He was determined to prompt a showdown on Berlin before it was too late.
On July 7, just after a lunch meeting with Kennedy on another issue, Schlesinger handed the president his Berlin memo and asked that he look it over en route to Hyannis Port that afternoon. The timing was good, as the president would meet with senior officials there the next day on Berlin. Kennedy said he preferred to read Schlesinger’s thoughts right away, because Berlin was his most urgent problem.
Schlesinger had calculated correctly that nothing would get Kennedy’s attention faster than a credible warning that the president was in danger of repeating his mistakes in Cuba. Kennedy had joked after the debacle that Schlesinger’s cautionary memo on Cuba would “look pretty good” when the historian got around to writing his book on the administration. He then added a word of warning: “Only he’d better not publish that memorandum while I’m still alive.” In his anti-Acheson memo, Schlesinger reminded Kennedy that the Cuban fiasco was a result of “excessive concentration on military and operational problems” in the preparatory stage while underestimating the political issues.
Though Schlesinger’s paper praised Acheson for “analyzing the issues of last resort,” he worried that the former secretary of state was defining the issue “to put it crudely as: are you chicken or not? When someone proposes something which seems tough, hard, put-up-or-shut-up, it is difficult to oppose it without seeming soft, idealistic, mushy….” He reminded the president that his Soviet expert Chip Bohlen believed that nothing could help discussion of the Soviets more than eliminating the adjectives “hard” and “soft” from the language of the debate.
“People who had doubts about Cuba,” said Schlesinger, in a clear reference to himself, “suppressed those doubts lest they seem ‘soft.’ It is obviously important such fears not constrain free discussion of Berlin.”
The president read the memo carefully. He then looked at his friend with concern. He agreed that Acheson’s paper was too narrow and that “Berlin planning had to be brought back into balance.” He tasked Schlesinger to expand on his memorandum immediately for use the following day in Hyannis Port.
Schlesinger worked against the clock, since Kennedy’s helicopter would lift off from the White House lawn at five p.m. With only two hours remaining before the president’s departure, Chayes and Kissinger, the lawyer and the political scientist, dictated as Schlesinger edited while typing furiously. By the time Schlesinger ripped the final version from his typewriter, he had something that raised a series of questions about the Acheson paper and suggested new approaches. It said:
The Acheson premise is substantially as follows: Khrushchev’s principal purpose in forcing the Berlin question is to humiliate the U.S. on a basic issue by making us back down on a sacred commitment and thus shatter our world power and influence. The Berlin crisis, in this view, has nothing to do with Berlin, Germany, or Europe. From this premise flows the conclusion that we are in a fateful test of wills…and that Khrushchev will be deterred only by a demonstrated U.S. readiness to go to nuclear war rather than to abandon the status quo. On this theory, negotiation is harmful until the crisis is well developed; then it is useful only for propaganda purposes; and in the end its essential purpose is to provide a formula to cover Khrushchev’s defeat. The test of will becomes an end in itself rather than a means to a political end.
The three men then listed the issues that they believed Acheson had overlooked.
“What political moves do we make until the crisis develops?” The memo argued, “If we sit silent or confine ourselves to rebutting Soviet contentions,” Khrushchev would keep the initiative and put Kennedy on the defensive, making him look rigid and unreasonable.
“The [Acheson] paper indicates no relationship between the proposed military action and larger political objectives.” The memo argued, in language intended to shock, that Acheson “does not state any political objective other than [preserving] present access procedures for which we are prepared to incinerate the world.” It thus argued, “It is essential to elaborate the cause for which we are prepared to go to nuclear war.”
“The paper covers only one eventuality…the Communist interruption of military access to West Berlin.” Yet, the memo argues, “actually, there is a whole spectrum of harassments, of which a full-scale blockade may well be one of the least likely.”
“The paper hinges on our willingness to face nuclear war. But this option is undefined.” The three men counsel Kennedy, whom they already knew was troubled by his war options: “Before you are asked to make the decision to go to nuclear war, you are entitled to know what concretely nuclear war is likely to mean. The Pentagon should be required to make an analysis of the possible levels and implications of nuclear warfare and the possible gradations of our own nuclear response.”
