Author Q&A with Frederick Kempe
Q: What led you to write this book?
A: The Cold War is still the least understood and worst
reported of our three world wars. Berlin was its epicenter. The
year 1961 was the most decisive. I wanted to tell the story of
that year. And I wanted to tell it through its protagonists, as
rich a cast of characters as history could provide. I also wanted
to satisfy my own questions about whether the Berlin Wall could
have been avoided—and whether the Cold War could have been ended
much earlier. Might we have been able to help liberate a whole
generation of Eastern Europeans—tens of millions of people—three
decades earlier?
Then, after President Obama’s election, I was even more
motivated to finish my research. The reason is that this is also
a story of a brilliant but inexperienced president dealing with
issues far beyond his skill set. Kennedy’s first year in office
proved to be one of the worst of any modern presidency. U.S.
presidents shape world history—and in this case it is not a
positive story.
Q: Much has been written about the Cold War in general and
about this particular time and place. What’s different about this
book?
A: Two aspects are quite different from what has appeared
before. First, I pull in all the strands about this historic year
that haven’t been in a single book: the Kennedy story, the
Khrushchev story, the Ulbricht and Adenauer stories. I also draw
upon recently released documents in Russia, Germany, and the U.S.
that haven’t yet been put into a single story. I weave these into
a narrative that is both human and historic, as has been my
instinct to do as a journalist. Second and more important, the
book builds the best cases to date that Kennedy acquiesced to the
border closure and the building of the Wall. The record shows
that in many respects he wrote the script that Khrushchev
followed—as long as Khrushchev restricted his actions to
Soviet-controlled East Berlin and East Germany, Kennedy would
accept his actions. Kennedy falsely believed that if East Germany
could end its refugee stampede, Khrushchev might become a more
willing negotiator on a set of other issues. It was a tragic
misreading of the man and of the situation. Berlin paid for it—as
did tens of millions of people.
Q: Among the main points you highlight in this book are the
self-reinforcing misinterpretations, miscommunications, and
misunderstandings between the U.S. and the USSR. What examples
stand out to you as the most important?
A: They began years before Kennedy took office. The U.S. never
fully recognized or acted upon how dramatic was the break between
Khrushchev and Stalinism at the 20th Party Congress in 1956.
Khrushchev’s call for peaceful coexistence with the capitalist
West was never fully explored. Nor did we ever answer or reward
his support for Finnish and Austrian neutrality and his
reductions in personnel and spending. During Kennedy’s
presidency, the misreading began when Khrushchev released
captured U.S. airmen and Kennedy failed to recognize the
potential importance of the gesture. It continued when he
misinterpreted a relatively unimportant hard-line propaganda
speech by Khrushchev as a declaration of an even more aggressive
Soviet challenge ed at him. From Khrushchev’s side, he often
listened more to his own insecurities than what was warranted by
the situation. He was enormously vulnerable to perceived
slights—he would respond excessively to moments like the U-2
incident and Kennedy’s State of the Union speech and the U.S.
Minuteman missile test. However, there was one moment when
Khrushchev listened closely to Kennedy’s communication—and that
regarded what the president would be willing to accept in Berlin.
Then Khrushchev acted very much according to the clear messages
he received.
Q: Do you think we could have ended the Cold War earlier if
Kennedy had managed his relationship with Khrushchev differently?
A: As General Brent Scowcroft says in the foreword to the
book, history doesn’t reveal its alternatives. My own view is
that the Soviet empire would have be to unravel earlier had
Kennedy held the line—but we will never know. It is unclear how
the Soviets would have responded to that without a Gorbachev and
a Yeltsin in charge. Would they have backed down, as they did
during the Berlin Airlift of 1948, or would they have defended
what they controlled, as they did in Budapest in 1956? The key
difference between those two events was a demonstration of
resolve by the U.S. with its nuclear superiority. I am certain of
one thing: East Germany would have collapsed if the communists
hadn’t put up the Wall to stop the refugee flow—and that would
have had severe consequences for the rest of the Soviet bloc.
After all, it is the refugee flood that prompted its collapse
twenty-eight years later. Whether or not the Cold War would have
ended earlier, Kennedy certainly saved Khrushchev from a lot of
trouble then by acquiescing to the building of the Wall.
Q: Berlin 1961 is described as being based on a “wealth of
new documents and interviews.” Please tell us about the research
you did. What sort of new documents did you uncover, and what new
interviews did you conduct?
A: Some of these were new documents I was able to find through
additional research in Berlin, Moscow, and the United States.
Some were new interviews with witnesses of the time— and the
unearthing of interviews and oral histories that had previously
received little notice. However, the real wealth of new material
came from documents that had been released in all three countries
that hadn’t been brought together in a book that explained their
meaning and their connections. Almost all of the most significant
players from 1961 are no longer living; however their memoirs,
oral histories, and documents recounting some of their most
crucial meetings have either gone unnoticed or have attracted too
little notice. Sadly, much of what we still need to know remains
classified. But this book does make clear what we should be
watching for most intensively when new documents are released,
particularly those of President Kennedy’s brother Robert.
Q: What surprised you most as you worked on the book, and
what do you think will most surprise readers?
A: What most surprised me is the body of evidence that Kennedy
not only was relieved by the Berlin border closure, but in many
respects wrote the script for it. Reading the documents, I was
also struck by how refreshingly self-aware Kennedy was about the
failure of his first year as president and the danger that
Khrushchev would consider him weak. On the Soviet side, what
interested me most was the power of a weak client and his failing
state, Walter Ulbricht and East Germany, to influence the actions
of a great power. The greatest mystery to me remains the Georgi
Bolshakov–Bobby Kennedy relationship, which I’m now confident
played a larger role than can be documented.
Q: What do you want readers to get out of this book?
A: I want Americans to understand how the decisions of their
presidents—then and now—shape world history in ways we don’t
always understand at the time of a specific event. I want readers
to know that Kennedy could have prevented the Berlin Wall, if he
had wished, and that in acquiescing to the border closure he not
only created a more dangerous situation—but also contributed to
mortgaging the future for tens of millions of Central and Eastern
Europeans.
The relatively small decisions that U.S. presidents make have
huge, often global, consequences. Though most U.S. analysts and
even historians have forgotten the events around Berlin in 1961,
I want to start a debate about whether the U.S. actually could
have ended the Cold War earlier. I also want to remind Americans
of the cost to the world of perceived American weakness. Luckily,
we escaped a nuclear conflict—both over Berlin and over Cuba—but
the greatest danger came not because we overreached but because
our adversary had concluded that we wouldn’t act to defend our
interests.