Abstract

In a speech at Moscow's sports stadium on 10 November 1958, and in a diplomatic note sent subsequently to the governments of the other three powers, Khrushchev put the status of the four powers in doubt by threatening to entrust control over movement within Berlin to the DDR and by "normalizing" the situation in Berlin within six months if the West was not disposed to reach an agreement. The Americans, British and French were thus posed with the choice of giving up their original victors' rights or else facing a confrontation. Such was the start of the "second Berlin crisis", whose most dramatic moment was the construction of the Berlin Wall. This article retraces in all their complexity the circumstances which led to the crisis and which eventually brought about a deal with the Soviet bloc countries.