With President Kennedy permanently glorified for history by a battalion of hagiographers (Arthur M. (Schlesinger Jr., Theodore C. Sorensen and uncountable other droolers) debunkers of his mythology face a serious public-opinion obstacle. But history has a way of getting beyond unblinking idolatry, and we are learning that many events presented as JFK’s “presidential triumphs” were in reality serious glitches in both performance and results.
Such surely was the case in his handling of the bold decision by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to build the infamous Berlin Wall in 1961 - a barrier that split East and West Berlin and left much of Eastern Europe in unnecessary communist thrall for three extra decades.
As Frederick Kempe, former diplomatic correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, details in his richly researched study of the Berlin Wall crisis, East Germany was imploding in 1961. One in six people - 2.8 million - had fled to the West since the East German state had been established in 1949, including the country’s most talented and motivated people. The unrest was spreading to other communist bloc nations, putting Khrushchev under tremendous political pressure from his ruling Politburo.
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