JUNE 1961
President John F. Kennedy took small bites from a breakfast roll and sipped a glass of orange juice as Air Force One navigated clear skies during the two-hour flight from Paris, France, to Vienna, Austria.
He was on the second leg of his first visit to Europe as the leader of the Western world. The crew of Air Force One departed after a slow start on the morning of Saturday, June 3, 1961, as the plane was delayed at Orly Field by the late arrival of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary, her maid, and a mountain of luggage. The president was glad to have a few more precious moments to review the briefing books for his first summit with Nikita Khrushchev.
Kennedy leafed through the leather-bound dossier describing Khrushchev’s complicated psychological profile, compiled by American intelligence analysts. The president had met Khrushchev only briefly in Washington, DC, in 1959, just long enough to jot down descriptions of the premier’s dress and vodka consumption during his meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Intelligence experts warned that the Russian leader’s manner ranged from cherubic to choleric and that he often became visibly angry before abruptly switching to more amiable topics during meetings. But their report also stated that a softer side to the sixty-seven-year-old Khrushchev’s volcanic personality had begun to emerge in his advancing years. The CIA believed that the Soviet leader’s pace had slowed and that he was now prone to taking frequent vacations. The dossier revealed that Khrushchev had made frequent mention of his age and health and was concerned about possible problems of succession should he decide to step down.
Which side of Nikita Khrushchev’s personality would the American president encounter in Vienna?
Kennedy’s youth and his recent handling of the Bay of Pigs fiasco had put him at a disadvantage on the world stage. This European tour had begun with a courtesy call to French president Charles de Gaulle. The meeting with de Gaulle was set up as a tune-up bout for the young American president before his showdown with Khrushchev in Vienna.
“De Gaulle likes fighters,” explained Pierre Mendes-France, France’s former minister of foreign affairs, during a conversation with an American intelligence source one month prior to Kennedy’s meeting. Mendes-France had served with de Gaulle in the Free French forces during World War II but now considered him a political adversary.
“[He] may become huffy, but he respects candor,” Mendes-France went on to say.
He urged Kennedy to stand his ground with the six-foot-five French leader.
“During the war, he had one fight after another with Winston Churchill, but these were argued in the open, and in consequence, de Gaulle respects Churchill more than any other statesman of our time.”1
AFTER AN AWKWARD greeting at the airport in Paris, at which Kennedy failed to acknowledge a waiting color guard performing in his honor, the president was escorted to the Quai d’Orsay, where he freshened up before his lunch with de Gaulle at the Élysée Palace. While Kennedy’s young wife dazzled Parisians in the City of Light, he was sequestered at the French president’s palatial residence discussing de Gaulle’s commitment to Western unity and Kennedy’s obligation to France, “America’s oldest friend.”
De Gaulle wanted to pull his country away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and establish his own nuclear-armed defensive perimeter against the Soviet Union.
“[The Soviet Union] has perhaps ten times the killing power of France,” he told Kennedy. “But she might not attack if she knew that France could tear an arm off Russia.”2
Kennedy was direct with his counterpart. He asked de Gaulle to suspend his goals for a greater France until the fate of Berlin was settled or at the very least tension had died down. The American president reiterated his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower’s pledge to retaliate with nuclear weapons should the Soviet Union wage an attack on Western Europe.
“I regard European and American defense as the same,” Kennedy told de Gaulle.
“Since you say so, Mr. President, I believe you,” he replied.
De Gaulle assured Kennedy that France would follow America’s lead during the crisis over Berlin but would move ahead with its plans to build a nuclear arsenal in the future.
Kennedy saw this as a victory over the French leader, whom he considered “selfish.”
That evening at a formal dinner in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, President Kennedy used a touch of humor to reinforce America’s commitment to its longest-standing ally. “It is not difficult for this President of the United States to come to France,” Kennedy said as he raised a glass to de Gaulle, his host. “I sleep in a French bed. In the morning, my breakfast is served by a French chef.… I am married to a daughter of France.”
As talks ended between the two leaders at the close of Kennedy’s visit, de Gaulle told him, “I have more confidence in your country now.” Despite a thirty-year age difference between the two men, Kennedy had earned the French president’s respect.
The young president had used a combination of guile and tact to win over de Gaulle, the last great figure from World War II. On the short flight from Paris to Vienna, Kennedy met with his advisors to go over the final game plan for the summit with Khrushchev.
“Avoid ideology,” warned Llewellyn Thompson, former US ambassador to the Soviet Union. “Khrushchev will talk circles around you.”
Averell Harriman, who had served as US ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II, urged Kennedy to relax and take it easy. “Be humorous, open and funny,” he advised.
