Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick Kempe

Author:Frederick Kempe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: 20th Century, Political Science, Europe, Berlin, Germany, John F, 1961-1989, Soviet Union, International Relations, Kennedy, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, United States, Berlin (Germany) - Politics and Government - 1945-1990, Berlin (Germany), History, Soviet Union - Foreign Relations - United States, Berlin Wall, Presidents & Heads of State, United States - Foreign Relations - Soviet Union, Diplomacy, General, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780399157295
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-05-10T18:10:01+00:00

Ulbricht and Kurt Wismach Lock Horns

OBERSPREE CABLE WORKS, EAST BERLIN

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1961

With less than forty-eight hours to go before launching his operation, Walter Ulbricht nevertheless kept a routine appointment with laborers of the Oberspree Cable Works in the southern part of East Berlin. Some 1,500 laborers gathered in a giant hall, wearing work overalls and wooden shoes that protected them against electrocution and molten metal. Some climbed up the struts of cranes for a better view; others sat atop twelve-foot-high cable rollers.

Reporting that he had just returned from Moscow, Ulbricht told his crowd, “It is imperative that a peace treaty be signed without delay [between East Germany] and our glorious comrade and ally, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” In a combative voice, he said, “Nobody can stop socialism…. Not even those who have fallen into the clutches of the slave-traders.” He said the cost to the East German economy of the refugee flight, which he called “flesh trade and kidnappings,” was two and a half billion marks a year. “Every citizen of our State will agree with me that we must put a stop to such conditions.”

Kurt Wismach, who at first appeared to Ulbricht to be just another one of the workers, boiled inside as he listened to what he considered the usual communist double-talk. Imbued with a false sense of strength as he sat far above Ulbricht on a roll of cables, he began to applaud derisively and at length after each of Ulbricht’s statements. It seemed that nothing could stop Wismach’s hands from clapping nor his voice from shouting into the silence of the hall around him.

“Even if I am the only one to say it: Free elections!” he screamed.

Ulbricht looked up at the worker and snapped back. “Now just a moment!” he shouted. “We’re going to clear this up right away!”

Wismach shouted back at the leader whom millions so feared: “Yes, and we’ll see which is the right way!”

Ulbricht shouted up at him and then turned to take in all those seated and standing in the hall around him. “Free elections! What is it you want to elect freely?…The question is put to you by the people!”

By then Wismach spoke with the courage of a man who had gone too far to reverse himself. “Have you the slightest idea what the people really think?” he yelled, seeing that most of his coworkers’ hands were frozen at their sides. No one was coming to his support.

Ulbricht waved his hands and barked back that it had been Germany’s free elections in the 1920s and 1930s that had brought the country Hitler and World War II. “Now I ask you: Do you want to travel along this same road?”

“Nein, nein,” shouted a vocal minority of party loyalists in the crowd. With each additional rebuttal from Ulbricht and his request for the crowd to support him, this group shouted more encouragement to the communist leader.

Other workers who might have sided with Wismach—likely the majority—remained silent. They realized that to

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