Office of the Historian

106. Letter From President Kennedy to Senator Mike Mansfield0

Washington, August 28, 1962.

Dear Mike: I want to thank you for your thoughtful memorandum of August 25 about the situation in Berlin.1

1.
Your memorandum concentrates mainly on the problem of East Berlin. I think the truth is that East Berlin is not an issue of war and peace for us, and therefore we should not adopt any of the more drastic alternatives proposed in your memorandum. The time for a fight over an effective Western role in East Berlin passed, if it ever existed, many years ago—about the time of the first blockade. Our contingency plans therefore do not call for shooting over developments which may affect the relatively unimportant access we now have to East Berlin.
2.
The crucial question remains that of West Berlin, and our attention is currently focused on what we should do to sustain the vital interests which do indeed exist there, in the event of further Soviet steps looking toward the increasingly complete incorporation of East Berlin into East Germany. There may be important things which we can do to strengthen our own ties to West Berlin, and perhaps the ties of West Berlin to West Germany, in this event. The three basic rights—of presence, access, and viability—which we have been asserting throughout this Administration all relate to West Berlin and not East Berlin; it is on this position that we shall continue to base our planning.
3.
I entirely agree with your view that we should keep our Allies with us as we move ahead in this crisis and use the UN wherever it can help us. But both Allies and the UN seem to me to have their main importance [Page 290] in connection with West Berlin, and not with the remnants of our role in a section of the city which has been under effective Soviet control for a decade and a half.

Sincerely,

JFK2
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 762.00/8–2862. Secret. The source text bears no drafting information.↩
  2. A copy of this memorandum, attached to a White House memorandum of transmittal, dated August 30, is ibid., 762.00/8–3062.↩
  3. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