Blowback - S2 Episode 8 - “We’ll All Meet In Hell”

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

The USA announces to the world there are missiles in Cuba. Fidel prepares for war. Khrushchev secretly haggles with Kennedy. Americans enjoy Betty Crocker Super Moist Cake Mix.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launch from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. The President, as we have seen, had waited until Monday evening to make this speech in order that the armed forces could be properly positioned, and thus with ships and, planes ready and the world notified the issue was joined. We're in present danger continues after this message. When you're under unusual stress, nerves taught, stomach uneasy. Every second can bring painful misery from tension headache. This pain remedy is Bufferin, the one specially designed to relieve these symptoms of tension headache. Take two Bufferin, and every second can mean Bufferin's pain reliever is speeding through your bloodstream

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I'm Brendan James. I am Noah Colwyn. And this is episode 8. We'll all meet in hell. In the second half of 1959, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara led a delegation on a visit to several nations in Asia and Africa, establishing relations on behalf of the revolutionary government. One of their last stops was Japan,

a big sugar buyer and won the delegation hope. could be friendly to the new Cuba. Japan had also been subject to significant land reform after World War II, and the Cubans, with their own designs for land reform in progress, were looking for the do's and don'ts. Che took in both the country's giant industrial harbors and its violent social contradictions, as he put it in an article later.

But there was one place that was not on the itinerary, which Che insisted he be able to visit. Hiroshima, where 14 years earlier, the United States became the first and still only nation to deploy a nuclear bomb against human beings, obliterating the city and killing as many as 140,000 people. The Americans carried out a similarly deadly attack at Nagasaki days later. The delegations Japanese hosts were not so keen on the Cubans visiting Hiroshima. According to John Lee Anderson's biography of Guevara, a comrade recalled Che's reaction when he was told by the Cuban ambassador in Tokyo

that he was expected to go the next day to lay a wreath at Japan's tomb of the unknown soldier, commemorating the men lost in World War II. Che reacted violently. No way I'll go! That was an imperialist army that killed millions of Asians. Where I will go is to Hiroshima, where the Americans killed 100,000 Japanese. The diplomats sputtered and told him it was impossible

that it had already been arranged with the Japanese chancellor. Che was adamant. It's your problem, not mine, he said. And so Che slipped away to Hiroshima. According to another comrade's account, Che said that not even the cruelest word could express the pain of Hiroshima. We visited that martyr city, completely rebuilt today, Guevara wrote afterward,

noting that over 100 people a year were still dying there from the diseases and other after effects caused by the bomb. Everything is new in Hiroshima, rebuilt after the dreadful explosion, but indelible signs of the tragedy float over the city and into the new buildings, often exact replicas of those that previously occupied the site. One census, however, a lack of continuity. It is a difficult to define sensation that makes the city appear as the reproduction of something already dead. Summing up his trip to Hiroshima,

Guevara described, quote, the concentrated desperation of those who have seen so many human beings perish in an unequaled argy of fire and death. Last episode, we saw the culmination of the war waged on Cuba by the Euro. of 1962. Just a year after the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the Cubans were facing down a relentless campaign of terror, siops, and sabotage courtesy of the mammoth Operation Mungus.

And in the spring of 1962, they were witnessing several massive military exercises simulating attacks on Cuba, including plans of a full-scale military invasion. The Soviet Union, now an economic and political ally, of Cuba, offered the small country's leadership a secret guarantee of defense, strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, with the missile bases to boot. This undercover deployment, Operation Anadir, got almost all the weapons to the island before the United States found out about it, and so then we saw Excom, President Kennedy's missile crisis squad, deliberate on what to do. The Joint Chiefs and the Hawks, including Bobby Kennedy for a while, were pushing for an attack

or an invasion of the island. The softliners, the minority, were pushing for something less than that, and Kennedy muddled through until, on October 22nd, he steered a middle course, neither negotiation nor invasion. He decided on a military blockade of Cuba, in which the remaining Soviet ships headed to Cuba would soon be stopped and searched. And that may just include the Soviet freighter Alexandrovsk, still on route to Cuba with the rest of the nuclear payload. Marta, what did you think about the Soviet missiles and the troops coming to Cuba? Of Soviet military support in Cuba more generally. What did people in Cuba think?

