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Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War
Campbell Craig
1998
9.The Wall and the Prospect of War, August–October 1961
In the early hours of August 13, 1961, East German soldiers, "Vopos," they were called, began to set up barriers blocking traffic from East into West Berlin. By morning they had set up barbed-wire blockades around the entire western sector of the city. East Berliners heading west for work were turned back; West Berliners crowded around the new fortifications to boo the hapless Vopos as they pounded fence posts into the ancient Berlin cobblestones. Over the next few days the Vopos began to replace these temporary barriers with an immense wall that would eventually encircle all of West Berlin. 1
Khrushchev approved this action, despite its dismal testimony to the appeal of communism, because it expediently solved two pressing problems. The wall obstructed the flow of resources, labor, and, especially, talented East German refugees into West Berlin. Capable people were fleeing East Germany by the tens of thousands, and that nation’s leader, Walter Ulbricht, was incessantly demanding that Khrushchev allow him to close the border before the DDR was reduced to a hollow shell. At the same time, the wall allowed Khrushchev to defuse the Berlin Crisis unilaterally, well before the deadline of his ultimatum in December, when he would have had to face risking war or once again backing down. 2
In the days immediately following the "border closing" not one official in the Kennedy administration recommended military response. On the evening of August 14 Rusk emphasized that exploiting the wall’s propaganda value was "the most important" item on the West’s agenda. In a memorandum to Kennedy, Bundy argued against any reprisal at all. As George Kennan and the columnist Joseph Alsop had already pointed out, Bundy noted, the Soviets were bound to have taken such a step sooner or later—better that it happened now, well before the deadline, than in reaction to a Western move in the "cold winter" of 1961&-;62. Kennedy sent to Rusk a memorandum asking him to list "what steps will we take this week to exploit politically propagandawise" the wall. 3
The Berlin steering group met the next day to formalize this policy. Rusk offered the State Department view that "while the border closing was a most serious matter, the probability was that in realistic terms it would make a Berlin settlement easier." McNamara emphasized his opposition to the "gesture" of sending a reinforcement to West Berlin. Bundy summarized the group’s conclusion: because "the closing of the border was not a shooting issue, the problem was essentially one of propaganda." Therefore, Washington would reject "temporary and incommensurate reprisals." Rusk met with the French, British, and German ambassadors that evening to inform them of the American position. The West would issue protests, but not take any military action against the wall; the United States would send military reinforcements (against McNamara’s recommendation) in order to restore West Berliners’ morale. 4
With hindsight, one can see that the official United States decision not to act put an end to the Berlin crisis. 5 Once the Americans concluded that the "border closing" was not worth war, both superpowers had effectively signaled each other that accepting the artificial division of Berlin was an expedient solution to a lingering Cold War problem. Seen in this light, the skirmishes after August appear as aftershocks, not central to the international crisis.
In some respects, this was how Kennedy and his advisers saw it too. The Wall indisputably reduced their fears of all-out war, making their immediate task one of reassuring the isolated people of West Berlin that they would not be abandoned. However, they could not be sure that the Wall signified not a Soviet decision to end the crisis but rather an opening move to drive the West out. Therefore, the administration continued to prepare for war. And by sending Lucius Clay to soothe the West Berliners, they almost succeeded in starting one.
Preparing for War
There was no reason to suppose that the West Berliners would gladly welcome the encasement of their city with armed guards, barbed wire, snarling dogs, and a ten-foot-high concrete wall, even as the price for easing Cold War tensions. West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt sent an urgent and not entirely politic letter to Kennedy on the 16th, demanding that the West take immediate political action against the "accomplished extortion." Brandt realized quite well that the Wall might be seen as an acceptable device for avoiding a nuclear war. He wanted to disabuse Kennedy of this feeling. The continuing tragedy of Berlin, Brandt warned, meant that the West "will not be spared [the] risks of ultimate decision." 6
Kennedy wanted to be spared the risks of ultimate decision, and in late August he began to renew his search for alternatives to all-out nuclear war. On the 18th he approved Maxwell Taylor’s proposal to send a U.S. battle group down the Autobahn to Berlin, to demonstrate American willingness to deploy conventional forces on the Berlin scene. 7 Three days later Kennedy issued NSAM 78, which demanded from McNamara an update on contingency planning. McNamara replied on August 25 that Norstad was preparing plans based on the assumption that the U.S. would have to act unilaterally—that its NATO allies would refuse to go along with a conventional war to maintain access to West Berlin. "We do not yet have the additional forces needed to expand our military options," McNamara told Kennedy, "nor do we have Allied agreement that non-nuclear options are necessary and possible." 8 To remedy this, the next day McNamara decided to move up the date for deploying conventional reinforcements from January 1 to November 15, while Rusk instructed Norstad that in the event of war the United States did not intend to use nuclear weapons, but rather would try to settle "the problem of Berlin while progressively making the Soviets aware of the danger of general war." 9
Perhaps Kennedy, McNamara, and Rusk still believed that American conventional forces could adequately defend Berlin; General Norstad did not. In an August 28 telegram Norstad belittled the new ideas coming out of the White House. How, he asked, was the United States supposed to "settle the problem of Berlin" without using nuclear weapons? "What are the new options? Are they based on real probability or thin probability? Would we be in a position to exercise them in any event by 1 January 1962? By 1 July 1962?" 10 The European commander was telling his superiors, once again, that war over Berlin was going to be a nuclear war—or an immediate and ignominious defeat. Conventional forces were not going to be adequate in any foreseeable future. It was time, he urged, for Washington to accept this reality.
