Lesson for Putin: How the World Avoided Armargeddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

At the end of October 1962, the signs pointed to the end of the world. Dozens of American bombers were constantly in the air, ready to attack targets in the Soviet Union. In the United States itself, numerous ICBMs were poised to carry nuclear death behind the Iron Curtain. And nuclear terror also lurked underwater: US submarines had gone to secret positions to send their “Polaris” missiles east.

Never before has the world been so close to a nuclear exchange. DEFCON 2 was ordered to Strategic Bomber Command by President John F. Kennedy on October 24, 1962. DEFCON stands for the special state of defense in which the United States armed forces or parts thereof are located. DEFCON 5 stands for “peace”, DEFCON 1 means war.

The days between 14 and 28 October 1962 went down in history as the Cuban Missile Crisis. But why did the island nation become the scene of one of the Cold War’s greatest crises? A conflict in which “millions of people could have died in a nuclear exchange of battles between the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union”, as historian Reiner Pommerin summarizes in his detailed and vivid book “The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962”.

The simple answer is: because Air Force pilot Major Richard Heyser, who took off on October 14, 1962, brought with him footage of an overflight over Cuba that terrified Washington.

The photos proved beyond a doubt that, despite all previous promises, the Soviet Union had not only sent so-called defensive weapons to its socialist ally in Cuba, Fidel Castro.

On the contrary, what was built on the island had a decidedly offensive character: positions for Soviet medium-range missiles of the “R-12” type, which NATO feared as the “SS-4 Sandal”. With a range of about 2,000 kilometers, the “R-12” with its nuclear warheads could have devastated large parts of the United States.

“Suddenly the nuclear threat was at our doorstep,” author Pommerin sums up the vote in Washington, DC. Soon, the Executive Committee, the so-called ExComm, which Kennedy had assembled from high-ranking politicians and advisers, was debating how the US should respond to the threat. An air raid? Surprising and devastating?

But such an action could have been a disaster, especially since the US would have been the aggressor. Fidel Castro, for example, saw the neighboring state to the north as such. In 1961, the US supported the so-called Bay of Pigs landings, a disastrous attempt to overthrow the Castro regime with the aid of Cuban exiles. This was followed by “Operation Mongoose” (in English: “Mongoose”), which also aimed to end Castro’s “prematurely” – albeit with very little success.

Not least because of these threats, Castro was eager to join the communist supremacy of the Soviet Union. She saw some kind of advanced missile site in Cuba. One with significant benefits to the Soviets, which as a superpower were not as “super” as the US. Their nuclear potential was significantly greater than Moscow’s, as evidenced by US medium-range missiles deployed in Turkey.

If the US has missiles in Turkey, why not send them to Cuba? As a strongman in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev must have asked himself this question. And if missiles are sent to the Caribbean, why only “R-12” with a range of 2000 kilometers? Then there are those of the “R-14” type with a range that is more than twice as large.

President Kennedy, who briefed the American nation and the world about the threat from Cuba in a televised address on Oct. 22, faced a dilemma: to attack or was there another option? The hardliners preferred solution number 1. General Curtis LeMay already muttered, “The red dog is sniffing in the backyard.” Fortunately, there was an alternative: quarantine.

US forces have established such a zone around Cuba, in which they reserve the right to search ships bound for Cuba. However, it was not only civilian ships that went in this direction, but also various Soviet submarines.

The Cold War then became almost very, very hot: On board the “B-59”, the commander already had a nuclear torpedo ready for launch when American warships forced the submarine to the surface. Even today, mankind can thank the Soviet sailors for their composure.

In Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev was anything but “quiet” after Kennedy’s televised speech, which sparked outrage at the Soviet Union across much of the world. “You screwed up,” the Kremlin chief snapped at his defense minister.

As if the shame wasn’t enough, the US ambassador to the United Nations Security Council soon publicly condemned his Soviet counterpart, Walerian Sorin, for lying: Sorin had claimed there that the weapons in Cuba were in no way offensive in nature. . Using aerial photos, the US proved otherwise.

Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. also wanted to take such pictures when he flew to Cuba on October 27, 1962 in his “U-2” reconnaissance aircraft. Anderson, however, would never see his homeland again. A Russian missile took him out of the sky. Fortunately, Anderson was the only soldier to die in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as Reiner Pommerin points out.

Khrushchev was overcome with fear after Anderson’s death. Was that the reason for the war for the Americans? Luckily not. Khrushchev eventually agreed to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba, Kennedy to return US missiles from Turkey. On October 28, 1962, it was clear: the world had gotten away with it again.

It is true that the danger of using nuclear weapons during the current war in Ukraine is in all likelihood less than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin, who continues to threaten with his nuclear weapons in the present, would do well to remember those days in October 1962. There are no winners in a nuclear war. Or as Nikita Khrushchev, Putin’s predecessor in the Kremlin, once summed up the consequences: “The survivors will be jealous of the dead.”