>> he discusses to this tur blen period. from angela stent. >> i'm angela stent. i'm director for the center of eurasian, and east european studies at georgetown university and it is my great pleasure to introduce you to frederick kempe, author of "berlin, 1961:kennedy, khrushchev and the most dangerous place on earth." he had a distinguished career as a journalist. his last position being the editor of the european "wall street journal." he's the author of a number of books, among them sibeerion odyssey and a book about his own family and germany and his own thoughts about a unified germany. so i think this will be a very interesting discussion. fred, most people when they look back at the 45-year cold war think about the cuban missile crisis when it did come to the brink of a war with the soviet union was the most dangerous moment in that cold war. you think otherwise. why do you think better minimum in 1961 as the most dangerous place on earth? >> guest: partly because nikita khrushchev described it that way. and it was where people were to go to war. i think in cuba as a historians think that the backing off already began halfway through that crisis week but when you had tanks faced off against each other in october, 1961 in berlin had you had soviet men and women and tanks against each other, you never did know how it was going to turn out so i think it was more important for that reason. also, cuba was not the epicenter of the cold war. berlin was. berlin was the place where the two ideological systems were faced off. the second thing is, the wall in berlin, when it was built in august 1961 really shaped the contour and where is it led to the cuban missile crisis. >> host: why did you decide to write this book and this particular city to write about? >> guest: angela, as you mentioned and as you know i cut myself teeth on the cold war. it was depressing. i saw the people of poland in 1981, risk everything, their jobs, families for independence. most of my relatives were german and lived in east german but they were kind and generous but they lived lives of limited freedom, limited travel, limited scope. and i asked myself at that time, so it was my personal reason, could one have avoided the berlin wall and ended the cold war that mortgaged the lives of tens of millions of east europeans. could have it ended it earlier. that's the personal side. on the historical side, i think the cold war is the least -- the worst reported and the worst reported of our world wars, and i think it was world war iii. it ended the communist center. and berlin was the epicenter for the war and 1961 was the most decisive year for the cold war so i wanted to tell the story of that year through its events and its characters. . >> host: well, it's certainly a fascinating story but before we get to some of the details you have more major characters that dominate your book. they were very different characters. they were all larger than life and their interaction really set the tone both for this crisis and really for the rest of the cold war until the war collapsed. so tell us about the four main characters and how you see their main interactions with each other. >> angela, a hollywood casting director could not have given me rich characters. [laughter] >> guest: you had the son of privilege, president john f. kennedy, handsome, brilliant. wanting to be a great historical president like lincoln and franklin roosevelt but fearful that they only became that through war and in his age that would be nuclear war. against him, son of privilege, 43 years old, 67-year-old son of peasants, illiterate until his 20s, tough, formed through war, survived world war ii, survived stalin's purges but very insecure. and resentful of american mill taxpayers and then the other two characters you talked about the westerner, really a great hero of history, founded west germany, brought germany back from the ashes of world war ii. and then walter o-bert, probably the last standing stalinist. both of them distrusted their powerful opposites, conrad distrusted kennedy and didn't think he was experienced enough and didn't have enough background to handle the soft and a lot of people are khrushchev and leveraging his weaknesses into forcing khrushchev to approve the -- approve the wall. so it was a great cast of characters. i don't think fiction could have given me a better cast. >> host: you had some minor characters in the book and they are very evocative of the tensions and the drama surrounding berlin in 1961 and indeed since the end of the war. and you have some fascinating vignettes there. could you tell us a little bit more of these more minor characters? >> guest: yeah, my favorite minor character who actually turned out to be something of a major character and i write about him in this book more than it's been recorded than any book before me and that's a soviet spy who's a military intelligence agent and he finds himself and a very colorful character, hard drinking, boisterous and friends with ben bradley so not a really secretive spy. and then the -- he becomes the conduit between kennedy and khrushchev. very interesting back-channel that john f. kennedy approves with this soviet spy and his brother bobby kennedy the attorney general. so that's the most interesting of the minor characters. the vignettes i added because i wanted berlin to be as rich as a character as my four protagonists. so there i had everyone from the miss universe of that year who was an east german refugee to a farmer who tried to escape -- it was resisting the collectivization of his farm in east germany. tried to escape to the west and was caught and imprisoned and i tell the sorry of his resistance against east germany and different stories like that throughout to try to bring home the color of this rich story. >> host: yes, and they certainly do. now, one of the things that i think leaps out from your book is a consummation of the old adage that all politics is local. we tend to think of kennedy and khrushchev as these protagists on the world stage and a global struggle but both of them were subject to a lot of domestic pressures. they had different groups of advisors telling them different things. and they were also subject to pressures from their own allies. as you pointed out conrad was very wary of kennedy. so if you could tell us a little bit about the domestic context before we get to the great drama of that year. when president kennedy came into office, what were the different sets of advice that he was receiving on how to deal with the soviet union? >> guest: yeah. i mean, let me start with khrushchev and