The Proudest Boast
 

Twelve days after the President spoke at American University, he left for a two-week tour of Europe.  His first stop was Germany.  Kennedy arrived a hero.  Throughout the country, Kennedy was mobbed by crowds.  People held up signs that read, "Hurray for Johnny," and "Keep up the good work."  Rather than miss the chance to see the American President, one bystander in Frankfurt gave birth to a child right on the street.
Kennedy's call to limit nuclear testing was popular among West Germans.  After all, since the end of World War II, when Soviet troops occupied East Germany, their country had been divided, and, if war were to break out between the U.S. and the Soviets, Germany would likely be the battleground.
Kennedy's new spirit of detente was not as popular in West Berlin, which, 100-miles from the West German border was surrounded one all sides by Soviet East Germany.  Since the end of World War II, West Berliners had been protected from Soviet attack by U.S.-led troops.  Over the past 15 years Soviets continually threatened to take over the city.  With each threat, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy airlifted military supplies into West Berlin and put U.S. troops and nuclear bombers on 15-minute red-alert.  When President Kennedy announced that he would speak in West Berlin, many residents of the city feared that they might be the next olive-branch offered to the Soviets in the President's new found priority for peace.
Kennedy and his advisors worked hard to prepare a speech that would not upset the Soviets but would also placate West Berliners' fears.  Before leaving for West Berlin, Kennedy showed a draft of the speech to an American commander.  The speech, which did not address the future, recounted the history of American commitment to the city in exhaustive detail.  "What do ya' think?," the President asked.  "It's terrible, Mr. President," came the frank reply.
On the plane to Berlin, Kennedy decided to alter the speech.  "What was the proud boast of the Romans...Civis Romanus sum?," Kennedy asked an aide.  "Send Bundy here.  He'll know how to say it in German."
The President's German was not good.  Newsweek correspondent Ben Bradlee, who was on the plane, reported that Kennedy spent the better part of an hour with a foreign service officer before he could master the sole line Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a Berliner).
When Kennedy landed, he was scheduled to look over the top of the Berlin Wall, which Communist authorities had erected to keep East Germans from fleeing to the West.
The Soviets blocked his view by hanging red banners and anti-Western propaganda from one of the city gates.
Kennedy then met with families whose relatives had been killed trying to escape from East German.
Shocked at what he heard and angered at the sight of the wall, Kennedy once again revised the speech.
When the President climbed the platform to begin his address, he looked out on the largest crowd he had ever seen--more than one-million people, nearly 80 percent of the entire city's population had assembled.  When Berliners started chanting his name, Kennedy gave the crowd what it most wanted to hear.
When he had finished, the President was euphoric.  His advisors were not.  The President had completely forgotten the spirit of the American University address.  Crowds were nearly rioting, and West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt had to order troops on alert to prevent people from lunging at the wall.
Kennedy speech writer Ted Sorensen, writing in The Kennedy Legacy, explained what had happened:

[Kennedy's] speech illustrated both the spontaneous eloquence an [enraged] audience could arouse in him and the dangers of stump speeches on foreign policy.  He sounded as though he were rallying opposition to the very kind of collaboration with the Soviets he was then seeking on the Test Ban Treaty... The incident illustrated JFK's dilemma:  He was at his most forceful best when discussing extemporaneously as an individual those world issues about which he cared the most; but those were the very issues which required him to speak as President from a carefully prepared and distributed text.
 

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