ABSTRACT
The year from the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis to Kennedy’s assassination saw the development of a trend in which Brandt’s political moves in Berlin became increasingly more proactive and less determined by impulses from Washington. This process began, fittingly enough, with the death of the last project pending between Berlin and Washington: the old idea of a referendum in West Berlin. In order to achieve a sounder footing for West Berlin’s status and to finally enshrine the ties with West Germany, Brandt now wanted referendum questions on the Allied presence in Berlin and relations with the Federal Republic. But while the Americans sometimes toyed with the idea of a new status, they had no intention of getting manoeuvred into a revision of their legal position. Consequently Brandt and the Allies clashed over the referendum questions, and since Brandt had no interest in a plebiscite that failed to cover the ties with the Federal Republic, while the Americans had already lost interest after its propaganda value evaporated together with the threat to Berlin in the wake of the Cuban Missile crisis, the referendum idea finally passed away.2
