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Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair

Tekijä: Michael R. Beschloss

JäseniäKirja-arvostelujaSuosituimmuussijaKeskimääräinen arvioMaininnat
310683,844 (4.11)1
Describes the shocking event in 1960 when an U.S. spy plane was shot down in the Soviet Union just prior to a vital summit meeting.
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Summary: A detailed accounting of the shoot-down of a U-2 CIA reconnaissance flight over the USSR and the consequences that increased Cold War tensions between Eisenhower and Kruschchev and their respective countries.

After Sputnik, it was one of the first international events I remembered. A high altitude plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down during an overflight of the Soviet Union. Both Powers and enough of the plane survived to make clear that it was clear that it was a spy plane from the US. At first, the U.S. President Eisenhower believed that the plane was destroyed. That’s what he was told would happen. First they responded with silence, then a cover story of a NASA weather observation plane off course. Only when Kruschchev revealed that Powers had survived and they knew enough that it was clear he was doing aerial spying did Eisenhower finally take responsibility. Kruschchev thought he would take the cover Kruschchev offered, blaming it on subordinates and firing them. Eisenhower wasn’t that kind of guy, but the bungling had sown deep distrust in the lead-up to a four nation summit, meant to de-escalate continuing conflict over Berlin and Germany, both divided into East and West. The Summit ended up a disaster. Kruschchev was deeply offended and walked out early. An invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union was rescinded, a deep disappointment after the warm personal relations they had developed on a visit the previous year at Camp David and the Eisenhower farm. What Eisenhower hoped would be a crowning achievement of his eight year presidency ended in disappointment. All because of a downed plane.

Or was it? That’s one of the questions Michael Beschloss raises and leaves with us. On the face of it, the overflight was a deep offense, a breach of trust, especially since it occurred on Mayday, the Soviet equivalent of the Fourth of July. Behind the scenes, though, militaristic elements in the Kremlin were already coming to think that Kruschchev was too soft on the Americans, and were fearful that he would give away too much in negotiations on Berlin. Kruschchev was walking a tightrope. He wanted to lower military expenditures and invest more in a flagging economy. Beschloss raises the question of whether the downed plane gave Kruschchev cover to take a hard line, which he may have had to do anyway. The overflight and the American admission of spying allowed him to do so from the moral high ground of the moment.

Then there were questions about Power’s story. Was he really shot down or did something else account for him being taken into custody? For one thing, he survived. The plane was relatively intact for being shot down at 70,000 feet. Pilots were supposed to hit a self-destruct switch before ejecting. Powers claimed he was unable to. The fact that Powers apologized at all, even though he refused to denounce the US made him suspect or weak in the eyes of some. Why hadn’t Powers been better prepared for the possibility of surviving a shoot-down?

The book explores a number of questions around the Eisenhower administration. Why did they release a series of cover stories before admitting they were lies? Did the CIA fail the president in the assurances they gave him concerning the impossibility of a U-2 pilot surviving a shoot-down? Why didn’t Eisenhower take advantage of Kruschchev’s early arrival at the Summit to seek out a private meeting to see if he could resolve the tensions between them? And why did Eisenhower authorize a flight so close to the Summit?

Beschloss explores the intelligence dilemma that led to the pressure to approve these flights. The fear of a “missile gap” was driving pressure to increase defense spending. The intelligence gained through these overflights enabled him to fend off these pressures and control spending. There was no “missile gap.” Just a lot of boasting. The intelligence also helped defense planners to plan for the unthinkable, knowing better what assets to target. The Soviet Union was able to acquire this information with ease in the U.S., an open society. There was no comparable way for the U.S. to gather this intelligence, and overflying satellites were a few years away. One has the sense in the end, as regrettable as the U-2 incident was, that most feel the intelligence reaped over the years justified the incursions into Soviet airspace and the concomitant risks.

Finally, this is an interesting study of how easy it is in tense international relationships for parties to misinterpret each other’s acts and not to understand how they are perceived by others. Eisenhower concluded that because Kruschchev didn’t bring up the overflights at Camp David, he had decided to tolerate them. Kruschchev had decided they had repeatedly denounced these flights and that it wouldn’t help his relationship with Eisenhower, who he thought did not know about them. Kruschchev didn’t expect Eisenhower to take responsibility for the spying.

