ABSTRACT
The so-called ‘Khrushchev Ultimatum’ of November 1958 triggering the second Berlin crisis heralded one of the tensest phases of the Cold War in Europe. For the first time, it raised the spectre of a nuclear showdown in which the West no longer enjoyed an unquestioned superiority over the Soviet Union. This Soviet challenge tested first of all the credibility of the policies the Western powers so far had adhered to on the German and the Berlin questions. It tested the Cold War policies of the West by confronting its governments with a number of awkward questions: Were the three former Western occupation powers really resolved to insist on their rights in Berlin? Were they prepared to defend the political independence of the city’s population and its ties to the Federal Republic? Were they determined to uphold West Berlin’s position as the decisive gap in the Iron Curtain-an opening that permitted East Germans to flee to West Germany-created a continuous brain drain that undermined the GDR and, as the Bonn government claimed, thus preserved the chances of reunification? Were the Western powers resolved to risk a military or even nuclear showdown in order to defend all these various interests?