I would say the rest of the Cuban stuff like I felt. They were helping us. The Soviets were helping us. And really, I tell you, if it wasn't by the Soviet weapons, we couldn't have fought the Bay of Pigs, and we couldn't have fought the rest of the time in Cuba. So I was say I was not only happy for that, I was even saying, well, thank you for doing that. As we left it last time on October 22nd, 1962, John F. Kennedy announced to the world that the U.S. had confirmed the presence of nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The status of Operation Anadir, the until-now secret Soviet mission to deliver the missiles, was by this point quite far along.

Cuban diplomat Carlos Lachuga, who wrote an account of the crisis, notes this. When Kennedy announced on October 22nd that atomic missiles had been discovered in Cuba, the launching pads for the two regiments had already been completed, and work on a third was in its final stages. But significantly, as Lachuga notes, quote, the nuclear warheads were never installed, nor were the liquid fuel and oxidizing agents ever prepared. Within the past week,

unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation, large, long range, and clearly offensive weapons, this rapid offensive buildup. This is important to start with. A significant element of Kennedy's speech was his labeling these missiles in Cuba as, quote, offensive weapons. For some reason, these weapons, which Khrushchev and Castro repeatedly said, were to prevent an invasion and never to be used, were offensive. Compare them to what the United States called its defensive weapons stationed in Turkey, a country on the Soviet Union's doorstep that the USSR had no intention of

invading, and which in fact the United States would run a shadow government through Operation Gladiow, but that is a different season of this show. But since, as we discussed last time, the Soviet Cuban moves were perfectly legal here, and it was the U.S. blockade that was in fact illegal, this concept of Cuba's missiles being offensive and America's just being defensive was key to shaping some legitimacy out of the aggressive U.S. policy. On a basic level, as Cuban diplomat Mario Garcia in Chowstigi put it, the United States insists on deciding which missiles are good and which missiles are bad. A fleet of more than 80 American warships went into action in the Caribbean.

The Marine Division went to sea. The Air Force went on a full-scale alert. At this time, about 25 Soviet ships were steaming toward Cuba. The Cuban Revolutionary Government immediately responded to Kennedy's televised address. It denounced the blockade, and, sensing this was merely the opening move of a larger strike from America, Cuba began mobilizing 350,000 soldiers and militiamen. Cuba also drafted an emergency letter to the president of the U.N. Security Council to resolve the situation. Now, there was actually a war between India and China going on at the time, but that became a secondary priority at the United Nations after Kennedy's address.

So the next day, October 23rd, there was a debate on the floor. In the face of this rapid buildup, no country of this hemisphere can feel secure. Adley Stevenson, who we now know, ambassador to the U.N., who had been caught lying, about the United States backing the Bay of Pigs invasion, Stevenson now had the opportunity to point the finger at the Soviet Union's offensive missiles in Cuba. Let's quote here from an authority, Carlos Lachuga, who would soon be the UN ambassador for Cuba.

Stevenson said that the Soviet bases in Cuba were entirely different from the NATO bases near the Soviet Union since the latter were, here we are, of a defensive nature, compatible with the principles of the UN, whereas the Soviet bases in Cuba, which had been installed clandestinely, had created the most important nuclear base in the hemisphere outside of all existing treaties, end quote. The agreement between Cuba and the Soviet Union apparently did not count as much as the agreement between the U.S. and Turkey.

Back to Luchuga. Quote, Stevenson emphasized that the Security Council was faced with a serious matter and that the future of civilization might hang on its decision. Cuba's representative Mario Garcia and Chaustagi argued that Cuba was arming itself defensively after years of violence exported by the United States. Cuba had always been willing to engage in negotiations to solve its conflicts with the United States, but its offers had always been met with angry replies. He added that the naval blockade was a war measure and asked that the aggressive forces