The memo attacked Acheson for addressing himself “almost exclusively to the problem of military access” to Berlin. However, military traffic was only 5 percent of the whole, while 95 percent consisted of supplies for the civilian population. It noted that East Germany was already in full control of this civilian traffic, which it “has gone to surprising lengths to facilitate.” It noted that civilian traffic was most essential to the U.S. objective of preserving West Berlin’s freedom.
The memo argued that Acheson ignored sensitivities inside NATO. “What happens if our allies decline to go along?” It was unlikely the Allies would support Acheson’s idea of sending troops up the Autobahn to break a blockade through a ground probe, which de Gaulle had already opposed. “What about the United Nations? Whatever happens, this issue will go into the UN. For better or for worse, we have to have a convincing UN position.”
Seldom had such an important document been composed so rapidly. Schlesinger typed quickly to keep up with the unfolding thoughts of his brilliant co-conspirators. With an eye on the clock, he created a section called “Random thoughts about unexplored alternatives.” It listed in rat-a-tat fashion what questions the president should be exploring beyond those Acheson had provided.
Most of all, the men wanted to ensure that all questions and alternatives were “systematically brought to the surface and canvassed” before rushing forward with the Acheson plan. The unsigned Schlesinger paper suggested that the president consider withdrawing the Acheson paper from circulation altogether. The danger of Acheson’s thoughts leaking, the memo argued, was greater than the danger to full discussion from a more limited distribution.
Oblivious to the fact that Khrushchev had already decided his course on Berlin, U.S. officials in Washington were engaged in a behind-the-scenes bureaucratic war against Dean Acheson. Although written quickly, the Schlesinger-inspired memo was thorough, even including ideas about which new individuals should be brought into the process to dilute the power of Acheson. It suggested, among others, Averell Harriman and Adlai Stevenson.
It was the revenge of the so-called SLOBs—the Soft-Liners on Berlin.
The Schlesinger memo concluded by suggesting that one of its authors drive the process. “In particular, Henry Kissinger should be brought into the center of Berlin planning,” it said. It would be one of the opening acts for a man who would over time become one of the most effective foreign policy infighters in U.S. history.
At the same time, Kennedy was also hearing doubts about existing nuclear war planning regarding Berlin from Defense Secretary McNamara and National Security Advisor Bundy. In his own memo ahead of the Hyannis Port meeting, Bundy complained about the “dangerous rigidity” of the strategic war plan. It had left the president little choice between an all-out attack on the Soviet Union or no response at all. Bundy suggested that McNamara review and revise it.
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1961
Henry Kissinger spent only a day or two each week in Washington working as a White House consultant, commuting from his post at Harvard University, but that had proved sufficient to put him at the center of the struggle to shape Kennedy’s thinkin
g on Berlin. The ambitious young professor would happily have worked full-time for the president; that, however, had been blocked by his former dean and now D.C. boss, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.
Though Kissinger had mastered the art of flattering his superiors, Bundy was more immune to it than most. Along with the president, Bundy regarded Kissinger as brilliant but also tiresome. Bundy imitated Kissinger’s long, German-accented discourses and the rolling of the president’s eyes that accompanied them. For his part, Kissinger would complain that Bundy had put his considerable intellectual talents to “the service of ideas that were more fashionable than substantial.” Kissinger biographer Walter Isaacson concluded that their differences were a matter of class and style: the tactful, upper-class Bostonian condescending to the brash German Jew.
Still, being so near the center of American power was a new and heady experience for Kissinger, and an early introduction to the White House infighting that would be such a part of his extraordinary life. Born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Bavaria, in 1923, he had fled Nazi persecution with his family, arriving in New York when he was fifteen. Now he was advising America’s commander in chief. While Bundy had labored to keep him at arm’s length from Kennedy, Kissinger was now reaching him through another Harvard professor, Arthur Schlesinger, who was deploying him against Acheson.
