Status Updates From Berlin 1961

[NSA memorandum 109]…if the Soviets cut off access to Berlin...[Stage IV:] Only if the Soviets did not respond to substantial use of Allied conventional weapons would Kennedy escalate to nuclear war. He would then have the choice of one or all of the following: selective strikes to demonstrate the will to use nuclear weapons; limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve tactical advantage; and, finally, general war.

[NSA memorandum 109:]...if the Soviets cut off access to Berlin...[Stage IV] Only if the Soviets did not respond to substantial use of Allied conventional weapons would Kennedy escalate to nuclear war. He would then have the choice of one or all of the following: selective strikes to demonstrate the will to use nuclear weapons; limited use of nuclear weapons to achieve tactical advantage; and, finally, general war.

Once the border line was secure, the East Germans turned their guns to the East, prepared to contain their own people.

[Krushchev] said the logic of the US needing to protect its interests in Berlin ‘cannot be understood and the USSR cannot accept it.’ He told the president he was sorry, but that ‘no force in the world’ would stop Moscow from moving forward on its peace treaty.

He repeated again that sixteen years had passed since the war. How much longer did Kennedy want Moscow to wait? Another sixteen years? Perhaps thirty years?

The Kennedy-Khrushchev honeymoon had ended before it had begun. Misunderstandings were souring the relationship between the world’s two most powerful men before Kennedy had even chaired his first meeting on Soviet policy.