Berlin 1961

by Frederick Kempe

  His victory, however, would be a brief one. The same morning, the East German government published an official decree that it would henceforth require all foreigners—except Allied military men in uniform—to show ID before entering “democratic” Berlin. The East German news agency ADN condemned the Sunday-evening incident as a “border provocation” prompted, it said, by an unknown civilian (Lightner) with an unknown woman (Dorothy), later to be joined by a drunk (Hemsing).

  Once East German radio had the names of the Americans involved, it beamed a broadcast in English aimed at U.S. soldiers: “It will be a long time before Minister Lightner takes his girlfriend out and tries to shack up with her in East Berlin over the weekend.”

  Back in Washington, Kennedy was annoyed. The president was trying to launch negotiations with the Soviets, not provoke a new confrontation. “We didn’t send [Lightner] there to go to the opera in East Berlin,” he said, getting the event wrong and overlooking the fact that Lightner had acted according to the guidelines of his own personal representative.

  At the same time, Kennedy was dealing with another problem. Just four days earlier Clay had tabled an offer to resign if he wasn’t allowed to be more effective. The president could prevent a political earthquake only by providing Clay more freedom to maneuver.

  U.S. MILITARY HEADQUARTERS, WEST BERLIN

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1961

  Mounting frustration had prompted General Clay to include an offer to resign in the first personal letter he had written to President Kennedy since his return to Berlin.

  National Security Advisor Bundy had warned Kennedy when he chose Clay that he was risking “another MacArthur–Truman affair,” recalling the politically damaging decision by President Truman to fire General MacArthur after the general had publicly disagreed with the president’s Korean War policy. MacArthur had wanted to bomb China at the time, and Bundy reckoned there was every chance Clay would want to be more aggressive in Berlin than Kennedy, at a time when his administration was considering making major Berlin concessions to Khrushchev.

  Though in his letter Clay offered to step down more quietly than MacArthur had done, he must have known that the reasons for his departure from Berlin would almost certainly leak and then only further inflame Kennedy’s critics and more deeply dishearten Berliners.

  Clay began by apologizing to the president for his letter’s length, 1,791 words, and for the fact that he hadn’t written earlier. He explained to Kennedy that he considered the many other incidents he had confronted since his arrival in Berlin not to have been worthy of presidential attention.

  Above all, he wrote the president, “we must retain the confidence of West Berliners. Otherwise, the flight of capital and responsible citizens could destroy our position here, and the indicated loss of confidence in us would spread throughout the world.” While the Berliner cared little about French or British behavior, Clay argued, “if we fail, he is dismayed.”

  Clay held no punches. He indirectly criticized the president’s handling of the August 13 border closure, which he believed could have been contested with little risk. “I do not believe we should have gone to war to stop the creation of the Wall,” he said, but he added, “At a minimum, we could have moved back and forth across selected places on the border with unarmed military trucks and this limited action might well have prevented the Wall.”

  However, Clay was quick to blame not Kennedy but rather his Berlin underlings. “I was amazed to find that no specific action to this end was recommended here,” he said. He criticized what he considered a risk-averse culture that had evolved among his Berlin ranks. “It takes only a few disapprovals to discourage independent thinking and positive recommendations,” he said. He worried that Kennedy lacked access to more independent viewpoints like his own because even “as able a Commander as [NATO Supreme Commander Lauris] Norstad” was influenced by Allied reluctance.

  Clay then came to the point: the “urgent need to stop the trespassing on our rights” by East German forces “while Soviet forces have been far in the background.” He did not like the fact that the European Command was “tossing aside lightly” his recommendations that the U.S. must answer minor incidents. He wanted the president to give him more personal authority to address such tests of American will as the East German border checks, because their sum total was more serious than Kennedy’s foreign policy advisers realized.

