Ep. 20 – 1962 Part II: The Month the World Almost Ended

After the Cuban Revolution installed a pro-Soviet Communist regime next door to the USA, American government officials had engaged in attempts at regime change in Cuba, through actions such as the Bay of Pigs invasion & Operation Mongoose. During summer 1962, the Soviets responded by sending nuclear missiles & military forces to Cuba. The North Americans discovered that operational nukes had been installed just 90 miles from US territory during October '62, which set off a panic within the Kennedy Administration. Hard-line US military leaders urged Pres. John F. Kennedy to respond by attacking Cuba with air strikes, followed by an invasion. JFK wisely chose a more cautious option. He announced to the American people that the US Navy would set up a blockade around the island, preventing further Soviet weapons & personnel from reaching Cuba. If the USSR violated the blockade, there would be war. The public breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Soviets turned their ships around. However, the Soviets then shot down an American U-2 plane flying through Cuban airspace, killing the pilot. The superpowers remained on the edge of war until a secret agreement was reached that the Soviets would remove its nukes from Cuba, in exchange for the removal of American nuclear missiles from Turkey. People around the world were greatly relieved that the crisis had been resolved peacefully (with notable exceptions including Cuban dictator Fidel Castro & American general Curtis LeMay). We conclude the episode by examining the psychological & cultural impact the Cuban Missile Crisis had upon American youths of the Baby Boomer generation.

Transcript

                  From Boomers to Millennials is a modern US history podcast, providing a fresh look at the historic events that shaped current generations, from the 1940s to the present. Welcome at long last to part II of the year 1962. This is Episode 20, entitled “The Month the World Almost Ended.” In part I, we discussed developments within the USA during ‘62, including the rollout of President Kennedy’s domestic agenda and the violence that occurred in reaction to a black student’s attempt to enroll in classes at the University of Mississippi (see Episode 19). However important those issues were, it was an international diplomatic crisis that would be the defining event of the year. It would be the most significant challenge that John F. Kennedy’s administration would ever face. 

I wish I could inform my listeners that today’s topic, the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, is of little historical relevance to the global situation here at the beginning of 2025. However, with the United States currently engaged in confrontations with Russia, China, & Iran, the possibility of world war is arguably greater now than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Even the possibility of a nuclear exchange among powerful nations cannot be ruled out. Under these circumstances, hopefully many listeners can benefit from hearing the story of a previous instance when two nuclear superpowers walked right up to the edge of Armageddon, and stepped back just in the nick of time.

                  The potential dangers presented by the growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons possessed by the United States & the Soviet Union, respectively, was becoming more apparent by the early 1960s. Back in Episode 15, we discussed the growing awareness in the USA about the dangers of nuclear testing, which led to some of the first public efforts to persuade governments to negotiate limitations to such atomic detonations. However, growing tensions between the superpowers made a test ban treaty infeasible during the JFK Administration; during October 1961, for instance, the USSR exploded its largest ever nuclear weapon during an atomic test within the Arctic Circle (see Episode 18).

The US military itself received a nuclear scare during January 1961, in the form of a terrifying accident, the details of which were not made known to the American public until decades later. According to a 2013 article in the UK periodical The Guardian, a “newly declassified US document” confirmed that in 1961, (quote) “two bombs were on board a B-52 plane that went into an uncontrolled spin over North Carolina – both bombs fell, and one began the detonation process” (close quote). The fact that a B-52 had crashed in the region was acknowledged by the American government at the time, but what was not revealed until the 21st Century was the fact that (quote) “3 out of the 4 fail safe mechanisms [on the bomb] failed,” and “only one safety mechanism, a single low-voltage switch, prevented disaster” (close quote). The Guardian reports that the weapon that almost detonated was a Mark 39 hydrogen bomb, (quote) “almost 260 times more powerful than the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” back in 1945. 

The crashing plane with the almost-triggered bomb on board hit the ground near the town of Goldsboro, North Carolina, only about an hour’s drive southeast of Raleigh, the state capital. To make matters even worse, expert estimates indicate that in addition to wiping out heavily populated areas of North Carolina, nuclear fallout from an exploded bomb would have blown northward, up the Eastern seaboard through Virginia and Maryland, with radiation enveloping the nation’s capital & extending as far northeast as Philadelphia. Tens of millions of people would have suffered the negative health effects of exposure to this nuclear radiation. One can only imagine how such a catastrophe would have affected this country’s history had the H-bomb’s last fail-safe switch not held. Now, imagine the chaos and horrors that would unfold if several such bombs had hit the United States within a short period of time. That’s exactly the possibility that US policymakers would be contemplating in the Fall of 1962.

