Welcome to Schönbrunn Palace, the massive yellow baroque residence with 1,441 rooms that dominates this square. On June 3, 1961, the grandest hall inside hosted a state dinner between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev that marked the collapse of Cold War diplomacy.
The dinner came after a day of brutal negotiations at the US Embassy. Kennedy was 43, the youngest elected US president, convinced he could charm Khrushchev into easing tensions. Khrushchev was 67, a Soviet survivor who saw Kennedy as fatally weakened by the Bay of Pigs invasion two months earlier.
All day, Khrushchev had threatened war over Berlin. He mocked Kennedy's inexperience. The banquet inside couldn't mask what had already happened.
Afterward, Khrushchev told his aides Kennedy was "very young, not strong enough; too smart and too weak." Kennedy confided to reporter James Reston that the encounter was "the worst thing in my life."
Both men left convinced the other wanted war.
Two months later, the Berlin Wall went up. A year after that, Soviet missiles appeared in Cuba, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. The elegance of this palace couldn't prevent what came next.
Sources. Story: https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/vienna-summit, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_summit Photos: Stanley Tretick, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
