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    Berlin 1961
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    Berlin 1961
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    Berlin 1961
    Audiobook20 hours

    Berlin 1961

    Written by Frederick Kempe

    Narrated by Paul Hecht

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A former Wall Street Journal editor and the current president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe draws on recently released documents and personal interviews to re-create the powder keg that was 1961 Berlin. In Cold War Berlin, the United States and the Soviet Union stand nose to nose, with the possibility of nuclear war just one misstep away.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateMay 17, 2011
    ISBN9781461803829
    Unavailable
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    • 4/5
      A thorough, well-researched look at Cold War relations between the United States, West Germany, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, focusing on the city of Berlin. The author does an excellent job of giving enough background information for the average reader to understand the situation, while also providing a riveting account of the events that took place during that year. However, the author's overtly conservative viewpoint and conclusions detracted from the overall narrative.
    • 4/5
      History as a thrilling narrative. The Berlin crisis is one that is strangely overlooked in most modern retellings of the Cold War. This book tells the story well - on a day by day basis, covering all the major players, in a well-researched and flowing narrative.

      It is a chilling case of history, not only from its own tensions - even worse than the Cuban missile Crisis in some aspects - but that it is forgotten from history by some. Events like this are too dangerous to forget.
    • 4/5
      A really good read. I've always been interested in JFK and this era, and this book helps to detail what was going on during this time of the "Cold War". Definitely recommended for anyone interested in Berlin and 1961.
    • 5/5
      What makes this book unique is that it focuses on the events in one year, with a little background on the history of Berlin. Kempe, gives enough of an overview to describe the action during this year in Berlin's history which culminates in the building of the wall. If one is inclined to learn more about the various details of events leading up to or after 1961 there are many books that can help fill in the details. I found the book to be engaging.
    • 4/5
      I found this book to be an engaging and highly-readable account of a very tense time. The author seems to have done extremely thorough research, which certainly made me trust his account. He even occasionally puts in amusing details, like the fact that the head of the Stasi, Erich Mielke, had "a passion for Prussian hunting music . . . and the success of the security forces' soccer team . . . which would regularly win championships with the help of his manipulation of matches and players." Details like that add color and depth to his portrayal of the East Germans generally and of specific individuals. As a historical account, I highly recommend this book.My only problem with the book is its insufficiently-explained criticism of Kennedy's handling of the situation. I think Kennedy is an overrated president, so I don't disagree with the author's general point, but he fails to explain what Kennedy should have done--he just says Kennedy was weak and inexperienced. However, the facts he sets out are that Kennedy decided it wasn't worth going to war over East Berlin, Kennedy let Khruschev know his position, and Khurschev stuck pretty faithfully to the bounds Kennedy set rather than pursuing more extensive action. Also, given the author's description of East German politics and Khruschev's own domestic troubles, it seems unlikely that the East Germans and Soviets were going to let the refugee flow from East Berlin continue indefinitely--something was going to happen, and the question is whether it was worth risking nuclear war to allow that refugee flow to continue. To convince me of his position, the author needed to present a viable alternative to Kennedy's actions. (Also, the Germans, both East and West, really came off as whiners in this account. They were upset that the U.S. did not prevent the Wall, but they didn't take action themselves, and the East Germans just built the Wall as directed rather than attempting any resistance: they wanted the U.S. to risk the lives of U.S. soldiers and potentially millions of people in nuclear war but were unwilling to take any risks of their own.)
