The Berlin Wall, 1961

THE PROBLEM OF GERMANY

At the end of WWII, at the Potsdam Conference, the Allied powers had agreed to set up the four ‘zones of occupation’ in Germany.  Germany was to be demilitarised, and a new government set up under democratic principles. 

In the event, the US, UK & France had united their zones into West Germany, re-vitalised the economy and, without Soviet agreement, formed the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), allowed it to join NATO, stationed NATO troops there, and allowed it to have its own army (all in direct contravention of Potsdam). 

    •  The Chancellor of West Germany in 1961 was Konrad Adenauer.  Adenauer was fiercely anti-Soviet, and believed that Western containment of Soviet Communism had to be based on superior Western military strength.  Adenauer continually pressed the USA to maintain its military commitment in Germany; by 1960, 1,500 US nuclear warheads were stored in West Germany. 

In response, the USSR had formed the Warsaw Pact, and granted sovereignty to East Germany in 1954, which in turn had its own very large army. 

    •  The East German leader, Walter Ulbricht, was convinced that the flow of workers and refugees into the more prosperous western sector of Berlin was destroying the East German economy.  It was a Russian joke that "soon there will be nobody left in the GDR except for Ulbricht and his mistress."  He was pressing the USSR to close the border from 1953.  In November 1960 he had held several trucks bound for West Germany, and in December threatened to close off all traffic.  He repeatedly also chided Moscow for countenancing nuclear weapons in West Germany. 

Germany was, therefore, in the 1950s, a flashpoint, with two hostile armies facing each other. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic notes

Standard US-centric account 

A Soviet view - see also: a 1979 English textbook for East German pupils

CIA Report on migration from East Germany, 1961 (pdf)

YouTube

Film clips from the time 

 Mr Allsopp's 'History clip' about the Wall

Podcast:

- Giles Hill on the Berlin Wall

The building of the Berlin Wall  - BBC Witness History

Spying in Berlin  - BBC Witness History

Escaping from East Berlin  - BBC Witness History

JFK’s Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech  - BBC Witness History

THE IMPORTANCE OF BERLIN

In the middle of East Germany was West Berlin.  It had already been the cause of a Cold War crisis in 1948 (the Berlin Blockade). 

From the US PoV

In a televised address to the American People on 25 July 1960, President Kennedy outlined the importance of West Berlin:

"West Berlin – lying exposed 110 miles inside East Germany, surrounded by Soviet troops and close to Soviet supply lines – has many roles.  It is more than a showcase of liberty, a symbol, an island of freedom in a Communist sea.  It is even more than a link with the Free World, a beacon of hope behind the Iron Curtain, an escape hatch for refugees. 

"West Berlin is all of that.  But above all it has now become – as never before – the great testing place of Western courage and will, a focal point where our solemn commitments stretching back over the years since 1945, and Soviet ambitions now meet in basic confrontation. 

"We cannot and will not permit the Communists to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force.  For the fulfillment of our pledge to that city is essential to the morale and security of Western Germany, to the unity of Western Europe, and to the faith of the entire Free World."

However, West Berlin was vulnerable – Khrushchev described it as the ‘testicle’ of the West, which he could squeeze whenever he wanted to make the West scream.  Also, the legal right of the US to have a military presence there was tenuous. 

Plus Kennedy was a new and young President who had been elected on a promise to get tough on Communism.  He had therefore:

    •  financed the forces fighting the Communists in Vietnam and Laos, and

    •  sanctioned aid for an invasion of Cuba. 

When he sought advice on Berlin, all his advisers told him that Khrushchev would try to bully him, and he must not show any weakness or give way on any point. 

Meanwhile Adenauer had let it be known that he did not trust Kennedy to protect West Germany, so Kennedy had to calm those fears.

From the Soviet PoV

In 2010 the Russian historian Alexei Filitov suggested that Germany was an issue for the Soviet Union for four reasons:

1. The placing of nuclear weapons in West Germany

2. East Germany’s economic inferiority to West Germany

3. The consequent flight of East Germans into West Berlin. 

   By 1961, 3 million had fled to the west through Berlin.  As the Cold War tension grew, more left, fearing that the border would be closed – by August 1961, the flow was 1,800 a day.  This was an embarrassment to Russia, which claimed that Communism was better. 

4. Ulbricht was pressurising for the border to be closed

   Ulbricht and Khrushchev did not get along well, and Ulbricht was very critical about Khrushchev's lack of progress in getting East Germany recognised, or in stopping the emigration from the country.  If Khrushchev wouldn’t close the border, Ulbricht asked, could he instead supply East Germany with a workforce (it is American historian Hope Harrison’s ‘tail wags the dog’ theory that it was Ulbricht who badgered Khrushchev into agreeing the Wall). 

But it is clear that other factors were pushing Khrushchev:

5. The West's violations of the Potsdam Treaty

   Khrushchev was furious about the West’s dual standards about the Potsdam Treaty – for instance telling a Press Conference in 1958:

   “The Governments of the United States, Britain and France have grossly violated the Potsdam Agreement and sabotaged its fulfilment.  At the same time they cling to one part of this agreement to prolong somehow the occupation of Berlin.”