                  Let’s briefly recap our recent episodes on the Cold War tensions that had been building up during the early 1960s. Back in the late Fifties, it looked like there might be a window of opportunity for more peaceful relations between the superpowers. Notorious Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died back in 1953 (see Episode 8A), and his successor Nikita Khrushchev appeared more open to compromise with the West. The new Soviet premier even traveled to the United States on a goodwill tour, meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower at Camp David during September 1959 (see Episode 15). However, attempts to build trust between the superpowers were shattered in May 1960, when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane that they caught flying in their airspace (see Episode 16). From that point onward, diplomatic relations between US & USSR became far more contentious. Adding to the tension was the continuing Soviet pressure upon NATO forces to abandon their enclave of West Berlin within Communist East Germany. The results of the recent Cuban Revolution of 1959 had also become a preoccupation of the US national security state. Although the political intentions of the revolution’s leader, Fidel Castro, had initially been unclear, over time it became apparent that he was an authoritarian Marxist. Castro officially made an alliance with the Soviet Union, and he installed a Communist regime in a Caribbean country just 90 miles away from the borders of the United States.

                  As discussed in Episode 14, by the end of the year 1960, the US Central Intelligence Agency had begun training a group of Cuban emigres to overthrow Castro’s regime. When John F. Kennedy entered office in early 1961, the military and intelligence agencies persuaded him to deploy the expatriates & allow them to attempt an invasion of Cuba. This military operation took place in April ’61, but it resulted in a humiliating defeat, with most of the anti-Communist fighters being captured or killed by the Cuban military, which we discussed in detail during Episode 17. Despite the failure of the so-called Bay of Pigs invasion, the Kennedy Administration continued to target the Communist regime in Havana through a secret intelligence operation known as Operation Mongoose. Robert F. Kennedy biographer Larry Tye notes that the Attorney General worked with the CIA, and he (quote) “personally steered a campaign to sabotage Cuban agriculture, incite political upheaval, and chart new schemes for invading the island & deposing its leaders. The myopic attorney general failed to consider how his plotting would be perceived in Havana and Moscow” (close quote). Tye also notes that, while the sabotage efforts of Operation Mongoose agitated the Cuban regime, it failed to do major damage to the Cuban government. Most significantly, multiple CIA efforts to kill Fidel Castro did not come close to succeeding.

                  Tensions over the American attempts to undermine the Cuban state contributed to a worsening of US-Soviet relations in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy failed to find common ground with Premier Khrushchev during a tense June 1961 summit meeting in Vienna. In the months that followed, the superpowers ramped up their nuclear testing. JFK increased federal defense spending, called up reserve military units, and began a program for the construction of bomb shelters across the United States. The Cold War was now in danger of becoming a hot war, and during 1962, the Soviets took risky actions that threatened to ignite this geopolitical powder keg.

The Kremlin determined that it had to act in order to deter the continuing American threat to the Soviets’ sole satellite state in the Western Hemisphere. During 1962, the USSR began importing an arsenal of weapons, including nuclear missiles, into Cuba. This armament was done at the request of Fidel Castro, who believed he needed a defensive deterrent in order to preserve his revolution from the attempts of the North Americans to undermine it. Historian of US foreign policy George C. Herring examines the question of why Soviet Premier Khrushchev agreed to assist Cuba by placing nukes in the Western Hemisphere. Herring writes that Khrushchev (quote) “insisted that he was protecting his Cuban ally from [potential] US invasion” (close quote). Historian James T. Patterson argues that if Kennedy (quote) “had not followed the Bay of Pigs with Operation Mongoose & other highly threatening anti-Castro activities, the Cubans might not have looked so eagerly for Soviet military help” (close quote). 

According to John F. Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek, Khrushchev had (quote) “decided to turn Cuba into a missile base from which he could more directly threaten the United States” (close quote). The Soviets felt this was only fair, given that NATO had recently placed some operational nuclear weapons in Turkey, which was right across the Black Sea from the Soviet Union. According to Dallek, Soviet construction of new weapons installations on their Caribbean ally’s territory began during June 1962, and (quote) “Khrushchev’s aim was to hide the buildup in Cuba until after the [November] American [Congressional] elections . . . he would then reveal the existence of the Cuban missile base and extract concessions” from President Kennedy (close quote).

