Download Berlin Mattered

Name: _____________________________
The Battle for Berlin
Assignment: Read The German Problem & Why Berlin Mattered
 Create an annotated timeline of Berlin (use: blank space below)
 Answer: (use: blank space below)
o What is the role of Berlin in regards to origins of the Cold War?
o Why does Berlin remain significant for the duration of the Cold War?
o How does the importance/significance of Berlin change over time?
 Answer: O-P-V-L style document analysis questions
 Answer: Paper 1, Question 1b style (document analysis) questions re: Berlin Crisis
Powaski, Ronald E. The Cold War: the United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991, Oxford University Press, New
York, 1998, pp. 74-75
Why Berlin Mattered1
How could one city mean so much?
By Fred Kaplan|Posted Friday, Nov. 6, 2009, at 3:14 PM ET
Slate2
The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, but few of the news stories marking the anniversary have explained the event's
full significance. The Cold War had been raging for 14 years before the wall went up on Aug. 13, 1961. How could its
collapse, on Nov. 9, 1989, have heralded the Cold War's demise?
Berlin was always the centerpiece of the Cold War and, more often than many remember, very nearly the front line of
real combat.
At the end of World War II, the city was divided into four sectors, each occupied by one
of the four allied armies—U.S., Soviet, British, and French. As the East-West divide
hardened into a Cold War, so, too, did the division of the city, into East and West Berlin.
See: Outposts of democracy image3
Clearly West Berlin was an anomaly: an island of freedom locked 100 miles inside Sovietcontrolled East Germany. In 1948, Josef Stalin mounted a blockade, cutting off the city
from its Western suppliers. The United States responded with an airlift that went on for
300 days, until Stalin finally backed off and signed an agreement with the other three
powers, guaranteeing Western access to the enclave.
Ten years later, Nikita Khrushchev resumed the pressure, announcing that within six
months, he would declare the '48 agreement "null and void" and placing all of Berlin
under East German sovereignty—which is to say, under Soviet control. If the West
resisted, he said, there would be war.
See: Maps below4
Western intelligence agencies didn't know it at the time, but Khrushchev's
threat stemmed from desperation. Over the previous decade, West Berlin had
grown free and prosperous while East Berlin had stagnated under the Soviet
boot. Easterners were emigrating to the West in droves, using West Berlin as
their transit point. By the fall of 1958, East Germany had lost 2 million people,
with continued losses of 10,000 per month, including some of its besteducated youth. Khrushchev needed to stop the hemorrhage.
When the Western leaders ignored his
threat, Khrushchev knew that he would
have to backpedal. The threat was a
bluff; the Soviet military and economy
were in dire shape; its vaunted missile
program was in tatters.
So, at the start of 1959, Khrushchev sent his deputy prime minister, Anastas Mikoyan
(see image at right5), on a goodwill trip to America, and in September, he made the
voyage himself, the first time any Soviet premier had visited the United States. It was
a trip of high drama and comedy from coast to coast. But the trip's purpose was
fulfilled at the end, on Sept. 26 and 27, when Khrushchev and President Dwight
Eisenhower met at Camp David.
1
Kaplan, Fred. "Why was Berlin the key to the Cold War? - Slate Magazine." Slate Magazine - Politics, Business, Technology, and the Arts - Slate
Magazine. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2009/11/why_berlin_mattered.html (accessed November 14, 2012).
2
Slate is a daily magazine on the Web. Founded in 1996, we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news,
business, technology, and culture.
3
"Berlin in Early Cold War Army Booklets." Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary. http://voicesunderberlin.com/1959.html (accessed
November 14, 2012).
4
IBID
5
"[Photo] Anastas Mikoyan, Joseph Stalin and Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia, 1925 | World War II Database." World War II
Database: Your WW2 History Reference Destination. http://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=10789 (accessed November 14, 2012).
At meals, the two leaders chatted amiably, mainly about their experiences in World War II.
During their formal talks, they talked frankly about Berlin. (The minutes of all these
meetings can be read in the State Department's historical volumes, Foreign Relations of the
United States6)
Khrushchev admitted that he'd acted brashly in declaring an ultimatum on Berlin, but he
said he'd been exasperated by the incessant pressure. Eisenhower acknowledged that West
Berlin was an "abnormal" entity, but he emphasized that the American people would never
allow anyone to grab the city unilaterally. It wasn't just a symbol of freedom. Two million
people lived there; Washington was obliged to protect their security. Khrushchev asked
whether he could have some assurance that the United States did not intend to occupy
Berlin permanently. Eisenhower responded that he'd be very surprised if Western troops
remained there for another 25 years.
