The Berlin Wall had just come down, and this rich discussion with three men who

were behind the scenes in Washington and London starts with the erection of the Wall in

1961. (Macmillan served as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, stepping down just a

month before Kennedy was killed.) One sample: AH: "From Kennedy's point of view,

Cuba, ninety miles off the coast of Florida, was absolutely overriding, and it swept off his

vision any threat to Berlin. Macmillan, three thousand miles away but much closer to

Europe, saw Berlin as the possible danger, and he saw that what Khrushchev may have

been playing, as he often did in his rather crazy, adventurous policies, was a maximum

and a minimum. The maximum was achieved if Kennedy lost his nerve and he could get Cuba, and then he could roll up Berlin. But the minimum might have been to have taken

Berlin as a pawn and exchange a pawn ... over Cuba.".