Posted on 11/08/2004 7:28:41 PM PST by GoldwaterBooster
I knew it!! The History Channel special on the Berlin Wall on now says that De-classified Russian files say that Russians would have backed down if Western Allies had bulldozed the barb wire put up to start the Berlin Wall on August 12-13, 1961. The poor people of East Berlin were kept in prison for 28 years because Jack Kennedy was scared to challenge Nikita Khruchev after the collapse of the Bay of Pigs invasion just four months before. Appeasement never works. France, Britain, and USA had the right to full transit in all sectors of Berlin and if they had confronted the Soviets on the wall, a whole generation of young East Germans could have been able to escape to freedom.
OTOH, it gave Ronald Reagan one hell of a message to shout out.
This is rather progressive for the History Channel.
OK so appeasement doesn't work, but JFK had a possible nuclear holocaust to worry about. Just because he was a rat and didn't actually win his first term w/o a lot of cheating doesn't mean that most voters today don't have a favorable opinion of him. Don't piss off those swing voters!
I always thought that JFK was a lousy president. He did very little during his term of office, and he put the country through all sorts of crises with the Soviet Union because they figured he was a patsy after he backed down at the Bay of Pigs right at the start of his presidency. It was a terrible precedent.
I was in the military at the time, and while it was not a big deal I (and everyone else on active service) was extended for three months because of the Berlin crisis. Kennedy was trying to prove how "tough" he was. But he did nothing, and we all sat around and did nothing. He was constantly on the defensive as the Russians probed him for weaknesses.
Kennedy was the perfect instance of political imagery trumping actuality. Not that he was all that attractive if you saw him up close, but he was surrounded by worshippers in the press and in history departments. Kenneth Galbraith was just one of the mob of Kennedy image builders. Ugh.
Appeasement is a failure. It never worked with the Third Reich, Soviet Union, and Muslims now.
Go ahead and have a favorable opinion of JFK if you want to. But he was still very immature when he started in office at age 43 and he made a lot of mistakes his first year in office. The truth is the truth. The fact that he was martyred in 1963 and American mourned does not correct his mistakes of 1961.
Actually, it wasn't a case of the US being scared are much as it was an intelligence failure. The CIA had no idea how fragile E Berlin was and had no idea that the Russians didn't care much for it. You have to understand that the US only got serious about the intelligence business during WWII. By the time the Americans got into the game, the Russians and Germans already had it mastered. We had so many hole and moles in BOB (Base of Berlin... CIA HQ at the time) that the Russians were leading us where they wanted us to go. Don't get me wrong, I would love to blame anything on a Kennedy. However, in all fairness, Berlin was an intelligence failure from the start due to Ivory Tower CIA post-civilian lawyers didn't have the first clue on how to turn key Communists and relied on trying to turn everyone who came off the train... then trusted them once they did turn.
JFK went to Texas,where he was shot,because he was going to lose that state,LBJ as VEEP or not,in order to shore up support.
Appeasement and indecisivness never accomplish anything good.
I agree Kennedy was a lousy president...and an eastern elite on top of that.
Having General Clay force Checkpoint Charlie is one thing .... but we sure did not force the blockade on the ground in the 1940s ..... so what makes you think that we were going to confront the Soviets when the Wall went up? Documents are one thing .... "Ground Truth" is another.
A Democrat with no balls? I am shocked, shocked.
The Berlin blockade was caused by agreements made by Truman years before Ted Kennedy. The Allies agreed to let the Russians control the access to and from Berlin through the Russian sector during his administration. Patton had the right idea of pushing the Russians back to their border before ending the war. They would never have gotten the German scientists that enabled them to become a nuckear power.
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