around Cuba's coast to be withdrawn. Lechuga writes of the U.S. demand to immediately remove the missiles and hold further talks with the Soviet Union. Quote, note how right from the first, Washington excluded Cuba from all negotiations, for the U.S. spoke of talks only between the U.S. and the Soviet negotiators. In contrast, the Soviet document included the Cubans in the context. Nikita Khrushchev was actually relieved by Kennedy's TV address. The Soviet Presidium got its copy of the speech from the U.S. Embassy and interpreted correctly that Kennedy was buying time. As Timothy Naftali and Alexander Fersenko recount,

with this scintilla of breathing room, Khrushchev decided, what to do next. Ships were still en route to Cuba, including the nuclear-stocked Alexandrovsk, as well as several nuclear-armed submarines. Quote, the Kremlin was especially worried about the Alexandrovsk, which was carrying as many as 24 nuclear warheads

for the intermediate ballistic missiles and the remaining 44 warheads for the land-based cruise missiles. Moscow did not want these to fall into enemy hands, because of course now, they're up against the clock for when the blockade kicks in and the U.S. starts searching these ships. Should these guys turn around, with the blockade about to come down in their path? If not, what about the other ships trailing them a bit further back?

The Presidium decided they would not shrink from Operation Anadir. Quote, the four submarines must continue their crews, and the Alexandrovsk must go to the nearest port. However, in that balancing act that he was constantly improvising, Khrushchev called off the rest, who would likely be cut off by a U.S. blockade. Four ships carrying more intermediate-range missiles would go ahead, but the rest would have to turn around and come home. Meanwhile, the Soviet army was put on higher alert.

Khrushchev, not for the last time, would now go to sleep on his office couch. Quote, I wanted to be able to react immediately. Meanwhile, in Washington, police surrounded. the Soviet embassy. Georgi Bolshekhov, Soviet spy and back channel to Bobby Kennedy, watched the D.C. cops take position, as a colleague said, the blockade has begun. October 23rd, 1962, a Wednesday, between Tuesday and Thursday.

Americans knew there were warheads in Cuba, but were they all delivered? If some were still coming, what ship were they on? The Cubans and the Soviets were very much hoping the remaining ships docked, in Cuba before the blockade was in full force, particularly the Alexandrovsk, whose cargo included several dozen nuclear warheads. In fact, the freighter was supposed to dock in Mariel Cuba west of Havana, but after Kennedy's announcement, it stepped on the proverbial gas, changing course to dock in La Isabella. In these crucial hours, with the potential of the Americans boarding the Soviet ships to find missiles or nukes, and then what? The Soviet troops

in Cuba were feverishly preparing defensive positions and completing the missile installations. Here's Tim Naftali and Alexander Fersenko. Quote, tension mounted throughout the day that the Alexandrovsk might not get through before the blockade went into effect. The ship was behind schedule, and at 4 p.m., two U.S. planes flew over Mariel, where it should have already arrived. The Soviet commander, Issa Pliev, decided not to take any risks, since the Americans seem to have figured out that the nuclear warheads were going to Mariel.

However, since there were no bunkers nearby, Pliyiv would have to keep the boarheads on board the ship until the crisis subsided. The Alexandrov's journey had the Soviet Presidium biting its nails all day until it successfully beat the blockade by a matter of hours. Alexander Alexeyev, you remember him, he's been the Soviet point man in Cuba since 59, now he's the official ambassador.

He got the word to Moscow immediately. Throughout this whole saga, the heads of the two superpowers, Khrushchev and Kennedy, exchanged letters, as did Khrushchev and Fidel, which we'll get to. In the initial days of the crisis on the 22nd, Kennedy opened the exchange, addressing Khrushchev with the rather chilly, sir, rather than any honorable title. The basic takeaway from this initial letter is that Kennedy is genuinely stunned, Khrushchev is going to attempt to level the playing field in the nuclear

age, especially in defense of this island Cuba. He brings up their rather disastrous Vienna summit from the year before, about which Kennedy says, quote, I made clear that in view of the objectives of the ideology to which you adhere, the United States could not tolerate any action on your part, which in a major way disturbed the existing overall balance of power in the world. There was no need to mention who that balance favored. Khrushchev shot off a quick response, essentially saying that the illegal aggression was coming from the United States, not the USSR. Taking note of America's whole offensive, defensive spin about the missiles, Khrushchev wrote,