    • 5/5
      "A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war"That was John F. Kennedy's verdict on the prolonged foreign policy crisis of 1961 surrounding the status of Berlin, still in limbo 15 years after the end of the Second World War, which had left both the city and Germany itself split into rival factions that gave dramatic shape to the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. At the beginning of 1961, the year that Fred Kempe chronicles so painstakingly in this excellent diplomatic, political and social history, it was fairly straightforward for residents of Soviet-occupied East Berlin to cross into West Berlin, made up of the British, French and American sectors. So straightforward, in fact, that thousands of refugees -- including the young and able-bodied that East Germany's new Communist leaders needed to stay put -- were using Berlin as a way to simply walk across the border and take refuge in the West. East Germans may not have had free elections, but they were exercising their right to vote with their feet and fleeing at an ever-faster rate.As this book opens, Ullbricht, the East German leader, is determined to halt this flow and enlists Khruschev, himself fed up with the need to subsidize the ailing German economy. On the other side of any negotiations about Berlin's status was Kennedy, just elected, who seemingly has never encountered a figure of importance whom he couldn't charm or a problem that was truly intractable. He saw Berlin as a sideshow at the time of his inauguration; for Khruschev, it was clear that the city was the most dangerous place in the world.Kempe's chronicle of the events of 1961, which culminated in the building of a wall that would divide the city for nearly three decades, is a delicate balancing act. Just when the risk that the reader might bog down in too much diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing reached perilous levels, he injects a short three- or four-page tale focusing on a particular character whose life was affected by the division of the country and the city. These examples of how real lives were brutally affected by the great power talks were well chosen and force the reader to stop and remember the thousands of individual tragedies that preceded and followed the wall's construction. This isn't just a diplomatic history -- although it's that par excellence -- it's the story of real-world confrontation, misunderstandings, mistakes and missteps. Many of these were on the part of Kennedy, Kempe points out: while Khruschev may have looked like a buffoon to Americans when he slammed his shoe on the rostrum at the UN to win attention, he was a wily street fighter whom Kennedy was ill-prepared to confront. For his part, Kennedy may have been smart as a whip, but as Dean Acheson wryly remarked (and Kempe pointedly quotes), "brains are no substitute for judgment." The Bay of Pigs debacle, followed by a disastrous performance at the Vienna summit, put Kennedy at a diplomatic disadvantage that Kempe points out the Soviet leader ruthlessly exploited in 1961 in Berlin.This probably won't be a book for all readers. It's a hefty tome, with 502 pages of text that require close scrutiny. On the other hand, it's been a long time since I've read a book about the Cold War years that engaged me as much as this one did. I grew up in a world where the Berlin Wall was simply a fact of life (I was born months after its construction; educated at schools in a rigidly divided Europe and honestly had little hope of seeing anything different) and it was fascinating to realize that while we may now see this as a simpler era -- one easily identifiable enemy, taking the shape of a nation state -- at the time policymakers were grappling with the unknowns of their situation in the same way they do today. It's also a sharp reminder that the process of making policy isn't simply a matter of what seems logical or wise, but what is politically expedient or what is dictated by the personalities and biases of the policymakers and the information they have at their disposal. (After all, Kennedy himself, lounging in a bathtub in Paris, commented that bickering over the state of Berlin when Germany would never be reunified anyway, was a bit of a foolish pastime.)Before the postmortem reputation of Kennedy the statesman took hold and was fostered energetically by his circle, there was this Kennedy -- the man out of his depth in the aggressive games of power politics being played on a global stage. Read this book to understand how that shaped the world that many of us lived in in the decades that followed. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the personalities, the era, the issues or diplomatic history in general.Full disclosure: While the author and I worked for the same publication in Europe for a few years in the late 90s, neither he or his publishers contacted me with respect to this book, or provided a copy for review.
    • 5/5
      A lot of history writing can be excruciatingly boring, but Berlin 1961, by Frederick Kempe, is not among them. Berlin 1961 is a detailed, yet not tedious, look at one of the most dangerous showdowns between the United States and the Soviet Union during the entire Cold War. The chronological format allows the reader to easily keep track of the sub-events that were happening at various locations around the world. As this book shows, Kennedy's handling of his Berlin crisis was just one more knot on a string of foreign policy failures. If one could read only five books about the Cold War, Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe should be on the list.
    • 5/5
      Very well researched with lots of info and insights into the decisions made shaping the Cold War. According to Krushchev, Berlin was "the most dangerous place on earth" .
