Berlin полностью

Aware that he himself had helped to establish the diplomatic preconditions for the Wall, Kennedy was not anxious to comply with Adenauer’s request. However, steady pressure from the chancellor, combined with entreaties from his own advisers, convinced him to make the trip. On his way to Berlin Kennedy stopped in Bonn to pick up Adenauer, who did not want to be excluded from this occasion despite his distaste for the venue and the prospect of having to share hosting duties with Willy Brandt. It would be the chancellor’s first appearance in West Berlin since the Wall went up.

Kennedy and Adenauer arrived in Berlin on the morning of June 26, 1963. Together with Brandt, they toured the city in an open car. All along the route Berliners cheered and threw flowers. It was not the sour-faced chancellor who was the object of their adoration, nor even Brandt, but the handsome American president. In Brandt’s view the homage to Kennedy “contained an element of gratitude towards a former enemy who was demonstrating to the Germans that the West’s foremost power had made its peace with them—that they had rejoined the family of nations.” Kennedy’s tour, unlike Johnson’s two years before, included stops at the Berlin Wall. Standing on a platform across from the Brandenburg Gate, which the East Germans had obscured from view with red bunting, Kennedy got a good sense of the price that the Berliners were paying for the reduction in East-West tension ushered in by the “solution” he had privately welcomed.

President John F. Kennedy, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer during Kennedy’s visit to West Berlin, June 26, 1963

Another huge crowd awaited Kennedy at Schöneberg Rathaus, where he was scheduled to deliver a major address on the status of Berlin. As he stepped to the rostrum—looking, in the words of William Manchester, “handsome, virile, and—yes—Aryan”—a mighty roar went up. Recalling that a few short years ago Germans had swooned before another charismatic leader, Adenauer asked Rusk: “Does this mean that Germany can have another Hitler?” Kennedy was not averse to a little demagoguery, and on this occasion he was determined to hit all the emotional high notes. Focusing on the political symbolism of the Berlin Wall, he intoned:

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the Free World and the Communist world. Let them come to BERLIN! There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to BERLIN! . . . And there are even a few who say that it’s true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin!”

These lines brought spirited applause, but nothing compared to what came next. On the flight over Kennedy had come up with the idea of equating the civic virtue of modern Berlin with that of ancient Rome. He had asked his aide McGeorge Bundy for a German translation of the key phrase, which he had practiced in Brandt’s office. Now, lifting one hand in the air, he intoned the famous lines: “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was ‘Civis Romanus sum.’ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’” (Bundy later realized that Kennedy should have said “Ich bin Berliner,” since “ein Berliner” could mean a doughnut. But given his policy on Berlin, what the President really should have said was “Ich bin ein West Berliner.”) Hearing Kennedy praise their city in their language, the crowd went into ecstasy, screaming for minutes on end. One of Adenauer’s aides later observed that with this one phrase Kennedy had made his audience feel that “he was a great President and friend of the Germans.” More to the point, he had made the Berliners feel important again and proud of themselves.

When Kennedy was assassinated five months later, West Berliners went into deep mourning; his death was felt as profoundly on the Spree as on the Potomac. The square in front of Schöneberg Rathaus, where he had given his historic speech, was renamed “Kennedy-Platz.” Yet the Berliners’ love for Kennedy did not extend in equal measure to later American presidents, who, along with America itself, would soon lose prestige in many (especially younger) Germans’ eyes as a consequence of the war in Vietnam and other actions that cast Washington in the role of world policeman.

Life at the Trough