we affirm that the armaments which are in Cuba, regardless of the classification to which they may belong, are intended solely for defensive purposes, in order to secure the Republic of Cuba against the attack of an aggressor. To put out the idea of a summit to resolve this crisis, Krischchev wrote an open letter to English philosopher Bertrand Russell. He also proposed this in person to a visiting American businessman offering to travel to the United States, because, as Khrushchev put it, if the United States insists on war, we'll all meet in hell. On October 25th, two men had a conversation in the tap room, a bar in the national

press club frequented by D.C. movers and shakers. The bartender, who was a Russian emigre with Baltic roots, made eye contact with a regular, a chess player, and a chess player, and suspected KGB spy. The bartender wanted to tell this regular, whom he knew was rumored to be a Soviet agent, a piece of scuttlebut that he had heard while working. The bartender said a couple American journalists, with contacts in the government,

had heard a Cuban invasion was in the works. This scanned with what Soviet military intelligence had been picking up while monitoring Pentagon radio signals, and the U.S. Strategic Air Command, the Air Force branch in control of America's nukes, had by now switched to nuclear alert. Meanwhile, JFK, responding to a Khrushchev letter from the day before, completely ignores the Soviet leader's diplomatic overtures.

To quote Naftali and Fersenko, quote, the tone of the letter made it appear the White House would accept nothing but a complete Soviet capitulation. Khrushchev realized that the United States, whether it be its military, its Congress, its president, or its president's brother, was not going to allow these missiles to exist in Cuba without plunging the globe into nuclear war. Calling together the Presidia, Khrushchev surprised some by saying that they needed to recall the four missile ships still bound for Cuba and offer Kennedy a way to step back from the brink. Khrushchev's idea was an offer to remove the missiles in exchange for a guarantee from the United

States to cease its planning to invade Cuba. October 26th, the Cuban leadership and military, after several days of relative calm and assurance, were now becoming anxious. Their intelligence indicated the U.S. was preparing an ultimatum for the United Nations to remove the missiles, and failing that, an invasion was in the works. By now, unlike Khrushchev, Castro believed JFK had committed to an attack on Cuba. In addition to the intel they'd been collecting, Cuba was looking at increased U.S. reconnaissance flights over their country, perhaps to scan the island just before an air raid or invasion. Fidel was beginning to wonder if it was time to stop letting these planes hover over the treetops of his country.

On the morning of the 26th, Fidel called his general staff together to put their forces on high alert and mobilize. His brother Raoul and Che Guevara would handle the combat position. in the West and East, respectively. Alexander Alexeyev, the Soviet pointman in Cuba, met with Castro to consult on what Alexiev's bosses in Moscow were thinking at this moment. Fidel said the Soviets should simply admit to the world the precise nature of these missiles and say they were under Soviet control, forcing the United States to contemplate their next action

as not only war against Cuba, but against the USSR. as Naftali and Fersenko write, Castro had been patient with these U.S. planes overhead, but he would not let them fly over undisturbed for much longer. So what was Nikita Khrushchev thinking? Well, he put it in words in a long letter to Kennedy on the 26th, unbeknownst to Fidel, Alexiev, and all the forces in Cuba. This letter torturously made its way to the United,

the White House in several pieces, the first part delivered in the early evening and the last by 9 p.m. It was devoured by the members of Xcom. I see, Mr. President, that you too are not devoid of a sense of anxiety for the fate of the world, of understanding, and of what war entails. What would a war give you? You are threatening us with war, but you well, know that the very least which you would receive in reply would be that you would experience the same consequences as those which you sent us. We must not succumb to intoxication and petty passions, regardless of whether elections are impending in this or that country. These are all transient things. But if indeed war should break out, then it would not be in our power

to stop it, for such is the logic of war. I have participated in two wars, and know that war ends when it is rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. You once said that the United States was not preparing an invasion of Cuba, but you also declared that you sympathized with the Cuban counter-revolutionary emigrants, and that you support them and would help them to realize their plans against the present government of Cuba. It is also not a secret to anyone that the threat of armed attack, aggression, has constantly hung and continues to hang over Cuba. It was only this which impelled us to respond to the

