Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

Secretary of State Dean Rusk had summarized his own interpretation of the Soviet actions: ‘I think also that Berlin is very much involved in this. For the first time, I’m beginning really to wonder whether maybe Mr. Khrushchev is entirely rational about Berlin.’ But Khrushchev, as it transpired, was entirely rational about Berlin. The Soviet Union had indeed maintained a vast superiority of conventional forces in Europe and could have occupied West Berlin (and most of Western Europe) any time it wished. But now that the US had sworn to defend the freedom of West Berlin by all means (which in practice meant nuclear weapons), Khrushchev had no intention of risking nuclear war for Germany. As the Soviet ambassador to Washington later observed in his memoirs, ‘Kennedy overestimated the readiness of Khrushchev and his allies to take decisive actions on Berlin, the most aggressive of which really was the erection of the Berlin Wall.’11 With Berlin and Cuba behind them, the superpowers moved with surprising alacrity to resolve the uncertainties of the first Cold War. On June 20th 1963 a ‘hotline’ was established between Washington and Moscow; a month later talks in Moscow between the US, the Soviet Union and the UK culminated in a Limited Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. This Treaty, which came into force on October 10th, had considerable significance for Europe—less because of its overt objectives than on account of the ‘sub-text’ underlying it.