How did the superpowers come to the brink of war over Cuba?
2007-05-03 09:42:46 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference ➔ Homework Help
I suggest you watch a movie called "Thirteen Days". It's set during the Cuban Missile Crisis and will definitely help you out!
There have been recent suggestions (since the release of KGB records) that there were more missiles there than we even knew at the time -- and they were ready to go -- to make things even more scary!
If you don't have time to watch the flick (although it's well worth it), try these websites:
This one from GWU is quite in depth, would be a great site if you're doing a paper. Lots of primary sources.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/
This one is general overview if you just need some background stuff.
http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/
In general, this is the closest we have come to global nuclear war -- that the general public knows about. I personally believe we were close a few other times during the cold war but the combination of diplomacy and MADD forestalled it.
2007-05-03 10:28:24 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
While we were busy watching the French get run out of French Indochina, Fidel Castro took over Cuba and made it a communist country. When we started stationing missiles in Germany, the Russians thought it would be fun to put some in Cuba. Since the Soviet Premier had recently pounded on a table in the UN with his shoe and proclaimed to America "We will bury you!", we took the matter with some seriousness.
Anyway, our spy planes figured out that there were Russians in Cuba, and interpreted the pictures to show they were constructing hardened silos for long range nuclear-tipped missiles, and we noticed some soviet ships headed that way. We sent our navy to block the ships from entering Cuban water.
There next followed a game of "chicken" for a few days, but in the end, the ships turned back without delivering the missiles.
We were not just on the brink of war, we were on the brink of NUCLEAR war.
The story, first told in a book called "The Missiles of October" would rival a Tom Clancy novel.
2007-05-03 16:54:15 · answer #2 · answered by open4one 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Watch the movie, "The Good Shepard" That just came out with Matt Damon. It's an ok movie, not that great but it goes into it a bit. Basically Cuba had a very strategic location as to where Russia could install nuclear weapons in case war ever broke out between America and Russia.
2007-05-03 16:51:25 · answer #3 · answered by Arizona Irish 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
What, you mean the whole "We don't want nuclear missiles sitting in our backyard because Cuba is only 90 miles away from Florida"?
Russia was going to protect the missiles they were sending to Cuba, and we were going to blockade Cuba from getting the missiles. Woulda been a bad war.
2007-05-03 16:51:02 · answer #4 · answered by Frank K 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Homework time: The President of USA Kennedy would not allow nuclear weapons in range of the United States. Unless they were ours of course. Read about the blockade.
2007-05-03 16:51:59 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The Bay of Pigshappened first ( where USA wanted to overthrow Castro).Then came the Cuban missle cirsis where the Soviet union wanted to place missles aimed at the US.
The result was this:
The US did not overthrow Castro and the SU did not get to place missles in Cuba.
2007-05-03 16:50:24 · answer #6 · answered by JoJo_90 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