The Berlin steering group met again on September 7. Acheson was invited this time, and he argued for a serious military attempt to defend that city. This meant getting rid of both token conventional deployments and a suicidal nuclear strategy. McNamara demurred, claiming that a moderate increase in conventional forces, while not providing the U.S. with the capability to win a war, would convince Khrushchev of the American will to use nuclear weapons. In the meantime he proposed to call up the national guard, suspend the movements of dependents to Europe, and transfer 37,000 Army personnel there. Acheson replied that these "gestures" would not deter Khrushchev from "doing as he pleases" and called for all-out mobilization as "the only chance of making [nuclear] war unnecessary." 11
Bundy noted that Acheson’s plan could lead to the "reverse," by which he meant, following both de Gaulle’s reasoning before Vienna and Bundy’s own July 13 memorandum, that a conventional build-up might indicate to Khrushchev that the West was afraid to use nuclear weapons to defend Berlin, hence tempting the Soviet leader to invade. 12 This distinction interested Kennedy, who issued another action memorandum, in which he asked McNamara this question: "Will an increase of our conventional forces in Europe convince Khrushchev of our readiness to fight to a finish for West Berlin or will it have the opposite effect?" 13
Kennedy, in other words, was asking McNamara whether flexible response was still valid. Initially McNamara stuck to his guns, arguing that a conventional build-up would assure allies that the United States was committed to their defense; in the end "it is probably a more convincing course for the allies actively to prepare to engage in substantial non-nuclear conflict in Europe—a conflict which inevitably would carry a substantial risk of nuclear war—than to threaten, unconvincingly, the certainty of a nuclear response to a political aggression." 14 But a week later McNamara retreated from this position. "Inevitably it must be quite uncertain what would convince Khrushchev of our willingness to fight to a finish over Berlin," he wrote. "While a conventional build-up alone would be unlikely to convince him, the absence of a build-up would probably increase his doubt of our determination. To continue efforts focused mostly on nuclear forces and nuclear threats," McNamara concluded, "would carry less conviction than building up both non-nuclear and nuclear forces." 15
McNamara was shifting his views because he could not get around Norstad. Whatever his own long-term strategic preferences, McNamara, like Dulles in September 1958, realized that for the time being the United States was not going to be able to wage a conventional war to defend Berlin. The Secretary of Defense bolstered his new position by attaching a memorandum written by Norstad to his reply. In it Norstad pressed his point home: a conventional, nuclear war-fearing policy, the SACEUR wrote, could destroy American credibility. "It is absolutely essential," Norstad argued, "that the Soviets be forced to act and move at all times in full awareness that if they use force they risk general war with nuclear weapons." A build up even of 30 divisions (McNamara was contemplating seven) could not provide assured defense against a massive Soviet conventional attack. As Norstad concluded, "in these times no operation regardless how limited, can have real credibility except in the context of a nuclear threat, direct or implied." 16
As was constantly the case in the Kennedy White House, however, just because McNamara had decided to side with Norstad over immediate Berlin contingency planning did not mean the issue had been put to rest. Norstad would be returning home in early October to coordinate planning with the Joint Chiefs and the White House, and Paul Nitze saw this as an opportunity to turn Kennedy against the McNamara/Norstad position and revive the more activist, flexible approach that he and Acheson supported. In a preparatory memorandum for this planning, Nitze analyzed Norstad’s position—as if the American General were an adversary at the negotiating table—for McNamara and Rusk. Norstad, he wrote, believed that the United States and NATO "must succeed" in any European war. In the event of hostilities over Berlin Norstad would see his options simply as either surrender or the initiation of "actions rapidly with the forces he has available." Norstad himself, meeting on the same day with the Joint Chiefs, confirmed Nitze’s suspicions. An "ordered" escalation in Berlin was a doubtful proposition; it could be more like a chemical reaction, "so rapid that it is uncontrollable." NATO will be "involved from the first shot," Norstad declared, every day sounding more like Eisenhower, and it was necessary to convince NATO as well as the Soviets of "our determination to use as many nuclear weapons as soon as required to insure success of our actions." 17
Kennedy’s aides coached him for his meeting with Norstad. Bundy, stating the obvious, described Norstad as a "nuclear war man, and all his preferences move accordingly." Taylor, also eager to preserve flexible response, told Kennedy that it was crucial that Norstad realize who was in charge: "Norstad must know your mind clearly," Taylor told Kennedy, especially since McNamara was wavering on the question of conventional war. This was unacceptable. "You need to make him know who is boss," Taylor said. 18
