Cold War cables declassified
The Washington Times reports that several thousand cables between US government agencies in regards to incident reports of events in Berlin have been declassified for historians’ review;
“What really struck me the most was the day-to-day nature of the confrontation in Berlin,” said Donald P. Steury, a historian at the CIA. “Every day there was something happening. Minor incidents that could’ve escalated into something significant.”
The cables offer a kaleidoscopic picture of life in the divided city: negotiations over East German workers smuggling a bouquet of flowers across the border to present to President Kennedy, pending Secret Service inspection, during his 1963 visit. The “tense, hushed” crowd that “sobbed openly” as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached in an East Berlin church a year later. East German displeasure after young rioters damaged five S-Bahn trains following the 1965 Rolling Stones concert in West Berlin (one State Department cable described the group as “jazz” and “English beat-singers”). The behind-the-scenes Soviet protest to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after a Nikon camera containing aerial photos of Soviet army units tumbled out of a foreign plane over East Germany.
Documents also include a big-picture strategy that could involve a nuclear confrontation, escape attempts using a homemade submarine of dubious quality uncovered in West Berlin, low-level conflicts such as consternation over communist flags on East German locomotives pulling U.S. military trains and U.S. negotiations with the Soviets on the propriety of curtains in military liaison vehicles.
It all seems so inconsequential now. You can read my own experiences, not in Berlin, but along the intra-German border in Bavaria at this link.
Category: Historical
“It all seems so inconsequential now.”
Your comment calls to mind this essay by retired USA Col. Andrew Bacevich:
“The Unmaking of a Company Man: An Education Begun in the Shadow of the Brandenburg Gate”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175290/
“…I began to entertain this possibility: that the truths I had accumulated over the previous twenty years as a professional soldier — especially truths about the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy — might not be entirely true.”
I love Cold War stories. They take me way back, to high school. Kids today have no idea.
I barely remember the wall coming down but I’ve been doing my homework about Berlin during the Cold War. I was lucky enough to serve with some that had served in the Berlin Brigade. Any downtime I’d pick their brains about any/every detail they’d talk about or remember. I’ve never understood why this was so damn important but I get if my generation doesn’t at least remember then that old trope may happen again. Hats off to you Veterans and to my Countrymen that lived through these times.
The “Cold War” wasn’t always particularly cold. One hundred twenty-six US personnel remain unaccounted for from the “Cold War”.
Shooting incidents were fairly common. This article relates the result of one such shooting incident. There were many others.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=34712
Oh Crap, I hope they don’t post the pictures of a bunch of drunken GI’s from C/2/6 who went up to the Berlin wall in 76 and pissed on it.
(I think I covered my face….)
Oh, you didn’t! My kind of guy! I SO wanted to do something like that.
All I can think is “Thank God we didn’t have Obumbles as president back then.”
We didn’t worry about small arms fire – we worried about the whole Warsaw Pact armies and tactical nukes. Thank God ours never happened….