamba.s.sador at large.a The days leading up to the session had produced a flurry of preparatory cables and meetings. Thompson had been busiest of all, sending in a series of long telegrams designed to educate the new president and his administration on all aspects of his greatest foreign policy challenge. Kennedy had decided to keep Thompson on as amba.s.sador, in large part due to his unique access to Khrushchev. This was his first trip to Washington, D.C., since that decision had been made. Thompson was delighted to serve a president who not only was a fellow Democrat but had already demonstrated he would read his cables far more closely than Eisenhower had ever done.
At age fifty-six, Thompson lacked the charm of his predecessor Bohlen and the brilliance of Kennan. But no one doubted his knowledge or pedigree. He had won the U.S. Medal of Freedom and had endeared himself to the Soviets for remaining in Moscow as a U.S. diplomat during the most gruesome days of the n.a.z.i siege after the American amba.s.sador had fled.
Thompson had been at the table in the postwar years for almost every important negotiation concerning the Soviets, from Potsdam in July 1945 through talks over Austriaas independence in 1954 and 1955. He was known for his steady hand, whether at poker with emba.s.sy personnel or at geopolitical chess with the Soviets. Thompson argued it was time for Kennedy to decide aour basic policy toward the Soviet Union.a Privately, Thompson had been critical of Eisenhoweras failure to pick up on the post-Stalin efforts to ease Cold War tensions. He agreed with Khrushchevas view that his efforts to reduce tensions had gone unrewarded. Thompson had cabled home in March 1959, aWe have refused these overtures or made their acceptance subject to conditions he as a Communist considers impossible.a Explaining Khrushchevas decision to launch the Berlin Crisis in late 1958, Thompson said, aWe are in the process of rearming Germany and strengthening our bases surrounding Soviet territory. Our proposals for settling the German problem would in his opinion end in dissolution of the Communist bloc and threaten the regime in the Soviet Union itself.a 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 Kennedyas State of the Union. He considered Khrushchev the least doctrinaire and best of all possible Soviet leadership alternatives. aHe is the most pragmatic of the lot and is tending to make his country more normal,a wrote Thompson in the spa.r.s.e language of the diplomatic cable. Pointing to Khrushchevas Kremlin opposition, Thompson warned that the Soviet leader could disappear within Kennedyas term afrom natural or other causes.a 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, aparticularly East Germany, which is probably the most vulnerable.a He said the Soviets were adeeply 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.a Thompson conceded that no one could predict with any accuracy Khrushchevas intentions regarding Berlin, but it was Thompsonas 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 Berlinas 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 awould be disposed not to bring matters to a heada 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 compet.i.tion with other voices, who were prescribing tougher measures against Moscow. Walter Dowling, the U.S. amba.s.sador to West Germany, cabled from Bonn that Kennedy had to be sufficiently tough with the Soviets so that Khrushchev would see there was ano painless way for him to undermine the Western position in Berlin,a 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 allianceas 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 arevolutionary posture.a aI am sure we would err if we should treat the Communist threat at this time as being primarily of a military nature,a he wrote in a cable that got particular traction in Washington. aI 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.a As if to counterbalance Thompson, Kennedy announced on February 9 that he was bringing out of retirement Harry Trumanas 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 Kennedyas behest, one of Americaas 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 Thompsonas 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 t.i.tled aThe Thinking of the Soviet Leadership,a Bundy organized the subjects under four headings: (1) the general condition of the Soviet Union and its leadership; (2) Soviet att.i.tudes toward the U.S.; (3) useful American policies and att.i.tudes; 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. aIave never heard of a president who wanted to know so much,a said Bohlen. Kennedy had little interest in the arcane subtleties of Soviet doctrine but instead wanted practical advice. aHe 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.a The men arrayed before him differed fundamentally in their views about Moscow. Bohlen worried that Kennedy underestimated Khrushchevas determination to expand world communism. Kennan had doubts about whether Khrushchev was really in charge. He said the Soviet leader confronted aconsiderable oppositiona from Stalinist remnants who opposed negotiation with the West, and thus Kennedy needed to deal with the acollective.a Thompson argued that although the government was a collective enterprise, it was increasingly one of Khrushchevas making. He thought only grave failures in foreign affairs or agricultural production could threaten Khrushchevas political control. There he saw problems, as Khrushchev could be facing a third successive year of bad harvests.