By placing medium-range nukes in Cuba, Herring argues that Khrushchev believed he could (quote) “make up on the cheap the huge US lead in long-range missiles” (close quote). These Soviet medium-range missiles were smuggled across the Atlantic into Cuba on transport ships, & the USSR also surreptitiously deployed thousands of troops onto Cuban soil in order to guard them. Despite Soviet attempts at secrecy, Herring states that (quote) “CIA analysts, using information gleaned from” a turncoat Soviet military official, learned that the Russians were placing missiles there. After obtaining this inside information, the United States sought to obtain confirmation by capturing photographic evidence of the USSR’s deployment of nuclear weapons to Castro’s Cuba. On October 15, 1962, American U-2 pilots successfully photographed these recent Soviet missile installations.

In his book Grand Expectations, historian James T. Patterson notes that, after the existence of the weapons had been verified, (quote) “for the next 13 days, high-ranking officials, chief among them [Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara, [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk, [Attorney General] Robert Kennedy, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy debated options far into the nights” (close quote). President Kennedy chaired the daily meetings of this group of top military and diplomatic officials, which became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or “ExComm.” Outside of these meetings, in private deliberations, JFK relied on Attorney General Bobby Kennedy as his closest advisor during this crisis. RFK lacked formal expertise in military & diplomatic affairs, but the president trusted that his brother had better judgment than most men.

Patterson notes that during ExComm’s deliberations, JFK consciously tried to avoid the “group think” mentality that had pushed him into the Bay of Pigs invasion back in 1961. For this reason, the president periodically brought in outside voices to share their own perspectives on the crisis with the committee. One of these was Harry Truman’s Secretary of State (and old friend of the podcast) Dean Acheson. Most historians conclude that Acheson’s performance advising ExComm was one of the low points of his long diplomatic career, because instead of providing an outside-the-box perspective, he mostly backed up the aggressive plans of the generals. During the early 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, Acheson had been called before Congress to face allegations of having been “soft on Communism,” and even was accused of having Communist sympathies himself (see Episode 6). Still stinging from these accusations & regretting past mistakes, such as his well-intentioned defense of diplomat Alger Hiss, who unbeknownst to Acheson actually had been a spy (see Episode 4), the former Secretary of State by this point in his career was overcompensating by taking a very hard line against the Commies. When he was invited into ExComm’s deliberations, Acheson sided with the military Joint Chiefs in recommending immediate air strikes to take out the missiles, a course of action that many historians now believe would have been a dangerously reckless decision.

Thankfully, Jack Kennedy on a separate occasion invited Adlai Stevenson, the two-time former presidential candidate & current US Ambassador to the United Nations, into the foreign policy team’s deliberations. Stevenson actually did bring a fresh perspective to ExComm, because his more dovish & diplomatic views tended to be well outside of the mainstream of the national defense establishment. Patterson reports that Stevenson was among the few top officials arguing for a diplomatic (rather than military) settlement of the problem of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Stevenson (quote) “called for the demilitarization of Cuba (including the US base at Guantanamo Bay) and for an American promise to remove [the] Jupiter offensive missiles that it had placed in Turkey, a NATO ally,” in exchange for (close quote) the USSR removing its nukes from the Western Hemisphere. After hearing this proposal, JFK then turned to Stevenson and said, “But Adlai, we can’t close Guantanamo Bay – otherwise, where will my son & Donald Trump send Hillary Clinton to face a military tribunal?” Sorry, that was just a joke made at the expense of certain popular conspiracy theories. I’m confident that teenaged Hillary & Donald were not on the Kennedy Administration’s radar back in 1962. 

Seriously, historian James T. Patterson believes that Adlai Stevenson made a valid point when he warned against a militaristic overreaction by the United States, because (quote) “the missiles in Cuba gave the Soviets little new military potential,” due to the fact that some Soviet ICBMs stationed in Europe (quote) “already could hit American targets.” So, because the US was already within nuclear range of the Communist bloc, perhaps the Cuban missiles did not fundamentally change the nation’s vulnerability to attack, and therefore, they were no cause for panic. Herring notes that at one point, even Defense Secretary McNamara acknowledged that the presence of the additional missiles (quote) “did not significantly alter the overall strategic balance” of the Cold War. Dallek points out that the military leaders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly disagreed with McNamara on this point; they argued that the Cuban missiles increased Moscow’s (quote) “strike capability” enough to change the “strategic balance” between the superpowers.

