Welcome back. This is the third and final installment of the doomsday series. For those of you new here, this series covers the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost ended human existence.
It was October 26. It just seemed the world might go back to normal when Kennedy received the first of Khruschev’s letters. Here’s the crux of the letter: the USSR would remove its missiles from Cuba if, and only if the US pledges to never invade the island. It seemed too good to be true, but it was 1962, and they couldn’t simply use a lie detector on Khruschev, so they were forced to believe his words and hope for peace. Well, sometimes intuition is just far superior to even physical proofs.
On October 27 came the peak of the crisis. Khruschev sent another letter. This time, it was aggressive, forceful, and threatening. Rather than the prevention of invasion of Cuba, Khruschev demanded that the US remove missiles in Turkey in order for the Soviet Union to remove the Cuban missiles. Furthermore, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, killing Rudolph Anderson, the only casualty in the crisis. This enraged America. EXCOMM decided retaliation was necessary. The world paused; they were inches away from war, possibly a nuclear war.
Here’s where I think Kennedy’s best move of his presidential term came. He ignores the second letter, and agrees to the terms of the first letter publicly. He agrees to not invade Cuba. However, he privately agrees to take back missiles in Turkey as well, and with that, Khruschev announces his missiles will be removed from Cuba, ending the crisis.
The aftermath was quite expected to say the least. Khruschev was seen as weak, and was ousted in 1964 after losing severe political support. President Kennedy’s popularity rose amongst Americans, but more importantly, a direct hotline was established between Washington and Moscow to prevent future miscommunication.
Well, this ends the story of how complete human annihilation almost occurred.
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