U.S. had A-bomb plan to keep Berlin

Press, 29 March 1982, Page 8

U.S. had A-bomb plan to keep Berlin

i NZPA-Reuter Washington i American officials were i ready in 1959 for nuclear ' war if that was necessary to hold on to West Berlin, according to previously secret Senate testimony released at the week-end. Christian Herter. then Acting Secretary of State, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee then that the Western Powers hoped to negotiate but were ready to go to war if the Soviet Union tried to drive them out of West Berlin. r “We are in good position to meet what may be the ultimate threat.” Mr Herter testified on March 10, 1959.” “When you say ultimate threat, do you mean nuclear bombing?” ’ Senator Mike Mansfield (Democrat. Montana) asked. “It would have to come to that,” Mr Herter replied. i The testimony by officials

in the late President Dwight Eisenhower’s Administration was made public by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr Herter said that nuclear weapons would have to be used because it would take years for the West to build up forces to match Soviet bloc troops for a conventional war. The Soviet leader, Nikita Kruschchev, had demanded in November, 1958, that the Western Powers remove their forces from West Berlin and make it a free, demilitarised city. West Berlin’s Mayor, Willy Brandt, called Mr Kruschchev’s move a Soviet plot to take over the city, and the Western Powers rejected the demand. Mr Krushchev withdrew it later in 1959 during his tour of the United States in an easing of Cold War tension.

Mr Herter said in the testimony: "To fight a conventional war without nuclear weapons would probably' take anywhere from one to two years. That has never been visualised." He said he was convinced that the Soviet Union would not try to drive the West out of West Berlin if it knew that it would mean nuclear war. A former Assistant Secretary of State, Livingston Merchant, said that the Soviet Union would back down if it knew, "we are prepared to retaliate with everything we have” to an attack on Western supply lines to West Berlin. But later he said that the West's .military response would depend on the provocation, and that nuclear war would come only if the Soviet bloc used • military force to drive Western troops out of West Berlin.