Berlin

Problems connected to Berlin left a deep imprint on the Kennedy presidency. Moving beyond both heroic and revisionist views, this chapter argues that the story of Kennedy and Berlin is full of contingencies, crises, and contestations - both vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and within the Western alliance. JFK himself stood at the center of his administration’s decisions on Berlin. He ultimately succeeded in understanding that the Berlin questions were part of the growing interconnectedness of military, political, and economic challenges. Kennedy avoided a military conflict over the divided city and defined new “essentials” for securing West Berlin only. Against West German opposition, he decoupled the fate of West Berlin from the issue of German unification and subordinated it under the aim of entering a phase of détente between the superpowers. JFK, too, utilized the particular appeal that “America’s Berlin” had to the publics on both sides of the Atlantic.