Thompson argued that the U.S. ahope for the futurea was the evolution of Soviet society into one that was more sophisticated and consumer-driven. aThese people are becoming bourgeois very rapidly,a 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. aFor this he really wants a generally unexplosive period in foreign affairs.a 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 Khrushchevas 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. athe princ.i.p.al enemy of mankind.a Bohlen opposed Khrushchevas suggestion that the meeting should take place during a UN session, abecause the Soviet leader cannot resist a rostrum.a 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 OaDonnell, aI have to show him that we can be just as tough as he is. I canat do that sending messages to him through other people. Iall have to sit down with him, and let him see who heas dealing with.a Beyond that, other countriesa"including close U.S. alliesa"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 asummit,a 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.
aIt is my duty to make decisions that no adviser and no ally can make for me,a 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 aprecisely, realistically, and with an opportunity for discussion and clarification.a Ten days later, on February 21, the same group of experts and senior officials a.s.sembled 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 Kennedyas 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 presidentas name to prepare a report studying the Berlin problem. The report should deal with the apolitical and military aspects of the Berlin crisis, including a negotiating position on Germany for possible four-power talks.a That same evening, Thompson arrived in Moscow with President Kennedyas letter. It had taken the ten weeks of transition after Kennedyas election and first month of his presidency before Kennedy had been ready to respond to Khrushchevas 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. Gromykoas frosty tone could not have transmitted Khrushchevas snub more clearly.
Thompson protested to Gromyko about the importance of the letter he carried. He said he would ago anywhere at any timea to see Khrushchev. Gromyko replied that he could guarantee neither the place nor the time. Thompsonas extension as amba.s.sador 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: aThe 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,a he said.
It was a long way from his New Yearas toast about Kennedyas presidency as aa fresh winda in relations. Kennedyas misreading of Khrushchevas intentions and the Soviet leaderas 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 overa. 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 conditionsa. 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 History 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 dependeda"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. aHe was not much liked in his youth and that didnat improve as he grew older,a said Kurt Hager, a lifelong fellow communist campaigner who would become the partyas chief ideologist. aHe had not the slightest understanding of jokes.a 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 Khrushchevas wavering commitment to protecting its existence.
For Ulbricht, the lesson of World War IIa"which he had spent primarily in Moscow exilea"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 Hitleras Gestapo. His lifeas purpose was the creation and now the salvation of his communist state of 17 million souls.
At age eighty-five, Adenauer was an eccentric, shrewd, dryly humorous, and orderly man who had survived all the chaotic stages of Germanyas previous century: the Imperial Reich, Germanyas first unification, the Weimar Republicas chaos, the Third Reich, and now Germanyas postwar division. He had seen most of his political allies die or fade from the scene, and he worried that Kennedy lacked the historical context, policy experience, and personal character to stand up to the Soviets in the style of his predecessors, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
Adenauer shared with Ulbricht a distrust of German nature, but his remedy was to lash his country irretrievably to the U.S. and the West through NATO and the European Common Market. As he would explain later, aOur task was to dispel the mistrust harbored against us everywhere in the West. We had to try, step-by-step, to reawaken confidence in Germans. The precondition for thisawas a clear, steady, unwavering affirmation of ident.i.ty with the Westa and its economic and political practices.
As the first and still the only freely elected West German chancellor, Adenauer had helped construct from n.a.z.i ruins a vibrant, democratic, free-market state of sixty million people. His objective was to sustain that construct until the West was strong enough to gain unification on its own terms. More immediately, he was seeking a fourth term in September with the rejuvenated purpose of a politician who felt vindicated by history.
Both Ulbricht and Adenauer were simultaneously central actors and needy dependentsa"both driving and being driven by eventsa"as the ways they spent the first days of 1961 ill.u.s.trate.
aGROSSES HAUS,a COMMUNIST CENTRAL PARTY HEADQUARTERS,
EAST BERLIN.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1961.
Standing before a secret emergency session of his ruling Politburo, Walter Ulbricht scratched his goatee unhappily and contradicted his optimistic, public New Yearas message of just three days earlier.
