The Presidential Years 307
stubbornly thought of in Paris as merely a French department. Charles de Gaulle,
the only protagonist of the Second World War who never wanted to meet the
Yugoslav marshal—likely because of Draža Mihailović’s shooting—decided to
recall his ambassador from Belgrade in protest.^219
Meanwhile, a serious international crisis erupted, caused by the decision of
the German Democratic Republic to separate East Berlin from the West by
throwing up a wall to block the flight of its citizens from one side to the other.
Before the start of the conference, Tito informed the American ambassador,
George F. Kennan, that he disapproved of Washington’s policy in Germany,
making it understood, however, that at the summit he would refrain from say-
ing something that could exacerbate international tension.^220 President Eisen-
hower reacted with a personal message approving the Belgrade encounter. Just
when the delegations had started to assemble, things took a dark turn, after
Khrushchev’s decision to resume nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Although
he had ceased such tests as a show of good will, he now wished to flex his
muscles once more. The Soviets announced that they were ready to explode a
hydrogen bomb in the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, which with its seventy-
five megatons would surpass all the nuclear experiments done until then. The
Soviet ambassador informed Tito about this on 31 August, at the Belgrade
airport.^221 The next day, the marshal opened the conference with a formal inau-
gural speech. After another meeting with the ambassador (which caused him
to be late to the session on September 3) he spoke again, this time more boldly.
In fact, Khrushchev had asked him to support his decision about the enormous
“Tsar-bomb.” Hence, at the last moment, Tito introduced some phrases into
his written text that practically adopted the arguments put forward by the
Soviets to justify their experiment. Instead of condemning it, as the majority
of the participants of the summit would have wished, he only expressed some
doubts about the moment chosen for the test and shared his hope that a “World
Atomic Conference” would be organized in which non-nuclear countries would
also take part. He also defended Soviet policy in Berlin and energetically
attacked the West for its attitude toward the German issue.^222 To an outraged
Ambassador Kennan, who felt betrayed, the Yugoslav diplomats later confessed
that the marshal had done this to support Khrushchev against his (unspecified)
internal “opponents.”^223 It is doubtful, however, that Tito’s comrades were con-
vinced of this justification, considering that Secretary of Foreign Affairs Koča
Popović was surprised by the marshal’s offhand words and furious for not hav-
ing been informed in advance.^224
The attendees at the conference were not shy about high-sounding declara-
tions of principles, among them speaking out on the fight against colonialism,