request of the Cuban government to furnish it aid for the strengthening of the defensive capacity of this country. If assurances were given by the president and the government of the United States, that the USA itself would not participate in an attack on Cuba and would restrain others from actions of this sort. If you would recall your fleet, this would immediately change everything. I am not speaking for Fidel Castro, but I think that he and the government of Cuba, evidently, would declare demobilization and would appeal to the people to get down to peaceful labor. And here's the most famous passage. Mr. President, I appeal to you to weigh well what the aggressive, piratical actions which

you have declared the USA intends to carry out in international waters would lead to. You yourself know that any sensible man simply cannot agree with this, cannot recognize your right to such actions. If you did this as the first step toward the unleashing of war, well then, it is evident that nothing else has left to us, but to accept this challenge of yours. If, however, you have not lost your self-control and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be

tied, and a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot. And what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. Consequently, if there is no intention to tighten that knot and thereby doomed the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie the knot. We are ready for this. all preparations to invade Cuba. This changed nothing for the hardliners, but the feeling between John Kennedy and now his brother was a delicate optimism. The letter, with all its rhetoric,

said the famously rhetoric-averse Bobby Kennedy, had the beginnings, perhaps, of some accommodation, some agreement. What he meant was that Khrushchev was willing to admit, despite the legal and moral case he had made for them, these missiles would probably have to go home soon enough. As the arguments continued at the United Nations, as the Allies rose in unanimous support of the President's action, private messages began to pass from the Kremlin to the White House and back again. Clear and present danger continues after this message.

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So you can make Betty Crocker Noodles Romanov in only eight minutes. And it's as good as if you made it for a czar. Maybe better. October 27th, around 1 a.m. Fidel broke bread with Alexeyev. The Cuban prime minister now put the odds of a U.S. attack on his country at around 20 to 1. Strengthening that estimate was a cable from the President of Brazil that warned him the Americans were planning to attack if the missiles were not gone within 48 hours. Then, 2 a.m. in Havana, 9 a.m. in Moscow.

General Pleev, in charge of the Soviet mission in Cuba, message the following to Moscow. From available intelligence information, the USA has located the arrangement of the R-12 and R-14 missile regiments, and the leadership of the Strategic Air Command has ordered a full military alert of its strategic aviation military units. Fidel Castro has ordered air defense units to fire on U.S. airplanes in the event of an attack on Cuba.

It is in this context that Fidel Castro wrote his own letter to Khrushchev, apparently in a somewhat tangled series of rewrites and translations. From an analysis of the situation and the reports in our possession, I consider that the aggressive aggression is almost imminent within the next 24 or 72 hours.

There are two possible variants. The first and most likely is an air attack against certain targets with the limited objective of destroying them. The second, less probable, although possible, is invasion. I understand that this variant would call for a large number of forces and it is, in addition, the most repulsive form of aggression, which might inhibit them. you can rest assured that we will firmly and resolutely resist attack, whatever it may be. The morale of the Cuban people is extremely high, and the aggressor will be confronted heroically.

At this time, I want to convey to you briefly my personal opinion. If the second variant is implemented, and the imperialists invade Cuba with the goal of occupying it, the danger that such aggressive policy poses for humanity is so great, that following that event, the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialist could launch the first nuclear strike against it. I tell you this because I believe that the imperialist's aggressiveness is extremely dangerous, and if they actually carry out the brutal act of invading Cuba in violation of international law and morality, that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear,

legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other. Up to the last moment, we will maintain the hope that peace will be safeguarded, and we are willing to contribute to this as much as we can. But at the same time, we are ready to calmly confront a situation, which we view as quite real and quite close. At around noon in Moscow, Khrushchev is informed of signals that the U.S. was going to attack Cuba and, by extension, the Soviet Union. But somehow, he did not believe Kennedy was going to invade. He sensed him hesitating. Khrushchev told the Presidium, if we could achieve additionally the liquidation of bases in Turkey, in addition to the non-invasion pledge, we would win. After assembling this general offer, the Presidium shot a message to Pliov for,

