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TLS as president, one page, 6.75 x 8.75, White House letterhead, August 9, 1961. President Kennedy thanks former Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder for his support during the Berlin Crisis. In full: "Many thanks for your very kind and generous letter. It is most reassuring and heartening to know that my message has met with the approval and confidence of many thoughtful citizens. You yourself have been through earlier crises, and I am most pleased to have both your reactions and your offer of service." In fine condition, with faint toning from prior display. Accompanied by a color glossy 6 x 8 print of a photo of JFK in the Oval Office, taken the same day.
Two weeks earlier, on July 25, 1961, Kennedy reported to the nation on the Berlin crisis, pledging to defend West Berlin and Western postwar occupation rights and outlining a six-point plan for a balanced military buildup to meet commitments in Germany and elsewhere. Clearly that was the message he references here, a message "met with the approval and confidence of many thoughtful citizens." Snyder, as a member of Truman's cabinet, had also "been through earlier crises" in Berlin via the 1948 Berlin Airlift.
After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, many residents of the newly acquired areas of the Eastern Bloc aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. The Soviet Union instead blocked access to the three sectors of Berlin held by the United States, Great Britain, and France. Now, years later, Kennedy watched as another crisis in Germany reached a boiling point. On August 13, East Germany sealed off free passage between East and West Berlin with barbed wire. Two days later, the building of the Berlin Wall began, closing access to the West for the next 28 years. Astonishing correspondence from one of the more heated periods of the Cold War.
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