Abstract
In December 1958, with tensions on the rise between the US and the USSR over Berlin, Dulles flew to Paris to attend the annual meeting of the NAC. While in Paris, he discussed with Norstad the possibility that Norstad should take certain “tightening up” actions that would not be lost on the Soviets.2 The source of tension arose from Chairman Khrushchev’s pronouncement of November 10, 1958 that he intended to sign a peace treaty “at an early date” with the German Democratic Republic (GDR), thus in his view terminating the Allies’ wartime rights in West Berlin. The official Soviet Note said: “the government of the USSR hereby notifies the United States Government that the Soviet Union regards as null and void the ‘Protocol of the Agreement between the Governments of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom on the zones of occupation in Germany and on the administration of Greater Berlin,’ of September 12, 1944, and the related supplementary agreements, including the agreements on the control machinery in Germany, concluded between the governments of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain, and France on May 1, 1945, i.e., the agreements that were intended to be in effect during the first years after the capitulation of Germany.”3
… it is in this area that political and military considerations are so intermingled that neither the statesman nor the soldier is sure that they are his business.1
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Notes
“Note by the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the Government of the United States of America on the Situation in Berlin, November 27, 1958,” as contained in Wolfgang Heidelmeyer and Guenter Hindrichs, Documents on Berlin, 1943–1963 (Munich: R. Oldlenbourg Verlag, 1963), pp. 190–191.
Quoted in Marc Trachtenberg, Strategy and Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 171. Discussed later will be the problem of refugee flows through West Berlin as a motivation for Krushchev’s action (See also Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999]).
Quoted in Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower the President, Vol Two (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 503. Although the JCS initially had recommended to Eisenhower that they were planning to force their way into Berlin with a division if the autobahn were closed, Eisenhower categorically disagreed; he wanted a force large enough for a probing operation, not a force “… far too weak to fight its way through to Berlin against serious opposition, yet far too strong for a mere show of force” (ibid.)
See for example, Jack M. Schick, The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1962 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 47–48. As will be seen later, the Berlin crisis also rekindled a debate over whether the Eisenhower-Dulles doctrine of “massive retaliation” was still appropriate to the circumstances. This debate was led by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and later by Gen. Maxwell Taylor (see his The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper and Row, 1960); also Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–1971 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1965), p. 318.
Paul-Henri Spaak, The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European, 1936–1966, transi. Henry Fox (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971), p. 263. Spaak went on to say: “I was determined to follow Norstad’s advice in all defence matters. I could not but bow to his technical expertise and very soon became convinced of his utter loyalty to the Atlantic Alliance.” For a discussion of the relationship between the Secretaries-General of NATO and the SACEURs, during this period, see Robert S. Jordan, Political Leadership in NATO: A Study in Multinational Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), esp. Chs 2 and 3.
For an excellent discussion of the evolution and the efficacy of NATO’s machinery for political-military consultation, see Douglas L. Bland, The Military Committee of the North Atlantic Alliance: A Study of Structure and Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1991). See also Robert S. Jordan, The NATO International Staff/Secretariat, 1952–1957: A Study in International Administration (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), for a discussion of the political-military consultative machinery that NATO had put in place.
Barry Buzan, ed., The International Politics of Deterrence (London: Frances Pinter, 1987), p. 176. This book provides a clear exposé of the perceptions of deterrence held by the West and by the Warsaw Pact.
For more on Krushchev’s motives, see Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Krushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Ambrose, Eisenhower the President, p. 521. The UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, did not agree with these ideas concerning the UN and Berlin. He could not, for example, envision how the UN could provide political guidance to such a UN presence, whether in the form of a garrison force or even of administering the city, which had been suggested at one time. Joseph P. Lash, Dag Hammarskjold: Custodian of the Brushfire Peace (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1961), p. 183.
Jean Edward Smith, The Defense of Berlin (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963) pp. 185–186.
Charles De Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour, transi. Terence Kilmartin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 202.
De Gaulle, Memoirs, p. 166. (See also Simon Serfaty, France, De Gaulle and Europe: The Policy of the Fourth and Fifth Republic Toward the Continent (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968).) In March 1959, de Gaulle withdrew the French Mediterranean fleet from NATO. Norstad merely shrugged this off, viewing the act as not significant militarily because of the small number of ships, although having some symbolic significance. De Gaulle did agree to cooperate fully with SACEUR in time of war. (Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 428; Robert S. Jordan, Alliance Strategy and Navies: The Evolution and Scope of NATO’s Maritime Dimension [London: Pinter; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 109–110].)
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Jordan, R.S. (2000). The 1958–59 Crisis Over Berlin: Putting the Consultative Machinery In Place. In: Norstad: Cold War NATO Supreme Commander. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62477-5_6
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