To find out more, read our, This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. They were arguing over if they should investigate the American's travel documents because no one could pass through East or West Berlin. Standoff at Checkpoint Charlie On 22nd October 1961 the deputy Chief of the US Mission to Berlin Allan Lightner and his wife were heading for a theatre in East Berlin. But war would be avoided, if only narrowly, because President Kennedy was willing to stray from the strict anti-communist orthodoxy of official U.S. policy and pursue compromise with the Soviet Union through secret back-channel communications. The scene was tense. A small checkpoint, from which Americans could enter East Berlin. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Throwback Thursday: A look back at events on October 27, including the Checkpoint Charlie standoff in Berlin and the first air-conditioned New York subway. Meeting with US President John F. Kennedy, Premier Khrushchev reissued the Soviet ultimatum to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and thus end the existing four-power agreements guaranteeing American, British, and French rights to access West Berlin and the occupation of East Berlin by Soviet forces. On October 27, 1961, US and Soviet tanks were muzzle-to-muzzle at Checkpoint Charlie, the one glimmer of hope in the gray Iron Curtain that had descended across Europe. October 1961: "The world holds its breath: at the end of October, American and Soviet tanks stand face-to-face at the US Checkpoint Charlie on Berlin Friedrichstrasse. Another twenty Soviet tanks stood nearby. Lightner was in his car bearing diplomatic license plates. If you are not a regular subscriber to our reports, please consider signing up below. In the early years of the Cold War, they could travel freely throughout the city. On October 27, the Soviets matched this show of force by deploying ten T-54 tanks on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie. While the U.S. had nuclear superiority over the Soviets, it did not have sufficient conventional forces deployed in Europe to mount a war with the Soviet Union. What was at stake in the standoff was the ability of the Allied powers to maintain troops and protect the freedoms of West Berlin derived through treaty agreements reached with the Soviet Union at the end of the war. These peace treaty proposals were rejected; but, in Vienna, Kennedy agreed to the permanent division of Berlin. Tank stand-off at Checkpoint Charlie, October 27, 1961. Fifty years ago on October 27, 1961, US and Soviet forces took the world to the brink of war at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie. The first time I visited Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin it was a more somber reminder of the division between East and West that held for decades during the … This “island of freedom,” the home of two million people, became a symbol of U.S. support for NATO and Western Europe and stood as a challenge to the Soviet claim of entitlement to the entirety of its East German sector. Click Certificate for larger image Authorized for Active Duty and Ready Reserve Service service during the Operation Period. The orange dots represent border crossings. This site uses cookies. "Standoff at Checkpoint Charlie" Don Stivers Commemorative Edition . Train tracks were pulled up. Doing these things expands our readership. Location and how to reach. Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna, June 4, 1961. Checkpoint Charlie is (together with Glienicker Brücke) the name of the most famous border crossing between former East- and West-Berlin during the Cold War. President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, 1963. 1 year ago. This was the culmination of several days escalation of actions on both sides and the face-off of the Soviet and American tanks, with guns uncovered, the first (and only) such direct confrontation of U.S. and Soviet troops. Checkpoint Charlie. After east germany had started to built the wall and denied us officials access…” 2,523 Likes, 14 Comments - ConflictHistory (@conflicthistory) on Instagram: “ Standoff at Checkpoint Charlie, 27th October 1961. For this reason, the information about the sector borders was printed in the languages of the occupying armies, and not the residents. Khrushchev had been equally uninterested in risking a battle over Berlin. What lessons can be drawn from this incident? [Reports suggest that Clay was something of a free agent, who believed a show of force was needed to discourage further attempts by the Soviets to reduce the treaty rights of Allied personnel.]. But at 10:30 the next morning, the Soviets began to withdraw their tanks from Checkpoint Charlie. In October 1961, border disputes led to a standoff and for 16 hours the world was at the brink of war while Soviet and American tanks faced each other just 300 feet (100 meters) apart. It was designated at the sole crossing point between East and West for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. [The primary purpose of the Berlin Wall was to prevent East Germans from fleeing to the West, while allowing others to continue to enter West Berlin.]