    • 4/5
      I was anxious to read this book because I remember hearing news reports of the wall being built in Berlin. Although the book is quite comprehensive, I was disappointed in some things. My review is based on an uncorrected proof that I received thru the Library Thing Early Reviewers program so I can't comment on the final edition. But first, I have to say I was very surprised that not even one map is included. Did the author think the reader would know enough of the circumstances that a map was not necessary? I don't know. Just one map of the city of Berlin showing the dividing line could have added so much. Kempe discusses Kruschev asking for a better map at one point during the crisis. He also discussed the use by Kennedy of a map in speaking to the American public and using the map as a teaching aid. I would have liked to at least see a copy of the map used by Kennedy.As I previously stated, the book is quite comprehensive. I would argue that it is more comprehensive than needed. I was not interested in the attire worn by the wives of the world leaders or their shopping trips. It didn't comprise a lot of the book, but I still found it extraneous. This is just one example of what seemed to be unnecessary detail that I considered distracting and made the book longer than it needed to be.At times, I also had a sense that the author was letting some personal bias show as he seemed to disparage President Kennedy at various points.The most interesting part of the book for me was the discussion of the planning that facilitated the erection of the initial barriers overnight. It was an achievement of coordination and secrecy.On a personal note, the author's mention of increased draft calls was part of my reason for interest. My husband was drafted a couple of months later and was still serving in the Army Reserve when the wall came down.
    • 5/5
      The quality I have admired most in President Kennedy was his ability to grow, to learn from his mistakes. This is the story of many of his early mistakes. The source of those mistakes was brilliantly identified by the author as Kennedy not wanting to deal with the problem he had inherited in Berlin (much like President Obama not wanting to deal with the problem he had inherited in the economy), but almost trying to wish it away so he could deal with what he considered more important issues.Kempe is a fine writer who is not afraid to spice up the narrative with wry, ironic humor from time to time. At times the book is a genuine page turner, particularly those dealing with the construction of the wall and the historic faceoff at Checkpoint Charlie. For the most part, the book is an engrossing, intelligent analysis of the relationships and thinking of the four key players and how the chess game played itself out. The final analysis is a bit disappointing in terms of certain what-ifs, but I do not want to spoil the author's conclusion.
    • 4/5
      A page turner, showing a new side of Kennedy (indecisive, manipulated, weak) that I hadn't read of before. There are some possibly gratuitous certainly unsubstantied observations on the Kennedys, and definitely a slant to the writing, but overall, Kempe explained why Berlin was so important to Krushchev, and supported his observations that the U.S. (and allies) just plain mid-read and thus didn't appropriately deal with Berlin.This edition was from an Early Review award and appears to be an advance edition with several typos still to be eliminated. Interesting to see how indexing, endnotes, etc. are accounted for in a an advance edition. I probably would have rated this book a 4 after a good final edit.
    • 4/5
      During the years of the Cold War, Berlin fully deserved Khrushchev's description (quoted in Frederick Kempe's new book) as the "most dangerous place on Earth." To the west, it was a tripwire for military intervention. To the east, it was a festering sore lodged deep in the communist flank. The armies of both sides faced off against each other in Berlin where the vast ideological and cultural gulf was reduced to an infinitesimally narrow geopolitical boundary separating the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the combined zones of the western allies--Britain, France and the United States.In the early years of the Cold War, Berlin was a microcosmic mirror of the larger world where the political passions of both sides ran as high as the stakes. Drawn on a smaller scale, there was little room for error by either side, and any miscalculation could have lead to a catastrophic global nuclear war. Frederick Kempe's new book, Berlin 1961, attempts to recapture the diplomacy and terror of the year 1961 when President Kennedy, during his first year in office, learned a series of hard lessons in international diplomacy. Kempe provides the reader with the illusion of being within the inner circles of both camps as they struggle to find a safe path through the darkness, each guessing at how the other side is likely to respond to their actions.One has to give Khrushchev his due. He was a shrewd politician with a keen eye for his opponent's weaknesses, whereas Kennedy was an inexperienced, if charismatic, newcomer. Khrushchev was bellicose and crude, but he had the sort of political keenness which only surviving for decades in Stalinist Russia could hone. He was one of only a handful of Central Committee members to survive the great terror of the late 1930's physically and politically intact. To pass through those years unscathed, as well as the war, is a testament to his survival skills. Here was a man, admittedly unpleasant and complicit in mass murder, who knew how to gauge the dangers he faced and plan an effective counter-stroke.Kennedy, on the otherhand, was young, charismatic, privileged, and completely out of his depth when faced with Khrushchev. For Kennedy, whose political experience was confined to the US Senate, international diplomacy was a something of a gentlemen's game of poker. So, he was completely taken aback by the pugilistic nature of negotiating with Khrushchev. As Kempe describes their confrontation at Vienna, one is almost tempted to look away to avoid the facing the pummeling given to Kennedy.Kempe gives a clear, journalistic vision of each side's options and actions throughout the boook. The story is told in a lively manner, but lacks the sort of historical depth necessary to produce a penetrating analysis of