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 andBritish 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.''