6. The Americans used West Berlin for spying & sabotage (see Sources A and B)

   Khrushchev called West Berlin “a cancerous tumour”. 

7. Worry about China

   The Chinese government favoured a traditional aggressiveness towards the West, and Mao Zedong denounced Khrushchev's 'peaceful co-existence' as a "bourgeois pacifist concept", and wanted him to be much more assertive with the Americans.  Khrushchev was aware that the hardliner Ulbricht was on friendly terms with the Chinese communists, and worried that a 'soft' stance in Berlin might lose him the support of his Iron Curtain allies. 

When American reporter Walter Lippmann interviewed Khrushchev in April 1961, he found Khrushchev confident that the West would back down:

"In my opinion there are no such stupid statesmen in the West to unleash a war in which hundreds of million would perish just because we would sign a peace treaty with the GDR that would stipulate a special status of ‘free city’ for West Berlin with its 2.5 million population ...  There are no such idiots or they have not yet been born."

Khrushchev believed that Kennedy was weak (his spies had told him more about the invasion of Cuba than the CIA had told Kennedy), and that a show of strength would bump the West into acquiescence. 

EVENTS

1.  November 1958  – Khrushchev's Ultimatum

Khrushchev revived a Soviet proposal from 1954, that all four occupying powers should withdraw from Germany pending a Peace Treaty of Unification between East and West Germany, and gave the USA, UK and France 6 months to comply.  It was ignored.  Khrushchev proposed the idea to Eisenhower in 1959, but progress was scuppered by the U2 crisis of 1960. 

2.  4-5 June 1961 – Vienna Summit and Soviet Note

Khrushchev and Kennedy discussed West Berlin.  Khrushchev again proposed his Peace Treaty idea, and either 'threatened' or 'mentioned' war (depending on whose side you are on), but got nowhere because Kennedy refused to change anything from the status quo.  After the Summit, Kennedy said of Khrushchev: "He beat the hell out of me [it was] the worst thing in my life.  He savaged me."  Leaving the Conference, Kennedy was sent a Soviet Note … proposing the Peace Treaty idea again. 

3.  25 July – Kennedy's Speech

In July, Kennedy formally rejected the Peace Treaty proposal as unworkable, and made his speech to the American people publicly refusing to back down an inch in West Berlin, and instead increased America’s military spending. 

So long as the communists insist that they are preparing to end by themselves unilaterally our rights in West Berlin and our commitments to its people, we must be prepared to defend those rights and those commitments.  We will at times be ready to talk, if talk will help.  But we must also be ready to resist with force, if force is used upon us.

Taking his advisers by surprise, Khrushchev arranged a meeting with Ulbricht and proposed, not just closing the border, but a concrete wall.  "Ulbricht beamed with pleasure," he remembered later.  "’This is the solution! This will help.  I am for this.’"

4.  3-5 August – Warsaw Pact meeting

Khrushchev called a secret meeting of the Warsaw Pact countries, who agreed to the Wall and to economic aid for East Germany if the West enforced economic sanctions. 

5.  13 August – Berlin Wall

On the night of 13 August a barbed-wire barrier was erected between East and West Berlin, gradually upgraded to a two-skin concrete wall. 

Source C

The Berlin Wall, 1962

RESULTS

1.  Berlin was split in two.

Hundreds of East Berliners died trying to cross it.   Hopes of German reunification had to be put on hold for 28 years.

2.  Khrushchev’s reaction was that it was a victory.

He had taken the West by surprise, and had closed off West Berlin from East Germany without response.  The economic situation in East German improved.  He told Ulbricht in 1963:

“In 1958 and before 13 August the matter was bad.  Now Ulbricht has built the wall and laughs at the Americans.  And they are forced to tolerate it...  Isn’t that enough for you?  You are a robber!”

3.  Kennedy’s reaction was one of relief –“a hell of a lot better than a war”.

Khrushchev had solved the problem for him!  Long term, the wall was a propaganda victory for the West, a symbol of Communist tyranny.  In June 1963 Kennedy visited Berlin, using the wall as a propaganda tool against the Communists.  When he finished his speech (see Source D), 1.4 million listening West Berliners cheered him.  On the other side of the wall, East Berliners (who could hear him but not see him) cheered him too. 

4.  Tensions decreased on both sides.

There was a small ‘stand-off’ at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October, when Soviet guards attempted to search US diplomats, but American General Lucius Clay sent in the tanks and the Soviet guards backed down; this was counted as a relief, because it showed the US that the USSR was not prepared to start a war over Berlin.  After 1961, the focus of the Cold War switched to Vietnam.

5.  Cuban Missile Crisis

In his book about the Wall, William Smyser (who was Clay’s assistant in 1961) stated that Clay believed that Kennedy’s acceptance of the Wall in 1961 led Khrushchev to be brave enough to attempt to place missiles in Cuba in 1962.