the crisis, it's causes and it's consequences. He never sets forth any ideas beyond the most mundane of commonplace theories. He offers no new insights and only weakly defends those he does offer.In his conclusion, Mr. Kempe asserts that a firmer response over Berlin would have prevented the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 (as though Kennedy, sporting high heels and a short skirt, was somehow to blame for luring Khrushchev into temptation). However, he offers no credible, realistic response which could have seriously altered the outcome of the Berlin crisis of 1961. Both sides knew that the risk of a conflict was higher than they were willing to pay if it came down to a shooting war, but for the Soviets and the East Germans, the cost of doing nothing was sufficiently high to make the risk worthwhile. From a game theory point of view, Kennedy made the most rational choice available to him. Perhaps he could have pushed harder and won a few minor concessions in some areas, but the Soviets were willing to ratchet the tension up much higher than NATO would have been willing to tolerate merely to keep East Berlin open. East Germany was losing thousands of skilled and and unskilled workers daily via migration to west. This most critical of Soviet client states was "bleeding out" through Berlin. Unless that hemorrhage was stanched the GDR faced certain economic collapse. (As one observer is quoted in the book, at the current rate of immigration East Germany would be empty by 1980.)Berlin 1961 is a fascinating overview of a critical time in world history. It suffers from many deficiencies and blind spots. (There is no mention of how Kennedy received the news of and reacted to the construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. Kempe only picks up his story several days later.) However, for those unfamiliar with the era it makes a solid introduction to the time, place and players.
    • 4/5
      This is a well-written account of 1961, which most must agree was a year that Kennedy had a rough time in. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight the author indicates what he belives were errors Kenney made, and even Kennedy's admirers, of which I confess I am one, must agree that history shows it was not a good year for Kennedy--though whether it was as dire as Kempe indicawtes other historians may not agree. I found the book unfailingly excitng reading and well-written, dismaying as some of it is.
    • 3/5
      I'd heard of the Checkpoint Charlie standoff in October 1961, with US and Soviet tanks and contingents of soldiers pointing arms with live ammunition at each other across the East Berlin / West Berlin boundary, but realise now I'd conflated it with the Berlin Airlift of 1948. Kempe's account of the lead-up to the tense confrontation of 1961, the first and last time the Cold War antagonists would face each other directly with arms rather than via proxy, helps set matters straight, and ties the confrontation to the larger political context.Kempe's main contribution is putting together a continuous narrative leading to the emergence of the Berlin Wall, detailing both the structural pressures (the brain drain from the Eastern Bloc through Berlin to the West, the logic of a nuclear deterrent) and political pressures (individual interests of Khruschev, Kennedy, Adenauer, Ulbricht -- and those arrayed with them in various configurations) converging on "the testicles of the West", as Kempe quotes Khruschev in characterizing of Berlin. [4]As popular history, there's always the question as to how complete are the facts and circumstances used to shape the narrative, and whether Kempe pursues an agenda which may account as much for his conclusions as those facts and circumstances. The blurbs claim much of the material accessible to Kempe are new, and his account is a departure from accepted history. Kempe does not identify where his conclusions might differ from others. I could not assess his account on those merits, and would be interested to find others who are able to put this argument in perspective.There are two key insights for me in reading Kempe's account:First, that the tensions arising from Berlin convinced Kennedy to explore options for tactical nuclear warfare and put in place both an overall strategy and specific rules of engagement involving the use of nuclear weapons. As another LT reviewer emphasised, prior to this the only options were MAD (primarily a political gambit), and on the field of operations the stark choice of all-or-nothing nuclear strikes.Second, the changes leading to the Wall raise the question of whether the US doctrine of flexible response effectively avoided a nuclear war, or whether conversely it enabled the Eastern Bloc in efforts to seal its borders and literally cement the Cold War dynamic forming since the end game of World War II. Evidence that a war was avoided arise from Kempe's recounting of discussions between Khruschev and Ulbricht, arguing that a design to seal East Berlin was well established, Khruschev's approval was almost inevitable, and absent a flexible response these developments would have led to full military conflict between NATO and the East Bloc. On the other hand, Kempe also addresses evidence that while US commanders had no real way of knowing for certain, there is now reason to think a firm resistance to the closing of East Berlin would have put a stop to this effort, the Wall would not have been built, and generations would have been spared all that the Cold War would bring. I'm inclined to think war was avoided, and am curious to know both whether there is any consensus on this point, and whether that consensus was any different prior to the "new" archives available to Kempe.A very readable history, presented in a journalistic style with as much attention to personalities (and there are a great many interesting people involved) as to political strategies and realpolitik. At the very least, it frames key questions in the Cold War and suggests issues for further reading: Cuban Missile Crisis; the interesting relationship between the DDR and CCCP; Khruschev's challenges within the Communist world.My ARC is an "uncorrected proof" missing black-and-white photo inserts and endpapers, presumably among which would be an orienting map or two. The cover also promises "an Amplified eBook including historical video footage and other extras" which piques my curiosity.
