Download or read book Berlin 1961 written by Frederick Kempe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 1961, Nikita Khrushchev called Berlin "the most dangerous place on earth." He knew what he was talking about. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, which would divide the world for another twenty-eight years. Then two months later, and for the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, one overzealous commander-and the tripwire would be sprung for a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat. On one side was a young, untested U.S. president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster and a humiliating summit meeting that left him grasping for ways to respond. It would add up to be one of the worst first-year foreign policy performances of any modern president. On the other side, a Soviet premier hemmed in by the Chinese, East Germans, and hardliners in his own government. With an all-important Party Congress approaching, he knew Berlin meant the difference not only for the Kremlin's hold on its empire-but for his own hold on the Kremlin. Neither man really understood the other, both tried cynically to manipulate events. And so, week by week, they crept closer to the brink. Based on a wealth of new documents and interviews, filled with fresh-sometimes startling-insights, written with immediacy and drama, Berlin 1961 is an extraordinary look at key events of the twentieth century, with powerful applications to these early years of the twenty-first. Includes photographs

Download or read book Kennedy and the Berlin Wall written by W. R. Smyser and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall Crisis dominated the presidency of John F. Kennedy from his inauguration in 1961 until his historic trip to the city in June 1963. W.R. Smyser's Kennedy and the Berlin Wall offers new insights into the Berlin events that riveted global attention, especially as Soviet and American tanks faced each other at point-blank range over "Checkpoint Charlie." Drawing on his experience as an American diplomat in Berlin at the time; personal interviews; memoirs; and Soviet, East German, and American documents, Smyser ties together the full story of what actually happened on the ground and in world capitals.

Download or read book Driving the Soviets up the Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.

Download or read book The Path to the Berlin Wall written by Manfred Wilke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.

Download or read book The Kremlinologist written by Jenny Thompson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-03 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Kremlinologist chronicles major events of the Cold War through the prism of the life of one of its top diplomats, Llewellyn Thompson. His life went from the wilds of the American West to the inner sanctums of the White House and the Kremlin. As the ambassador to Moscow, he became an important advisor to presidents and a key participant in major twentieth-century events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Yet, unlike his contemporaries McGeorge Bundy and George C. Marshall--who considered Thompson one of the most crucial actors in the Cold War and the "unsung hero" of the Cuban Missile Crisis--he has not been the subject of a major biography until now. Thompson's daughters Jenny Thompson Vukacic and Sherry Thompson set out to document their father's life as thoroughly as possible. Relying on primary sources and interviews, they received generous assistance from archivists, historians, and colleagues of their father. They also acquired documents and information from Russian archives, including the KGB archives. As family, they had unprecedented access to his FBI dossier, State Department personnel files, family archives, letters, diaries, speeches, and documents. Their original research brings new material to light including important information on the U-2, Kennan's containment policy, and Thompson's role in US covert operations machinery. The book refutes historical misinterpretations of events in the Berlin Crisis, the Austrian State Treaty, and the Cuban Missile Crisis."--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book A City Torn Apart Building of the Berlin Wall written by Central Intelligence Agency and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Built in 1791, standing 85 feet high, 215 feet long and 36 feet wide, this former city gate is one of the most iconic symbols of Berlin and Germany. Throughout its existence it has served as a visual representation of various political ideologies, ranging from Prussia's imperialism to East Germany's communism. It was closed by the East Germans on 14 August 1961 in a response to West Berliners' demonstration against the building of the wall dividing their city into East and West. It remained closed until 22 December 1989. Its design is based upon the gate way to the Propylaea, the entry into the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. It has 12 Doric columns, six to a side, forming five passageways. The central archway is crowned by the Quadriga, a statue consisting of a four horse chariot driven by Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory. After Napoleon's defeat, the Quadriga was returned to Berlin and the wreath of oak leaves on Victoria was replaced with the new symbol of Prussia, the Iron Cross.