Speaking to his subjects, he had spouted socialist triumph, extolled the success of his farm collectivization, and boasted that he had enriched East Germany economically in the previous year while improving its standing around the world. However, the situation was far too serious to risk employing the same lies on his leadership, who knew better, and whom he needed for his struggle against an opponent whose resources seemed to be expanding with every hour.
aWest Berlin is experiencing a growth boom,a Ulbricht complained. aThey have increased wages for workers and employees more than we have. They have created more favorable living conditions, and they have to a great degree rebuilt the main parts of the city, while construction in our part continues to lag.a The result, he said, was that West Berlin was asucking outa the East Berlin workforce, and that more of East Germanyas most talented youth were studying in West Berlin schools and watching Hollywood movies in its theaters.
Ulbricht had never been so clear with his comrades about the enemyas rising fortunes or their own declining position. aI am only saying this, because we need to deal with the real situation and draw its consequences,a he said, laying out his plans for a year during which he wished to shut off the refugee flow, bolster the East Berlin economy, and protect his East Germany from the spies and propagandists operating from West Berlin.
One speaker after the other rose to support Ulbricht and provide additional reasons for concern. A Magdeburg district party secretary said he had only solved a Christmas tree shortage over the holidays through an emergency harvest. His citizens blamed a shoe and textile shortage on the partyas redirection of insufficient supplies to the more politically sensitive major cities of Karl-Marx-Stadt and Dresden. Politburo member Erich Honecker complained that the Westas attractions were draining East Germanyas sports movement, for which he was responsible, of its best athletes, a serious threat to its Olympic ambitions. Bruno Leuschner, the head of state planning and a concentration camp survivor, said East Germany would only avoid collapse if it got an immediate billion-ruble credit from the Soviets. He reported that he had recently returned from Moscow, where just the technical doc.u.ments to work out the required scale of Soviet help had filled a twin-engine, Ilyushin Il-14 military cargo plane. East Berlin party boss Paul Verner, a former metalworker, said he could do nothing to stop the continued flight of his cityas most skilled workers.
Ulbrichtas party lieutenants drew a picture of a country heading toward inevitable collapse. As long as so much of the countryas productive capacity was walking out the door as refugees, they complained, they could do little to reverse the trend. Their increasing dependence on the West Berlin economy for suppliers had only made them more vulnerable. Karl Heinrich Rau, the minister in charge of East Germanyas trade with the West, argued that Ulbricht could not accept Khrushchevas position that they wait until the Soviet leader had his summit with Kennedy before he dealt with the growing problems. They had to act now.
With unusual candor before his party comrades, an exasperated Ulbricht condemned Khrushchev for his aunnecessary tolerancea of the Berlin situation. Ulbricht knew the KGB would get a report on what he told his Politburo, but he nevertheless pulled no punches. The dangers of Khrushchevas displeasure mattered far less to him than those of his continued inaction. Ulbricht reminded his colleagues that he had been the first to declare openly that all of Berlin should be considered part of East German territory, and that Khrushchev had only later come to agree with him.
Again, Ulbricht said, he would have to take the lead.
The West would not know until years thereaftera"through the release of secret East German and Soviet doc.u.mentsa"how crucial Ulbrichtas actions during the first days of 1961 would be in shaping everything that followed. That said, his decision to escalate his pressure on Khrushchev, despite the potential political perils for himself, was consistent with a career during which he had repeatedly overcome Soviet and internal opposition to create a state that was more Stalinist than even Stalin had envisioned.
Like his mentor Stalin, Ulbricht was unusually short, standing at just five feet, four inches, and like Stalin he had a physical peculiarity that helped define his misshapen personality. For Stalin, the scars were pockmarks, a limp, and a crippled left arm from childhood disease. Ulbrichtas enduring defect was his distinctive squeaky falsetto voice, born of a diphtheria infection when he was just eighteen. He hammered home his harshest points in a high-pitched, often indecipherable Saxon dialect, leaving listeners waiting for him to calm down and drop an octave or two. His anti-imperialist rantsa"most often delivered while he wore crumpled suits and shirts with clashing tiesa"had made him such an object of derision during the 1950s that he had become the b.u.t.t of jokes among East German citizens (in their bolder or more inebriated moments) and West Berlin cabaret comedians alike. Perhaps in response, Ulbricht had shortened his speeches and begun to wear more neatly pressed double-breasted suits with silver ties. However, those changes had done little to alter his public image.