    • 4/5
      Great account of this time period and standoff between US and Russia in regards to the split Germany and in Berlin.
    • 5/5
      “Why would anyone write a book about an administration that has nothing to show for itself but a string of disasters?” - President John F. Kennedy, September 22, 1961.That is how this book starts and that is how it continues from the very first page. The book is a long one (a tome actually), that covers only one year in President John F. Kennedy’s life - the year he was inaugurated-1961. A young, untried President was at the helm of the nation that was and still is the leader of the free world. He was up against a very formidable opponent. This opponent was battle-hardened, a consummate chess player and one who was the head of the Communist world - Nikita Khrushchev. The battle ground is the divided Berlin after the end of World War II. Khrushchev, fully aware of the danger and the powder keg that was Berlin, said over and over, “Berlin is the most dangerous place on earth.” Let me tell you, Kempe spares no punches as he writes in extreme detail about all the happenings in 1961, right from Kennedy’s disastrous Bay of Pigs offensive, through to the Berlin upheaval and the building of the wall and to the Cuban Missile crisis. We get an insider’s look at Kennedy’s and Khrushchev’s political maneuverings, back room dealings. Intelligence reports and an unflinching look at the world’s reaction to all the things that went on in that year. This book is very well-researched and very complex. It’s not for someone who is looking for escapist reading, but it immersed me totally right from the very beginning to the explosive ending. I am sure that I am not the only person in the world who didn’t realize how close we came to a nuclear war in this very alarming and unstable part of world history.The book is a tour-de-force in my opinion, in that it uncovers more than we have ever previously known about the young President Kennedy and his ongoing combative and unstable relationship with Mr. Nikita Khrushchev. At the very end of this book Kennedy makes a long-overdue visit to West Berlin, and on the western side of the wall he made his most memorable speech that he ever made on foreign soil. I will leave you with that.“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t understand, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words. — “Ich bin fin, Berliner.” - President John F. Kennedy - West Berlin - June 26, 1963. (Just 3 short months before an assassin’s bullet killed him in Dallas.)