. Kennedy, himself, had campaigned on a harsh anti-communist platform as a presidential candidate and continued to espouse anti-communist orthodoxy in the early days of his administration. The city of West Berlin is completely surrounded by the Berlin Wall, shown outlined in yellow. Abandoning West Berlin would also subject another two million people — the residents of West Berlin — to Soviet control. Divided among the four allied powers into individual geographic sectors of occupation and control, like the German nation as a whole, the post-war arrangement for Berlin defied conventional concepts of governance and territorial defense. It is surmised that a variety of compromise proposals were discussed, but what was said in this meeting was never recorded and is presumed to have been discussed privately with President Kennedy. Auschwitz Guards: The faces that oversaw a genocide, 1940-1945, Forgotten photographs of a late summer Sunday in Central Park, 1942, Evgeny Stepanovich Kobytev: A soldier's face after four years of war, 1941-1945, Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota, Belgian Congo, 1904, The Kovno Garage Massacre - Lithuanian nationalists clubbing Jewish Lithuanians to death, 1941, Adolf Hitler's eye color in a rare color photo, Samuel Reshevsky, age 8, defeating several chess masters at once in France, 1920. At the Vienna summit on 4 June 1961, tensions rose. Soon the rest of the Soviet tanks withdrew, followed shortly by reciprocal withdrawal of the U.S. tanks. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Don’t let fear of the past cloud your vision. The division created an indefensible symbol of anti-communism — the city of West Berlin — that the U.S. could not easily abandon without looking weak or unprincipled. • Checkpoint Charlie by Iain MacGregor is published by Constable (£20). The American tanks are M48 Pattons and the Soviet ones are T55s. Soon after the construction of the Berlin Wall, a standoff occurred between U.S. and Soviet tanks on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie Standoff. Despite its symbolic value to the West, Kennedy had no desire to resort to nuclear weapons to defend the city of West Berlin. Throwback Thursday: A look back at events on October 27, including the Checkpoint Charlie standoff in Berlin and the first air-conditioned New York subway. Checkpoint Charlie was also the scene of the infamous showdown between the United States and Soviets. By October 27, 10 Soviet and an equal number of American tanks stood 100 metres apart on either side of the checkpoint. To order a copy for £17.60 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3837 . But the realities of post-war European geography tested the efficacy of this doctrine. General Clay of the American troops was reminded by Washington that Berlin was not so “vital” an interest to be worth risking a conflict with Moscow. Khrushchev was unflinching in seeking this outcome. 17" x 24" overall size print, 12.5" x 20" image size. As news of the standoff spread, the streets nearby filled with approximately five hundred West Berliners. What’s interesting is that the sign on the right (first picture) only has German as the fourth language down the list, and in a smaller font than the others. For several months, the young US president John F. Kennedy has been negotiating with USSR First Secretary Khrushchev, the strongman of the Soviet Union. However, this time he did so by issuing a deadline of 31 December 1961. Geography dictates what is possible. U.S. tanks facing Soviet Union tanks at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, 1961. President Kennedy approved the opening of a back channel with the Kremlin in order to defuse what had blown up. In January 1961, just days before President Kennedy was inaugurated, Khrushchev made new demands that the Allied powers cease their “occupational regime” in West Berlin. Having for this reason acquiesced in the building of the wall we must recognize frankly among ourselves that we thus went a long way in accepting the fact that the Soviets could, in the case of East Berlin, as they have done previously in other areas under their effective physical control, isolate their unwilling subjects.”. In October 1961, border disputes led to a standoff and for 16 hours the world was at the brink of war while Soviet and American tanks faced each other just 300 feet (100 meters) apart. In the summer of 1961 there was a flood of East Germans and other people from countries behind the Iron Curtain fleeing from Communist East Berlin into free West … The GDR authorities are trying to restrict the allies' freedom of movement. Points of Interest & Landmarks, Historic Sites. East German officials had begun to deny US diplomats the unhindered access to East Berlin that was part of the agreement with Moscow on the postwar occupation of Germany. Lying ninety miles inside East Germany, West Berlin was connected to the rest of West Germany by narrow highway and rail corridors. The opposing tank forces stood one hundred yards apart, on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. All Limited Edition prints are numbered and include a Certificate … American and Soviet Tanks stood just 300 feet (100 meters) apart from each other for 16 hours on the brink of a WWIII. At this range, they can easily penetrate each other, so the advantage would be with who could reload faster, which would probably be the 90 mm guns on the Pattons rather than the 100 mm guns on the T55s, but the most important factor would be probably who shot first. Armageddon lurked on the horizon. Bolshakov had first approached Robert Kennedy the previous April, representing himself as an emissary from Khrushchev and seeking a face-to-face meeting. Kennedy was trapped between the need to defend a symbol of freedom but not risk nuclear war at a time when the use of nuclear weapons was still considered a bona fide military option. Roads were obstructed with barriers topped with barbed wire. Friedrichstraße, … Kennedy dropped the strident, anti-communist line in his back-channel communications with Khrushchev — a flexibility that was at variance with the standard U.S. public policy of the day. The Berlin crisis arose from what one may term “objective factors” – the fact that West Berlin was an anomalous Western enclave well to the east of the Iron Curtain, precipitating a clash of concrete interests of the Soviet Union and the West.