The Cuban Missile Crisis

1. The Cuban Missile Crisis

2. The Cuban Missile Crisis: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56lg2ET-HcE&feature=related

3. April 15, 1961: CIA attempts to overthrow Castro by landing several thousand anti-Castro Cubams at the Bay of Pigs

4. The operation failed miserably, but it made Cuba a key front in the Cold War: K gave Castro security guarantees

5. Khrushchev admired Castro as a true, real-life revolutionary

6. Solidarity with revolutionaries across the world

7. Vienna, June 1961

8. Jackie was truly entertained by K’s jokes and asked K for a space dog’s puppy. She got one soon after returning to Washington

11. The Vienna Summit • 1. Easy agreement on neutralization of Laos • 2. Fierce debate on the terms of peaceful coexistence – right to revolution? • 3. Germany, Berlin. Major Soviet worry about growing West German potential and East German weakness • K repeats his ultimatum to sign a peace treaty with GDR and give it full control over E. Berlin • JFK warns of consequences: NATO will act • K says he’s ready for war

14. August 14, 1961: East Germans build a wall around West Berlin

17. Kennedy orders mobilization of reserves

18. October 28, 1961: US forces make an attempt to destroy the wall. Soviet tanks stop them. After a 1-day standoff, both sides withdraw their forces

19. JFK in West Berlin, June 26, 1963: “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

22. Nuclear weapons stockpiles

25. 1960: The biggest nuclear bomb ever built: “Tsar-bomba”, “Big Ivan”, “Kooz’ka’s Mother” (from old Russian proverb, much liked by Khrushchev: “We’ll show you Kooz’ka’s mother!”

27. October 1961: The world’s biggest H-bomb tested at Novaya Zemlya Island, the Arctic, explosive power – 57 mt

29. Gen. Curtis B. LeMay, Chief of the Strategic Air Command, advocated all-out nuclear war to destroy Soviet Union and Red China

30. Spring 1961 • JFK asks JCS: “If your plans for general [nuclear] war are carried out as planned, how many people will be killed in the Soviet Union and China?” • Answer: • 275 mln. instantly • 325 mln. after 6 months • Up to 600 mln. total for Europe and Asia* • http://www.japanfocus.org/-Daniel-Ellsberg/3222

31. In the summer of 1962, K. orders a major Soviet military deployment in Cuba: 43,000 troops 164 nuclear weapons, of which (as was recently revealed): 42 were already put on intermediate-range missiles, ready to be launched at US targets 9 were on tactical missiles, ready to be used against an invading US force

32. Khrushchev’s motives: • Certainly not to wage war on the US. • Rather: • To restore Soviet image as a military superpower ready to confront US • To protect the Castro regime • To obtain strike positions against US similar to those US had against Russia

41. Col. Georgi Bolshakov, Soviet military intelligence, under cover as a Soviet diplomat in Washington, a “back channel” between the White House and the Kremlin – in 1961- 62, Robert Kennedy met with him about 90 times. He met with JFK, too

42. Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the US

44. Oct.22, 1962: JFK tells the nation about Soviet missiles in Cuba

45. Kennedy’s Oct.22 statement: • A quarantine on any ships bringing weapons to Cuba • Full alert of US armed forces. It meant: • 1436 strategic bombers • 172 ICBMs • 140,000 troops poised to invade Cuba • In case the missiles are used, US will respond with an all-out war

46. Castro was ready to sacrifice Cuba for the sake of destroying US imperialism

47. K’s response: • Full military alert • Turn the ships back • Offer to remove the missiles in exchange for JFK’s pledge not to invade Cuba and to remove US missiles from Turkey

48. In private conversations, both sides were greatly concerned about the influence of the military and the hardliners on the other side

49. A Havana memorial: Soviet surface-to-air missile of the type which downed a US U-2 reconnaissance plane over Cuba on October 27, 1962; in front of it, an engine from the downed plane

50. A US Navy destroyer intercepting a Soviet freighter off Cuba