The Kennedys ultimately rejected Stevenson’s approach as “too soft,” according to Patterson, especially due to the amount of criticism it would bring upon his administration from the militantly anti-Communist wing of US domestic politics. According to biographer Robert Dallek, JFK narrowed his choices down to (quote) “4 possible military actions: an air strike against the missile installations; a more general air attack against a wide array of targets; a blockade; & an invasion” (close quote). Hard-liners in the administration were pressing the president to approve an extensive campaign of air strikes, or even an outright invasion of the island. Herring says that hawks among the military Joint Chiefs favored an invasion because they wanted to remove not only the Soviet military presence in Cuba, but also to depose Fidel Castro from power & install a new regime. Other advisors around Kennedy warned that the Joint Chiefs’ recommendations were too risky. The Kennedy brothers expressed concern about the options the military was recommending to them; they feared that taking this approach presented a major risk of provoking a wider war. 

Yet John F. Kennedy was concerned that if the Soviets were permitted to provide Cuba with an operational nuclear arsenal, it would embolden the Communist bloc, shake the confidence of NATO allies, and hurt his own domestic political standing. Historian George Herring contends that JFK felt (quote) “boxed in by his own [prior] public statements that offensive weapons in Cuba [would be] unacceptable,” & “he feared that to do nothing in the face of this most blatant Soviet challenge would be political & diplomatic suicide” (close quote). For this reason, ExComm came to the conclusion that the USA could not ignore this Soviet provocation and would need to respond with serious actions.

American military leaders deliberated over what these actions should be, and some of them brainstormed how to rationalize an aggressive response to the American public. A few of the ideas put forward behind the curtain of US government secrecy about how to justify military strikes against Cuba are truly shocking. In the year 2001, declassified documents revealed the existence of a proposed US military plan called Operation Northwoods, which involved the US government staging violent incidents and blaming them on the Cuban regime. According to ABC News, (quote) “the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban emigres . . . hijacking planes, blowing up a US ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in US cities” in order “to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust” Cuban leader Fidel Castro (close quote). These plans apparently received initial approval by the military Joint Chiefs, but thankfully civilian leaders McNamara & Kennedy rejected these morally dubious schemes. 

As a quick aside, I want to add that one of the many drawbacks of government plots such as Operation Northwoods is that they allow present-day conspiracy theorists, such as those who make far-fetched claims that the federal government is staging false-flag shootings using “crisis actors,” to point at something in the historical record that makes their wacky theories sound more plausible. I am of the view that “blowback” against the secret Cold War operations of the US national security state has not been limited to foreign resentment of American power; it also has helped fuel domestic conspiracy theories about the operations of the so-called “Deep State.” Now, let’s get back to 1962.

During the initial days of ExComm’s deliberations regarding the crisis, Kennedy managed to keep the US government’s concerns about the missiles in Cuba out of the newspaper headlines. But to those government insiders who were in the know, these days were incredibly tense. On October 19th, President Kennedy had a heated meeting with leaders of the US military. According to presidential historian Robert Dallek, General Maxwell Taylor of the Joint Chiefs warned JFK that if the USA did not meet the Cuban missile threat with a strong military response, (quote) “we would lose our credibility” & appear weak around the world. Dallek reports that General Curtis LeMay was (quote) “even more emphatic,” arguing that the Soviets’ threats against West Berlin were only a bluff, and that decisive action by the US military would intimidate them into submission. Counterintuitively, LeMay argued that an American failure to attack Cuba would make the Soviets more likely to start a war, because our predatory Communist enemies would then perceive the US as weak & vulnerable.

Dallek recounts that following his meeting with the Joint Chiefs, a melancholy Pres. Kennedy remarked to a White House aide, (quote) “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we listen to them, & do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong” (close quote). Patterson reports that on October 20th, just before the administration made its final decision on how to approach the Cuban missile problem, the rattled American president (quote) “called his wife & children back to Washington so that they could join him in an underground shelter if necessary” (close quote). Clearly, JFK was concerned about the possibility that the Soviets could respond to US military moves with a retaliatory nuclear strike on the Eastern United States, which might affect the safety of his own family. 

According to historian James T. Patterson, (quote) “the president was determined not to back down from what he considered the provocative & reckless behavior of the enemy. The missiles must go,” JFK had decided (close quote). However, Kennedy also opted to reject the proposed air strikes against Cuba that the hard-liners had been pushing for. He had been listening to Undersecretary of State George Ball, a major voice of caution who helped to persuade the Kennedys to reject this course of action. This podcast will talk more in the future about George Ball, a relatively forgotten diplomat who also later defied the foreign policy establishment by urging JFK not to engage in military escalation in Vietnam. 