    • 4/5
      As the Cold War recedes further into the past, it becomes easy to forget some its most contentious battlefields; that is where good history books like BERLIN 1961 by Frederick Kempe comes in, for they remind us how close the conflict came to turning hot. Kempe’s book gives us an invaluable timeline for one of the worst crisis’s of the early 60’s and allows for a chance to become reacquainted with some almost forgotten figures who once played a very important part on the world’s stage. We also get some interesting behind the scenes look at some of the titans of 20th history, namely John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.Kempe’s book does a good job recreating the very tense early days of Kennedy’s administration, a time when relations between America and the Soviet Union were at an all time low following the collapse of the Paris Summit in the wake of the U2 incident the previous year. Berlin had been a sore point for the Soviets ever since the end of World War II left it as a piece of Western territory in the middle of what became Communist East Germany. Repeated attempts to settle the issue in their favor, either by threats or by force, by the Russians, had proved futile. Making the situation worse was the free access between East and West that existed in Berlin, an open door through which thousands of German refugees fled Communist oppression, a trickle that had become a torrent by early 1961. This flow of refugees had become so severe that it threatened to cause the implosion of East Germany and possibly unravel Soviet rule over all its Eastern European satellites. This was the crisis that the untested Kennedy had to deal with in the first year of his administration, when he was warily feeling his way and daily confronted by what he believed was an aggressive Soviet bear, personified by Khrushchev, bent upon humiliating and defeating the West, whenever and wherever possible. The President felt he could not appear weak and invite Soviet aggression, while not overplaying his hand and causing a war by mistake. BERLIN 1961 gives us a first hand account of the deliberations in Washington and Moscow as both sides circled each other and tried to guess what was happening behind closed doors in each city. The book also takes in account the smaller players in East and West Germany who had ambitions and agendas that differed from their super power partners. It is Kempe’s contention that the inexperienced JFK bungled an opportunity when did not force the issue when the East Germans, with Soviet backing, erected the Berlin wall in August of 1961 to staunch the flow of refugees. His contention is that Kennedy was so determined to find a way to defuse the tensions over Berlin he was willing to let the Communists build the Wall and imprison the East as long as they did not contest the presence of NATO troops in West Berlin and accept its existence inside their territory. Kempe lays out the case that Kennedy and American diplomats in the early months of the Administration quietly let it be known to the Soviets that they would accept a forcible closing of the Berlin gate if it would preserve the status quo. Kempe contends that if Kennedy had insisted from the get go that the flow of people across the border in Berlin remain open, the Communists would have taken no action and history would have been. Many would point out the faults in this reasoning. Khrushchev was no Gorbachev, he was a veteran of World War II and had seen the horrors of Hitler’s invasion up close, and like all Soviet leaders of the time, he was not about to undo Stalin’s legacy, a legacy that insured that if there was another great war in Europe in the 20th Century, it would begin hundreds and hundreds of miles further west than it began in 1941. Nor was the hard line Stalinist government in East Berlin about to just throw in the towel and reunite with West Germany, a prospect that was anathema to Moscow. What was possible in 1989 was not possible in 1961 and JFK’s decision to decrease nuclear tensions at the expense of East Germans, whose freedom he had no legal or treaty obligation to defend, made a lot sense at the time.It’s a point reasonable people can argue over and history is full of interesting possibilities. It is true Kennedy made many mistakes in his first year; chief among them was holding a summit with Khrushchev in Vienna not six weeks after the debacle at the Bay of Pigs. The new American President’s poor performance there gave his Soviet counterpart the impression he could pursue a much tougher course in dealing with the United States, a course that led to the Berlin Wall, and ultimately, putting missiles in Cuba. To his credit, Kennedy knew he had screwed up, later referring to his first year in office as a “disaster.” It says something about the man that nobody can imagine many of successors being that honest and self-critical. BERLIN 1961 brings back into the historical spotlight a number of characters who have faded into the mists of history, starting with Walter Ulbricht, the hard line Stalinist German Communist, a man determined to make his rump state of East Germany a success no matter what it takes, even if it means turning the whole country into a prison camp. There is Konrad Adenauer, the very elderly Chancellor of West Germany, his country’s first democratically elected leader; a man who has never given up on reuniting his divided nation. A man who finds himself uncomfortably estranged from the young American President whose support is vital for West Germany’s survival. We get portraits of Dean Acheson and General Lucius Clay, old hands from the Truman years, recruited by Kennedy to assist in this new crisis, only to discover that the new President is no Truman. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan constantly urges negotiation over confrontation; Vice President Lyndon Johnson has a raucous and potentially embarrassing trip to West Berlin at the height of the crisis. Attorney General Robert Kennedy attempts to open a back channel to the Soviet leadership, something the President and his brother loved to do, all to the consternation of the professional diplomats. Most of all, there is the long-suffering citizens of Berlin, both East and West, who really just wanted to be left alone to chart their own destiny, a fate denied them by history and geography. BERLIN 1961 is a must read for history buffs, especially those interested in the Cold War. The writing is crisp and to the point, putting the reader right on the front lines when American units and the tanks of the Red Army come face to face at Checkpoint Charlie. A good history book must read with the ease of great novel; in this, Frederick Kempe’s BERLIN 1961 is a complete success.
