V o L u m e I : a d

Khrushchev was determined to stabilize East Germany, which was fast

hemorrhaging its population. By the summer of 1961, some 3.5 million people,

among them the young and best educated, had fled through the escape hatch

of West Berlin to West Germany. The communist response came on 13 August

with the erection of the Berlin Wall, the initiative coming from East German

boss Walter Ulbricht rather than from Khrushchev. The escape hatch was at

last closed, and East Germans were now walled in.

Kennedy stood firm. In a speech to the American people, he characterized

the Soviet position as “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”

Kennedy called for a sizable increase in defense spending, a reinvigorated

civil defense program, and mobilization of some reserve and National Guard

air transport units. The only military action undertaken by the United States,

however, was to send 1,500 reinforcing troops along the autobahn and into

the city. Kennedy later went to Berlin and delivered one of the more mem-

orable (and grammatically incorrect) phrases of the Cold War when he said,

“Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner). The ugly concrete barrier remained,

however, symbolizing both the failure of communism and the unwillingness

of the West to take action against those regimes.

In the fall of 1961, the Soviet Union broke a three-year moratorium on

nuclear testing to explode a series of large bombs. This set the stage for the

Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, the single most dangerous confronta-

tion between the Soviet Union and the United States of the Cold War and

the closest the two sides came to thermonuclear war.

Castro had come to power in Cuba in early 1959 and soon transformed

the island into a communist state. Increasingly dire conditions on the island,

in large part the consequence of U.S. economic policies designed to unseat

Castro, forced the Cuban leader to turn to the Soviet Union for economic

and military aid. Anxious to secure his ally and buttress his own popularity at

home, Khrushchev responded. Cuba, so close to the United States, appeared

to Khrushchev in the spring of 1962 as the ideal means by which to offset

the heavy advantage in long-range nuclear weaponry enjoyed by the United

States.

The high-rolling Khrushchev ordered the secret placement of SS-4 and

SS-5 missiles on the island, hoping to present Kennedy with a fait accompli.

Despite the contrary opinion of some key Soviet military officers, Khrush-

chev and Minister of Defense Marshal Rodion Malinovsky persisted in the

belief that this could be accomplished without American detection. U.S. U-2

surveillance flights over Cuba, however, soon discovered the operation.

On 22 October 1962, in a dramatic television address to the American

people, Kennedy revealed the presence of the missiles and demanded that

they be removed. He ignored certain of his advisors who urged a preemptive

military strike on the island, announcing a naval quarantine of Cuba instead.

Peace hung in the balance for a week as Soviet ships carrying missiles con-

tinued toward the island nation.

On 27 October a U-2 was downed over Cuba by a surface-to-air missile,

apparently on the orders of a Soviet general on the spot. The occurrence

shocked even Khrushchev and may well have marked a watershed in his

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Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

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thinking. U.S. contingency plans called for an air strike if a U-2 was shot

down, but Kennedy countermanded the order just in time.

Khrushchev’s hand was weak, for the Soviet Navy was in no position to

run the blockade, but he played it to the end. Convinced that the United

States was about to invade Cuba, the Soviets arranged a face-saving com-

promise in which Castro, who had sought a preemptive Soviet nuclear strike

on the United States, was all but ignored. Khrushchev agreed to remove the

missiles along with jet bombers and some Soviet troops from Cuba. In

return, the United States pledged not to invade Cuba and to withdraw its

(obsolete) Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Massive Soviet economic assistance

to Cuba continued, however. Khrushchev’s misstep here was one of the chief

Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

41

John F. Kennedy delivers his famous “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech at the Rudolph Wilde Platz in West Berlin, 26 June

1963. (John F. Kennedy Library)

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causes of his ouster from power less than two years later. It greatly strength-

ened Kennedy’s hand, however, and encouraged a stronger response to com-

munist aggression elsewhere.

The United States had become increasingly involved in Vietnam, sup-

porting the government of the South Vietnam against an insurgency sup-

ported by North Vietnam that aimed to reunify Vietnam under communist

rule. U.S. strategy in Vietnam was prompted by the containment policy and by

the domino theory—the mistaken belief that if South Vietnam fell to the

communists, the rest of South Asia would automatically follow. This U.S. pol-

icy toward Vietnam began in the Eisenhower administration, but the commu-

nist Viet Cong were apparently on the brink of winning the war in 1961–1962.

President Kennedy therefore increased the American involvement by

dispatching both helicopters and additional American advisors. Both the Peo-

ple’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union supported North Vietnam,

although at considerably lower levels than the United States provided to the

South Vietnam.

As each side raised the stakes, the Vietnam conflict slowly escalated. In

1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, began bombing

North Vietnam and introduced U.S. ground troops into the RVN. Troop

numbers steadily increased as North Vietnam sent its regular forces south.

Following the costly but ultimately unsuccessful communist Tet Offensive

of January 1968 and a sharp drop in American public support for the war,

Washington sought a way out.

The war cost Johnson the presidency. With the polls showing plummet-

ing public approval ratings and with Johnson facing sharp challenges from

within his own party, he decided not to run again. Republican Richard Nixon

won a very close race against Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey.

Nixon, who was president from 1969 to 1974, accelerated the Johnson

administration’s policy of Vietnamization, or turning over more of the war to

the South Vietnamese. But the war dragged on, with more U.S. casualties

under Nixon than during the Johnson years, until a peace settlement was

reached at Paris in January 1973 that enabled the United States to quit Viet-

nam “with honor.” South Vietnam, largely abandoned by the United States,

fell to a communist offensive in April 1975.

Even as the war in Vietnam wound down, other events were moving the

Cold War from confrontation to cooperation, or détente. The policy of détente

originated with de Gaulle’s return to power in France in 1958. Uncertain that

the United States would risk nuclear retaliation on its own soil to defend

Europe, de Gaulle sought to develop a French nuclear deterrent and the

means to deliver it (the Force de Frappe). He also wanted to organize

Europe as a third force between the United States and the Soviet Union. De

Gaulle negotiated independently with the Soviets and made well-publicized

trips to Poland and Romania appealing for European unity. Soviet leaders

were quite content with de Gaulle’s attacks on the United States, but they

had no intention of giving up their hold on their satellites. In 1966, angry

because the United States and Britain would not share control of nuclear

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Course of the Cold War (1950–1991)

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