During an ExComm meeting on October 18th, Undersecretary Ball argued, (quote) “A course of action where we strike [Cuba] without warning is like Pearl Harbor. It’s the kind of conduct that one might expect from the Soviet Union. It is not conduct that one expects from the United States” (close quote). Listeners may note how Ball in this statement cleverly appealed to the Americans’ desire to perceive themselves as morally superior to their enemies. Bobby Kennedy was persuaded by George Ball’s argument. He concurred, (quote) “we’ve talked for 15 years about a first strike, saying we would never do that” (close quote). Some top officials also worried that if they sprung a surprise attack, Communists behind the Iron Curtain might retaliate by seizing capitalist West Berlin, which their military forces in East Germany already surrounded. Even worse, Patterson notes, was the risk that (quote) “if some of the [nuclear] missiles survived the [air] strikes, the Soviets might fire them off at the United States” (close quote). If that happened, the situation could quickly escalate into an apocalyptic nuclear war between the superpowers. 

Due to these concerns, on October 21st, 1962, President Kennedy officially rejected the proposed air strikes and settled upon a so-called “quarantine” policy. ExComm now backed a plan for US Naval forces to block additional Soviet ships from approaching Cuba. The USSR would be warned that any ships violating the blockade would be fired upon. Ships would only be let through if they consented to be thoroughly searched by the US Navy, & were found to have no weapons. Dallek writes that the administration was characterizing this operation as a “quarantine” instead of a blockade because, technically, some international law precedents regarded a “blockade” as an act of war. The US government asserted that the quarantine was not technically a blockade because it was only preventing missiles & other offensive weapons from entering Cuba, rather than preventing all materials & supplies from passing through to the island nation. In addition to preventing additional missiles from being shipped by the Soviets, the Kennedy administration warned that if the Communists did not promptly begin the process of removing their missiles from Cuba, American air strikes against Cuban targets were likely.

Between reaching the decision & announcing it to the American public, John F. Kennedy secretly met with members of Congress. During this meeting, he faced skepticism from not only conservative Republicans, but also from hawkish Dixiecrats within his own party. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia thought that air strikes were worth the risk of war; Dallek indicates that Russell said he felt a war with the Communists was inevitably “coming someday” in any case. Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas argued that the US should invade Cuba, claiming that technically (quote) “It is not an act of war against Russia to attack Cuba” (close quote). According to Dallek, when the meeting ended, Jack Kennedy turned to Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, his main opponent during the 1960 Democratic Primaries, and said, (quote) “If I’d known the job was this tough, I wouldn’t have beaten you” (close quote).

On October 22, 1962, JFK announced his quarantine policy to the American public. According to Patterson, President Kennedy also ominously warned the Soviets that any missiles they used against any country in the Western Hemisphere would provoke a (quote) “full retaliatory response” from the USA. Following the establishment of the blockade, Herring states that (quote) “the United States went to the 2nd highest state of defense readiness (DefCon 2) for the first time in the Cold War” (close quote). Patterson recounts that, after the president publicly announced that the government was facing a standoff against the Soviets over missiles stationed in Cuba, (quote) “unprecedented fear & tension gripped people throughout” the globe, and prominent American Evangelical pastor (& rabid Cold Warrior) Billy Graham began preaching about “the end of the world.” Journalist and author Larry Tye recalls that (quote) “Parents emptied the shelves of supermarkets and gun stores as they outfitted their fallout shelters” (close quote).

During the ensuing blockade, Herring reports that US warships operated under procedures (quote) “calling for firing a warning shot, & if that failed, disabling the rudder of the approaching ship” if it failed to stop when ordered by the American Navy. The international tension grew as (quote) “Soviet vessels with orders to return fire if fired upon moved ominously toward the quarantine line” (close quote). Herring writes that during this period, officials in the governments of both superpowers (quote) “worked under unimaginable pressures & went days without sleep,” causing their nerves to fray & their thought processes to blur, which made the situation even more dangerous. 

Then, on October 24, 1962, White House officials breathed a huge sigh of relief as they received news that several Soviet ships had reversed course to avoid the American navy’s “quarantine” line. Secretary of State Dean Rusk quipped in his Georgia drawl, (quote) “We are eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fella just blinked.” Patterson indicates that other Soviet ships agreed to be searched, and Americans allowed them to continue on to Cuba if they did not contain any weapons. Luckily, the US Navy did not open fire, and Soviet ships did not defy the quarantine line, which could have sparked a hot war.