forbidding him to arm any nuclear warheads to any missile system without authorization. There was one problem. At least according to the Soviets, in his breakneck dash to settle things with Kennedy before another twist occurred, and with telephone lines insecure, Khrushchev had no time to run the proposal by Castro. With a delay inevitable, he ordered that Castro be informed as soon as possible that he had Kennedy on the ropes. By mid-morning in D.C., XCOM, still deliberating over the first letter, the Let's Untie the Knot letter, received a second, more formal letter from Khrushchev that he had dictated with the Presidium. This letter, while it lacked some of the poetry of the first, was more concrete on proposals, and was also broadcast over Radio Moscow.

And you can hear the confusion in the XCOM tapes as they read this new missive coming off the ticker. They were doing a defensive record from Cuba, the United States, would do a rocket from Turkey. Hmm, you didn't. I thought he's read by both of the associations and put it out so far as the writer's at the same thing. They're realizing that Khrushchev put out this second offer over Radio Moscow,

and it's being reported. He did? He didn't free to say that, did he? I may not be putting out another leather paper. And at one point, they call in Pierre Salinger, who was the press secretary, and they all yell, Pierre, get in here. What?

Pierre? Pierre. That wasn't in the letter. We received. Here are the key, was it? No. I read pretty carefully. I read that way.

Well, therefore, is you supposed to put it out a letter he's written me or putting out a statement? Here are the key excerpts. You wish to ensure the security of your country, and this is understandable. But Cuba, too, wants the same thing. All countries want to maintain their security. But how are we, the Soviet Union, our government, to assess your actions which are expressed in the fact that you have surrounded? founded the Soviet Union with military bases, placed military bases literally around our country

and stationed your missile armaments there. This is no secret. Responsible Americans openly declare that it is so. Your missiles are located in Britain, are located in Italy, are located in Turkey. I therefore make this proposal. We are willing to remove from Cuba, the missiles, which you regard as offensive. We are willing to carry this out, and to make this pledge in the United Nations. Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States, for its part, considering the uneasiness and anxiety of the Soviet government, will remove its comparable missiles from Turkey.

Let us reach agreement as to the period of time needed by you and by us to bring this about. Of course, the permission of the government of Cuba and Turkey is necessary for the entry into those countries of these representatives. If the first letter's vague offer to de-escalate gave XCOM relief, this second letter's specificity gave many in the room heartburn. Now it wasn't just a non-advasion pledge, but a withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles at the Soviet Union's doorstep. Obviously, the military minds were not in favor of drawing down any missiles anywhere. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy urged Kennedy to ignore the proposal. But JFK was blunt. Quote, let's not kid our

themselves. They've got a very good proposal, which is the reason they've made it public over Radio Moscow. He knew, as they all did, that since the beginning of the crisis, the Jupiters were under discussion in the press, in the DC barroom chatter, and in Bobby Kennedy's Soviet back channels. To any man at the United Nations or any other rational man, it will look like a very fair trade, Kennedy said. I think you're going to find it very difficult to explain why we are going to take hostile military action in Cuba against these sites, what we've been thinking about. The thing is, he's saying, if you get yours out of Turkey, we'll get ours out of Cuba. I think we've got a very tough one here.

Kennedy was virtually alone in considering this. Everyone else thought it would be a disastrous NATO-block surrender. Not only Bundy, not only Ted the blockade is illegal, Sorensen, but even Kennedy's own brother, Bobby, was opposed. XCOM met again at 4 p.m. to discuss this second letter further, at which point the committee was informed, an American plane had been shot down over Cuba. Oh, YouTube. The YouTube was shot down. Well, I said it was not shut down. An American U2 spy plane passed over Guantanamo that morning. Amid a tropical storm and with the island's Cuban-an-Sul. Soviet forces on high alert, the Soviet commander, Plyev, could not be reached. But the plane could have been the first scout in an American attack. The Soviet officer on the ground made the call.

