On June 16, 1953, workers in East Berlin rose up in protest against government demands to increase productivity. Within days, nearly a million East Germans joined the protests and began rioting across hundreds of East German cities and towns. The protest was brutally put down on June 17, 1953, by the Soviet and East German military.
Although Radio Free Europe (RFE) did not broadcast to East Germany (German Democratic Republic), it reacted to the events in Berlin. As worked out its top policy advisors—Lewis Galantiere, then policy advisor in the New York office, and William E. Griffith, political advisor at RFE, Munich—RFE had developed a technique of what was called “chipping away” at the Communist power structure: aiming at the day when the gradual evolution of the captive nations would bring them nearer to the free open societies of the West. “Peaceful liberation” through “liberalization” became the RFE broadcast strategy.
Lewis Galantiere wrote a Special Guidance no. 12-A for Radio Free Europe: “On the Situation in East Berlin.” He advised the RFE staff that neither the United States nor NATO could be expected to act on the election-year Republican platform of Liberation. Furthermore, in 12-A, he warned RFE broadcasters to refrain from encouraging armed resistance by their listeners.
We do not advise other Eastern European workers to follow the example of the workers of East Berlin. We advise them only to take heart from what has happened there and to make note of it for the future…they should always be careful not to resort yet to overt acts which might only result in defeat, further suppression, and enslavement.
RFE—must avoid inciting the population of its target counties to similar actions at this time. We must remind our audiences that premature demonstrations of resistance will lead only to ruin and despair, for they are sure to be put down ruthlessly by the Soviets and their puppet stooges. [W]e do not want them to endanger themselves needlessly at this point. (Galantiere: The Lost Generation’s Forgotten Man)
The Free Europe Committee rejected Galantiere’s Special Guidance and FEC’s political advisor Reuben Nathan wrote a new 12-A guidance, with CIA input entitled “The Opening of a New Phase,” which, in part, stated that the people of Eastern Europe should “prepare for effective resistance,” that it was time “to call Moscow’s bluff,” and “nothing less than the freedom of the captive people is acceptable.” William Griffith and Paul Henze (RFE deputy political advisor in Munich) reportedly were furious when they saw Nathan’s Guidance 12-A and ridiculed it as: “the ‘stupid’ hare-brained’ advice of U.S. government and FEC “psy- warriors.” RFE’s Director Bill Lang even threatened to resign over it. Former Radio Free Europe Director Dr. A. Ross Johnson wrote:
When unrest broke out in East Germany in June 1953, RL Munich officials on their own initiative, sought to organize loudspeaker appeals to Soviet forces in Berlin and carry German-language interviews intended for the East German population. The Office of the High Commissioner for Germany put a stop to both initiatives, which it viewed as needlessly provocative before they could materialize. [T]his was one of several cases at RFE in the early 1950s of conflict between Munich executives and broadcast chiefs, on the one hand, and New York policy officials they disparaged. (Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; the CIA Years and Beyond)
Was the CIA involved in provoking the riots in Berlin? The answer is no:
The issue of direct American (particularly CIA) involvement in support of the disturbances has received much attention. Some have speculated that because Eleanor Dulles was in Berlin during this time as a State Department desk officer, Allen Dulles, her brother, and the new CIA director, may also have been there, but he was not. Actually, like its KGB counterpart, the CIA base in Berlin was completely surprised as one Berlin Operations Base (BOB) reports officer put it, "We were caught flatfooted!" Some East Berlin agents contacted their BOB case officers in West Berlin to report on the events, but as soon as the border closed, this kind of firsthand information was no longer available. The CIA German mission was equally surprised. Chief of Mission Gen. Lucian Truscott was in Nuremberg at the time with his deputy, Michael Burke, and his assistant, Thomas Polgar, discussing Czech cross-border operations with the US military. They read about the riots in the evening editions of newspapers on the train ride back to Frankfurt. (Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War, pp. 169-170)
Listen to a RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) report live from Potsdamer Platz, including gun fire: Berlin:http://www.rias1.de/sound4/timeline_nachrichten/1953/1953-06-17-r-schuesse_am_potsdamer_platz-2_.mp3
For more English information on the riots in Berlin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953
A memorial to the June 17, 1953, uprising is in front of the Federal Ministry of Finance building in Berlin: “The glass image, which as has been sunken into the ground, shows a photo of strikers marching to the building known at the time as the House of Ministries. The roughly pixelated photo has been blown up several times its original scale. Information panels report what happened before and during the protest march.“
