Berlin Crisis of 1961

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (German: Berlin-Krisecode: de is deprecated ) was an event in the Cold War. It was between United States, West Germany, and the rest of NATO against the Soviet Union, East Germany, and the rest of the Warsaw Pact. It led to the city being divided into two parts and to to the Berlin Wall being built.

Berlin Crisis of 1961
Part of the Cold War
U.S. M48 tanks face Soviet T-55 tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, October 1961.
Date 4 June – 9 November 1961 Location Checkpoint Charlie Result Stalemate Erection of the Berlin Wall on 12–13 August 1961
Belligerents
Soviet Union East Germany Supported by: Warsaw Pact (except Albania)	United States West Germany Supported by: NATO
Commanders and leaders
Nikita Khrushchev Walter Ulbricht	John F. Kennedy Konrad Adenauer

Berlin Crisis Of 1961 Media

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  President John F. Kennedy meets with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna 1961

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  East German construction workers building the Berlin Wall in 1961

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  East German water cannons near the Brandenburg Gate spray high-pressure water at West Berliners protesting the division of their city, 14 August 1961

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  West Berliners welcome the arrival of American reinforcements from the First Battle Group, 18th Infantry Regiment, 20 August 1961

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  Accompanied by a young refugee from East Germany, U. S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson greets the crowds at the Marienfelde refugee transit camp during his visit to West Berlin, 20 August 1961

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  American tanks face an East German water cannon at Checkpoint Charlie.

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  Soviet T-54 tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, October 27, 1961.

Related pages

• Nikita Khrushchev
• Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Presidency of John F. Kennedy
• Berlin Wall

Further reading

• Barker, Elisabeth. “The Berlin Crisis 1958–1962.” International Affairs 39#1 (1963), pp. 59–73. online.
• Beschloss, Michael. The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (1991) online
• Carmichael, Neil. "A Brief History of the Berlin Crisis of 1961" (US National Archives. 2011); short essay; no copyright
• Daum, Andreas (2008). Kennedy in Berlin. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85824-3.
• Durie, William (2012). The British Garrison Berlin 1945 - 1994: nowhere to go ... a pictorial historiography of the British Military occupation / presence in Berlin. Berlin: Vergangenheitsverlag (de). ISBN 978-3-86408-068-5. OCLC 978161722.
• Dowty, Alan (1989), Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement, Yale UP, ISBN 0-300-04498-4
• Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (Oxford UP, 2000) pp 45–120. online
• Gearson, John PS, and Kori N. Schake, eds. The Berlin Wall Crisis: Perspectives on Cold War Alliances (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
• Harrison, Hope Millard (2003), Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953–1961, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-09678-3
• Hornsby, R. (2023). The Soviet Sixties. Yale University Press.
• Kempe, Frederick (2011), Berlin 1961, Penguin Group (USA), ISBN 978-0-399-15729-5
• Loescher, Gil (2001), The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path, Oxford UP, ISBN 0-19-829716-5
• Lunak, Petr. "Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis: Soviet brinkmanship seen from inside." Cold War History 3.2 (2003): 53–82.
• McAdams, James (1993), Germany Divided: From Wall to Reunification, Princeton UP, ISBN 0-691-07892-0
• Newman, Kitty. Macmillan, Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis, 1958–1960 (Routledge, 2007).
• Pearson, Raymond (1998), The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, Macmillan, ISBN 0-312-17407-1
• Rasmussen, Kasper Grotle. "In search of a negotiated settlement: McGeorge Bundy and the 1961 Berlin crisis." Journal of Transatlantic Studies 14.1 (2016): 47–64.
• Schick, Jack M. The Berlin crisis, 1958–1962 (1971) online
• Sergunin, Alexander. "The role of the Executive Office of the President in the US decision-making on the Berlin crisis of 1961." Americana 15 (2017): 64–95.
• Slusser, Robert M. The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Soviet-American Relations and the Struggle for Power in the Kremlin, June–November, 1961 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1973) excerpt
• Smith, Jean Edward. The defense of Berlin (1963).
• Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and his Era (WW Norton & Company, 2003). pp 480–506.online
• Thackeray, Frank W. (2004), Events that changed Germany, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-313-32814-5
• Tompson, William. Khrushchev: A political life (Springer, 2016). online
• Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945‒1963 (Princeton UP, 1999) pp. 283–402. excerpt
• Voorhees, Theodore. The Silent Guns of Two Octobers: Kennedy and Khrushchev Play the Double Game (U of Michigan Press, 2020).
• Windsor, Philip. "The Berlin Crises" History Today (June 1962) Vol. 6, pp. 375–384, summarizes the series of crises 1946 to 1961; online.
• Zubok, Vladislav. "Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958‒1962)" (CWIHP, 1993) online, primary sources

Other websites

• The Wall, 1958–1963 Archived 28 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
• Forty Years Crisis
• First strike options and the Berlin Crisis
• The Berlin Crisis of 1961: Documents at the National Archives
• Khrushchev's Secret Speech on the Berlin Crisis, August 1961 Archived 17 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
• Conference: "From Vienna to Checkpoint Charlie: The Berlin Crisis of 1961"
• The short film Big Picture: Operation Readiness is available for free download at the Internet Archive