Patterson observes that despite the good news, at this point, (quote) “The crisis . . . was far from over. Construction on the [Cuban missile] sites continued; [and the Americans feared that] very soon the missiles might be operational” (close quote). JFK pushed the Soviets further, insisting that all of the nuclear missiles must be removed from the Western Hemisphere, and the sites where they had been located then needed to be opened up to international inspectors to confirm that every missile was, in fact, gone. 

At this tense moment, the USA made a play for global sympathy when on October 25, 1962, Adlai Stevenson went before the United Nations in his role as US ambassador to that body, and he presented to the world photographic evidence of Soviet missile installations in Cuba. Stevenson then directly asked his Soviet counterpart if he still claimed that the USSR had no offensive weapons in Cuba. The Russian responded, (quote) “I am not in an American courtroom, & therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in [this] fashion.” Stevenson retorted, (quote) “You are in the courtroom of world opinion right now, and you can answer yes or no.” The Soviet still evaded the question, but most observers thought that Stevenson had gotten the best of the exchange & had given an impressive performance. According to biographer Robert Dallek, President Kennedy was surprised by the toughness shown by the usually mild-mannered statesman. (Quote) “I never knew Adlai had it in him. Too bad he didn’t show some of this steam in the 1956 campaign,” JFK said.

Back at ExComm, top Kennedy Administration officials faced the paradox of how to respond to 2 apparently contradictory messages they had received in short succession from the Kremlin. Herring writes that (quote) “Apparently convinced on the basis of flawed intelligence that war was imminent, Khrushchev on October 25th dispatched to Washington a personal & highly emotional message warning of the ‘calamity’ of war, and offering to remove the missiles in return for a US pledge not to invade Cuba.” However, he reports that (quote) “the next day . . . [the Soviet premier] sent another message that left US officials shaking their heads in dismay . . . it upped the ante by also demanding removal of US Jupiter missiles from Turkey” (close quote). 

After the second note arrived from Khrushchev, ExComm debated what to do next; the sudden escalation of Soviet demands had confused and antagonized American leaders. Patterson reports that some American officials argued that removal of the Jupiter missiles would require the approval of NATO. Military officials predictably argued that Khrushchev’s new demands were unreasonable, and they continued to push for air strikes to take out the Cuban missiles before they could become operational. 

The pressure then ratcheted up substantially when a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down a U-2 plane over Cuba on October 27th, killing the American pilot. The Joint Chiefs reacted angrily to this provocation, and they called for an immediate air strike against the Soviet military installations within Cuba. The US military did not know that the Soviet officer in Cuba who made the decision to shoot down the U-2 had done so without getting Kremlin approval. It appeared to the Joint Chiefs that Khrushchev might have ordered the attack on the American aircraft in a show of force to intimidate the Americans. After consulting with ExComm, JFK made the call that the military should hold off on conducting a retaliatory strike, at least for one more day. The administration wanted a little more time to engage in a final desperate push for a diplomatic solution.

Patterson states that Bobby Kennedy, (quote) “drawing on suggestions from others,” proposed that the US “accept the arrangement proposed in the first Soviet note, & act as if the second note had never been received” (close quote). JFK wrote a response to Khruschev, stating that the USA officially accepted the Soviet leader’s initial offer, pledging to never invade Cuba in exchange for a Soviet promise to dismantle the missiles there. Meanwhile, according to Herring, RFK contacted the Russians through back channels via the Soviet embassy (with presidential approval from his brother, of course). Bobby (quote) “privately assured the Soviet ambassadors that the Turkish missiles would [also] be removed . . . [this offer was reported to] Khrushchev, [and] after hours of agonizing suspense, [he] accepted the US proposals” (close quote). The Americans insisted that the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey be kept a secret, in order to politically save face. According to RFK biographer Larry Tye, (quote) the Kennedys “knew an explicit swap like that would cause an uproar, not just among hawks in America, but from the Turks & other [NATO] allies. So, they made Khrushchev the offer on the condition that Russia keep that part of the deal secret” (close quote).