Beschloss offers a well-researched account that helps us understand this period of the Cold War. He helps make sense of the climate President Kennedy inherited. He also offers the intriguing perspective that the U-2 affair was the first in a series of events leading to Kruschchev’s downfall. Beschloss exposes some of the internal dynamics that weren’t clear to most of us at the time. Beschloss combines a well-paced account with careful scholarship that help us understand some of the dynamics of an era that had us hiding under our school desks. ( )
  BobonBooks | Jul 15, 2021 |
5627. Mayday Eisenhower, Khrushchev and yhr U-2 Affair by Michael R. Beschloss (read 17 May 2019) The U-2 came down in Russia on May 1, 1960 and this excellent book was published in 1986. This means that sufficient time had elapsed so that the book has the benefit of perspective--yet one wishes it had been publlshed about 1991 of so when Soviet archives would perhaps have been available. But the author has done a great job of investigative research and he seems to have let the facts speak for themselves. One does not feel he is trying to propound a particular view upon the reader. The downing of the U-2 certainly presented a most difficult situation for Eisenhower and the U.S. and whether they handled it well no doubt depends somewhat on the reader's outlook. I am convinced that if the U-2 had not been dispatched over Russia just two weeks before the summit was scheduled to open in Paris the entire history of the ensuing years would have been greatly altered. Kennedy was elected by a narrow margin in 1960 and if the U-2 had not been downed Ike might have scored a triumph in Paris and Kennedy would not have been elected. I am not sure that Ike did anything wrong after the plane was downed but we can be sure that he erred in having the plane make the flight when he did, as he of course realized when it was too late. This is a book which tells vividly and excitedly the entire sad story, and I was tremendously impressed by Beschloss's skillful work. (The cover on the book I read is not same as the one shown--and I don't know how to put the cover of the book In to this comment.) ( )
  Schmerguls | May 17, 2019 |
On May Day 1960, Soviet forces downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Soviet territory by Francis Gary Powers two weeks before a crucial summit. This forced President Dwight Eisenhower to decide whether, in an effort to save the meeting, to admit to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—and the world—that he had secretly ordered Powers’s flight, or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval.

