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Thinking Global

May 10, 2011

Berlin 1961: Konrad Adenauer, Suspicious Ally

By Frederick Kempe

Friends speculated that it had been his inconsolable concerns over President Kennedy’s fitness for office that had worsened Konrad Adenauer’s illness; a cold he had contracted before the U.S. elections deepened to bronchitis and then pneumonia. On the occasion of the West German chancellor’s 85th birthday, others attributed his fragility to age. Whatever the truth, […]

Thinking Global

May 9, 2011

Berlin 1961: Khruschev a Communist in a Hurry

By Frederick Kempe

It was just minutes before midnight, and Nikita Khrushchev had reason to be relieved 1960 was nearly over. He had even greater cause for concern about the year ahead as he surveyed his two thousand New Year’s guests under the towering, vaulted ceiling of St. George’s Hall at the Kremlin. As the storm outside deposited […]

Thinking Global

May 8, 2011

Berlin 1961: The Legacy of Soviet Rape in Germany

By Frederick Kempe

I first visited four of my elderly East German aunts as a college student in the late 1970s, they were willing to discuss almost anything except the final days of World War II and the first days of Soviet military occupation.  Only over time and in whispers, did one of my aunt’s share the story. […]

Thinking Global

May 7, 2011

Berlin 1961: How Misreading Khrushchev Led to Confrontation

By Frederick Kempe

 Five years after his forced retirement, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1969 would concede to the American physician A. McGhee Harvey, a specialist who had visited Moscow to treat his daughter, that his watershed political event – the moment after which he “was no longer in full control” of the Kremlin — had been the […]

Thinking Global

May 7, 2011

Johanna Schumann Kempe Honored by University of Utah

By Frederick Kempe

On its front page, the Salt Lake Tribune published a moving tribute to my late mother, Johanna Schumann Kempe, who was honored by the University of Utah’s College of Humanities as one of two distinguished alumni at Friday’s graduation ceremony.  At a lunch in her honor a day earlier, Dean Robert Newman spoke of her […]

Thinking Global

May 7, 2011

Berlin 1961: Interview with Doug Fabrizio

By Frederick Kempe

The first long-form interview on the book tour for Berlin 1961 was with Doug Fabrizio of my hometown NPR station, Salt Lake City’s KUER RadioWest.

Thinking Global

May 6, 2011

Berlin 1961: Characters Who Clashed

By Frederick Kempe

“The Great Man Theory,” first developed by the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle in the 19th Century, argues that history can be largely explained by the influence of towering historical figures from Shakespeare to Attila the Hun. Its detractors contend that the societal forces and trends which produce these people are more decisive. It wasn’t the […]

Thinking Global

May 5, 2011

Berlin 1961: Reliving the Cold War’s Tensest Moment

By Frederick Kempe

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s face turned red with rage. Leaning in close to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Khrushchev said that Cold War Berlin was “the most dangerous place on earth.” He told Kennedy he would “perform an operation on this sore spot – to eliminate this thorn, this ulcer…to the satisfaction of all peoples […]

Thinking Global

Apr 17, 2011

Global Water Cooler: Obama’s Foreign Policy Team

By Frederick Kempe

 Talk around the Global Watercooler on Sundays–at least among the internationally minded Washington set–revolves around what is typically the best edition of the Washington Post all week. This week’s was no exception. OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY TEAM The last thing you want when you enter one of those landmark years in history, which 2011 is likely to be, […]

Thinking Global

Apr 5, 2011

Global Watercooler: A More Robust UN?

By Frederick Kempe

 Around the watercooler today: UN acts in Ivory Coast; China outbids Australia for a Canadian copper mining company; and Germany chooses a new path. UN Watch:  Taking Sides in a Regime Change Strip out all the diplomatic niceties, and what we’re watching in the Ivory Coast is this: the United Nations is enforcing with military […]

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