See image at right7
At the end of the meeting, Eisenhower agreed to a summit in Paris the following year involving the four powers that had
occupied Berlin since the end of the war. On the agenda would be Berlin and disarmament.
Khrushchev returned to Moscow elated. He told a Communist Party plenary session that, judging from his conversations
not just with the president but with industrial leaders, most Americans did not want war and that the U.S. economy could
grow without huge military spending—heresy to Leninist doctrine.
In January 1960, he gave a public speech to the Supreme Soviet, laying out an extravagant disarmament plan as a
prelude to the upcoming Paris summit. The Soviets would unilaterally withdraw 1 million troops—one-third of the Soviet
army—from Eastern Europe and invite NATO to respond in kind. He would also destroy all Soviet missiles and discuss onsite inspection to verify that the United States did the same.
Even Allen Dulles, the hawkish director of the CIA, thought Khrushchev's speech represented a "sea change" in Soviet
policy.
Stateside, Air Force generals and congressional Democrats were
spreading reports that the Soviets were way ahead of the United States
in ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles). Eisenhower knew that the
most highly classified intelligence—based on secret flights of U-2 spy
planes over Soviet territory—contradicted that claim. Still, the evidence
wasn't clear. Dulles said that one more U-2 flight would settle the
matter. Eisenhower, who'd halted the flights after Soviet complaints,
authorized one more, to take place on May Day 1960.
The rest is sad history. A Soviet air-defense battery shot down the
plane. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, did not swallow the cyanide pill
as he was supposed to. The Soviets displayed the downed plane.
Eisenhower, assuming Powers was dead, lied and said the plane must
have veered off course. Meanwhile, Soviet intelligence officers
interrogated Powers, learned the truth—then produced Powers himself,
much to Eisenhower's embarrassment.
See image at right8
Khrushchev, who had taken great political risks in cuddling up to the West, stormed out of the Paris summit and withdrew
his disarmament plan. The prospects for Soviet reform and East-West peace vanished, not to be revived for another 27
years.
6
"Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Berlin Crisis, 1959–1960, Germany, Austria,
Volume IX." Office of the Historian. http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v09 (accessed November 14, 2012).
7
"Eisenhower and Khruschev at Gettysburg-- Visual Evidence #1." U.S. National Park Service - Experience Your America.
http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/29ike/29visual1.htm (accessed November 14, 2012).
8
"The Cold War Museum - Artifacts." Cold War Museum. http://www.coldwar.org/pictures/index.html (accessed November 14, 2012).
The main point, though, is this: Even if there hadn't been a U-2 crisis, the Paris summit
was doomed to failure. Khrushchev's disarmament offer was contingent on the West's
giving up Berlin. And, as Eisenhower told him (and as the Western European leaders
affirmed), that wasn't going to happen.
See image at right9
Meanwhile, young Eastern Europeans were still leaving the Soviet empire through West
Berlin. When John F. Kennedy became president in January 1961, Khrushchev renewed his
threats.
Finally, on Aug. 13, Khrushchev ordered East German troops to occupy the border
separating the two halves of the city and to lay the first layers of brick and barbed wire of
what would become the Berlin Wall.
In a sense, the wall marked the end of Khrushchev's crisis. But Kennedy took the move as the possible beginning of a
wider threat. He poured money into the defense budget for conventional forces; he even seriously, though briefly,
considered a plan to launch a disarming first strike against the Soviet Union should Khrushchev try to occupy West Berlin.
By October, the Soviets had closed off all but one border crossing.
On Oct. 27, in a now-forgotten confrontation (one year before the
Cuban missile crisis), Soviet and American tanks faced each other
along that checkpoint, at short range, for 16 hours until negotiations
were held and the Soviet tanks backed off. The crisis faded.
There would never be another crisis over Berlin (which may be why
all the previous ones have largely been forgotten). The Soviet rulers
had no need to threaten West Berlin as long as the wall kept their
own people locked in. See image at left10
The wall was built to bottle up an incipient revolt—a mass
emigration that threatened to expose the Soviet system as inferior
to the West, as an oppressive dungeon that its most educated
young people yearned to escape. The wall not only blocked those
yearnings; it also made clear to the brighter young Soviet and
Eastern European leaders that the system itself—the ideological
basis of their rule—was suspect, that it could not be sustained,
much less compete with the West, without the internal imposition of
force.