Kennedy sat down with Norstad on the afternoon of the 3rd and asked him about his views on limited war. Norstad was all for balanced NATO forces, but once "major forces were engaged, the United States must be in a position to use whatever forces were necessary." Terms like graduation and escalation were "unrealistic," he added: "in normal war escalation is apt to be explosive." It was crucial that the Soviets and the NATO allies understand that: recent talk about conventional build-up had "cast doubt on the importance of nuclear warfare." 19
Kennedy asked Norstad to envision a scenario in Berlin. Norstad replied that if the Soviets blocked access to the city, he could send a small platoon probe. If that were repelled, he could send a battalion probe. If that were repelled, "there would have to be a prompt and larger reaction." Kennedy grasped Norstad’s meaning. "As soon as someone gets killed," the president observed, "the danger of major involvement is very great." That was disturbing news indeed. "We must privately clarify our own decisions on contingency planning," Kennedy concluded. 20
Norstad’s message to the White House had been unwavering. It would be quite impossible to win a limited war over West Berlin. American forces there were ridiculously outnumbered by their East German, not to mention Russian, counterparts. Because this had long been the case, the United States and NATO had together developed a strategy to defend the German city with nuclear war. Soldiers in Europe from Norstad on down assumed that this would be their primary mission. With the possible exception of the British, America’s NATO allies were content with this strategy and could not be relied upon to join an American attempt to fight for Berlin with conventional forces. Every military and diplomatic factor weighed against trying to use flexible response to defend Berlin. By early October, Bundy and McNamara seemed reconciled to this reality.
But the lack of a strong center in White House planning, together with the fact that war seemed remote, encouraged Nitze to press his case. Working from a paper written by his aide Admiral John Lee, Nitze developed a four-stage plan and presented it at an October 10 meeting. 21
Nitze argued in this meeting that following an unsuccessful local bid to reopen Western access to West Berlin, comprehensive conventional military action should precede nonmilitary steps (like Rusk’s embargo or United Nations protests). McNamara and Rusk "strongly recommended" that these stages be reversed, a recommendation with which Kennedy agreed. The participants then turned to "Paragraph IV," of Nitze’s plan, the section dealing with nuclear war. Kennedy worried that the limited nuclear strikes outlined in that section would quickly lead to the subject of Paragraph IV, section C: "General Nuclear War." 22 In concluding his minutes of this meeting Bundy noted that "the division of opinion over Paragraph IV was not flatly resolved." 23 But apparently Kennedy had been persuaded: he asked McNamara to prepare a set of official instructions for Norstad based on Nitze’s original paper. 24
On October 10, therefore, the administration adopted a contingency plan based upon fighting for Berlin in a flexible, escalatory manner. This was so even though, as Bundy said, the administration remained undecided about whether the defense of Berlin justified general nuclear war, and even though no one had yet to refute Norstad’s statement that American conventional capabilities were entirely inadequate to fight seriously over Berlin, a conclusion with which both Bundy and McNamara concurred. Such muddle was hardly new in the Kennedy White House, as we have seen. It was certainly exacerbated by the quiet assumptions of Kennedy, McNamara, and others that the Wall had made war over Berlin unlikely. When that assumption proved untrue, the Nitze strategy would fall out of favor.
Lucius Clay’s Accomplished Fact
A major objective of Kennedy administration policy after the construction of the Wall was to restore the morale of the West Berliners. If they began to struggle against their confinement in this peculiar walled outpost, demanding perhaps emigration to the West or reunification with the rest of the city, the West would be faced with the old, dim choice of abandoning Berlin or fighting World War III.
Immediately after the Wall went up Kennedy decided to send the well-remembered hero of the airlift, Lucius Clay, to the besieged city. Accompanying Clay would be Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy sent along with them his reply to Brandt, in which he told the Berliner that the Wall "represents a basic Soviet decision which only war could reverse. Neither you nor we," Kennedy noted, "nor any of our Allies, have ever supposed that we should go to war on this point." Johnson and Clay visited Berlin on August 19 and 20, and Clay proved to be so popular that Kennedy proposed making him the military commander there. McNamara opposed that idea, and on August 30 Kennedy instead made Clay his "Special Representative in Berlin," a title that conferred upon the retired general the rank and power of Ambassador. 25 As Kennedy’s letter to Brandt stated—and as White House inaction following August 12 indicated—the United States rejected any idea of going to war over the Wall. Clay’s mission was therefore therapeutic, not military: his job was to soothe the West Berliners, to get them to accept their plight.