A surface-to-air missile shot the U-2 down. The pilot named Rudolph Anderson crashed and died. When XCOM heard about this, Anderson's plane hadn't returned for hours, Kennedy said, this is much of an escalation by them, isn't it? An even smaller group assembled that evening before another ex-com session. This included Bobby, Dean Rusk, and McGeorge Bundy. Everyone knew with this downed American pilot that this was probably the moment the U.S. could decide whether to step back from the brink or plunge the world into nuclear war.

JFK decided he would pull back. He was ready to pay the Jupiter missiles to end this. He dispatched his brother Bobby to meet with the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrinnan and accept, in general terms, a Jupiter trade with one key point. Like the Soviet mission to get missiles to Cuba, the deal to remove missiles from Turkey must be kept secret. That evening, XCOM resumed, with many of its members, ignorant of Kennedy's offer to accept Khrushchev's deal.

Several of them banged on about what they should do after another American plane gets shut down. McNamara, now convinced with the others that an invasion was inevitable, said to RFK, quote, Bobby, we ought to, we need to have two things ready, a government for Cuba, because we're going to need one, and secondly, plans for how to respond to the Soviet Union in Europe.

But President Kennedy, quietly one day ahead of everybody, seems to have decided to give Khrushchev a little time to consider what Bobby had told the Soviet ambassador. As all this was going on, after the blockade is in effect, after the downing of the U-2, a Soviet submarine lay underwater, surrounded by the U.S. Navy. Unbeknownst to the Americans, this B-59 submarine was one of the subs armed with a tactical nuclear torpedo, which, under agreement between several authorities, on board could be used. This vessel had of course been destined for Cuba, but was ordered to

stop, descend, and effectively hide in the water after American ships spotted them. Descending this deep, however, severed their contact with anyone else for days and left them guessing at what was happening on the surface. The improvisational and secret nature of Anadir, as we've said, put the crews of the flotilla under mind-boggling pressure, and this went doubly for the submarines, which were built for the Arctic. The sub's air conditioning did not function above around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures aboard were well above 100 degrees, and the CO2 levels were high enough to cause crewmen to pass out. It was in these surroundings, cut off from the world in a piping hot cage underwater, that the B-59 crew felt explosions in the water around them. A comms

officer on board described the sensation as, quote, like you were sitting in a metal barrel which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer. Captain Valentin Savitsky, nerve shot to hell, became convinced that war had broken out and that the submarine was under attack and that it was time to use that nuclear torpedo. In fact, these were depth charges by the U.S. Navy, non-lethal, grenade-like charges

that were meant to signal a submarine to surface and expose itself. The protocol around how many of these you could drop had been changed in recent days, days that the B-59 had spent deep underwater. Under the impression that World War III was well underway and that the submarine was under attack, Savitsky was determined to give the Americans hell. But on each Soviet submarine, there was a requirement that any use of the nuclear torpedo required assent from both the captain and the commissar, the political officer. The B-59 in particular actually had two captains in a

commissar. Captain Savitsky was ready to deploy the nuke, the commissar was ready to deploy the nuke, the second captain, Vasily Archipov, would not sign off. Arquipov calmed the captain down and urged him to consider the possibility that the explosions were non-lethal depth charges. The submarine surfaced and communicated with the Americans that it would return to the Soviet Union. Archipov's deed here, which most acknowledged prevented the beginning of the first nuclear exchange in world history, would not be known for another several decades. He reportedly kept his action's secret, even from his family, until near the end of his life.

October 28th, after Captain Vasily Arkipov quietly prevented a nuclear exchange in the Caribbean, Nikita Khrushchev did his part. He woke up that morning to good news and bad news. The good, Kennedy had responded favorably to his initial offer to withdraw the nukes for a pledge to keep hands off Cuba. The bad, an American had been shot down over Cuba just as negotiations were getting started. Khrushchev met with the Presidium, and though they were encouraged by Kennedy's acceptance of the minimal terms, they were still ready for America to attack Cuba that day.

But then word came in that RFK had told the Soviet ambassador that the U.S., in general terms, agreed to the Jupiter trade. The details would need to be worked out later, because RFK said somewhat remarkably, time was running out for John Kennedy to prevent a U.S. attack on Cuba and the Soviet Union. Khrushchev wasted no time. He called in a stenographer and got a response out. There was first a public letter, broadcast over the radio, that said, yes, good, let's sit down and talk. This was to publicly plant a flag, prevent any unforeseen twist to cause things to go backwards from negotiations. Then, there was a second private letter sent to Kennedy, making it clear the Jupiter deal could be secret, but it did need to be part of the deal.