Dallek recalls that (quote) “No one involved in the October 27 [ExComm] discussions could have doubted that the United States was on the brink of military action against Cuba, which seemed likely to lead to a crisis in Europe & a possible war with the Soviet Union” (close quote). Thankfully, Khrushchev had finally agreed to remove the missiles just in time to keep the Americans from losing patience & taking further military actions that would have almost certainly escalated the crisis. Author Larry Tye suggests that by (quote) “October 28, 1962, the thirteenth and last day of the missile standoff . . . America & the rest of mankind [had learned] enough to finally relax” (close quote). In the months that followed, both superpowers followed through with their agreement; during late 1962, the Soviets removed all of their nuclear missiles from Cuba, & by early 1963, the US had also removed its warheads from Turkey. Tye notes that the American government did not come clean about the reason for removing the Jupiter missiles during the Sixties. The US instead described it as (quote) “a modernization of the NATO nuclear deterrent, rather than [as] a payback to the Russians for withdrawing their nuclear warheads from Cuba” (close quote).

While officials in the White House and in the Kremlin were relieved they had brought their nations back from the brink of nuclear war, Fidel Castro stewed in Havana. According to Patterson, the Cuban dictator (quote) “was outraged [when the Soviets removed the missiles], both because Khrushchev had given in, and because he himself had not been consulted” regarding the decision (close quote). Herring notes that during the crisis (quote) “unknown to the Americans, [Fidel] Castro [had been] pushing Moscow to launch a 1st strike against the US.” According to the website of the PBS history program The American Experience, (quote) “As the tensions of the Missile Crisis escalated, Castro wrote Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev urging him to use the missiles and to sacrifice Cuba if necessary” (close quote). Today, it is still rather shocking to consider that the Cuban dictator was willing to see his own people wiped out so that he could go out in a blaze of revolutionary defiance & martyrdom.

Similarly, some hard-liners in the United States were upset that Kennedy had publicly pledged not to invade Cuba. This bellicose view was held not only by armchair anti-Communist cranks; it was the actual perspective of some of the most powerful American military officials. For instance, Dallek documents that General Curtis LeMay described the peaceful resolution of the terrifying Cuban missile crisis as (quote) “the greatest defeat in our history,” and he unsuccessfully pushed the Kennedy Administration to break its promise to Khrushchev by launching a US invasion of Cuba. 

Of course, LeMay’s perspective was outside of the mainstream of American public opinion. To most Americans, & to many others around the world, who were unaware of the secret deal regarding the missiles in Turkey, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed in the crisis by calling Khrushchev’s bluff & forcing him into retreat.  James T. Patterson asserts that Khruschev had gambled and lost in his efforts to permanently install nuclear weapons in Cuba. He reports that this failure caused a (quote) “worldwide public embarrassment” for the Communist Bloc (close quote), and it gave the USSR’s arch-frenemy, the People’s Republic of China, an excuse to drift further from the Kremlin’s orbit. Patterson indicates that Khrushchev had done many reckless things during the crisis, including giving (quote) “Soviet commanders the authority to fire off missiles on their own,” which had allowed a renegade commander to shoot down the American U-2 pilot. Patterson contends that Khruschev’s unsteady handling of the crisis played a role in the Soviet central committee’s subsequent decision to remove him as Premier during 1964, when he would be replaced by the purportedly more reliable Leonid Brezhnev as the USSR’s top leader. 

Patterson notes that many historians & biographers have viewed the handling of the October 1962 crisis as John F. Kennedy’s finest hour as president. He writes, (quote) “Kennedy advisers emerged from their ordeal with great pride & self-assurance about their capacity to handle crises in the future” (close quote). The Cuban Missile Crisis had been a tremendous test for the president, & Herring reports that historians have traditionally given him “high marks” for his performance. After all, he had (quote) “sought advice from different quarters. He left Khrushchev with room for retreat,” and “he did not gloat in apparent US victory” (close quote). Biographer Larry Tye argues that Premier Khrushchev also deserves some of the credit for the superpowers’ ability to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the crisis; he says that (quote) “Nikita Khrushchev nimbly shifted from tough guy to conciliator, much as JFK did, but he took the sacrificial step the Kennedys demanded by making his withdrawal of the missiles look like a one-sided deal” (close quote).

However, I agree with those historians who, in recent years, have emphasized that the successful outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis needs to be placed within a larger context of the policy miscalculations that allowed such a dangerous situation to emerge in the first place. George C. Herring argues that the Kennedy Administration’s obsession with regime change in Cuba, as evidenced by the Bay of Pigs invasion & Operation Mongoose, helped set the stage for the conflict. Historian James T. Patterson reports that we now know that (quote) “some 42,000 Soviet military personnel – twice as many as American military intelligence imagined at the time – were then on the island” (close quote). Historian Herring argues that a decision to invade likely would have been disastrous, because of (quote) “the [large] number of Soviet troops in Cuba . . . armed with [operational] tactical nuclear weapons” (close quote). The Americans had assumed that the nukes in Cuba were not yet operational, but had the USA invaded, the Soviets could have responded by firing nuclear missiles at American targets.