In September Clay immediately set about undermining this objective. 26 He openly declared that his own preference would have been to demolish the Wall, and conspicuously set up an exercise in a West Berlin forest that consisted of American soldiers repeatedly knocking down a large wall. 27 He encouraged the hopes of West Berliners that the United States would come to the rescue, tweaked East German authorities at every opportunity, and regularly sought approval from Washington to initiate more substantive action. Patiently, Rusk or Kennedy would deny Clay’s requests and ask that the General please refrain from unilateral action. 28
This continued for some time. On September 28 Clay complained to Rusk that "timid" authorities, by which he meant Norstad, had rejected his plan to send helicopters to rescue refugees from Steinstuchen, a section of West Berlin surrounded by the eastern sector. There "is no longer time," Clay stated, "for either caution or timidity when our basic rights are threatened." The next day Clay recommended that if the East Germans moved to close the Friedrichstrasse crossing (one of the last points of entry into East Berlin), the United States should "physically destroy the barrier with a tank or heavy equipment. . . . " 29 An alarmed Rusk replied on October 4, reminding Clay that access to East Berlin was not a "vital interest for which we would fight, as we have defined such interests." He told him that the president had specifically ordered that no force be used to remove any barrier the East Germans might put up at Friedrichstrasse.
Persistently, Clay demanded again on October 5 that Washington approve his plan to send "a small number of tanks, say three" through a Friedrichstrasse barrier. "If we are not prepared to go this far," Clay wrote, "we should do nothing." 30 On the 8th Kennedy himself followed up on Rusk’s letter. He suggested to the General that force "may in fact not be in our own interest." Gingerly, Kennedy assured Clay that his views would be considered at the highest levels and were respected by all concerned. 31
Not gingerly, Clay replied to the president on October 18. Suggesting that "even as able a commander as Norstad" had been hamstrung by NATO leadership, Clay demanded to be given "authority in emergency to act immediately" without having to wait for Norstad’s approval. He went on to recommend a complete contingency plan, which encompassed scenarios ranging all the way from a skirmish at the Wall to the "ultimate decision." Reviving his 1948 strategy of fait accompli, he informed his superiors that the United States must protect "our right to cross at Friedrich Strasse as we have built it up in the minds of the West Berliners. . . " What is more, Clay went on to threaten Kennedy, in oblique but unmistakable language, that "here in West Berlin any failure to act positively and determinedly with me here in this capacity will be assumed to have your direct approval." 32
Backing down, Kennedy issued NSAM 107, which approved a modified version of Clay’s plan to demolish an obstruction at Friedrichstrasse. 33 Despite his stated opposition to making the Wall casus belli, by the third week of October Kennedy had given Clay the opportunity to provoke the Soviets over the question of the Berlin Wall by destroying part of it. Nitze’s contingency strategy, which called for provocation and quick escalation to major conventional fighting, was at this moment the official American plan.
From Muddle to Evasion
By declining to make the hard military decisions regarding the defense of Berlin, and then allowing Clay to make the prospect of war there suddenly imminent, Kennedy had made for himself an exceedingly dangerous situation. It was time to back off, and to do so the president and his advisors began to adopt a strategy of evading war.
On October 17, Nikita Khrushchev declared in a speech to the 22nd Party Congress that he was withdrawing the ultimatum to sign a peace treaty with the East Germans and turn Berlin over to their control. 34 From a historical perspective Khrushchev’s actions seem perfunctory, since his construction of the Wall was the real indication that he would allow the West to stay in West Berlin. But because the Americans could not have been sure of this, his announcement was indeed reassuring, as it signified to Kennedy administration officials that their fears of the Wall being a prelude to further Soviet aggression were exaggerated. Suddenly, Kennedy’s decision to let Clay act belligerently in Berlin, and to allow Nitze and Lee’s escalatory plan to dictate his military options, seemed insane. Khrushchev was giving the West what it wanted in Berlin; there was absolutely no point in considering war.
