Historical North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Agenda

1. Agenda item 1

   1961 Berlin Crisis

   Berlin, 1961. A free city sits deep inside communist East Germany, and every day thousands of East Germans walk across the sector line and never come back. Millions have left since the end of the war. Moscow and East Berlin see the city as an open wound. The West sees it as a promise it cannot afford to break.

   At Vienna in June, Khrushchev made his position clear to a young President Kennedy. Sign a peace treaty with East Germany or the Soviet Union will sign one alone and hand over control of the access routes to West Berlin. Washington has answered by calling up reserves and raising its defence budget. Then, on the night of 13 August, barbed wire goes up across the city.

   The Alliance now faces a choice with no safe option. Push too hard and the world could slide into nuclear war over a single city. Do too little and every ally will wonder whether NATO's guarantees mean anything at all.