Download or read book Kennedy Adenauer and the Making of the Berlin Wall 1958 1961 written by Fabian Rueger and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2011 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kennedy, Adenauer and the Making of the Berlin Wall, 1958-1961 The Second Berlin Crisis, which began with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's threat to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany in November 1958, has largely been interpreted by foreign policy historians as a conflict between the superpowers, in which the dependent allies - the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR - had almost no influence on the course of events that led to the erection of the Berlin Wall. This interpretation served the political purposes of the governments involved for most of the Cold War. The Kennedy administration as leading government of the Western world could claim to have successfully managed a difficult crisis; the Adenauer administration and the Ulbricht regime could both point to Washington's and Moscow's responsibility for the division of Germany's capital; and Khrushchev, as leading statesman of the Warsaw pact, could finally deliver on some of his promises made to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. However, recent findings suggest that Ulbricht, not Khrushchev, was the driving force behind the decision to close the East Berlin sector. In the course of the first two years of the Kennedy administration, severe problems arose in West German-American relations. It is time to ask how the West German government's interactions with the Kennedy administration influenced the course of the crisis. President Eisenhower had seemingly managed to avoid an escalation of the Berlin crisis from 1958 to late 1960. This came at the cost of increasing pressure for his successor to find a solution. Ten months into the Kennedy administration, Berlin was divided by a wall, and American and Soviet tanks faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie. This dissertation reexamines the interactions between the Western governments, in particular between West Germany and the United States during the Second Berlin Crisis, and shows how these affected the outcome of the crisis. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the historiography of the Berlin Crisis and German-American relations in the period, especially between the Kennedy and Adenauer governments, and defines the pertinent questions; the second chapter provides an outline of the first two years of the crisis and the Eisenhower administration's approach to Adenauer and Berlin, especially as to Western policy on Berlin when the Eisenhower administration handed over the reins; the third to fifth chapters trace the Kennedy administration's and Chancellor Adenauer's interactions during the crisis in 1961 with particular regard to the actual sealing off of West Berlin, and the last chapter finally serves as an overview of the immediate aftermath. I argue that four key assumptions about the Berlin Wall crisis in 1961 can no longer be upheld: 1. The claim that Kennedy had stood firm on Berlin and merely continued the Eisenhower posture on Berlin is wrong. Instead, the Kennedy administration attempted to find new approaches to Berlin and Germany in line with its general revision of US foreign policy. 2. The notion that the closing of the sector border came as a surprise is not supported by the documents. President Kennedy had been informed numerous times that a closing of the sector border could be expected within the year. 3. Adenauer's policy to prevent diplomatic recognition of the GDR contributed to an escalation of Washington's search for alternative policy options, rather than slowing them. The West German election campaign in 1961 further limited the chancellor's willingness to make changes to his foreign policy. The Kennedy administration eventually sought accommodation with Khrushchev without consulting Bonn. 4. Inherent conceptual mistakes in Kennedy's early foreign policy agenda exacerbated the crisis, rather than contributed to its eventual solution. An additional lack of trust between West Germany and the United States complicated and delayed the attempt to find a more coherent, unified Western approach. All four Western governments anticipated an end to the refugee flow through West Berlin as the first step in a crisis escalation, while developing no contingency plans for this step. The lack of any political intention to prevent the expected stop of the refugee flow became the casting mould for Ulbricht's plan to close the sector border, a plan Khrushchev eventually made his own. By leaving Ulbricht and Khrushchev with only one option, Western policies on Berlin and Germany unwillingly conspired to force East Germany to face its systemic flaws in the summer of 1961.

Download or read book The Berlin Crisis of 1961 written by Robert M. Slusser and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1973. This book uses the Berlin Crisis of 1961 as a starting point to investigate Soviet-American relations in the Kruschev period. The book first chronicles the timeline of the succession of events during the Berlin Crisis and their interrelation. It then turns to the close interaction between Soviet and foreign policy before situating the event into the broader timeline of Soviet history.

Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by Frederick Taylor and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appearance of a hastily-constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse. This threat would vanish only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison, breached it on the historic night of 9 November 1989. Frederick Taylor's eagerly awaited new book reveals the strange and chilling story of how the initial barrier system was conceived, then systematically extended, adapted and strengthened over almost thirty years. Patrolled by vicious dogs and by guards on shoot-to-kill orders, the Wall, with its more than 300 towers, became a wired and lethally booby-trapped monument to a world torn apart by fiercely antagonistic ideologies. The Wall had tragic consequences in personal and political terms, affecting the lives of Germans and non-Germans alike in a myriad of cruel, inhuman and occasionally absurd ways. The Berlin Wall is the definitive account of a divided city and its people.

Download or read book Memo Harry Truman written by Harry S. Truman and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1986-03-21 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory history of the commemoration of the Berlin Wall and its significance in defining contemporary German national identity.

Download or read book The Tunnels written by Greg Mitchell and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall. In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, “A wall is better than a war,” and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “We don’t care about East Berlin.” JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions. As Greg Mitchell’s riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germany’s top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the “CBS tunnel”; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as U.S. networks prepared to “pay for play” but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive read whose themes still reverberate.