    • 5/5
      Reading this book has made me rethink my thinking on President Kennedy and lower him on my list of President's.Everyone should read this book especially anyone who grew up in the sixties. The present administration is showing the same level of weakness and misunderstanding of the Russian mind. Mr. Kempe has written a very good book and the only thing I disagreed with was his feelings about Chuck Hagel's abilities. You will not be disappointed when you read Berlin 1961.
    • 5/5
      Wow. A fantastic telling of an event that has been all but forgotten and yet changed the course of history. One of the things I most appreciated about this telling was how the author focuses on the rough start the Kennedy Administration had viz foreign policy. After the Bay of Pigs, this President struggled with how to meet the aggressive challenges of Kruschev in many different places but especially Berlin. The difficulty of calibrating a military response in the nuclear age is something that any history buff should know more about. Is the ability to destroy the world a deterrent? Well, certainly to massive military action. But as for salami tactics - where the foe challenges policy little by little, slice by slice, that deterrent complicated things as much as it preserved the peace. Even if you aren't a regular reader of History, get this book. The storytelling is fantastic and the drama so rich.
    • 2/5
      If one was to believe the blurbs and introduction for Berlin 1961, then one would expect this book to be the kind of definitive work that appears once in a generation to frame a particular historical period or event (Tony Judt’s Postwar for example). Sadly, it falls well short of this goal, and in fact left me asking whether there was really much new here.Kempe’s central thesis is that Kennedy’s indecision and blunders led to the Berlin crisis ending with the creation of the Berlin Wall and the survival of Communist East Germany for another 28 years. He argues that if the door to the west had been held open that the DDR would have inevitably moved towards collapse, the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been averted, and Soviet influence effectively rolled back much earlier. He quotes Brent Scowcroft that “History, sadly, does not reveal its alternatives” (p 486) and thus the good outcome of the Cold war cannot be used to retroactively endorse the result of the crisis of 1961. Because Kennedy could not know the Wall would fall, Kempe holds, he cannot be credited with doing much more than not immediately starting nuclear war over Berlin.Kempe errs in his analysis and in his presentation on several levels. The first and most important is that he engages in exactly the sort of hindsight to endorse alternatives that he categorically rejects to justify Kennedy’s actions. He, of course, makes his judgments from the safe distance of his Atlantic Council office in a world where even avowed Communists no longer believe that the radiant socialist future is coming. Kennedy charted his course looking forward and at the possibility of World War at a time when every one of his contemporaries could remember and easily imagine the consequences of a war far more destructive than the previous two. Kennedy was informed by Khrushchev’s repeated willingness to intervene with powerful (indeed overwhelming) military force in both East Germany and Hungary, and knew with some degree of certainty that the Russians would fight for East Germany. What Kempe takes for indecision was in fact the maintenance of the kind of strategic ambiguity required to survive confrontations between nuclear armed nations. Much of this is supported by his interpretive description of the mannerisms and tone of the principal players in the crisis. One example illustrates the rhetorical technique, Ulbricht is seen to have “scratched his goatee unhappily” (p. 92). He comes across as a sinister but ingenious villain. Kempe places himself in the minds of the leaders and creates meaning out of actions and paints an emotional picture. I find this style of history suspect at best, the primary source materials simply do not support this kind of invention. His interpretation is driven not simply by a deep historical curiosity but also by something deeply personal which has driven him to apply that emotion to those he writes about. The author’s closing acknowledgments suggest to me the source of this need to apply this approach to the Berlin Crisis. This was personal to Kempe and his family who originate from Berlin and who suffered for the perceived failure by Kennedy to “win” the Crisis. Much of the strength of Kempe’s argument rests on accepting the ascribed motivations, attitudes, and even moods that he portrays. A cooler analysis certainly has to give Khrushchev “the win” in this crisis. However, given the very real threat of nuclear war, the success that the previous 15 years had brought the Communist enterprise and Kennedy’s faith in the ultimate ability of the West to triumph, playing for time and stability (even at the cost of 17 million Germans staying under Communist rule) was a prudent and sustainable course. Kennedy’s action during his short tenure as President did much to move the U.S. away from the nose-to-nose confrontation at every point of the globe that had typified Truman and Eisenhower’s administration (even including “fighting” the Cuban crisis), his establishment of the Peace Corps and decisions to engage in peaceful if heated ideological and technological competition (such as the space race) placed the world on a course that took us to the triumphs of 1989 rather than seeing another decade of lurching from one potentially apocalyptic crisis to another. Kempe, despite a resume that would suggest real vision, cannot see much further than his family's view of the Wall.