But Kennedy’s first visit to Europe as commander in chief was as much about style as about substance. He remained under constant care by a team of doctors for excruciating back pain compounded by Addison’s disease but would not allow a physician even to be photographed in his presence.
Advisors had urged him to use crutches during meetings with de Gaulle in Paris and later with Khrushchev in Vienna. The president refused, saying he was not going to meet the Soviet premier “as a cripple.” He believed that signs of Franklin Roosevelt’s physical weakness at the Yalta Conference in 1945 had infused Soviet leader Joseph Stalin with the confidence to act boldly and pry Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia from Western influence and control.
As he had during the campaign, Kennedy ingested a cocktail of prescription drugs to help him project an image of youthful vigor and steely resolve. Each morning while in Europe, he received a shot of cortisone to keep him upright. The young leader had become dependent on the drug, which concerned Admiral George Buckley, the White House physician, who knew that Kennedy’s mood could swing from high to low when the effects of the medicine wore off. President Kennedy received procaine injections as many as three times a day to help numb the pain. But still it wasn’t enough. Also accompanying Kennedy on the trip, but kept out of public view, was Dr. Max Jacobson, an eccentric New York physician who injected the president with formulas that contained amphetamines, steroids, and even animal organ cells. Once, when confronted by his brother Bobby about the potential dangers of Dr. Jacobson’s “cocktail,” the president reportedly replied, “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.”3
But no one was overseeing the variety and amount of drugs the president was taking, and that meant no one understood the potential side effects.
Kennedy stared out a window of Air Force One as it landed and taxied down the runway in Vienna. Hundreds of well-wishers stood in the late-spring rain awaiting the young president and his beautiful wife. Supporters waved signs reading “Give ’em hell, Jack!,” “Lift the Iron Curtain,” and “Jackie… Ooh, la, la.” The president was not the only one with Roosevelt’s past mistakes fresh in mind. Austrian activists were also on hand at the airport passing out leaflets reading, “Mr. Kennedy, Europe does not forget Yalta.”
Despite the pain in his lower back, Kennedy descended the stairway of Air Force One with confidence and strode across the tarmac smiling, before climbing into a waiting limousine. By contrast, Soviet premier Khrushchev nearly stumbled off his train after it pulled into Austria’s capital city, where he was greeted by a small crowd that included four young Austrian girls wearing flowery dresses and frightened expressions, holding bouquets of flowers for Khrushchev’s third wife, Nina.
President Kennedy’s motorcade carved its way through Vienna’s winding roads and regal boulevards before arriving at the US embassy residence at Weidlich Gasse. The embassy lacked the grandeur of the Vienna Opera House and the nearby Schönbrunn Palace. The mansion was a foreboding place surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence and patrolled by military guard dogs. Despite the American seal over the entrance and Old Glory waving atop the flagpole, the estate looked very much as it had when it served as headquarters for Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) during World War II. Vienna had once housed the largest Gestapo headquarters outside Berlin; an estimated 50,000 people had been questioned and tortured there, then marched off to concentration camps. The president and First Lady were escorted to the second floor of the residence, where they would be staying along with Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s secretary of state, and Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers, two close friends and advisors since JFK’s Harvard days. As the delegation settled in, Kennedy paced the hallways with arms folded. He was nervous, and it showed. He turned to his “Dr. Feelgood” for help.
Max Jacobson administered an injection to relieve Kennedy’s back pain, and the president was then fitted with a tight corset to keep him from stooping over. Jack Kennedy appeared tall and presidential as he greeted his Cold War rival on the front steps of the American embassy. The two world leaders shook hands and exchanged pleasantries as news photographers snapped pictures that would appear on the front pages of newspapers and magazines around the world.
After formal introductions to Kennedy’s staff, Khrushchev was escorted into the embassy’s music room, which happened to be built directly over an escape tunnel once used by the Nazis. When they were seated together on a sofa, Kennedy reminded the Soviet leader that the two had met once before.
“As I recall, you were late for that meeting,” Khrushchev reminded his young adversary.
Kennedy responded with charm. “As I remember, you said I looked too young to be a senator, but I’ve aged a lot since then.”
Khrushchev returned the serve with equal charm. “The young always want to look older and the old to look younger.”
Polite smiles soon gave way to politics as the leaders addressed the big white elephant in the room—the divided city of Berlin. For the Soviets, the gaping wounds of World War II had not fully healed.
“Sixteen years have passed since the war,” Khrushchev reminded Kennedy. “The USSR lost 20 million people in that war and many of its areas were devastated. Now Germany, the country that unleashed that war, has again acquired military power and has assumed a prominent position in NATO.”4
Khrushchev told Kennedy that German military strength “constituted a threat of World War III which would be even more devastating than World War II.” The stockpile of nuclear weapons now available to NATO and the Soviet Union made this a reality easy for all to grasp. The Russian leader urged his American counterpart to sign a peace treaty under a myriad of conditions, including the recognition of two separate Germanys—East and West—and, most importantly, the evacuation of most US troops from Berlin.