Download or read book The Crisis Years written by Michael Beschloss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The groundbreaking and revelatory tale of the most dangerous years of the Cold War and the two leaders who held the fate of the world in their hands. This bestselling history takes us into the tumultuous period from 1960 through 1963 when the Berlin Wall was built and the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the United States and Soviet Union to the abyss. In this compelling narrative, author Michael Beschloss, praised by Newsweek as “the nation’s leading Presidential historian,” draws on declassified American documents and interviews with Kennedy aides and Soviet sources to reveal the inner workings of the CIA, Pentagon, White House, KGB, and politburo, and show us the complex private relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Beschloss discards previous myths to show how the miscalculations and conflicting ambitions of those leaders caused a nuclear confrontation that could have killed tens of millions of people. Among the cast of characters are Robert Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Adlai Stevenson, Fidel Castro, Willy Brandt, Leonid Brezhnev, and Andrei Gromyko. The Bay of Pigs invasion, the Vienna Summit, the Berlin Crisis, and what followed are rendered with urgency and intimacy as the author puts these dangerous years in the context of world history. “Impressively researched and engrossingly narrated” (Los Angeles Times), The Crisis Years brings to vivid life a crucial epoch in a book that David Remnick of the New Yorker has called the “definitive” history of John F. Kennedy and the Cold War.

Download or read book Murrow s Cold War written by Gregory M. Tomlin and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 1961 America’s most prominent journalist, Edward R. Murrow, ended a quarter-century career with the Columbia Broadcasting System to join the administration of John F. Kennedy as director of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Charged with promoting a positive image abroad, the agency sponsored overseas research programs, produced documentaries, and operated the Voice of America to spread the country’s influence throughout the world. As director of the USIA, Murrow hired African Americans for top spots in the agency and leveraged his celebrity status at home to challenge all Americans to correct the scourge of domestic racism that discouraged developing countries, viewed as strategic assets, from aligning with the West. Using both overt and covert propaganda programs, Murrow forged a positive public image for Kennedy administration policies in an unsettled era that included the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and support for Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem. Murrow’s Cold War tackles an understudied portion of Murrow’s life, reveals how one of America’s most revered journalists improved the global perception of the United States, and exposes the importance of public diplomacy in the advancement of U.S. foreign policy.

Download or read book The Vienna Summit and Its Importance in International History written by Günter Bischof and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of June 1961, the tensions of the Cold War were supposed to abate as both sides sought a resolution. The two most important men in the world, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, met for a summit in Vienna. Yet the high hopes were disappointed. Within months the Cold War had become very hot: Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall and a year later he sent missiles to Cuba to threaten the United States directly. Despite the fact that the Vienna Summit yielded barely any tangible results, it did lead to some very important developments. The superpowers came to see for the first time that there was only one way to escape from the atomic hell of their respective arsenals: dialogue. The "peace through fear" and the "hotline" between Washington and Moscow prevented an atomic confrontation. Austria successfully demonstrated its new role as neutral state and host when Vienna became a meeting place in the Cold War. In The Vienna Summit and Its Importance in International History international experts use new Russian and Western sources to analyze what really happened during this critical time and why the parties had a close shave with catastrophe.

Download or read book Kennedy Tapes Concise Edition written by Ernest R May and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002-02-05 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 1962: the United States and the Soviet Union stood eyeball to eyeball, each brandishing enough nuclear weapons to obliterate civilization in the Northern Hemisphere. It was one of the most dangerous moments in world history. Day by day, for two weeks, the inner circle of President Kennedy's National Security Council debated what to do, twice coming to the brink of attacking Soviet military units in Cuba -- units equipped for nuclear retaliation. And through it all, unbeknownst to any of the participants except the President himself, tape was rolling, capturing for posterity the deliberations that might have ended the world as we know it. Now available in this new concise edition, The Kennedy Tapes retains its gripping sense of history in the making. Book jacket.

Download or read book The Cuban Missile Crisis written by Don Munton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History, Second Edition, Don Munton and David A. Welch distill the best current scholarship on the Cuban missile crisis into a brief and accessible narrative history. The authors draw on newly available documents to provide a comprehensive treatment of its causes, events, consequences, and significance. Stressing the importance of context in relation to the genesis, conduct, and resolution of the crisis, Munton and Welch examine events from the U.S., Soviet, and Cuban angles, revealing the vital role that differences in national perspectives played at every stage. While the book provides a concise, up-to-date look at this pivotal event, it also notes gaps and mysteries in the historical record and highlights important persistent interpretive disputes. The authors provide a detailed guide to relevant literature and film for those who wish to explore further. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the crisis, this revised and updated edition of The Cuban Missile Crisis is ideal for undergraduate courses on the 1960s, U.S. foreign policy, the Cold War, twentieth-century world history, and comparative foreign policy.