Word: berlins
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perfect Pretext. Against the backdrop of military preparedness, the Soviets began an ominous propaganda campaign that seemed aimed at crippling West Berlin's economy. The Soviet government announced that it had requested the East Germans to use whatever measures were necessary to halt what it claimed was the flow of military products from West Berlin to West Germany. That announcement was followed up by a Pravda article that listed a large number of Berlin-made products, chiefly optical and electrical equipment, that the Soviets claimed were used by the West German armed forces...
While patently contrived, the Soviet charges provided the perfect pretext for interfering with freight traffic between West Berlin and West Germany. Since the products on the Pravda list include West Berlin's major exports, a ban on their transport through East Germany would strike a severe, perhaps debilitating blow at the West Berlin economy. In another charge, the Soviets accused the West Germans of breaking four-power agreements by recruiting West Berliners for the Bundeswehr. Nor did the Western allies escape Russian blasts. In an obvious threat to the allied air rights into the city, the Soviets charged that...
Britain, France and the U.S., who are the ultimate guarantors of West Berlin's security, strongly rejected the accusations of the Soviets, whom the allies hold responsible for ensuring freedom of access to West Berlin. In a last-minute effort to avert a crisis, West German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger summoned Soviet Ambassador Semyon Tsarapkin for an extraordinary 2½-hour session at the Palais Schaumburg, but failed to find a solution. After an emergency session of the West Berlin Senate, Mayor Klaus Schütz appealed to West Berliners to remain calm. They were bracing for what many...
...Reciprocity. The crisis had actually begun three weeks ago over quite a different cause. At that time, the dispute, as so often in the past, focused on the status of Berlin and the plan of the West German government to convene an electoral college there this week to choose the new President for the Federal Republic. The West Germans claim that the western half of the divided city is part of the Federal Republic. In their opinion, the convocation of the Federal Assembly there symbolizes West Berlin's political inclusion in West Germany. But the Soviets and East Germans...
...Tsarapkin helicoptered 170 miles from Bonn to Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger's weekend home in Stuttgart. Over glasses of light Swabian wine, the two men chatted amiably as the Soviet diplomat explained a way out for both sides. If the West Germans would withdraw the Federal Assembly from West Berlin, the East Germans would allow West Berliners to pass through the Wall during the Easter holidays to visit relatives in East Berlin, the first such passage permitted in three years...