JFK and Khrushchev meet in Vienna, June 3, 1961
On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met in Vienna for a two-day summit. In a letter delivered to Khrushchev in March, Kennedy proposed the two leaders meet for an informal exchange of views. Accordingly, they conferred without a set agenda.
For Kennedy, who had just turned 44, it was an initial contact with the leader of the rival superpower. For Khrushchev, 67, it was an opportunity to batter an opponent he viewed as weak and inexperienced after just four months on the job.
Some 1,500 journalists were accredited to cover the summit. Crowds lined the Viennese streets and stood on balconies as Kennedy’s motorcade drove by, while Russian expatriates greeted Khrushchev as he stepped off the train from Moscow after a journey of several days.
Subsequent accounts confirmed that the summit did not go well. Khrushchev took a particularly harsh stance over the future status of Berlin, a Western enclave within communist-controlled East Germany, where the United States, Britain and France had maintained a symbolic military presence since the German defeat in World War II.
In addition to Berlin, Kennedy later told reporters, Khrushchev had berated him on a wide range of Cold War issues, including “wars of national liberation” and nuclear weapons.
“I never met a man like this,” Kennedy told Hugh Sidey, Time magazine’s White House correspondent. “[I] talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill 70 million people in 10 minutes, and he just looked at me as if to say, ‘So what?’”
“He just beat the hell out of me,” Kennedy told James “Scotty” Reston of The New York Times. “It was the worst thing in my life. He savaged me.”
Observing Kennedy’s dour visage when the summit ended, Khrushchev noted in his memoirs that Kennedy “looked not only anxious, but deeply upset … I hadn’t meant to upset him. I would have liked very much for us to part in a different mood. But there was nothing I could do to help him … Politics is a merciless business.”
At their final meeting, Kennedy noted the chilled atmosphere over Berlin. “It is up to the U.S. to decide whether there will be war or peace,” Khrushchev said. “Then, Mr. Chairman,” Kennedy responded, “there will be war. It will be a cold winter.”
In the wake of the failed summit meeting, Kennedy won congressional approval for an additional $3.25 billion in defense spending, a tripling of draft calls, a call-up of reservists and a beefed-up civil defense program.
Khrushchev responded by resuming above-ground nuclear tests. Then, on Aug. 13, the East Germans began building a wall that quickly divided Berlin in two. Kennedy, in turn, sent Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to the city, along with an Army battle group, to reaffirm his commitment to maintain Western access.
SOURCE: “PRESIDENT KENNEDY: PROFILE OF POWER,” BY RICHARD REEVES (1993)