Work with your pair and leave your answers to the dropbox below.

TASK 1: Source analysis
Study the source below. With reference to its origin, purpose and content, analyse the value and limitations of the source for an historian studying Soviet policy on Germany/Berlin. 

TASK 2: Essay writing
Using the source and your own knowledge, examine the Soviet and the Western interests in Berlin between 1958 and 1961.

SOURCE: The 'Berlin Ultimatum'
Extracts from a note delivered by the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the US Ambassador in Moscow in 27 November 1958. Notes with similar contents were sent also to the governments of the Great Britain and France through their embassies in Moscow.

'The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics addresses the Government of the United States of America as one of the signatory powers of the Potsdam Agreement [Aug 1945] on the urgent question of the status of Berlin.
-- The Potsdam Agreement contained important provisions where by Germany was to be regarded as a single economic entity, even during the occupation period. The Council of Foreign Ministers, established by a decision of the Potsdam Conference, was instructed to prepare a peace settlement for Germany.
-- The policy of the Western Powers, however, was increasingly influenced by forces obsessed with hatred for Socialist and Communist ideas but which concealed during the war their hostile designs against the Soviet Union. As a result, the course was set in the West toward the utmost aggravation of the ideological struggle headed by aggressive leaders, opponents of the peaceful coexistence of states. The signal for this was given to the United States and to other Western countries by W. Churchill in his notorious Fulton Speech ['Iron Curtain'] in March 1946.
-- The conflict between the two ideologies – a struggle of minds and convictions – in itself could not have been particularly detrimental to relations between states. The ideological struggle has never abated, and it will continue so long as there are different views on the structure of society.
-- But the matter did not end there. With every passing year the governments of the USA and Great Britain drifted farther and farther away from the principles underlying the Potsdam Agreement. The same road was followed by France --.
-- Moreover, they included West Germany in the North Atlantic bloc was created behind the back of the Soviet Union and, as everyone is aware, against it, and are now arming West Germany with atomic and rocket weapons. -- The Government of the FRG [= The Federal Republic of Germany], encouraged by the Western Powers, is systematically fanning the “cold war,” and its leaders have repeatedly stated that the FRG would pursue the policy “from a position of strength,” i.e., a policy of dictation to the other German state. Thus, the Government of the FRG does not want a peaceful unification of the German people, who are living in two states under different social systems, but is nurturing plans for abolishing the GDR and strengthening at the latter's expense its own militaristic state.
-- The Soviet Union, as well as other states interested in strengthening the peace in Europe, supports the proposals of the German Democratic Republic for the peaceful unification of Germany. The Government of the USSR regrets that none of the efforts made in this direction has as yet produced any positive results, since the governments of the United States and other NATO members, and, above all, the Government of the FRG, do not, in fact, display any concern either for the conclusion of a peace treaty or for the unification of Germany.
-- The USSR does not seek any conquests. All it wants is to put an end to the abnormal and dangerous situation that has developed in Berlin because of the continued occupation of its western sectors by the USA, Great Britain, and France.
-- Of course, the most correct and natural way to solve the problem would be for the western part of Berlin, now actually detached from the GDR, to be reunited with its eastern part and for Berlin to become a unified city within the state in whose territory it is situated.
However, the Soviet Government, taking into account the present unrealistic policy of the USA as well as of Great Britain and France with respect to the German Democratic Republic, cannot but foresee the difficulties the Western powers have in contributing to such a solution of the Berlin problem. At the same time, it is guided by the concern that the process of liquidating the occupation regime may not involve any painful break in the established way of life of the West Berlin population.
The Four Powers which shared in the administration of Berlin after the war could, as well as both of the German states, undertake to respect the status of West Berlin as a free city, just as was done, for instance, by the Four Powers with respect to the neutral status which was adopted by the Austrian Republic.
-- For its part, the Soviet Government would have no objection to the United Nations also sharing, in one way or other, in observing the free-city status of West Berlin.
-- The above-mentioned solution of the problem of West Berlin's status would be an important step toward normalizing the situation in Berlin, which, instead of being a hotbed of unrest and tension, could become a center for contacts and cooperation between both parts of Germany in the interest of her peaceful future and the unity of the German nation.
The establishment of free-city status for West Berlin would firmly ensure the development of West Berlin's economy, due to its contacts on all sides with the states of the East and the West, and would ensure a decent standard of living for the city's population. For its part, the Soviet Union states that it would contribute in every way toward the achievement of these ends, in particular by placing orders for industrial goods and amounts that would fully ensure the stability and prosperity of the free city's economy, and by regular deliveries on a commercial basis of the necessary quantities of new materials and food stuffs to West Berlin. Thus, by the liquidation of the occupation regime, not only would the more than two million people of West Berlin not be harmed but on the contrary they would have every opportunity to raise their living standard.
-- The Government of the Soviet Union would like to hope that the problem of normalizing the situation in Berlin, which life itself raises before our states as a natural necessity, will in any case be solved in accordance with considerations of statesmanship, the interests of peace between peoples, without the unnecessary nervous strain and intensification of a “cold war.”--'

Source:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3509

(Selections, bolding and issues on square brackets by J.A.)