A first step in evading war was to put Nitze’s escalatory strategy aside. Typically this was done in a cumbersome manner. The White House scheduled a major meeting on Berlin for the morning of October 20, to review Nitze’s paper, and to approve a letter to Norstad (which had been drafted by McNamara), telling him what to do in the event of war. Bundy, as was his habit, wrote a preparatory memorandum for the president. Both the paper and the letter, he wrote, "fudge" the issue of whether limited war would lead inevitably to general war. McNamara, Bundy added, had deliberately avoided making up his mind on that central matter in his letter to Norstad. Everything listed on the meeting’s agenda were "essentially subordinate clauses in the main question. . . Are there a variety of steps between blocked access and general war, or not." 35
During that morning’s meeting the participants debated the main question, with the immediate purpose of drafting a final letter to Norstad. Bundy, again, suggested that Norstad’s position may have reflected the view that conventional build-up diminished the nuclear deterrent. Acheson, who strongly supported the Nitze plan, demanded that the United States move quickly, rather than waiting for congressional and allied approval. A "serious military movement," Acheson stated, "by the United States is `an ominous thing’ which would clearly convey the serious purpose of the American government." 36
Kennedy endorsed Acheson’s position, but "subject to the modifying advice from the Secretary of Defense." That advice turned out to be decisive. McNamara had declared early in the meeting that the size of the American conventional build-up in Berlin was no longer important: Khrushchev’s announcement meant that the "matter need not be decided now, since troops will not be ready for shipment until the middle of November.. . . the issue will be re-examined and presented to the President at that time." 37 This was a clear rebuff to the Nitze/Acheson position, which depended upon a quick and substantial conventional deployment to Europe. McNamara then presented the letter he had written to Norstad. It carefully explained that he was not to use any nuclear weapons without authorization from Washington; he demanded that Norstad spell out "with particularity" command and control procedures regarding nuclear weapons so as to ensure no miscommunications on this matter. He stressed that in case of a conflict in Berlin the West—once it had adequate forces in place—was to engage in conventional war, especially air operations. "Should it appear that Soviet forces sufficient to defeat these actions are being brought into play," McNamara wrote, "the response, on which you would receive specific directions, will be one or more of those contained in paragraph IV." 38 "At this juncture," he continued, "I place as much importance on developing our capacity and readiness to fight with significant non-nuclear forces as on measures designed primarily to make our nuclear deterrent more credible." 39
McNamara was telling Norstad that NATO was to rely upon "our capacity and readiness to fight with significant non-nuclear forces," which, he emphasized, were being developed not just for immediate purposes but to make the nuclear retaliatory forces more credible. In other words, McNamara was saying that with the Soviet retreat it was time now to return to the longer-term task of building a limited war strategy in Europe that he and Taylor had introduced in the beginning of his term.
But McNamara was not sending a policy paper to Rusk or Kennedy outlining his hopes for a future capability in Europe: he was sending instructions to be followed in case of war to the military commander Norstad. He was telling the SACEUR, who had made his determination to go nuclear vividly clear, to rely on conventional forces in a war over Berlin, until he was given specific approval otherwise, even though those forces did not yet exist. McNamara was saying that if war occurred tomorrow Norstad was not to use nuclear weapons unless he received direct approval from Washington, and instead to use conventional forces which—as McNamara’s letter also clearly stated—Norstad conspicuously did not have.
The following evening, McNamara’s deputy Roswell Gilpatric announced to the world, via a speech to the Business Council in Hot Springs, Virginia, that the missile gap of which Kennedy had spoken during the campaign never existed. Indeed, Gilpatric said, it was the United States that held an advantage in nuclear missiles; American "destructive power" could destroy the Soviet Union even after a Soviet first strike. An enemy’s move that triggered an American nuclear retaliation "would be an act of self-destruction on his part." 40
Gilpatric referred ominously to Berlin. "If forceful interference with our rights and obligations should lead to violent conflict," he warned, "as it well might, the United States does not intend to be defeated." In such a conflict, Gilpatric continued, the United States would "join free men in standing up to their responsibilities." 41
Something odd, even for the Kennedy administration, was going on. On the 20th, McNamara, having defeated the hard-liners Nitze and Acheson, ordered Norstad not to use nuclear weapons in a war over Berlin; the next day, he had his deputy announce to the world, in a speech that ranks among the toughest given by an American during the Cold War, that the United States was quite prepared to do so.
Subtly, and perhaps without being entirely aware of it, Kennedy and his advisers were replacing their muddled position on Berlin with a strategy to evade war that bore a nice resemblance to the one Eisenhower had used in the late 1950s. The strategy which McNamara sent to Norstad removed, as had Eisenhower’s, all intermediate military options: Norstad was either to fight with conventional forces he did not possess, or wait for the administration to authorize any use of nuclear weapons. On this last point McNamara, like Eisenhower, was quite clear: Norstad was not to go nuclear until he had direct and explicit approval from Washington. At the same time, Gilpatric’s speech highlighted—not only to the Soviets, but to Americans and Europeans as well 42 —that a war in Berlin would trigger a devastating nuclear war, one in which America’s NATO allies had better be involved ("standing up to their responsibilities") from the beginning. By raising a public specter of thermonuclear war, while at the same time secretly adjusting military policy to make such a war unlikely, McNamara was utilizing the Eisenhower strategy well.