  The general wrote with the self-assurance of a man who knew he had shaped history through the same sort of direct communication with a previous president. “If we are to react properly and promptly,” he said, “the local commander must have the authority in an emergency to act immediately with my advice and consent within the full range of the authority you have delegated to our Military Command in Europe.”

  Clay wanted the president to free General Watson, the local Berlin commander, of the constraints being placed upon him by General Clarke in Heidelberg and General Norstad in Paris. While he acknowledged that the U.S. could not alter the Berlin situation militarily, he said, “We can lose Berlin if we are unwilling to take some risk in using force…. We could easily be backed into war by failing to make it clearly evident on the ground that we have reached the danger point.”

  Clay defended the actions he had taken thus far, which he knew Kennedy’s advisers had opposed, particularly in freeing the Steinstücken refugees and running military patrols on the Autobahn. He insisted, “These few simple actions on our part have eased tension here and restored confidence in West Berlin.” He told the president it had to be a priority of the U.S. to defend its right of free passage across Checkpoint Charlie, not for its own sake but because West Berliners were watching. For that reason, Clay said, he was “pushing as many vehicles as possible through each day.”

  Though the president had not asked him to do so, Clay then laid out a military contingency plan for Kennedy should the Soviets push back, much as he had done for Truman after the Soviet embargo: “If we are stopped on the highway [to Berlin], we must probe quickly and, I would think, from Berlin with light military strength to find out the depth of the intent [of the enemy]. If our probe is stopped by superior force and compelled to withdraw, we should resort to an immediate airlift concurrently and publicly apply economic sanction and blockade in an attempt to force Soviet action. If these steps are taken concurrently there will be no panic in West Berlin and we will gain the time for you to make the ultimate decision with calm and objective judgment.”

  When Clay mentioned “the ultimate decision,” Kennedy would know he was speaking of nuclear conflict. Clay wrote coolly, “If our probe results in the destruction and capture of the force involved, it is of course evident that the Soviet government wants war.”

  Clay closed by promising to write shorter correspondence in the future. He wrote of how honored he was to serve as Kennedy’s point man in Berlin, but added, “I realize no one knows quite what this means.” He warned Kennedy that “any failure to act positively and determinedly with me here in this capacity will be assumed to have your direct approval…. I do not believe that you sent me here to live in a vacuum and I know that I can be of no real service if it is deemed wise to be extremely cautious in Berlin” (italics added).

  What followed was the general’s resignation offer. In his military career, Clay had gained something of a reputation for his occasional threats to step down, and in almost all of those cases it had achieved his purpose. Clay had found that a resignation offer was sometimes the only way to get his superiors’ attention.

  Clay weighed each word carefully, expressing the loyalty of a soldier to his commander in chief, but questioning how he could continue to serve effectively under the existing circumstances. “I may add, too, that I did not come here to add to your problems and that I am gladly expendable. I do want you to know that I would never permit myself to be made into a controversial figure in these critical times and that if you decide, or if I find that I must report to you, that I serve no useful purpos
e here, I would withdraw only in a manner which would meet with your approval and would not add to the problem here.”

  With that, he signed off:

  With high respect,

  Faithfully yours,

  Lucius D. Clay,

  General, Retired,

  U.S. Army.

  PARIS

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1961

  At Kennedy’s instruction, the U.S. ambassador to Paris, General James M. Gavin, had arranged a meeting with President Charles de Gaulle to respond to the French leader’s letter that Kennedy had read with considerable irritation just two days earlier.

  At a time when Kennedy badly wanted a common Allied front behind his desire to engage Moscow in new Berlin talks, de Gaulle had become his most troublesome ally and was egging on West German Chancellor Adenauer as well. De Gaulle had refused to join even the preliminary discussions among the Americans, British, and West Germans regarding the possibility of new negotiations with the Soviets—and no amount of cajoling or wooing seemed to move him.

