Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth

Acknowledgments

My association with Berlin began in the womb.

My mother, Johanna Schumann Kempe, was born on January 30, 1919, in the Pankow district of what would later become communist East Berlin. She immigrated with her family to America in 1930, three years before the beginning of the Third Reich. She often told me how she, as a teenager, returned to Berlin in 1936 to watch Adolf Hitler host the Olympic Games, where his “master race” won the most medals but was upstaged by black U.S. athlete Jesse Owens, whose four golds were so enthusiastically cheered by Berliners. My mother brought back a souvenir photograph book, which still stands in my bookcase as a reminder of Berlin’s many dramas.

Like most Berliners, my mother was extraordinarily proud of her origins. Berliners consider themselves a breed apart from their fellow Germans. My mother insisted Berliners were more free-spirited and flexible than other Germans, and more witty and worldly.

Given my father’s more provincial German pedigree, he suffered under my mother’s notions about Berliners’ exceptionality. Born on May 21, 1909, in the provincial Saxon village of Leubsdorf, he grew up in Kleinzschachwitz near Dresden before immigrating to the United States in 1928. What unified my mother, a schoolteacher, and my father, a baker, was that they were both raised in parts of Germany that would fall under Soviet occupation after World War II. The rise of the Berlin Wall in 1961 severed our extended family; I remember my parents sending large Christmas packages every year to relatives in East Germany, filled with goods they couldn’t buy themselves. One of my great regrets is that my parents would both die a year before they could see the Berlin Wall collapse of its own oppressive weight in 1989.

So, first and foremost, I am indebted to my mother and father, without whom this book would never have been written. I learned from them about Berlin’s significance as the dividing line between the free and unfree worlds. It was my parents who instilled in me an indignation both toward those who imposed and those who tolerated the oppressive system that encased seventeen million of their fellow Germans (and, by association, tens of millions of other East Europeans) behind Berlin’s concrete walls, barbed wire, watchtowers, and armed guards.

There is also plenty of other thanks to go around. My gratitude again goes to Neil Nyren, my four-time editor at Putnam, who was crucial at every stage of this project, from the development of the concept to the final tweaks. His deft touch and creative eye much improved this manuscript’s narrative. Thanks also to one of the world’s most gifted agents, Esther Newberg, who along with Neil quite properly steered me away from less promising projects and toward this one.

Thanks go as well to the enormously creative Ivan Held, president of Putnam; Marilyn Ducksworth and her publicity team; and the remarkable group under Meredith Dros, including Sara Minnich, who put together the enhanced e-book. Special thanks go to John Makinson, dear friend of so many years, and Penguin visionary. His advice was always wise.

I owe much to the many chroniclers who preceded me in capturing portions of this history. I have provided a comprehensive bibliography for the reader that lists the many texts I studied over more than six years of research and reporting. But it is nonetheless appropriate to list those who influenced my understanding most: Hope Harrison and Mario Frank, on Walter Ulbricht and his relationship with Khrushchev; Hans Peter Schwartz and Charles Williams, on Adenauer; Strobe Talbott and his remarkable work on Khrushchev’s memoirs; and Michael Beschloss, Robert Dallek, Christopher Hilton, Fred Kaplan, Timothy Naftali and Aleksandr Fursenko, Robert Slusser, Jean Edward Smith, W. M. Smyser, Frederick Taylor, Theodore Sorensen, and Peter Wyden, who all have contributed important work. Two books that focus squarely on August 1961, by Norman Gelb and Curtis Cate, are of particular merit, as they were written by witnesses with great proximity to events of the time.

Despite all that good work, it still struck me that none of these books had put together all the pieces that had contributed to the historic occurrences around Berlin 1961. My goal was to produce a readable, authoritative narrative for both the expert and the general reader that would investigate all the available historical accounts and combine those with more recently declassified materials in the United States, Germany, and Russia.

To take on that challenge, my thanks go above all to the talented and resourceful Nicholas Siegel, my research assistant during the most crucial period of this project. Thanks also to Roman Kilisek, whose careful, thorough, painstaking work in the later stages was invaluable. I am deeply grateful to Natascha Braumann and Alexia Huffman, my personal assistants, who contributed richly to the book itself while also brilliantly managing the executive office of the Atlantic Council. A tip of the hat is also due many others who provided valuable research along the way: Milena Brechenmacher, Bryan Hart, Petra Krischok, Maria Panina, and Dieter Wulf. Susan Hormuth’s expert photo research helped unearth unique material for the book and its various electronic incarnations—and Natascha again played a crucial role in making sense of mountains of material. Thanks as well to Maryrose Grossman and Michelle DeMartino at the John F. Kennedy Library, and to William Burr at the National Security Archive.

I owe much to colleagues at my former employer, the Wall Street Journal, and at the Atlantic Council of the United States, where I now work. Thanks in particular go to my former Wall Street Journal boss, Paul Steiger, and to Jim Pensiero, who made it possible for me to write this book. At the Atlantic Council, our always wise Chairman Emeritus Henry Catto and then President Jan Lodal encouraged me to continue this project. I owe a particular thanks to General Brent Scowcroft, one of America’s most extraordinary individuals, and to Virginia Mulberger, a woman of unique judgment and character, for their friendship, inspiration, and support. Throughout this project, I have benefited from the wise counsel of Richard Steele.

I have had the remarkable luck to serve as Atlantic Council President and CEO under two chairmen who are among this country’s finest leaders and mentors: Senator Chuck Hagel and General Jim Jones. Senator Hagel, our current chairman, embodies the consistent, principled, bipartisan leadership the United States so badly needs. All Americans have profited from forty-two years of General Jones’s remarkable public service, most recently as President Obama’s national security advisor.

Special thanks to Walter Isaacson for his early encouragement of this project. Thanks to the many Americans and Berliners who shared their stories, and to David Acheson for providing access to his father’s correspondence. I’m grateful to Vern Pike for sharing his still-unpublished manuscript about his days in Berlin.

No project of this sort happens without friends and family. Pete and Maria Bagley provided kindness and support that can never be repaid. My dear friends Pete and Alex Motyl offered crucial organizational and editing suggestions that improved the manuscript significantly.

In adulthood as in childhood, I rely for ballast on my sisters Jeanie, Patty, and Teresa, and I thank them for their encouragement and understanding when this project took time that might have been spent with them. We are bound by a common heritage as first-generation Americans.

This book is quite properly dedicated to my wife, Pam, who has been my extraordinary friend, partner, editor, and counselor through every early-morning hour, every weekend day, and every vacation week spent on this project. Throughout it all, our remarkable daughter, Johanna Natalie (aka “Jo-Jo”), named for the Berliner who brought me into this world, sustains our happiness with her infectious joy and boundless curiosity. I can’t wait to show her Berlin.