Herring argues that in October 1962, (quote) “the world came closer than it ever has [before or since] to nuclear conflagration.” Similarly, Patterson contends the fact that Khrushchev & Kennedy allowed US-Soviet relations to reach such volatility by ’62 (quote) “did credit to neither man as a diplomatist, and it provoked the most frightening military crisis in world history” (close quote). My own view is that JFK showed great poise & courage in standing up to hawkish US military leaders during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I do concur with these historians that it had been the Kennedy administration’s own aggressive actions toward Cuba that helped to provoke the Soviet military buildup on the island.

Although the country & the world had only narrowly avoided disaster in October 1962, the peaceful resolution of the conflict played to John F. Kennedy’s political benefit. Herring writes that the president benefitted from the “rally round the flag effect” that often causes presidents to become more popular during & after a national crisis. He writes that (quote) “the Democrats bucked tradition by gaining seats in the Senate in the [November] midterm elections” (as we discussed in our Part I episode for 1962), and JFK’s own presidential approval ratings “soared.”

In the aftermath of the crisis, the superpowers made efforts to ensure that they would not so easily reach the brink of war again. According to Patterson, the USA & USSR created a so-called “hot-line” in 1963 so that they could communicate directly, (quote) “in order to lessen the chances of nuclear disaster” (close quote). The two superpowers, along with Britain, agreed to a new nuclear testing ban in 1963 as well. Patterson describes this as a mild thaw in Cold War tensions after the missile crisis, but he notes that the US continued its CIA sabotage operations in Cuba, and the island nation (quote) “remained a flashpoint of the Cold War.”

                  Before we conclude this episode, let’s discuss the cultural mood in North America following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the fact that the American people approved of Kennedy’s handling of the conflict, many would never forget the fear they experienced in Fall 1962. Popular art & entertainment reflected a continuing feeling of anxiety & unease in the aftermath of the crisis. In Episode 19, we discussed the growing popularity of folk music during the early Sixties. In late 1962, Bob Dylan released a song entitled “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” It featured foreboding lyrics about human suffering and coming catastrophes. For instance, Dylan sang, (quote) “I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warning, I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world, I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing, I heard ten-thousand whispering and nobody listening, I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing, I heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall” (close quote). 

Writer Thom Donovan of American Songwriter magazine notes that many assumed the song was written in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the “hard rain” potentially referring to missiles being dropped upon a population. However, this is a common misconception; the song was actually first performed in September 1962, a month before the 13 days of anxiety that gripped the White House. Dylan claimed in his autobiography, Chronicles Volume 1, that he wrote the song after spending a day reading through old newspapers in the New York Public Library. He says he was overcome with an impression (quote) “of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being . . . thrown off course. It’s all one long funeral song” (close quote).

Many Boomers who lived through the Sixties recall “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” as an almost prophetic warning by Dylan about the coming political assassinations and the devastation of the Vietnam War, which would soon spoil the early optimism of the 1960s era. However, it is important to note that, although the song was technically written before the Cuban Missile Crisis, it gained popularity in its immediate aftermath, when the American public became increasingly preoccupied with, and troubled by, the serious possibility of nuclear war. Thom Donovan argues that Dylan’s composition (quote) “voiced the general anxiety of Cold War doom in America” (close quote). Due to the tensions of 1962, many teenaged Boomers were becoming aware of noxious political and social influences in the world beyond the bubble of suburbia, and the urgency & severity of current geopolitical problems seemed more apparent than ever. 

Domestic cultural tensions would build still further during the year 1963, as the civil rights movement would reach a new apex with the March on Washington. The Kennedy administration would face tough decisions regarding the ongoing war in Vietnam, which was not going well for the anti-Communist forces. Then, by the year’s end, the United States of America would be rocked by the decade’s first great generational trauma. Buckle up as we continue exploring another turbulent year during one of the most dramatic decades in American history, here on “From Boomers to Millennials.”

[musical interlude break]

The “From Boomers to Millennials” podcast is co-produced by Erin Rogers & Logan Rogers. This program has been written & narrated by Logan Rogers. You can send us feedback about this episode via email at boomertomillennial@outlook.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and BlueSky. Many thanks to all of our listeners who patiently waited for us to complete this episode on one of the most complicated & most important national crises in 20th Century American history. We sincerely hope that a hard rain does not fall on any of you, and thanks as always for listening!