    • 5/5
      The book _Berlin 1961_ weaves the character strengths and flaws of USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev, newly elected USA President John F. Kennedy, and their respective allies, East Germany's Walter Ulbricht and West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, into the political power struggle between the two Cold War superpowers, both now armed with nuclear arsenals, that came to a head in divided Germany's post-World War II Berlin in the summer of 1961 with the construction by East Germany of a reinforced concrete wall separating the eastern Soviet from American, British, and French zones of occupation in the city to stop the flow of East Germans to the West. In his Introduction author Kempe lays out his book's structure in three parts, the first presenting the major players Khrushchev, Kennedy, Ulbricht, and Adenauer; the second, background events to include the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, Soviet agreement to a multinational conference on Asian flash point Laos, and the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting in Vienna; and the third, the 'showdown' events of the construction of the Berlin Wall in August and the military face off at Checkpoint Charlie in October. In addition to in-depth analysis of the political interplay and intrigue, Kempe has included more intimate vignettes of personal tragedy and triumph. One example of which is an excerpt from Marta Hiller's memoir, first published 1959, about the rape of between 90,000 and 130,000 Berlin women by their Russian conquerors following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945; another, the story of Marlene Schmidt, refugee from Jena in East Germany, who escaped to the West, entered a beauty contest and soon after became Germany's first and only Miss Universe to the embarrassment of Herr Ulbricht._Berlin 1961_ comes to us fifty years after the crucial events of the Cold War. The Wall went up in August 1961 and was torn down nearly thirty years later in November 1989. The reunification of Germany and dissolution of the Soviet empire soon followed. The tensions that existed in 1961 between the two ideologically different superpowers have dissipated, the reader senses, but only to have been replaced by another worldwide tension that we hope will find resolution in a similar manner.On a personal note, _Berlin 1961_ reminded me of the lingering thought of possible nuclear war felt when living in Orleans, France as an overseas brat. My father served with the Ordnance Supply and Control Agency, Communications Zone, US Army Europe (in military jargon – USAREUR COMZ). The military and civilians had 'red' alerts monthly in preparation for expected NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. The Franco-Algerian War was in play in Oran and in Paris. Yet, for me the most exciting times of the summer of 1961 were the home run streaks of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and my liberation from riding the Army shuttle bus with the acquisition of a Lambretta motor scooter. The saddest event was learning of the death jazz bassist Scott LaFaro in an automobile accident just ten days after having been part of the now seminal recording, Sunday at the Village Vanguard / The Bill Evans Trio. And I remember the envy felt for one of my younger brothers, who as a member of the Explorer Scouts, went by train to Berlin for a week in July, and recounting to me his bus tour of East Berlin and give-and-take with the VoPos. This also is part of the story of 1961 in Berlin.
    • 3/5
      I was in Germany throughout 1961, as a very green lieutenant in the 4th Armored Division, and have many memories of the tension and confusion of those times. I have puzzled over the absence of historical writing about that critical season and place. This book is a start. It is well-written, wonderfully descriptive, with fascinating imaginative dialogue and presumptions about attitudes and motivations of prominent persons , but too speculative and fictionalized, Michener-style, to be taken very seriously. Kempe’s admiration for Soviet Premier Khrushchev is surprising. He is unable to hide the blunders of the Eisenhower administration in the lead-up to Berlin 1961, but he passes over them rather lightly. It is too bad that Kempe was unable to resist using this work as a vehicle to express his shallow contempt for President Kennedy. He has spoiled an otherwise stellar work by reducing much of it to the level of partisan Republican propaganda, something one would think beneath the dignity of a competent historian. But then, he is not an historian but a journalist, reporting on events he did not witness.