  De Gaulle had disapproved of the Rusk–Gromyko talks that had taken place so soon after the border closure because they gave the impression that the U.S. had accepted Berlin’s permanently divided state and was willing to discuss with Moscow a recognition of that status. He worried further that Kennedy was even willing to discuss with the Soviets the future of West Germany’s alliance membership. The French leader saw no circumstances under which talks with Khrushchev could result in anything but further concessions that would negatively alter the political balance in Europe and “create a psychological demoralization, difficult to contain, in the countries that belong to our alliance, particularly in Germany, and could encourage the Soviets to undertake a further advance.”

  In his letter, de Gaulle had discarded all of the fatherly warmth he had shown during Kennedy’s Paris visit ahead of Vienna. His language was clear and tough: “I must say, Mr. President, that today more than ever, I believe the policy to be pursued should be as follows: to refuse to consider changing the status quo of Berlin and the present situation in Germany, and consequently [to refuse] to negotiate concerning them, so long as the Soviet Union does not refrain from acting unilaterally and so long as it does not cease to threaten.”

  As harsh as it was, de Gaulle’s letter had merely built upon a confrontational tone he had established with Kennedy immediately following August 13. As early as two weeks after that, Kennedy had asked for de Gaulle’s help in influencing Third World opinion against communism. He also had said he wanted French assistance in his efforts to reach out to Moscow for new negotiations on Berlin.

  De Gaulle rejected Kennedy’s plea for help in the Third World, arguing that underdeveloped countries lacked the West’s burden of responsibility, and “for the most part have already made up their minds, and you know in what way.” De Gaulle was all the more clear in his opposition to new talks with the Soviets due to “the threats that they are hurling at us and the actual acts that they are committing in violation of agreements.”

  The French president warned Kennedy that any negotiations so closely following the August border closure would be understood by the Soviets as “notice of our surrender” and thus would be a grave blow to NATO. Khrushchev, he wrote, would only use the talks to apply greater pressures to Berliners.

  Despite two months of U.S. diplomatic efforts since then to win over de Gaulle, including Kennedy’s personal correspondence, the French leader had only hardened his position. On October 14, Kennedy had informed de Gaulle that he had achieved a “breakthrough” with Moscow in that Khrushchev had agreed to negotiate directly with the Allies over Berlin and not require them to deal with East Germany. Kennedy had said that he hoped to organize a mid-November meeting of Allied foreign ministers to prepare for new Berlin negotiations with Moscow. Kennedy had assured de Gaulle, “We have no intention of withdrawing from Berlin nor do we intend to give our rights away in any negotiations.” He argued, however, that the Allies should make every diplomatic effort possible before Berlin moved “to the stage of great and dramatic crisis.” Kennedy said what he wanted was Allied clarity of purpose and military preparation “before the ultimate confrontation.”

  De Gaulle scoffed at Kennedy’s notion that Khrushchev had made a concession regarding East Germany. He dismissed Kennedy’s fear of war, saying Khrushchev “does not give the impression that the Kremlin is really prepared to hurl the thunderbolt. A wild beast that is going to spring does so without waiting that long.”

  With that as prelude, Ambassador Gavin knew that he was in for a difficult meeting. Kennedy had chosen Gavin for the Paris job in part because his military record made him one of the few men available whom de Gaulle respected. He had been the youngest major general to command a division in World War II, and his men called him “Jumping Jim” for his willingness despite his rank to join combat drops with his paratroopers. Nevertheless, de Gaulle spoke to him with characteristic condescension.

  De Gaulle told Gavin that although he would do nothing to prevent the U.S. from holding a November meeting of the Allies, Kennedy would have to do so without French participation.

  Gavin asked whether de Gaulle didn’t think it would be better to participate and make clear in a common Allied front “our intent to engage in hostilities” if the Soviets pursued their current course.

  De Gaulle told Gavin he believed the Soviets had only two options, and neither of them required negotiations. Either the Soviets did not want to wage a general and nuclear war, as de Gaulle believed was the case—thus there was no hurry to talk to them—or they did want to go to war, in which circumstance the Allies should refuse talks because they then “would be negotiating under direct threat.”

