Foreign News: Pressure at Berlin

When Nikita Khrushchev wants to be taken at full seriousness, he does not merely pop off at a diplomatic reception, he solemnly reads what he has to say.

Last week, before 15,000 people gathered for a Russian-Polish friendship rally in Moscow’s new Sports Palace, Khrushchev opened up what is obviously Russia’s winter offensive in foreign policy. In a first hasty reading, the world took him to mean a new hot time in Berlin. But his real goal was Germany itself.

Hot Time in Berlin. Reading slowly at lecture pace from a prepared text, .Premier Khrushchev announced: “The time has come when the powers who signed the Potsdam agreement should give up the remnants of the German occupation regime. The Soviet Union, for its part, will hand over those functions which it still retains in Berlin to the sovereign German Democratic Republic [meaning Communist-run East Germany], and the U.S., French and British can form their own relations with East Germany if they still have questions about Berlin.”

This blunt proposal to wipe out freedom’s most exposed outpost in Europe set off a flurry of excited headlines. Western diplomats had been expecting some kind of trouble over Berlin. Four days before, at a press conference, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had taken pains to be explicit: “We are most solemnly committed to hold West Berlin—if need be, by military force.” London, Paris and Bonn were just as forthright. In West Berlin, citizens inured to crises went their rounds unflustered.

Six-Month Stockpile. A big reason for Western steadiness was that West Berlin is a far more prosperous and populous community than the naked city that so desperately withstood Stalin’s 1948-49 blockade. Business is booming, the hammering sounds of construction fill the air, the shell of a new Hilton Hotel is rising near the sleek shops of the Kurfurstendamm.

All the city’s supplies still have to cross that stubborn thumb of East Germany that separates Berlin from the West; one third arrives by rail, a third by truck, a third by barge. But governing Mayor Willy Brandt, a World War II resistance hero who looks as if he could fill the shoes of the late Bur germeister Ernst Reuter of blockade-days’ fame, let it be known that his government has stashed away six months’ supplies of fuel, food and medicine, valued at $180 million. If it came to a showdown, there were always the three air lanes from the West along which the airlift planes once shuttled, and along which Pan American, Air France and

British European Airways now fly some 40 trips daily.

In East Germany Premier Otto Grote-wohl seemed almost in a hurry to say, shortly after Khrushchev’s speech, that nothing “sensational” was about to happen—then, correcting his initial announcement, added that, “naturally,” Russian troops are likely to withdraw only when Western forces pull out.

There were plenty of signs that the Russians were building up a major campaign over the ”German question.”

Columnist Walter Lippmann, after a two-hour interview with Khrushchev, reported last week that Khrushchev discussed it “with more passion than he showed on any other subject.”

In his Sports Palace speech, Khrushchev lashed out at dangerous West German “military circles” who are “playing with fire.” Playing on fears that are still lively in Poland and Czechoslovakia, Khrushchev charged that “with the approval of NATO, the ruling circles of West Germany use every means to rouse military ambitions to swallow up” former German lands to the East. To stir up latent Western antagonisms toward Germany, Khrushchev asserted: “Economically, West Germany is flying at .the throat of its West European allies.” ‘TO frighten Wrest Germans, he warned that their “geographical position” and Soviet “modern military techniques” ensure that “West Germany’s drive to the East would be a drive to death.” and that West Germany could not “survive one day of modern war.” To Walter Lippmann. Khrushchev turned right around and warned the West that, to avoid “suicidal” missile war, the Germans would probably turn to the East instead of the West, as they kid in the days of the Hitler-Stalin pact.

A Form of Legitimacy. In all this dazzling bewilderment of arguments, Khrushchev was obviously laying the groundwork for a new barter on Germany. He was not interested in reunification with free elections, which has long been Adenauer’s and the West’s position. He knows that his half has no moral authority, as shown by the number of refugees—2.000 a week—who flee to West Germany’s prosperity and freedom. But he also knows the longing of all Germans for a closer community. His apparent strategy: using Berlin as his lever, to conclude a Big Four peace treaty over Germany that would leave to the “mutual consent” of the Germans their future status. Not reunification but “confederation” would be his offer, and, in return for normalizing conditions between the two Germanys, Communist East Germany would achieve some form of legitimacy.

In such a deal, said the oily East German Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht last week, if the U.S., Britain and France had legitimate interests in West Berlin, “we would not be petty.”

Khrushchev knew that many West Germans—and not just the opposition Socialists—consider Adenauer’s stand too rigid. Adenauer’s government recently felt called upon to deny formally that any of its ministers had ever been willing to negotiate with the East Germans. To this, the East Germans coyly asked: What happened June 11, 1955 and Oct. 20, 1956? Adenauer’s government had to admit last week that on those dates Adenauer’s Finance Minister (now Justice Minister) Fritz Schaffer had indeed crossed over into East Berlin to talk with an East German minister and the Russian ambassador. Schaffer did it on his own, said Adenauer, and had not been deterred because “his conscience” required it.

At week’s end the Russian air control officer was still showing up every day to help approve Western flights to Berlin. One three-truck U.S. convoy was stopped for eight hours at the West Berlin gateway—but by Soviet, not East German guards; and hundreds of other trucks passed through without difficulty. In Moscow Nikita Khrushchev told graduates of Moscow’s Military Academies that the Soviet Union had not meant to imply the use of force at Berlin, but that his government would soon offer the U.S., Britain and France “definite, concrete proposals regarding the status of Berlin.”

Western allies, expecting a gradual Soviet turnover to the East Germans, braced themselves for a new testing of their intentions and resolutions.