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Thinking Global

Jun 21, 2011

Berlin 1961: The Aftershocks of Kennedy’s Bad Year

By Frederick Kempe

A year after President John F. Kennedy acquiesced to the communist construction of the Berlin Wall, two dramas occurring five thousand miles apart illustrated the high cost of one of the worst inaugural year performances of any modern president. The first unfolded under the spotlight of a Berlin summer sun, when eighteen-year-old bricklayer Peter Fechter […]

Thinking Global

Jun 15, 2011

Berlin 1961: Kennedy’s Showdown at Checkpoint Charlie

By Frederick Kempe

There had not been a more perilous moment in the Cold War.  Undaunted by the damp, dangerous night, Berliners gathered on the narrow side streets opening up onto Checkpoint Charlie. The next morning’s newspapers would estimate their numbers at about five hundred, a considerable crowd considering that they might have been witnesses to the first […]

Thinking Global

Jun 14, 2011

Berlin 1961: Kennedy-Khrushchev Nuclear Poker

By Frederick Kempe

Nikita Khrushchev would celebrate his Berlin triumph at the 22nd Communist Party Congress in Moscow — and through it send the most powerful message imaginable that President John F. Kennedy had failed to create a more peaceful planet through his acquiescence to the construction of the Berlin Wall two months earlier.  Never had so many […]

Thinking Global

Jun 13, 2011

Berlin 1961: Berlin Wall’s First Victim

By Frederick Kempe

Günter Litfin, a twenty-four-year-old tailor whose boldest acts until that point had been performed with a needle and thread, summoned the courage to flee East Berlin eleven days after the communists had sealed the border.   Until August 13, Litfin had lived divided Berlin’s ideal life, taking maximum advantage of each side’s benefits as one […]

Thinking Global

Jun 8, 2011

The Sex Pistols and Berlin 1961

By Frederick Kempe

Book promotion has its indignities and high points. The indignities thus far have come from America’s polarized political debate trying to fit a serious history of 1961 into its ideological framework – as if everything in the world has to be crammed into this simplistic division of thought. Some conservative radio hosts are a little too […]

Thinking Global

Jun 7, 2011

Berlin 1961: West Berlin’s Impertinent Mayor

By Frederick Kempe

President Kennedy was enraged.  He considered the letter from Mayor Willy Brandt that had landed on his desk that morning, three days after the Berlin border closure, to be insulting and impertinent. Even given the gravity of Berlin’s crisis, it overstepped the sort of language any city mayor should use with the American president. With […]

Thinking Global

Jun 6, 2011

Berlin 1961: Kennedy Writes the Script, East Germany Builds the Wall

By Frederick Kempe

Among those closest to him, President John F. Kennedy did not hide his relief after East German forces, with the approval of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, sealed the Berlin border in the early morning hours of August 13 in an operation of stunning speed and German efficiency.   After all, in many respects Kennedy had […]

Thinking Global

Jun 6, 2011

Berlin 1961: A Kennedy Speech That Was Weaker Than it Sounded

By Frederick Kempe

In the late afternoon, President Kennedy retreated to the Lincoln Bedroom to read through the latest draft of a speech he would deliver live at ten o’clock that evening to a national television audience. It was rare for any president to use the Oval Office for such a purpose, and workmen had been there all […]

Thinking Global

Jun 5, 2011

Berlin 1961: The Kissinger – Kennedy Connection

By Frederick Kempe

Henry Kissinger spent only a day or two each week in Washington working as a White House consultant, commuting from his post at Harvard University, but that had proved sufficient to put him at the center of the struggle to shape Kennedy’s thinking on Berlin. At age 39, the ambitious professor would happily have worked […]

Thinking Global

Jun 4, 2011

Dallas Morning News Reviews Berlin 1961

By Frederick Kempe

Michelle Jones of the Dallas Morning News recently wrote a review of Berlin 1961. The full text is below: At the conclusion of Berlin 1961, his detailed chronicle of the events leading up to and following the construction of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Kempe describes the barrier as the “iconic image of what unfree systems […]

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