"JFK, the Berlin Wall, and a Cold War Failure" Topic

"August 13, 1961, was another date that will live in infamy. That day, East German forces began constructing the Berlin Wall, erecting a physical barrier between the Soviet empire in Europe and the free world. The American president, John F. Kennedy, viewed it as a fait accompli that he was powerless to stop without risking a military confrontation with the Soviet Union. It was not Kennedy's finest hour. His inaction over Berlin merely reinforced the increasingly accepted view that Kennedy was out of his depth as president. He had earlier botched the Bay of Pigs invasion, and at the Vienna Summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev he had exhibited naivete and inexperience.

The best book on the Berlin crisis of 1961 is Frederick Kempe's Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth (2011). During the 1960 presidential election, Kempe writes, the Soviets wanted Kennedy to defeat then-Vice President Richard Nixon. The Soviets considered Kennedy a "lightweight, a product of American privilege who lacked the experience required for leadership." They were not alone in that view. Konrad Adenauer, West Germany's Chancellor, thought that Kennedy had a "dangerously flawed character and insufficient backbone." Dean Acheson, who served as Secretary of State in the Truman administration, referred to JFK as an inexperienced "gifted young amateur." President Eisenhower worried about Kennedy's youth and inexperience. At Vienna, two months before the Berlin crisis, Khrushchev told his interpreter that Kennedy was "very inexperienced, even immature." Kempe notes that when American officials saw the transcripts of the exchanges between the two leaders at Vienna, they were shocked that Kennedy had implied that the division of Europe was "acceptable and permanent," despite the fact that the Potsdam Agreement had guaranteed unrestricted movement in all of Berlin, and that the Soviets' previous effort to blockade Berlin in 1948-49 had ended with a reaffirmation of that agreement after the success of the Berlin airlift.

The motive for erecting the Berlin Wall, Kempe noted, was to stem the flow of East Germans who had been fleeing this outpost of the Soviet-communist empire since 1945. The survival of the Soviets' satellite empire was at stake. There had been uprisings within the empire in the 1950s — East Germany in 1953, and Poland and Hungary in 1956. The erection of the Berlin Wall — which would eventually reach 96 miles in length — led to the construction of fortifications along a 4,350-mile border designed to prevent citizens of the satellite nations from fleeing communist rule. It was the physical manifestation of what Winston Churchill famously called the "iron curtain" in his memorable speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in 1946…"

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Armand

I feel as if I must rise to the defense of St John Fitzgerald Kennedy against this foul calumny!

So…. Errrr…. Ummmmm….
Sorry. I got nothing. 🤷
Luckily I was too young to have voted for him, so that's a load off.

Likewise.