moved to apply this same standard to East Berlin. He obtained a map of Berlin and he and Ulbrecht sat down to work out the details. "It was a difficult task to divide the city of Berlin," he reminisced in his memoirs. "Everything is intertwined. The border goes along a street, so one side of the street is East Berlin while the other is in West Berlin." 6 After much discussion, the two communist leaders "decided to erect antitank barriers and barricades." 7
By Sunday night, East German guards were patrolling that barricade with machine guns and tear gas. At Teltow Canal, which also formed the border but where no wire fence had been built, many refugees escaped by swimming across its short width. By Monday, the border guards moved in, and when a young couple dove into the water, the guards opened fire. Though the couple escaped
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unharmed, the gunfire announced to all that refugees now risked death if they tried to flee East Berlin. On Thursday the East Germans proved their deadly intent. When another man tried to swim across, the guards ran out on a railroad bridge and fired repeatedly down at him until he disappeared underwater. West German frogmen recovered his body three hours later. 8
Because the Soviets had restricted their activities to their own zone, any action by the West to interfere could have been seen as aggression, triggering greater violence. Despite the apparent injustice to the East Germans, tearing down the wall by force wasn't worth risking nuclear war.
West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt noted with disgust that the West's inaction would cause "the entire East . . . to laugh from Pankow to Vladivostok." 9
Kennedy
For President John F. Kennedy a major part of whose presidential campaign was an aggressive anticommunist stance the Berlin Wall was only one in a string of humiliations. Eight months earlier, for instance, the CIA-led attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro had ended in total failure. When Kennedy refused to lend direct military support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1,200 man rebel force was quickly overcome. 10 "How could I have been so stupid as to let them go ahead?" Kennedy complained privately to his advisors. 11
In the race to dominate space, things were going badly as well. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had announced the United States' intention to put the first man into space sometime in the spring of 1961. The agency hoped that this flight would prove that the leader of the capitalist world still dominated the fields of technology, science, and exploration.
Originally scheduled for a March 6, 1961 launch, the short fifteen minute suborbital flight was repeatedly delayed. The Mercury capsule's first test flight in January, with a chimpanzee as test pilot, rose forty miles higher than intended, overshot its landing by a hundred and thirty miles, and when
Page 75
the capsule was recovered three hours later it had begun leaking and was actually sinking. Then in March another test of the Mercury capsule included the premature firing of the escape rocket on top of the capsule, the unplanned release of the backup parachutes during descent, and the discovery of dents on the capsule itself. 12
These difficulties caused NASA to postpone repeatedly its first manned mission. First the agency rescheduled the launch to late March. Then early April. Then mid-April. And then it was too late.
On April 12th, Tass, the Soviet news agency, proudly announced to the world that Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to enter space. Unlike NASA's planned fifteen minute suborbital flight, Gagarin's launch vehicle had reached escape velocity and orbited the earth. As the New York Times noted in an editorial, "The political and psychological importance [of this accomplishment gives] the Soviet Union once again the 'high ground' in world prestige." 13 Or as the Soviet government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party stated, "In this achievement, which will pass
By Sunday night, East German guards were patrolling that barricade with machine guns and tear gas. At Teltow Canal, which also formed the border but where no wire fence had been built, many refugees escaped by swimming across its short width. By Monday, the border guards moved in, and when a young couple dove into the water, the guards opened fire. Though the couple escaped
Page 74
unharmed, the gunfire announced to all that refugees now risked death if they tried to flee East Berlin. On Thursday the East Germans proved their deadly intent. When another man tried to swim across, the guards ran out on a railroad bridge and fired repeatedly down at him until he disappeared underwater. West German frogmen recovered his body three hours later. 8
Because the Soviets had restricted their activities to their own zone, any action by the West to interfere could have been seen as aggression, triggering greater violence. Despite the apparent injustice to the East Germans, tearing down the wall by force wasn't worth risking nuclear war.
West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt noted with disgust that the West's inaction would cause "the entire East . . . to laugh from Pankow to Vladivostok." 9
Kennedy
For President John F. Kennedy a major part of whose presidential campaign was an aggressive anticommunist stance the Berlin Wall was only one in a string of humiliations. Eight months earlier, for instance, the CIA-led attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro had ended in total failure. When Kennedy refused to lend direct military support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1,200 man rebel force was quickly overcome. 10 "How could I have been so stupid as to let them go ahead?" Kennedy complained privately to his advisors. 11
In the race to dominate space, things were going badly as well. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had announced the United States' intention to put the first man into space sometime in the spring of 1961. The agency hoped that this flight would prove that the leader of the capitalist world still dominated the fields of technology, science, and exploration.
Originally scheduled for a March 6, 1961 launch, the short fifteen minute suborbital flight was repeatedly delayed. The Mercury capsule's first test flight in January, with a chimpanzee as test pilot, rose forty miles higher than intended, overshot its landing by a hundred and thirty miles, and when
Page 75
the capsule was recovered three hours later it had begun leaking and was actually sinking. Then in March another test of the Mercury capsule included the premature firing of the escape rocket on top of the capsule, the unplanned release of the backup parachutes during descent, and the discovery of dents on the capsule itself. 12
These difficulties caused NASA to postpone repeatedly its first manned mission. First the agency rescheduled the launch to late March. Then early April. Then mid-April. And then it was too late.
On April 12th, Tass, the Soviet news agency, proudly announced to the world that Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to enter space. Unlike NASA's planned fifteen minute suborbital flight, Gagarin's launch vehicle had reached escape velocity and orbited the earth. As the New York Times noted in an editorial, "The political and psychological importance [of this accomplishment gives] the Soviet Union once again the 'high ground' in world prestige." 13 Or as the Soviet government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party stated, "In this achievement, which will pass
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