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Since the end of World War II Germany and Berlin, in particular, have pro vided the Soviet Union with convenient points on which to apply pressure upon the West. In September 1955 the Russians formally terminated the occupation status of their zone and recognized the "sovereignty" of the "German Democratic Republic", but in doing so they reserved to the Soviet Army control over the movement of British, French, and American military personnel and freight between West Berlin and the Federal German Re public which the Western Big Three had recognized as a sovereign state in 1954· In September 1958 the Soviet Union began exerting new pressure upon the West to alter the status of Berlin and Germany. Its initial moves sug gested the Russians were primarily interested in concluding a peace treaty with a divided Germany and making West Berlin a so-called "free city- unilaterally if need be - by the end of May 1959. However, intensive diplomatic maneuvering on both sides soon revealed the Russian position to be more flexible than originally indicated and one of its primary goals to be the calling of a summit conference which the Soviet Union had sought since 1956. Shortly before the expiration of N. S. Khrushchov's November 27, 1958, six-month "ultimatum," the Big Four had reached sufficient agreement to convene a Foreign Ministers' Conference. However, after three months of fruitless negotiations it produced only deadlock.
Examines the effect of domestic politics on the interstate bargaining in international crises
"When I go to sleep at night I try not to think about Berlin," said Dean Rusk; and in this first comprehensive reconstruction of that crucial period, Jack M. Schick demonstrates that Rusk's nightmare did not end for decades. He traces the East-West pattern of impatient negotiation followed by military posturing and pressuring. He sheds new light on Dulles' intellectualized diplomacy, Kennedy's cautiously balanced Berlin strategy, and Ulbricht's urgent gamble on the Berlin Wall. Against a detailed back­ ground of diplomatic verbiage and tension-ridden events he points up the blind convictions and dangerous misunderstandings on both sides that inevitably led to each incident in the continual crisis—and ultimately brought us to the impasse that remained "frozen in splendid ambiguity" for decades. Berlin's fragile armistice could have been shattered by the merest trifle. And the pattern of the early 1960s repeated itself, with East and West squaring off for new rounds of negotiation-posturing-pressure. The frightening lessons of the past, as Schick presents them, became vital warnings of the present, to a time when our ultimate survival could have depended upon our ability to heed these warnings.
The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.
Examines the development of Soviet-West German relations from both the Russian and German sides.