then we'll go on. i think the domestic politics that surrounded khrushchev, i think that's where the book really sheds some new light because domestic politics drives foreign policy. look at president obama today. look at others before him. khrushchev had never consolidated his power. he defeated a party coup in 1957. but then there was a u2 crisis in may 1960 where the soviets shot down a u.s. spy plane and khrushchev's advocates pointed you are living naive that we can live in peaceful coexistence with the west. secondarily, as you said east german leader walter obert. and curiously his leverage were growing of the refugees flowing out of his country. the greater of the danger of east germany imploding the greater the domestic pressure on khrushchev to do something about it. it wasn't just a danger to the soviet it was the danger to his own political standing. and then the chinese. they were rising. they were trying to oppose khrushchev at that time. they thought he wasn't the worthy representative of world communism. and he was looking at a party communists. but he had seen other soviet leaders lose their jobs at such conferences so everything for him was pointed at that october party congress and getting through and holding on to power. >> host: and i think you point out -- i mean, after stalin's death, no soviet leader was really secure in his. they always had to worry about the people around them and there was a lot of politics going in the soviet union. it's just not -- it wasn't going on the same way as it was in the united states but people who think this was a monolithic structure are wrong. tell us a little bit about president kennedy and the people whom the conflicting kind of advice that he was getting and -- but both -- within the united states and then also in his dealings with the federal public of germany, west germany. >> guest: yeah, and i'm sorry i raced into khrushchev but i find that story fascinating. with kennedy, he wanted to be a great presidency but he didn't know making it peace through the soviet union or with conflict with the soviet union. so you see him very ambiguous about that in the beginning. he calls dean atchison, secretary of state for truman out of retirement. and that shows he wants to protect his right fang. atchison was a hof towards the soviet union. and the people running the desk for berlin and germany also were hawks. you have to be tough. and others were arthur schlesinger, avril harriman and tommy thompson who thought engagement was the only way to go. and you see this tension in kennedy but the hawkish elements of domestic politics both for khrushchev and for kennedy were dominant. and the reason kennedy barely won and he was more hawkish as a campaigner than nixon and khrushchev wanted to hold onto power. so even though their personal instincts would have been to get along and find some accommodation, the domestic politics was pushing them to more of a confrontation. >> host: you point out at the very beginning president kennedy in your view misinterpreted a speech khrushchev has made. >> guest: yeah, i mean, i think, angela, the most significant finding of this book, and this is after six years of research looking at documents, really think about it, is that kennedy's first year in office in the inaugural year was the worst foreign policy performances of any modern president in his first year and it started with this misreading. he comes into office trying to figure out who is khrushchev? who are the soviets and how am i going to deal with them and khrushchev releases captured u.s. pilots on the day after his inauguration, reduces censorship, prints the entire inaugural in profit. >> host: an american inaugural? >> guest: you know, bear any burden, shoulder -- he pulled the great colorful words of president kennedy. khrushchev was trying to send a message, look, i really would like to work with you but we have some problems to solve. i think it was genuine. kennedy was given a cable and was given a text of a speech that khrushchev had delivered on january 9th so a couple of weeks before the inauguration. and it was tough red rick. it was escalating the war in the developing world and it was a speech to propagandists. most people who saw that who are experts, this is nothing new but kennedy saw this as a sign and so between his inaugural and his state of the union 10 days later, he told changes his tone toward the soviet union even before he set down with his experts, he turns in a much more hawkish defection. khrushchev sees that and he pulls back from his gestures, he can't afford to exploit his own flank and he turns tougher as well. so i think at that point we missed a very key opportunity when the two of them might have been able to find some better way forward. >> yeah, it really shows the perils i mean, during the cold war trying to figure out what was happening in the soviet union and interpret these words. and in the end you had to rely on instincts. so i would say the most dramatic part of your, again, gripping book is a depiction, a description and discussion of the vienna summit. the first time that this newly elected, inexperienced young handsome american president met with this veteran wiley soviet leader as you say who came from a peasant background. tell us a little bit about how the -- how the talks began? how they continued and why you believe kennedy did so badly in this very crucial first encounter in vienna. >> guest: yeah and the first two words about what got us there. it was the summit of the television age, you know, the "wall street journal" wrote about it as two boxers coming in the ring, you know, the "new york times" went back to 146 years earlier to the congress of vienna and reminded of tali drama and it was great. khrushchev refused to come after the bay of pigs debacle where kennedy failed the bay of pigs. khrushchev was weaknesses and indecisiveness and could expose this to the summit and kennedy put the first man in space so he had some momentum. kennedy was there because he wanted to repair his foreign policy reputation after the failure of bay of pigs so there they are. the first day kennedy gets into an ideological argument about the virtue of communism and he gets totally, totally overwhelmed by khrushchev. his advisors told him not to go there. they told him not to talk about it. second thing, discussion of berlin. he's not prepared for it. he has -- he thought he'd reach a presummit agreement that nothing would be negotiated and khrushchev lays down a threat of war and an ultimatum saying the status of berlin had to change or he was going to change it unilaterally. kennedy