Driving the Soviets up the Wall: A Super-Ally, a Superpower, and the Building of the Berlin Wall, 1958-61

For understanding the key events and dynamics of the Cold War, it is insufficient to study just the policies of the superpowers; the new archival evidence increasingly reveals the importance of the goals and policies of the superpowers’ key allies, or ‘superallies’, in the Cold War. Based on archival research in Moscow and Berlin, this article examines the Berlin Crisis of 1958-61 during which a ‘superally’, East Germany, used direct and indirect means to persuade the reluctant Soviets to build the Berlin Wall.