Hot Communication Between USA and USSR in 1961

At Checkpoint Charlie, US and Soviet tanks faced each other at point-blank range.

If any place was ground zero for the Cold War, it was Berlin.

Awash in intrigue, the former capital of the Third Reich lay 110 miles inside the Iron Curtain but was not part of East Germany. Each of the four victorious powers in Europe in World War II—the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—held control of a sector of the city, which would be preserved as the future capital of a reunified Germany.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called it "the most dangerous place in the world." Nowhere else did the superpowers confront each other so closely and constantly. West Berlin was a source of embarrassment and aggravation to the Communist East German regime, which suffered by comparison. Large numbers of East Germans, especially skilled workers, fled to the West through Berlin.

Three times in the decades following World War II, the Soviet Union provoked crisis in Berlin. The third and last of these crises was set in motion June 4, 1961, when Khrushchev gave Western armed forces six months to get out of Berlin. The Russians had made similar demands before, but this time, they held the hard line and the situation escalated rapidly.

The Berlin Wall, constructed by the East Germans beginning Aug. 13 that year, cut off access to West Berlin. For those attempting to escape, the East German border guards had shoot-to-kill orders.

As the crisis escalated, the US Air Force and the Air National Guard reinforced NATO with the largest overseas movement of aircraft since World War II. Before it was over, US and Soviet tanks faced each other at point-blank range at Checkpoint Charlie, raising the fear the superpowers would go to war. Ramifications from the Berlin Crisis of 1961 persisted in Cold War relations for the next 30 years.

The roots of the confrontation went back to September 1944, when Allied occupation protocol divided postwar Germany into three zones, and Berlin into three sectors (Soviet, American, and British). The protocol was amended in July 1945 to provide France a role in the occupation.

Source: http://www.airforcemag.com/