On the evening of October 22, deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Berlin Allan Lightner and his wife decided to attend a Czechoslovak theater performance in East Berlin. Despite the Wall American troops and officials, still formal occupiers of the defeated Nazi capital, were regularly crossing through the Friedrichstrasse opening into the eastern sector. But on that night East German Vopos stopped the American diplomat and demanded official identification. Lightner refused, citing his right as an American official to pass freely throughout Berlin. The Vopos insisted that unidentified civilians could no longer enter East Berlin without military escort. Lightner, forgetting about the play, demanded to speak to a Soviet official and summoned American MPs, who arrived and escorted him through the checkpoint, whereupon they returned to the western sector and then repeated their steps. A Soviet officer meanwhile arrived at the gate and apologized for the mistaken detainment; that ended the evening’s events at Friedrichstrasse. But the confrontation confirmed for the East Germans their suspicion that the Americans still saw themselves as occupiers of all Berlin. The next day East German authorities announced that nonuniformed Western officials would have to show passports when entering East Berlin. 43
The East German decision would have been a classic example of "salami slicing"—the strategy of demanding concession after concession, aware that each was in itself too minor likely to provoke armed response—had it occurred before the Wall went up. But two months of Western inaction regarding the Wall signified, as the East Germans knew, as Kennedy had implied in his speech, as Rusk constantly explained, and as Khrushchev’s ultimatum withdrawal indicated, that the West had extended de facto recognition of East German sovereignty over East Berlin. For the Americans to incite a conflict over access at Friedrichstrasse after accepting the Wall would have been like the Soviet Union suddenly demanding that the United States leave Guantanamo Bay after the Cuban missile crisis.
But Clay did not see events from this perspective. He was eager to stand up to the East German action and push events toward war, which in October 1961 meant either immediate defeat or nuclear holocaust, over an issue which the administration had thoroughly defined as unworthy of further action. 44 Clay, therefore, had to be stopped. On October 24 he telephoned Kennedy directly to insist that he be allowed to challenge the East German barrier at Friedrichstrasse. Kennedy allowed Clay to send civilian cars through Checkpoint "Charlie," the American border control on the west end of Friedrichstrasse, into East Berlin. When, as assumed, they were ordered by Vopos to turn back, Clay had armed Jeeps escort the cars through, while he deployed personnel carriers and ten American tanks in the rear.
The next day, Clay urged Rusk to allow him to provoke the Soviets into confronting American forces by sending his troops through the checkpoint, then tearing down a section of the Wall as they returned to the American sector. Clay’s objective was to force the Soviets to demonstrate that it was they, not the East Germans, who were really responsible for the Wall: this could only be verified, as he saw it, by forcing a confrontation. 45 On that day Clay deployed ten tanks near the checkpoint.
Here, finally, was a moment when a further move by either side could have led to real hostilities. It "appears," as Norstad wrote to Lemnitzer, "that we may be faced with a showdown." 46 The Soviets replied to Clay’s deployment by sending seven tanks to the border—the next move was the Americans’. Clay demanded on the 26th that Washington respond to his previous day’s proposal to conduct a raid through the checkpoint: "request reply soonest," he added. Rusk did reply, telling Clay that "entry into East Berlin is not a vital interest." 47 On October 27, two months after the Wall went up, the Berlin Crisis reached its most tense moment. Late in the afternoon three more Soviet tanks appeared on the eastern side of the Friedrichstrasse. American tank crews went on full alert, ready to move against their Soviet counterparts should they try to intercept the American civilian cars that continued to zip back and forth across the border.
At 11:55 a.m., Washington time, Clay called Kennedy, who told the General to stop the civilian probes. Clay complied. 48 The Soviet and American forces faced off against each other across the broad thoroughfare for the entire day, while (on the western side) journalists fought each other for available telephones and an enterprising vendor sold pretzels. 49 That afternoon Kennedy called Clay. The General argued that the Soviets were unlikely to make any move. Kennedy congratulated Clay for keeping his nerve during the standoff, to which Clay replied, "Mr. President, we’re not worried about our nerves. We’re worried about those of you people in Washington." 50
It is unknown how Kennedy himself reacted to this last slap, but it is now known that the president had authorized his brother, Robert, to work out a back-channel deal with Khrushchev to defuse the Friedrichstrasse crisis. The Soviets would withdraw their tanks, and the Americans would follow. 51 At 10 o’clock that evening Rusk sent Clay a telegram informing him, in proper diplomatic passive voice, of official planning. Instructions, Rusk wrote, "have been issued to defer any further civilian probes with armed escorts into Berlin." In addition, uniforms would be worn by all American military personnel entering East Berlin, and civilian officials would refrain from attempting to enter East Berlin—except for one such attempt per day. 52 (Like the Chinese in 1958, the United States would back down, but perform a little ritual defiance to show that it was not beaten.) Clay stopped the American probes, and on the morning of the 28th the Soviet tanks began to withdraw from their position. The American forces followed suit. Other than some desultory skirmishes over air access in February, that was the end of direct Cold War conflict in Berlin.
Flexible Response versus Evasion of War
President Kennedy and his main advisers had taken office in 1961 determined to invigorate American military policy—to replace Eisenhower’s one-dimensional fixation upon thermonuclear retaliation and his incoherent security policies with flexible strategies designed to give the president interesting options in a crisis rather than the old choice between conciliation or general nuclear war. Throughout 1961 they worked to devise a Cold War strategy of flexible response, and they would continue to so until late October 1962. 53
When the administration faced a vivid possibility of war with the Soviet Union, however—most notably between May and August, and then during the Friedrichstrasse showdown in October—key administration officials, especially Bundy, McNamara, and Kennedy himself, found themselves backing away from flexible response. The prospect of any kind of war with the Soviet Union suddenly seemed terrifying, and instead of confidently considering what kind of war would best suit American interests, these officials began to worry much more about finding ways to avoid war. Unconsciously (except perhaps in the case of Bundy), they grabbed hold of the war-evasion strategy that Eisenhower had left for them. Indeed, the Kennedy administration’s behavior in October—McNamara’s creation of a nonstrategy, Gilpatric’s announcement of American nuclear determination, and then the White House surreptitious defusing of the tank showdown—owed quite a bit to Eisenhower.
