The Penguin History of the World

In October 1957, Sputnik I had opened the age of superpower competition in space and gave a terrible shock to Americans’ confidence that Soviet technology lagged behind their own. Soviet foreign policy in the Khrushchev era meanwhile continued to show recalcitrance, unco-operativeness and sometimes remarkable confidence. Fearing the danger of a rearmed West Germany, the Soviet leaders were anxious to strengthen their satellite, the German Democratic Republic. The all too visible success and prosperity of West Berlin – surrounded by GDR territory – was embarrassing. The city’s internal boundaries between west and east were easily crossed and well-being and freedom drew more and more East Germans – especially skilled workers – to the west. In 1958, the USSR denounced the arrangements under which Berlin had been run for the previous ten years and said the Soviet sector of the city would be handed over to the GDR if better arrangements could not be found. Two years of drawn-out wrangling followed.

As an atmosphere of crisis over Berlin deepened, the outflow of refugees through the city shot up. The numbers of East Germans crossing to the west were 140,000 in 1959, 200,000 in 1960. When more than 100,000 did so in the first six months of 1961, in August that year the East German authorities suddenly put up a wall (soon reinforced by land-mines and barbed wire) to cut off Berlin’s Soviet sector from the western sectors. Tension increased in the short run, but in the long term the Berlin Wall may have calmed things down. Its gloomy presence (and the sporadic killing of East Germans who tried to cross it) was to be for a quarter of a century a gift to western Cold War propaganda. The GDR had succeeded in stopping emigration, though. Khrushchev quietly dropped more extreme demands when it was clear that the United States was not prepared to give way over the legal status of Berlin, even at the risk of war.

A similar rhythm was seen the following year over Cuba, although the risk was then far greater. The European allies of the United States were not so directly interested as they had been over a possible change in the German settlement, nor did the Soviets seem to pay much attention to Cuban views. Moreover, in a virtually ‘pure’ confrontation of the superpowers, the Soviet Union appeared to have been forced to give way. While avoiding action or language which might have been dangerously provocative, and while leaving a simple route of retreat open to his opponent by confining his demands to essentials, President Kennedy none the less made no conspicuous concessions, though the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey followed quietly after a little while. Immediately, Khrushchev had to be satisfied with an undertaking that the United States would not invade Cuba.

It is difficult to believe that this was not a major turning-point. The prospect of nuclear war as the ultimate price of geographical extension of the Cold War had been faced by the Soviet Union and found unacceptable. The subsequent setting-up of direct telephone communication between the heads of the two states – the ‘hot line’ – recognized that the danger of conflict through misunderstanding made necessary some more intimate and immediate connection than the ordinary channels of diplomacy. It was also clear that in spite of Soviet boasting to the contrary, American preponderance in armed strength was as great as ever. The new weapon that mattered for purposes of direct conflict between the two superpowers was the intercontinental rocket missile; at the end of 1962 the Americans had superiority in this weapon of more than six to one over the Soviets, who set to work to reduce this disparity. The choice was made of rockets before butter, and once again the Soviet consumer was to bear the burden.

Meanwhile, the Cuban confrontation had helped to achieve the first agreement between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union on the restriction of testing nuclear weapons in space, the atmosphere or underwater. Disarmament would still be pursued without success for many years, but this was the first positive outcome of any negotiations about nuclear weapons.