Much has been written about the similarities between Russia’s current war in Ukraine and past aggressive behavior.
“We’ve been through this before folks and there are lessons to be learned,” physicist and Livermore resident Tom Ramos said, comparing the invasion of Ukraine today to the Berlin Crisis of 1961.
Not many people know about Livermore laboratory’s role in preventing the Berlin Crisis from escalating into a nuclear war, but Ramos wrote the book on the subject … literally.
Ramos’ book, “From Berkeley to Berlin,” details the history of the nuclear weapons program of what is now known as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and how a group of physicists in Livermore helped avert a nuclear war in the ’60s.
Ramos will share the knowledge he garnered from years of research and interviews with weapons designers, as well as an unfathomable amount of time combing the lab’s archives, during a program entitled “How the Livermore Lab Helped Avert a Nuclear War” next Tuesday. The program is part of the Livermore Public Library and the Livermore Heritage Guild Then & Now: Livermore Stories, a free local history lecture series.
He will discuss the creation of the Berkeley and Livermore Radiation Laboratories and how the Livermore lab created a national defense strategy to deter the Soviets. President John F. Kennedy adopted this strategy in time to face Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the Berlin Crisis, in which the Soviet leader threatened to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
A brief and very elementary refresher on Cold War history might be beneficial here. At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. Berlin technically fell in the Soviet zone but was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city.
Eventually, East Germans began escaping communism by simply moving to zones occupied by America, Britain or France — particularly West Berlin.
Khrushchev quickly became tired of this and wanted division of the city to end and for it to be completely under Soviet control. To this end, in June 1961, Khrushchev issued an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the U.S. in West Berlin, and threatened the use of nuclear weapons against America.
“The nation needed to face up to communism,” Ramos said. “We had a real honest to God threat and we needed to face up and challenge it.”
Demands that the West withdraw from Berlin had been made during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s term in office. Within six months of taking office, Kennedy was tested.
“(Khrushchev) thought ‘now I can get your ass out of Berlin,'” Ramos said of the U.S., adding Khrushchev gave Kennedy six months to get out of Berlin, “because the Red Army is coming in.”
“We had a Russian thug, Nikita Khrushchev, and Kennedy faced him down,” Ramos said, without weapons being fired or bloodshed.
What gave Kennedy and his administration confidence and wherewithal to stand up to a thug was a defense strategy and weapon created by a team known as the “Rad Lab physicists.”
Work on the Polaris nuclear warhead started in 1957 at what is now known as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“In the 1950s, Livermore became an epicenter of intellects and they came up with a strategic defense that Kennedy used,” Ramos said.
“These guys were camping out here in the Tri-Valley,” Ramos said of America’s most talented nuclear physicists who came to work at the Livermore lab. “These are not bush league people. They were coming up with a strategy to get us through the Cold War.”
“Khrushchev tried to intimidate Kennedy,” Ramos said of the Soviets. “They underestimated him.”
Ramos will explain how Kennedy used the threat of the Polaris nuclear weapon and defense strategy to make Khrushchev stand down, how Kennedy was so grateful that he personally visited the team and shook the physicists’ hands and tell many stories of that time — like disclosing who the real “Dr. Strangelove” is and how an atomic bomb was driven to Novato in the back of a “woody” station wagon — at 7 p.m. Tuesday (April 19) via Zoom.
No registration is required. The live program can be accessed at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83778286286.
Editor’s note: Gina Channell Wilcox has been the president and publisher of Embarcadero Media’s East Bay Division since October 2006. Her “Around the Valley” column runs the first and third Fridays of the month.