Conversely, when the threat of war receded—in the early months before Vienna, between the Wall and Friedrichstrasse, and then for another year—the administration began to reconsider flexible response. Hardliners like Nitze and Acheson began to rise in bureaucratic power. Those who were unsure of their stance, like Kennedy, fell in stature. A strategy that offered alternatives to "holocaust or humiliation" became appealing again to an administration filled with men bent upon finding new and innovative solutions to tough political problems.
This pattern demonstrates how Eisenhower’s strategy of evading war extended into the Kennedy era. Eisenhower had left for the new administration a military policy which stipulated nothing but massive nuclear retaliation should the United States go to war with the Soviet Union. When such a war became a vivid possibility, the prospect of all-out thermonuclear destruction flew up in the faces of Kennedy and his advisers, literally forcing them to back away from conflict and pursue war evasion tactics quite reminiscent of the old master.
What happens when the likelihood of war becomes more remote? When Eisenhower was president, he personally made sure that flexible response did not become attractive by defeating its advocates in the all-important struggle to define basic American security policy. There was, however, no comparable figure in the Kennedy administration. As a consequence, the administration drifted away from Eisenhower’s strategy after the Friedrichstrasse crisis. It would take Khrushchev’s decision to deploy missiles in Cuba to bring it back.
Endnotes
Note 1: Editorial Note, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 325; Tusa, The Last Division, ch 10. Back.
Note 2: See Tusa, The Last Division, pp. 232–33; Tompson, Khrushchev, pp. 235–36. Back.
Note 3: August 14, 1961 memorandum from Bundy to Kennedy, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 330–31; August 14, 1961 memorandum from Kennedy to Rusk, ibid., p. 332. Back.
Note 4: Minutes of August 15, 1961 Berlin Steering Group meeting, ibid., pp. 333–34; Rusk telegram to American Embassy in Germany, ibid., 337–39. Back.
Note 5: Catudal, for example, ends his Kennedy and the Berlin Wall Crisis in August. Back.
Note 6: Brandt letter enclosed in August 16, 1961 telegram from U.S. Berlin mission to Department of State, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 345–46. Back.
Note 7: See August 18, 1961 memorandum from Taylor to Kennedy, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement. Back.
Note 8: August 25, 1961 memorandum from McNamara to Kennedy, ibid., pp. 2–3. Back.
Note 9: Department of State memorandum of August 26, 1961 Four-Power Ambassadorial Group conversation, DDC 1993, number 1945, p. 4; cf. Trachtenberg, History and Strategy, p. 222. August 25, 1961 memorandum from McNamara to Kennedy, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 2–3; August 28, 1961 telegram from Rusk to Norstad, ibid., pp. 2–3. Rusk’s language also seems influenced by the works of Thomas Schelling. More on Schelling’s relation with the Kennedy administration can be found in the epilogue. Back.
Note 10: August 28, 1961 telegram from Norstad to Lemnitzer, ibid. In this telegram Norstad also urged that Clay not be sent to Berlin. On the intense rivalry between Clay and Norstad, see Jean Edward Smith’s Lucius D. Clay (New York: Holt, 1990), pp. 656–58. Back.
Note 11: Memorandum of September 7, 1961 Berlin Steering Group meeting, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 395–98. Back.
Note 12: Ibid. Bundy’s thinking here reflected the ideas of his aide Robert Komer, who argued back in July that Khrushchev "may well interpret our remarks and preparations [about conventional war] as meaning that we are in fact afraid to use nuclears in the clutch." July 20, 1961 memorandum from Komer to Bundy, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, p. 1. Back.
Note 13: NSAM 92, issued September 8, 1961, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 398–99. Back.
Note 14: September 11 memorandum from McNamara to Kennedy, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 3–4. Back.
Note 15: September 18, 1961 memorandum from McNamara to Kennedy, NSA number 2484, p. 3. Back.
Note 16: Appendix A to September 11 memorandum from McNamara to Kennedy, cited above, note 14. Back.
Note 17: Nitze analysis attached to October 2, 1961 memorandum from Kohler to Rusk, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 2–7; memorandum of October 2, 1961 meeting with Norstad and the JCS, ibid., pp. 2, 5. Back.
Note 18: October 3, 1961 memorandum from Bundy to Kennedy, ibid., pp. 1–3. Taylor’s recommendations were included in Bundy’s memo. Back.
