At Checkpoint Charlie in divided Berlin, where U.S. and Soviet tanks once faced off at point-blank range, Communist border guards last week erected Christmas trees. It was as paradoxical a symbol as any to mark the fourth anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's bold threat to force the West out of the city and sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany.
Even in Moscow there was not a hint of those old familiar ultimatums. A Khrushchev message to East German Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht pointedly omitted any reference to a separate peace treaty; Izvestia's chief spokesman on Germany, Commentator Nikolai Polyanov,...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