Kissinger had none of Acheson’s historic place or access to the Oval Office—and at age thirty-eight was thirty years Acheson’s junior—but his thirty-two-page “Memorandum for the President” on Berlin was an audacious attempt to one-up the former secretary of state. It landed on Kennedy’s desk just before he departed for Hyannis Port to work on developing his approach to Berlin. Though Kissinger was much more hard-line on Moscow than Schlesinger, he felt it would be foolhardy for Kennedy to embrace Acheson’s complete dismissal of diplomacy as one available avenue.
Kissinger worried that Kennedy’s aides, and perhaps the president himself, might be naive enough to be tempted by Khrushchev’s “free city” idea, under which West Berlin would fall under United Nations control. Kissinger was also concerned about Kennedy’s distaste for the great Adenauer, and the president’s belief that the West’s long-standing commitment to eventual German unification, through free elections, was fanciful, and should be negotiable. Kennedy, Kissinger feared, didn’t sufficiently realize that inattention to Berlin could breed a crisis for the Atlantic Alliance that would hurt U.S. security interests far more than any deal with Moscow could justify.
So Kissinger put his warning to Kennedy in unmistakable terms:
The first task is to clarify what is at stake. The fate of Berlin is the touch stone for the future of the North Atlantic Community. A defeat over Berlin, that is a deterioration of Berlin’s possibility to live in freedom, would inevitably demoralize the Federal Republic. Its scrupulously followed Western-oriented policy would be seen as a fiasco. All other NATO nations would be bound to draw the indicated conclusions from such a demonstration of the West’s impotence. For other parts of the world, the irresistible nature of the Communist movement would be underlined. Coming on top of the Communist gains of the past five years, it would teach a clear lesson even to neutralists. Western guarantees, already degraded in significance, would mean little in the future. The realization of the Communist proposal that Berlin become a “free city” could well be the decisive turn in the struggle of freedom against tyranny. Any consideration of policy must start from the premise that the West simply cannot afford a defeat in Berlin.
Regarding unification, Kissinger warned Kennedy that abandoning traditional U.S. support would demoralize West Germans, making them doubt their place in the West. It would at the same time encourage the Soviets to increase their pressure on Berlin, as they would conclude that Kennedy already was “cutting [his] losses.” Instead, Kissinger suggested that Kennedy’s response to Khrushchev’s increasing of Berlin tensions “with respect to German unification should be offensive and not defensive. We should use every opportunity to insist on the principle of free elections and take our stand before the United Nations on this ground.” He warned Kennedy that he should not take West Berlin morale for granted, as U.S. leaders had done since the beginning of the Berlin Crisis in November 1959. “We should give them some tangible demonstration of our confidence to maintain their hope and courage,” he wrote.
It concerned Kissinger all the more that Kennedy didn’t have a credible military contingency plan for a Berlin crisis. In any conventional conflict, Kissinger argued, the U.S. would be overrun by Soviet superiority, and he doubted that Kennedy would ever engage in a nuclear war over Berlin’s freedom. His paper captured all of those ideas in clearer, more strategic form than any other document that had reached the White House until that time.
A cover note for the Kissinger memo, written by Bundy, said: “He and [White House officials Henry] Owen and [Carl] Kaysen and I all agree the current strategic war plan is dangerously rigid and, if continued without amendment, may leave you very little choice as to how you face the moment of thermonuclear truth. In essence, the current plan calls for shooting off everything we have in one shot, and it is so constructed as to make any more flexible course very difficult.”
Kissinger advised Kennedy that his only course in the tense days ahead, should the Soviets maintain their aggressive post-Vienna position on Berlin, would be to make any unilateral Soviet action appear too hazardous to the risk-averse Khrushchev. “In other words, we must be prepared to face a showdown,” he said. Kissinger dismissed the arguments of some in the administration that Kennedy should make Berlin concessions to help Khrushchev in his domestic struggles against more dangerous hard-liners ahead of his October Party Congress. “Khrushchev’s domestic position is his problem, not ours,” he said, adding that only a strong Khrushchev could be conciliatory, and that was not what Kennedy was facing.
