Cuban Missile Crisis - HISTORY

Get the story of the dramatic face-off that nearly ended in nuclear war, as told by musician and artist Jeffrey Lewis.

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In a secretly recorded meeting on October 19, 1962, President John F. Kennedy discusses the Cuban missile crisis with his military advisors. After criticizing Kennedy’s call to blockade the island as too weak a response, Gen. Curtis LeMay, Air Force chief of staff, tells the president that his refusal to invade Cuba would encourage the Soviets to move on Berlin.

On October 18, 1962, President Kennedy met with nine of his advisers to discuss what to do about the Soviet missiles that U.S. aerial surveillance discovered in Cuba on October 16. After the meeting, President Kennedy went to the White House Oval Office and recorded his recollections of the meeting.

In 1950s Cuba, government corruption led to Fidel Castro's violent rise to power.

In an address to the U.N. Security Council on October 31, 1956, Great Britain's Sir Pierson Dixon discusses French and English military operations in response to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal.

On February 15, 1961, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson addresses the United Nations General Assembly on the Congo crisis, pledges American support for the U.N.'s peacekeeping efforts and warns against Cold War politics in the civil war.

In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded that Western forces pull out of West Berlin in six months. On March 16, 1959, in a radio and television report to the American people, President Eisenhower speaks of the escalating Cold War tensions over Berlin, stressing that the United States will not give in to pressure from the USSR.