He launched his massive attack in November 1958:in a note addressed to the United States, France and Great Britain, he accused the Western powers of fomenting disorder in Germany and of using Berlin to carry out subversive plots. against all socialist nations. He demanded that the occupation of Berlin be ended within six months, otherwise the Soviet Union would conclude a separate treaty with East Germany and end the occupation anyway.
These excessive demands, which he later abandoned, had exactly the result he had hoped for:creating a crisis and pinpointing weak points in the policy of each of the Allies. He detected in American politicians a growing tendency to compromise. In Geneva the following year, the United States even showed a certain willingness to give in on certain points concerning Berlin in the hope of placating the Soviets. The intransigence seemed to be succeeding.
Meanwhile, the East Germans continued their "Salami" tactic of removing thin slices of Western rights. They forced the West German Bundestag and a refugee organization to cancel meetings in Berlin on the grounds that they constituted an attack on the sovereignty” of East Germany. They demanded that diplomats going to the eastern zone show their papers. All of these vexatious measures undermined the Western position and led to an implicit recognition of East Germany's right to control its own territory.
In Vienna, in June 1961, Khrushchev renewed his offensive, this time against Kennedy, who began to consider with concern the possibility of war. Khrushchev had put his finger on the weak point of the Americans:they were ready to negotiate. This attitude, common especially to the members of the new administration, inclined them to consider the refugees from East Berlin as an obstacle to the establishment of better relations with the Soviet Union. They were therefore ready, in essence, to accept the closing of the border - as long as West Berlin was not affected - so that East-West relations could take a more normal course.
In the month following the meeting Khrushchev gave six important speeches in which he raised the question of Berlin. He announced that the Soviet military budget would be increased by 25%. Even when Kennedy responded by expressing the determination of the West to fight if necessary over Berlin, he did so by emphasizing the terms West Berlin as if the agreements on the entire capital did not concern the Americans.
At the beginning of August, the leaders of the Warsaw Pact met in Moscow and Khrushchev agreed to what Ulbricht insisted on:the closing of the border between the two Berlins.
Khrushchev took advantage of the return of Titov, the cosmonaut, to deliver a
shattering speech in which it was of the "military hysteria" of the United States, of the "orgy of revanchist passions" of West Germany.
Westerners, he said, had to keep their blood- cold, thus playing on their fears of an escalation towards war. With hindsight, this can only be interpreted as a clear warning against any intervention. He even had the British Ambassador in Moscow, Sir Frank Roberts, summoned to his box in the Bolshoi to let him know the number of bombs expected to destroy Britain.
He was, admittedly, high time the communists took action. East Germany had lost two million people to the West since 1948. Industrial projects could not be realized; agriculture lacked hands and latent strikes hampered production. A vicious circle had formed and the crisis that was causing people to leave only intensified.