In rich and fascinating detail, Mayday explores the years of U-2 flights, which Eisenhower deemed “an act of war,” the US government’s misconceived attempt to cover up the true purpose of the flight, Khrushchev’s dramatic revelation that Powers was alive and in Soviet custody, and the show trial that sentenced the pilot to prison and hard labor. From a U-2’s cramped cockpit to tense meetings in the Oval Office, the Kremlin, Camp David, CIA headquarters, the Élysée Palace, and Number Ten Downing Street, historian Michael Beschloss draws on previously unavailable CIA documents, diaries, and letters, as well as the recollections of Eisenhower’s aides, to reveal the full high-stakes drama and bring to life its key figures, which also include Richard Nixon, Allen Dulles, and Charles de Gaulle.
An impressive work of scholarship with the dramatic pacing a spy thriller, Mayday “may be one of the best stories yet written about just how those grand men of diplomacy and intrigue conducted our business” (Time).
  MasseyLibrary | Mar 15, 2018 |
It's truly astonishing the impact an accident can have on history. On May 1, 1960, Francis Gary Powers was captured in the Soviet Union after his U-2 spy plane was shot down or crashed. (The precise cause has never been established.)
Michael Beschloss in Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair explains that spy flights over Russia had begun in 1956 at the behest of Eisenhower who was worried about the possibility of surprise attack and Russian missile capability. The U-2s were a marvel, developed from design to flying prototype in a matter of months for the CIA by Kelly Johnson in the Skunk Works. The flights over Russia provided reassuring information to the president that enabled him to withstand pressure from hawks to spend huge amounts of money on defense. The U-2 photos made it clear the Russians did not constitute the threat alleged by the defense lobby.
Eisenhower did worry about the morality of the spy flights and the possibility of an embarrassing crash. But the CIA assured him no pilot would be able to survive being shot down; the plane had all sorts of self-destruct mechanisms built in and the pilots were provided with "suicide pins". No evidence of espionage would exist. CIA officials also assured Eisenhower that no Russian missile could ever reach the 70,000 foot altitude the U-2 routinely flew at. The President was also concerned that revelations of espionage might destroy his tentative steps toward detente and the nuclear test ban treaty he wanted.
The Russians knew all about the overflights, but were powerless to stop them. They did not have the capability and they did not want the rest of the world to know of their impotence in the face of this brazen invasion of their air space; so they remained mute.
Khrushchev had difficulties of his own. He wanted to reduce spending for the military so more could be spent on consumer goods. He had gone a long way toward relaxing the paranoid, inquisition mentality of his predecessors. He was prepared to exchange visits with the American president and had visited Eisenhower at Camp David just the spring before the fateful event. In 1957 he had barely survived a coup attempt so the Russian people and political opposition were told nothing of the spy missions.
The U.S. public was equally in the dark. The U-2 was portrayed as a device for determining weather conditions at high altitudes for the new passenger jets just coming into service. The president was careful to use only civilian pilots. Covert action was by this time Eisenhower's preferred method of foreign policy. It permitted more leeway in achieving his foreign policy aims without risk of alienating the huge support he had among Americans.
Eisenhower personally approved each U-2 flight. He permitted the fateful flight only reluctantly, however. Nothing untoward should spoil chances for the upcoming summit meeting planned for May 16th in Paris. The CIA was insistent. They needed certain information only the U-2 could provide and again assured the president that nothing would happen. Eisenhower's luck ran out and the crash changed everything. Speculation over why the plane went down ranges from a lucky antiaircraft missile near-miss, to flameout, to structural problems, to defection, to sabotage. After the crash, the CIA released a lot of disinformation. They wanted everyone to believe the plane had a flameout and was shot down at 30,000 feet. They did not want the American public to think the Russians could shoot down a plane at 70,000 feet which was higher than our manned bombers could fly, thus rendering our most potent threat worthless. The most likely explanation is a near-miss, blowing off the plane's stabilizer.
The original reaction of the U.S. was to lie. We publicly claimed the U-2 was nothing but a weather plane that had strayed off course. Khrushchev held a trump card: he knew what the president did not; that the pilot had been captured alive. Khrushchev was forced into the position of taking the hard line. He could not risk being labeled as soft on capitalism. At the summit conference he insisted on an apology from Eisenhower who refused, insisting on the right to fly over Russia whenever necessary to protect our national security. Khrushchev considered this a personal insult and stormed out of Paris. The situation deteriorated from there.
There's no question that the U-2 had considerable strategic value. The information obtained during the Suez crisis was invaluable as France and Britain refused to provide the U.S. with any information. The spy flights also enabled Eisenhower to hold the line on the military budget. As a result of the U-2 incident, however, he lost much faith in the CIA. Allen Dulles in particular was never trusted by the White House again. (The Bay of Pigs was to hammer the last nail in his coffin.) The people of the United States, who until this time, had naively trusted their government, would never again have such blind faith after Eisenhower was caught in several bald-faced lies. The seeds of unrest during Vietnam were sown on Mayday, 1960. ( )
  ecw0647 | Sep 30, 2013 |
Michael Beschloss, a historian, draws on the private papers of the individuals involved to give us a unique peak into the U-2 Crisis. When Powers was shot down over Russia on Mayday, Russia's most important National Holiday. It shows how the CIA considered it important to have an aircraft in Russian airspace for reconnaissance.

We are given a look into the web of deceit that has been the U-2 incident. He starts with Gary Powers and how he became a U-2 pilot. The details of the fatal flight itself are shared with the reader. The reactions of the two leaders involved, Eisenhower committed to this reconnaissance and Khruschev who was fighting to stay in power. And how this incident was to affect the opportunity for detente between the USA and Russia. We even read about Charles de Gaulle's efforts in trying to save the Paris Summit Meeting. ( )
  mramos | Aug 24, 2007 |
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