A resistance movement run by Fidel Castro was set up because the people of Cuba wanted a more effective government. Batista’s government was finally overthrown in 1959 and Castro became the Cuban president. However, the USA did not get on with him for much longer as Castro had now become Communist.
Castro started a number of reforms. He nationalised some American industries. Castro started to blame the USA for Cuba’s poverty and asked the USSR for help. As the USA would not by Cuba’s sugar the USSR agreed to take the sugar for oil and machinery.
When John F Kennedy took over as U.S president, the CIA told him about a plan, which was to overthrow Castro by invading Cuba. 1500 of Castro’s opponents were landed at Cochinos Bay, meaning ‘The Bay of Pigs’ on the southern coast of Cuba. They had been told that the Cubans would help them to overthrow Castro, but they did not. The group were badly trained and poorly armed and were now outnumbered by about three hundred to one. They were nearly all killed or put into prison.
This disastrous operation made Castro become more popular and also he asked Khrushchev for help to defend Cuba. The USA did not want either of these things and they were now in a worse position than when they started.
Soviet ships were seen going to Cuba, as American intelligence was now watching the island. Cubans who lived near the docks had been thrown out of their homes and soviet sentries watched over ships that were being unloaded. The USSR told the USA that they were supplying Castro with arms but said that they were only for Cuban defence and no other reason. The USA believed this, as they knew that if the USSR wanted to attack them they were quite capable of doing it from Russia. However when the CIA reported that they had seen missiles being set up in Cuba, pointing at America, it became very clear that Khrushchev had lied.
Kennedy now had to make a decision about what to do next. He had to be very careful, as a wrong move could result in a nuclear war. Kennedy decided that he would blockade Cuba with the U.S Navy so that the Soviet ships wouldn’t be able to get any more missiles or weapons to Cuba. However, the USA thought that the USSR would take action against them and seize West Berlin so 156 ICBM’s were primed in Western America, and were ready to be fired at once. The American air force was put on stand by and nuclear bombs were loaded into the bomb bays. The outside world knew nothing of this, until Kennedy appeared on television.
The USSR had been told that if a Cuban missile were launched then the USA would attack them. This resulted in all Soviet ships heading for Cuba to either stop pr change direction. However, the work continued n the Cuban Missile sites.
The USA troops got ready to invade Cuba. The USSR did not want this to happen so they started to look for a way out of the crisis. Khrushchev sent Kennedy two letters and they talked to each other on the telephone.
The rest of the world though that a nuclear war would start at any minute. On one occasion, the U.S navy boarded a USSR merchant ship but the USSR did not retaliate. On another occasion a U2 spy plane was shot down by the USSR, over Cuba and the USA took no action.
The public was then told on October 28 that the USSR would remove its missiles form Cuba and that they would not install any more. In return the American blockade was ended and they promised not to invade Cuba.
This only happened because Kennedy had struck a deal with the USSR, in secret. Kennedy would remove missiles from Europe if the USSR removed missiles from Cuba. No-one else4 knew about this.
During the Cuban missile crisis the USA and the USSR had come dangerously close to a war and neither sides wanted to get into the same situation again. In 1963 a direct telephone line was set up between Moscow and Washington. It was a ‘hot-line’, which the two leaders could use to talk to each other directly, at just a few minutes notice.
The Cuban missiles Crisis was very significant as although the world cam very close to a nuclear war, the result was that both the USA and the USSR would, in the future make every effort not to let this happen again.
Bibliography:
International relations-Tony Rea
The Cold War and after-J F Aylett
The modern World since 1870-Snellgrove
