Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Berlin-Cuba Crisis, 1961-1964 : The 1961-64 Wall - gebunden oder broschiert

During the period covered by this book, Ausland was a member and later Deputy Director of the Berlin Task Force, the interagency organization that coordinated U.S. policy regarding Berlin. As such, he had a first-hand opportunity to see how business was really conducted behind the scenes.

It was what may have been the most fragile and dangerous period of the Cold War. The confrontation was one of uneasily building tensions, which in fact, still have reverberations in Europe today. With his position as a participant and keen observer during the Berlin-Cuba crisis, he was provided with information about the Kennedy administration's policy-making process that may never turn up in documents.

Most books about these turbulent days stop with the division of Berlin and the immediately ensuing incidents. This perceptive account - written shortly after the author left his post as Deputy Director of the Berlin Task Force in 1964 - deduces much more. It details, for example, the Soviet efforts to interfere with air access, the Berlin role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Soviet attempt to control the movement of convoys to West Berlin. The author also gives an account of Kennedy's efforts to reach an agreement with Khrushchev on Berlin and the problems this caused with America's allies. In addition, the author has selected some of the key documents related to the crisis, including a briefing he gave Kennedy about Berlin planning and a record of the discussion at the briefing between Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara about nuclear weapons. Finally, Ausland's personal depictions of Kennedy and accounts of what was said off the record are also illuminating and frequently amusing.

Ausland's book is a revealing account of the Kennedy years of the Berlin crisis by a member of the Berlin Task Force. The task force set an innovative organizational pattern for the handling of subsequent crises within the U.S. government. A valuable aspect of the book is the documentary annexation that edifies the most serious and formative crisis of the Cold War and the most sensitive aspects of Berlin contingency planning. Some of the documents have never been published before.

John C. Ausland was born in 1920 in Wisconsin, USA. After serving as an officer in World War II and graduating from Princeton University, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1949. In addition to service abroad, he held two posts in the State Department. After retiring in 1974, he wrote several books and was a contributor to the International Herald Tribune. He died in May 1996.