  “One cannot make working arrangements with people who are threatening them,” de Gaulle told Gavin. Driving home his point, de Gaulle said the Allies could not negotiate with the Soviets “when they have threatened us with the atomic bomb, built the wall in Berlin, threatened to sign a treaty with East Germany with no promise to guarantee access to Berlin, and indulged in saber-rattling in general.” His recipe: “If they apply force, we will do the same and see what happens. Any other stand would be very costly for not only Germany but for all alike.”

  As had been the case with his predecessors in the White House, Kennedy was losing his patience with de Gaulle, who was all too willing to risk American lives over Berlin. Kennedy’s frustrations were mounting as he wrestled with the incalculable Soviets, uncooperative allies, and a retired general in Berlin who was playing by his own rules and now even trying to interfere in diplomacy.

  U.S. MILITARY HEADQUARTERS, WEST BERLIN

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1961

  Emboldened by the success of his military escorts, Clay decided it was time to provide Washington with advice about how it could couple a negotiating initiative with military muscle-flexing. He wrote down his thoughts in a cable to Secretary of State Rusk, one of his key opponents in Washington.

  Clay said he agreed with Rusk’s view that the matter of showing identification papers at East German border points was not by itself a matter of “major import,” but nevertheless he insisted that the U.S. had to push back. “I do not believe,” he told Rusk, repeating the message he had sent to the president, “that we can afford to have any remaining right taken away from us prior to and without negotiation as we would then enter into negotiations with only those rights left which we are committed to maintain by force if necessary.”

  Therefore he “urgently recommended” that Rusk summon the Russian ambassador and advise him that the U.S. rejected the new East German border regime and would refuse to join any talks with the Russians on Berlin until the East Germans reversed their decree. He argued that this would improve the American position in Berlin, test Khrushchev’s goodwill for negotiations, and more closely align the U.S. approach on Berlin talks with the harder-line views of the French and the West Germans.

  Clay made the case to Rusk that using the border disp
ute for diplomatic leverage right away was a more promising track than the continuation of his armed escorts, for he realized they would ultimately run up against vast Soviet conventional superiority. Clay thus announced that he would stop his probes at Checkpoint Charlie after only one day’s execution so that Rusk could pursue the diplomatic path that Clay believed he had made possible.

  “We will avoid a test at Friedrichstrasse today awaiting your consideration of this recommendation,” he said, then added, “We must probe not later than tomorrow.”

  OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1961

  The White House staff considered West German Ambassador Wilhelm Grewe to be the most unpleasant member of the foreign diplomatic corps. Humorless and condescending, Grewe had been so open about his disdain for Kennedy’s so-called New Frontiersmen that Adenauer himself had reproached him.

  Given Ambassador Gavin’s failure to move de Gaulle the day before, Kennedy did not look forward to his morning meeting with Grewe in the Oval Office. He was irritated by increasing leaks to the U.S. and European media about French and German opposition to his desire for a new round of Berlin negotiations, and he wanted them to stop.

  Ambassador Grewe dispensed with small talk and spoke of the chancellor’s concern about Kennedy’s lack of commitment to West Berlin and to German unification more generally. Grewe had the dry, prosecutorial bearing that came with being one of his country’s leading international lawyers. He had negotiated the end of the Allied occupation of West Germany and had been instrumental in creating the so-called Hallstein Doctrine, the tough policy which dictated that West Germany would not establish or maintain diplomatic relations with any country that recognized East Germany.

  Grewe said Adenauer was prepared to go to war to defend Berlin’s freedom. To prepare for that, he said, the chancellor was increasing his military budget and building up forces even as he built his new coalition government. However, Grewe said that Adenauer worried about Kennedy’s plan for a conventional buildup in Europe. He “considered that such operations would only be convincing if we were prepared to follow them with a preemptive nuclear strike if that became necessary.”