was ill-prepared. kennedy knows he's done badly and so at the end, it's almost like he's seeking the confessor. so he goes to scotty rustin from the "new york times" and he says worst day of my life, worst performance of my life. he savaged me. and he knew that he had appeared weak to khrushchev and khrushchev thought he was weak and it was a terrible, terrible performance. >> host: and then -- and how did it go on from there? [laughter] >> guest: well, oh, one other thing about the vienna summit. the other thing i focus on is everyone has written about kennedy's womenizing, kennedy's health issues. he had particularly great pain and we know that from his doctor. we know he had an injury earlier from a trip from canada. he was in enormous pain. and on the trip he had someone called dr. feelgood. he was the doctor to celebrities. and he was shooting him up with a mixture of enzymes and steroids and amphetamines to keep him alert, to keep him from depression. but if you look at the side effects of these things, the side effects are mood swings. the side effects are nervousness, anxiety. you know, he did show mood swings at the end of the summit. he did show nervousness and anxiety. these are national security consequences with these sorts of shots. we never know how it affected him but when you think about vienna, the 67-year-old soviet peasant might have been in healthier shape than the 43-year-old handsome. >> host: today in the united states we expect we have the right to know as much as possible about the health and personal lives of our presidents. as you point out in the book. about this is going on. there was so much completely hidden from the public eye. and it has world history consequences. it was hidden from the public eye and reporters and journalists knew about this but didn't report it. >> host: there was a different code even when you were a journalist. so how did this summit end? it was quite a long summit, right? >> guest: it was a long summit. kennedy returns to the u.s. and knows he's in trouble. he gives a speech and increases defense spending. and there's a great debate in his administration between atchison and particularly arthur schlesinger and then henry kissinger comes in at that point as a young consultant on the anti-atchison side at that point. >> host: yeah. >> guest: and there's a real argument about how hard of a line to take, how are we going to respond. how do we overcome this image of weaknesses? at the same time, while they're trying to decide how to respond to this ultimatum from khrushchev, khrushchev is looking at things ahead and he's approved after the summit walter's plan for a border closure. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: and he puts this on fast forward. so i think as a result of the vienna summit, khrushchev thinks he can go forward. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: i think one of the strongest findings of the book and i feel very strongly about this, kennedy helped write the script for the berlin wall. i'm not sure it's been said before in any book this strongly. the his words were if you don't touch west berlin -- if you touch the access to west berlin or to the freedom, you can do whatever you want to do in this territory and that's what khrushchev did when he approved the border closure and then the berlin's construction. it was all within east berlin territory. >> host: maybe we should go back -- i mean, you and i are so steeped on the german problems which has changed and maybe just explain again what were the issues at stake at 1961? i mean, you had the two german states founded in 1949. nobody in the west had recognized the gdr, east germany. it had very little legitimacy. it was completely dependent on the soviet union for its existence. why was there a crisis in east germany in 1961? and why did they have to take action and maybe just to spell that out a little bit? >> guest: what happened is, though, the border had been cut off between east and west germany, and so there was a no man's land and there were fences and towers along that border, there was no border or dividing line inside of berlin. and so here's a city of 3.2 million people. you have two ideologyies. the dividing line of the cold war but all it is is a line. there's nothing stopping people going back and forth across the city. so what happens is the better economic conditions turn in west germany and there was an economic miracle with jobs galore. the worst situations -- the situation got in east germany because people came to take those jobs. and so you had a flood of refugees but it wasn't just refugees, it was the best and brightest of east germany. the western-most outpost of the soviet union bloc and the place the 20 million soviets and russians had died to end world war ii so lots and lots of things. the more the refugees came out, the greater the danger of implosion of east germany. and so you really had a situation where khrushchev had to stop this bleed or his entire soviet bloc might be in danger and let's not forget 30 years later there was a flood of refugees that started the collapse of the soviet union and the fall of the berlin wall in 1989. >> host: yeah, and, of course, in 1958, khrushchev had already thrown down the gauntlet. he issued this berlin ultimatum where he wanted a solution then saying he wanted best berlin to be somehow an independent free city and then turn over control of it to east germany and they started collectivizing east germany and people didn't want that and they were fleeing out and, of course, you could as you point out very well in the book go to the station in east berlin, get on a train and go into west berlin and nobody could really do anything. so -- >> guest: 50,000 residents of east berlin worked every day in west berlin so they were going back and forth every day. >> host: and then 2,000 a day were fleeing just before the war come up. >> guest: absolutely, yep. >> host: describe to us now the dramatic events of the night of august 12th and 13th, 1961. and when you do that, maybe say a little bit about, without getting into too much legal detail, were the soviets within their rights to do this because there was this complicated four-power allied control where they were in their rights or were they really zweig the legally agreed norms for the four-power occupations in both parts of berlin? >> guest: i'll answer that and then go to the description. >> host: yeah. >> guest: they were not. and they were not because east german forces had no right to be in east berlin doing the things that they were doing. so if kennedy -- >> host: because