Note 19: Memorandum of October 3, 1961 White House conversation, ibid., pp. 2–3. Back.
Note 20: Ibid., pp. 4–5. Back.
Note 21: Editorial Note, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 462; Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), pp. 202–03. Back.
Note 22: Nitze, ibid., pp. 203–5; minutes of October 10, 1961 meeting, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 487–89. Back.
Note 24: Nitze did offer Kennedy another alternative. Instead of launching limited nuclear strikes after the failure of conventional war in Europe, he said, "it would be best for us, in moving toward the use of nuclear weapons, to consider most seriously the option of an initial strategic strike of our own." A pre-emptive nuclear strike, Nitze argued, could give the United States a chance for military victory impossible to achieve with conventional war or spasmodic second-strike retaliation. McNamara, however, rejected this. See minutes of October 10, 1961 meeting, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 487–89. Nitze does not mention offering this alternative in his memoirs. Back.
Note 25: August 18, 1961 letter from Kennedy to Brandt, ibid., pp. 352–53; August 24, 1961 memorandum from McNamara to Kennedy, ibid., p. 369; memorandum of August 30, 1961 White House conversation, ibid., p. 382n. Back.
Note 26: This was something Bundy had predicted on the 28th. Reminding Kennedy of the struggle between Truman and MacArthur in Korea, he warned that "Clay will be a burden to you if he takes a line more belligerent than yours." August 28, 1961 memorandum from Bundy to Kennedy, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement . Back.
Note 27: On Clay’s wall-destruction see Garthoff, "Berlin 1961," p. 147. Back.
Note 28: For Clay’s side of the story, see Smith, Lucius D. Clay, chapter 29. Back.
Note 29: September 28, 1961 telegram from Clay to Rusk, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 441–43; the September 29 message is recorded in footnote 2, ibid., p. 443. Back.
Note 30: October 5, 1961 telegram from Clay to Rusk, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 1–2. Back.
Note 31: October 4, 1961 telegram from Rusk to Clay, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 467–68; October 8, 1961 letter from Kennedy to Clay, ibid., pp. 484–86. Back.
Note 32: October 18, 1961 letter from Clay to Kennedy, ibid., pp. 509–13. Back.
Note 33: NSAM 107, issued October 18, 1961, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 1–2. Back.
Note 34: Khrushchev’s reasons for doing this remain unclear, but it is likely that he was hoping to give the Americans an out, as he tried to do with the proposal for a Summit in 1959. See Garthoff, "Berlin 1961," p. 146, and Tompson, Khrushchev, pp. 236–37. Back.
Note 35: October 20, 1961 memorandum from Bundy to Kennedy, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 1–2. Back.
Note 36: Memorandum of October 20, 1961 meeting, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 517–18. Back.
Note 38: October 20, 1961 letter from Kennedy to Norstad, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 520–21. Back.
Note 40: Gilpatric left Washington immediately after his speech to coordinate military planning with the West Germans. Also see Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 256–57. Back.
Note 42: Gilpatric left Washington immediately after his speech to coordinate military planning with the West Germans. Also see Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 256–57. Back.
Note 43: October 23, 1961 telegram from Lightner to Department of State, ibid., pp. 524–25; Gelb, The Berlin Wall, pp. 250–53. Back.
Note 44: To his profound regret, Clay had not seen combat in either World War. Friedrichstrasse was his last chance to command forces in the field. On this see Tusa, The Last Division, p. 127. Back.
Note 45: Clay explains his motivations in Smith, Lucius D. Clay, pp. 660–61. I see no reason to doubt them. Back.
Note 46: October 25, 1961 telegram from Norstad to Lemnitzer, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement. Back.
Note 47: October 26, 1961 telegram from Rusk to Clay, FRUS 14 (1961–63): 539–41. Back.
Note 48: See October 27, 1961 telegram from Watson to Norstad, which relates Clay’s compliance with Kennedy’s order. FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement. Back.
Note 49: Clay’s call to Kennedy is recorded in footnote 1, telegram from Clay to Rusk, ibid., p. 543. Gelb describes the unusual, even "postmodern" scene around the showdown in The Berlin Crisis, p. 256. Back.
Note 50: Quoted in Smith, Lucius D. Clay, p. 661. Also see Beschloss, The Crisis Years, p. 334. Back.
Note 51: Robert Kennedy had begun to communicate with the Kremlin on a regular basis by meeting with Georgi Bolshakov, a Russian attache and KGB agent. On the Bolshakov connection, see Garthoff, "Berlin 1961," p. 145, and Tusa, The Last Division, pp. 336–37. Back.
Note 52: October 27, 1961 telegram from Rusk to Clay, FRUS, 1961–63):14, pp. 544–45. Similar instructions were conveyed from the JCS to Norstad: see October 27, 1961 telegram from Lemnitzer to Norstad, FRUS 14 (1961–63), supplement, pp. 1–2. Back.
Note 53: I will discuss the "collapse" of flexible response in the epilogue. Back.
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