Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [157]
In the aftermath, JFK felt pretty unforgiving toward the military. “They always give you their bullshit about their instant reaction and their split-second timing, but it never works out. No wonder it’s so hard to win a war.” And he had even harsher thoughts about the local officialdom. It was simply incredible to John Kennedy that not a single elected Mississippi authority had stepped in to attempt to restore civil order. The siege of Ole Miss—like his experience as skipper of the foundering PT 109—had forced him to assume a lone command and grab tight his own destiny. What it also had done was give him the satisfaction of enforcing, to the best of his abilities and with all the conviction he had, the law of the land.
To be the American president at this moment in history was to sense the edge of the precipice. Jack Kennedy’s deepest fear was that he might somehow take the step that would send the United States toppling over it. And when he looked out at the world beyond Washington, what he saw was a single place—West Berlin—that, in the flash of an instant, could provide the setting. The balance between the two superpowers was now so precarious that a single stumble there would be all that it took.
The German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, as it was commonly known, was determined to take back full control of its capital, the largest city in Germany. In pursuit of this aim—a land grab completely unacceptable to the Free World—the German Communists had their Russian patron’s full support. In July, Premier Khrushchev had once again thumped his chest, demanding the end of “the occupation regime in the West Berlin.”
The American, British, and French troops billeted there since the end of World War II were to be replaced by a newly organized police force, Khrushchev insisted. This constabulary’s members would be recruited from the three Western powers, as well as from neutral and Warsaw Pact countries. Four years down the road, the new force would be composed entirely of East Germans.
The Soviet leader sent word to Kennedy that he would put off pressing his demands until after the American midterm elections in November. As Khrushchev made clear, this was just a temporary reprieve. Alluding to West Berlin as the “bone in my throat,” he wasn’t about to let it remain there. Rumors of an increased Soviet military presence on the island of Cuba were also disturbing the peace of mind at the Kennedy White House.
Khrushchev, very certain that he had the upper hand and meaning to keep it, had Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, who was visiting Moscow, flown to his Black Sea dacha. There the startled American was entrusted with a warning to pass on to the president. “We will not allow your troops to be in Berlin.” He then added an even more specific threat that he wished relayed. “War over Berlin,” he said, “would mean that within the space of an hour, there would be no Paris and no France.”
Then, having issued this horrifying message, he told Udall that he wanted to meet the president at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in the second half of November. The main topic would be Berlin.
With the Americans continuing, nervously, to monitor Russian activity in Cuba, the Soviet leader once again issued an ultimatum. He sent JFK a letter bluntly informing him that any U.S. attack on Cuba would bring a retaliatory strike at West Berlin. The Russian behavior was so provocative as to be puzzling. Two days later, Kennedy told his close friend David Ormsby-Gore, now British ambassador to the United States, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he thought Khrushchev might actually be encouraging him to invade Cuba so he could grab West Berlin. Why else would he be tying the two together?
Suddenly it came, the real threat of war over Berlin. It came in a fight, once again, over Cuba. A bit after eight a.m. on Tuesday, October 16, 1962, McGeorge Bundy carried to Jack Kennedy the news that the latest U-2 spy flight had brought back photographic evidence of Soviet offensive missile sites under construction