Word: sectored
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...fourth. "What next?" groaned U.S. offi cials in Washington and Berlin. "Tanks?" The U.S. last week decided to put an end to the daily 2. 2 -mile circus. To the Russians went a curt announcement: as of midnight next day, there would be no more junketing through the U.S. sector to the war memorial. Instead, the Communists could either break a path through their own Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, or use the Invalidenstrasse crossing point directly into the British sector, where the monument is located...
There were some tense hours, for many West Berliners expected the Russians to try a showdown. But when the deadline came, the Soviet troops drove to Invalidenstrasse, avoiding the U.S. sector as directed. Some Westerners seemed jubilant that the West for once had made the Russians knuckle under, instead of vice versa. "Well, whaddya know," guffawed a G.I. "The Mets finally won a ball game." Whether it was even a moral victory was doubtful. Many a critic of the West's painfully cautious Berlin policy wondered aloud why the Russians were not ordered to go back to riding buses...
After bringing Berlin to the boil, Russia last week let the city simmer a while. Soviet armored cars continued to shuttle through the Western sector; they drew only scowls from the crowds that had stoned them the week before. More than 300 East Berliners turned out for the funeral of Peter Fechter, the 18-year-old bricklayer who had been shot and left to die while trying to cross the Wall. Surest sign of relaxed tensions was the Western alliance's return to disarray. Despite President Kennedy's announcement that the Big Four had agreed "in principle...
While the Soviet propaganda mill churned out charges that West Berlin had become a "NATO base," Moscow officials formally protested the stoning of its buses in the western sector, which it blamed on "fascistic elements with the obvious connivance...
Militarily, West Berlin's position deep inside Communist territory is hideously vulnerable. The western sector is 140 miles from the nearest Allied bases in West Germany; hence the U.S. preoccupation with access rights, both on land and in the air. In a test of strength with East Germany alone, the three Western powers' 11,000 man Berlin garrison would be outnumbered by Ulbricht's 24,500 armed forces and paramilitary police. They would also have to reckon immediately with the three Soviet divisions that are in and around the city. But, as General Maxwell Taylor, soon...