What concerned Kissinger most was the apparent Kennedy course of doing nothing about Berlin and waiting for a Soviet move, which, he argued, was the riskiest approach. “What may seem watchful waiting to us may appear as insecurity [to Khrushchev],” Kissinger said. Prophetically, he indicated that such an approach would tempt Moscow to prompt a crisis at the moment of “maximum difficulty” for the U.S., causing a situation in which the world would come to doubt Kennedy’s determination.
In a separate note to Schlesinger, Kissinger later said, “I am in the position of a man sitting next to a driver heading for a precipice who is being asked to make sure the gas tank is full and the oil pressure adequate.” Frustrated with being at the fringes of decision making, he worried that Kennedy’s White House wanted him only for brainstorming purposes, not as someone whose advice would be taken. He eventually resigned in October, having concluded that his ideas would not be taken seriously.
HYANNIS PORT, MASSACHUSETTS
SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1961
President Kennedy was displeased.
It was fine to drop the ball on Laos or even Cuba. Neither was decisive for the United States or his place in history. But this was Berlin—the central stage for the world’s defining struggle! He repeated this fact several times to advisers as he expressed his dismay that while Moscow was charging ahead on Berlin, they had yet to respond even to Khrushchev’s aide-mémoire delivered in Vienna—even though it had been more than a month since the summit. The news from the Soviet Union that morning was bad. Khrushchev had announced he would rescind plans to reduce the Soviet Army by 1.2 million men and would enlarge his defense budget by a third, to 12.399 billion rubles—an increase of roughly $3.4 billion. Speaking before graduates of Soviet military academies, Khrushchev said that he believed a new world war over Berlin was not inevitable, but he nevertheless told his country’s soldiers to prepare for the worst.
Soviet troops roared their approval.
Khrushchev told them his measures were in response to news reports that President Kennedy would ask for an additional $3.5 billion for his defense budget. With that, the Soviet
leader was abandoning his insistence on putting general economic investments ahead of the military budget and increasing missile forces at the expense of troop numbers. “These are forced measures, comrades,” he said. “We take them because we cannot neglect the Soviet people’s security.”
Kennedy was livid that Newsweek had published details of the Pentagon’s top-secret Berlin contingency planning, which apparently had been the basis for Khrushchev’s response. Kennedy was so upset by the leak that he ordered the FBI to investigate its source.
Khrushchev had responded to the Newsweek article as if it were a declaration of Kennedy’s policy. Realizing that London was the weakest Allied link on Berlin, Khrushchev had summoned British Ambassador Frank Roberts to his box at the Bolshoi Ballet for a dressing-down during a break in a performance by the famous British prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn. Khrushchev scorned British resistance to Soviet goals in Berlin as futile. He told Roberts that six hydrogen bombs would be “quite enough” to destroy the British Isles, that nine would annihilate France, and that the Kremlin could respond a hundredfold to any new division that the West could scrape up. Knowing he was singing from Prime Minister Macmillan’s song sheet, he said, “Why should two hundred million people die for two million Berliners?”
In Hyannis Port, Kennedy scolded Secretary Rusk, who sat in his usual business suit on the fantail of the Kennedys’ fifty-two-foot speedboat, the Marlin, for having failed to come up with an answer to Khrushchev’s Berlin ultimatum. While the president fumed, the First Lady dropped into the ocean to water-ski, and Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor joined Kennedy’s friends Charles Spalding and his wife for hot dogs and chowder.
When Rusk explained that the text had been delayed by the need to clear it with the Allies, Kennedy exploded that it wasn’t the Allies but the U.S. president who carried the burden on Berlin. Inspired by the Schlesinger memo, he ordered Rusk to give him a plan for negotiations on Berlin within ten days. The president then turned on the State Department’s Soviet expert, Chip Bohlen, a former ambassador to Moscow: “Chip, what’s wrong with the goddamned department of yours? I can never get a quick answer, no matter what question I put to them.”
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