President John Kennedy meets with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, June 4, 1961
In the early days of Kennedy’s presidency, shortly after the Bay of Pigs incident, he and the Soviet premier Khrushchev held a summit meeting in Vienna. Khrushchev tried to bully his younger adversary on the subject of West Berlin, hoping to take control of the entire city because more and more citizens of Soviet-controlled East Berlin were risking their lives in the name of freedom by escaping to the adjacent territory, controlled by the United States and its World War II allies. Kennedy refused to back down, and a chastened Khrushchev began construction of the Berlin Wall to save face.