“A united Germany is not practical because the Germans themselves do not want it,” Khrushchev claimed.
“We are in Berlin not because of someone’s sufferance,” Kennedy replied. “We fought our way there, although our casualties may not have been as high as the USSR’s. We are in Berlin not by agreement of East Germans but by contractual rights.”
The president stressed that Western Europe was vital to the national security of the United States and that American servicemen had supported it through blood and sacrifice in two world wars. Kennedy also told Khrushchev that if the United States left Berlin, Europe would feel abandoned also.
“Loss of a drop of blood equals the loss of a pint of blood by those who shed that blood,” said Khrushchev, whose son Leonid, a Soviet fighter pilot, had been shot down and killed in 1943. “The U.S. lost thousands and the USSR lost millions, but American mothers mourn their sons as deeply as Soviet mothers shed tears over the loss of their beloved ones.”
These painful losses and Khrushchev’s belief that Hitler’s generals now held high positions in NATO were reason enough for the USSR to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany that could block American access to the city of Berlin.
Kennedy reminded his rival that he had also lost a loved one in the war—his brother Joe.
“I didn’t come to Vienna to talk about a war of twenty years ago,” President Kennedy said in frustration. “The decision to sign such a peace treaty is a serious one. The USSR should consider that in light of its national interests.”
Khrushchev would not budge. During a walk together in the residence gardens and later back in the music room of the mansion, the Soviet leader continued to take a hard stance on Berlin. Kennedy had grown tired, and his mood most likely shifted as his body felt the effects of the drugs wearing off. He let his mental guard down and Khrushchev seized the opportunity. The Soviet leader slowly lured Kennedy into a classic struggle of ideas, where the American president, a realist, proved no match for Khrushchev’s impassioned rhetoric. JFK had failed to heed Llewellyn Thompson’s warning not to fall into this political trap.
When it came to the virtue of each political system—communism versus capitalism—Khrushchev felt that history would prove the fairest judge. “If capitalism ensures better living for people, it will win,” he lectured Kennedy. “If communism achieves the goal, it will be the winner.”
The Soviet leader said that his country did not spread its influence through the barrel of a gun but instead supported “the aspirations of the people” for a better life—a better way. The United States, not the USSR, was focused on world domination, according to Khrushchev. The case in point was the continued US meddling in Cuba. Kennedy’s counterpart reminded him that the United States had supported corrupt Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista before Castro overthrew him.
Khrushchev then said the three words Kennedy had been expecting and dreading: Bay of Pigs.
The pain and embarrassment were still fresh in Kennedy’s mind, and his closest confidants had urged him to postpone the summit in Vienna until the United States had regained the ideological and moral high ground against the USSR.
The Bay of Pigs invasion “only strengthened the revolutionary forces and Castro’s own position,” Khrushchev eagerly pointed out. “The people of Cuba were afraid they would get another Batista and lose the achievements of the revolution.”
“Castro is no communist,” he argued. “But you are well on your way to making him a good one.”
The words stung Kennedy, who knew they were accurate. Fidel Castro’s victory at the Bay of Pigs had buoyed his popularity and his stranglehold on Cuba.
When the conversation later turned to the turbulent situation in Laos, Khrushchev continued his verbal attack, saying that he believed Kennedy knew full well that the United States had manufactured the coup that ousted the small country’s leader, Prince Souvanna Phouma, in December 1960, a month before the American president’s inauguration. A year later, both countries were infusing Laos with armaments in its civil war. The Soviet premier warned that this conflict on the far side of the world could trigger a clash between the USSR and the United States.
Once again, the short, pudgy former metalworker from Ukraine had the Ivy League–educated Kennedy at a loss for words. When he did respond, the young president opened a door that would lead to possible Armageddon.
“We regard Sino-Soviet forces and the forces of the United States and Western Europe as being more or less in balance,” Kennedy admitted.
Although the president did not fully realize it, his words marked the first US admission that Soviet military strength was on par with its own. This statement only reinforced Khrushchev’s view that Kennedy was both inexperienced and weak. JFK, Khrushchev thought, was certainly not ready to take decisive action during a crisis. The world was now up for grabs, and the Cold War was about to come to a boil. When the young president returned to Washington, he sat down for an off-the-record conversation with Time magazine reporter Hugh Sidey, who asked what Khrushchev was like.
“I never met a man like this,” President Kennedy told him. “I talked about how a nuclear exchange would kill seventy million people in ten minutes and he just looked at me as if to say, ‘So what?’ My impression was that he just didn’t give a damn if it came to that.”5