Khrushchev was ousted by hardliners in 1964. For the next quarter-century, the Kremlin's leaders devolved into
increasingly sluggish bureaucrats; the system itself bogged down more and more obviously. In 1988, when Mikhail
Gorbachev set a course of serious reform and reopened the Soviet Union to the world, the possibilities that had been
unleashed in the late 1950s, but suppressed ever since, once more bubbled up in the popular imagination. And when the
wall came down, it was like a cork exploding.
The end of the Soviet Union—and, with it, the end of the Cold War—was, at that point, nearly inevitable.
9
"TIME Magazine Cover: Paris Summit - May 23, 1960 - Cold War - France - Russia - Great Britain." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News
Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19600523,00.html (accessed November 14, 2012).
10
"German Missions in the United States - Berlin Wall Photo Gallery." German Missions in the United States - Home.
http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/02__GIC/GIC/05/03__Without__Walls/Feature__1/Timeline__Gallery__B.html (accessed November 14,
2012).
Berlin Crisis 1948-1949
(Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift)
O-P-V-L Document Analysis
Source: Extracts from the minutes of meetings of the British Cabinet
in 1948, covering discussions of the early stages of the Berlin
Blockade. British National Archives, Cold War Education Collection
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/coldwar/G4/cs1/s2.htm
1. With reference to Origins, what is the PURPOSE of this
source?
Source: From a Russian history book
[The Americans had introduced a new currency into
Berlin.]
Old money flooded into the Soviet Zone. Some restrictions
were placed on links between Berlin and western zones, but
the Soviet side was ready to supply food to all Berlin. Yet
every day 380 American planes flew into Berlin. It was
simply a propaganda move intended to make the cold war
worse.
2. What are the LIMITATIONS of this source?
Source: Letter from an American citizen to
President Truman (Project Whistlestop and
British National Archives and Records
Administration)
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/col
dwar/G4/cs1/s4.htm
3. With reference to Origins and Purpose,
what is the VALUE of this source?
Source: Harrington, Daniel F, The Berlin Blockade Revisited, The International History Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), pp. 88112, Jstor, date accessed 19 November 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40105349
*American historian Daniel Harrington is the author of Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War, (2012)
Historical accounts tend to reflect the time in which they are written, and scholarly treatments of the Berlin blockade of 1948-9 have
had difficulty escaping the shadow of the cold war. Cold war historians traced the source of the 'Berlin problem' to Franklin D.
Roosevelt's alleged naive faith in Soviet goodwill, a faith that led him to approve wartime agreements that left the city deep within a
Soviet zone of occupation. They also saw the blockade as the final step in a carefully planned and orchestrated campaign of graduated
pressures. According to this view, only Harry S. Truman's resolute determination to maintain American rights in Berlin, no matter
what the cost, defeated Soviet coercion. Proof of Soviet iniquity, evidence of American technological prowess and benevolence, the
Berlin blockade and airlift, all appeared to a generation of Americans as convincing demonstrations of the perils of appeasement and
the necessity for firmness in dealing with the Russians. While historians have moved beyond such simple verities in studying other
aspects of the cold war, the Berlin blockade lives on as a pre-eminent cold war legend. Recently declassified source make a new look
at the crisis worth-while, and new sources and new perspectives suggest that traditional accounts have not always accurately assessed
the origins, course, and consequences of the Berlin blockade.
…
Both sides were trying to protect their own positions, but in Berlin each would do so only through actions that harmed the other.
…
Berlin, Germany, and Europe would remain divided. As tragic as that division was, it settled the question of Germany's future -the
greatest source of uncertainty in European diplomacy since the end of the war - and it met the minimum interests of each side.
Separation muted the security dilemma that had so aggravated relations in Berlin, making it easier for each side to protect its interests
without attacking those of the other. It also drew the lines of the cold war so clearly across Europe that attempts to alter them involved
risks neither side was willing to accept.
4. With reference to Origins and Purpose, what is the VALUE of this source?
Paper 1: Question 1b: Find two meanings for each cartoon
How to close the gap?