Khrushchev also sent Castro a letter, insisting not. to shoot down any more American planes. Over in the U.S., Khrushchev's broadcast and letter made it to Washington. There was a general relief in XCOM, but not so much in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military brass, in fact, were furious. Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations, said, quote, we've been had. Maxwell Taylor's aide, General William W. Smith later said, quote, primed to deliver a knockout blow, the leaders of the U.S. armed forces were obliged to pull their punch, and Curtis LeMay demanded for hours to speak to the president. Fidel Castro, prime minister of Cuba, heard about the breakthrough between Kennedy and

Khrushchev over the radio. He was not pleased to hear this olive branch from Khrushchev to Kennedy, which, among other things, left out what Khrushchev could not tell anyone yet, the secret agreement to dismantle the American missiles in Turkey. To Fidel, it sounded as if the Soviets had given up without much of a fight. Putting on a face, Fidel told a Soviet officer, Cuba will not lose anything by the removal of the missiles because she has already gained so much. But he was obviously stung, if only because he was not informed during the heady moments when Khrushchev made this offer to Kennedy.

Now, Castro was crystal clear. There needed to be further demands about the economic embargo, about terrorism, about the basic Guantanamo Bay, and Cuba needed the Soviet Union to back them up. And in fact, Khrushchev had always told Kennedy that different parts of the arrangement

they were working out, like weapons inspections, these would have to be agreed to by Cuba and Turkey, as a matter of fact. And Vidal Castro would be damned if he was going to let agents of the United States roam free around his country after all of this. As October 1962 came to a close, the highest stage of the crisis was over.

The Cubans call it the October crisis for a reason. But heading into November, several loose ends between the U.S. and the Soviet Union threatened to reverse the progress they had made. And Cuba's government was desperate to preserve its sovereignty after the backroom deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev. The last time the news was simple and our reactions were uncomplicated was on Sunday when Khrushchev backed down. The worst of the tension had eased then and we have returned to our normal complications. Not only the complications of politics because we're a political people and need political conflict,

but the news today underlines this return to complexity, to different shades of gray. On October 29th, Cuba issued its own terms for winding down the crisis. An end to the military blockade. An end to the economic embargo. No more Operation Mongoose or Black Ops. No more pirate attacks. No more Cuban airspace violations. And no more U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay.

Finally, Fidel Castro was absolutely opposed to on-site weapons inspections inside of Cuba, which was now a stipulation by the Americans. He was confident that it would be an espionage bonanza for the United States, which, of course, had put spies and saboteurs in Cuba for years now. Whatever the Americans and respectable opinion thought about the heady subject of nuclear missiles and so on, Fido Castro was not going to be yet another Cuban leader who let the Yankees treat his country like their plaything.

The talks between Uthont and Castro apparently have not gone, well and the UN Secretary General is returning to New York this evening with his entire party, leaving no one behind to arrange things. This morning, Havana Radio is saying that Fond had come to not to inspect the removal of missiles, but only to negotiate. This period following the crisis, in fact, was also a low point in the relationship between Cuba and the USSR, a relationship that would eventually become quite long and fruitful. Nikita Khrushchev was aware that he had burned his Cuban comrades by rushing through the high-stakes deal with Kennedy. On October 30th, Khrushchev sent Fidel a letter.

We have lived through the most serious moment when a nuclear war could have broken out. Obviously, in that case, the Soviet Union and the whole socialist camp would have also suffered greatly. As far as Cuba is concerned, it would be difficult to say even in general terms what this would have meant for you. In the first place, Cuba would have been engulfed in the fire of war. There is no doubt that the Cuban people would have fought courageously, nor that they would have died heroically.

But we are not struggling against imperialism in order to die, but to take advantage of all of our possibilities, to lose less in the struggle and win more, to overcome and achieve the victory of communism. And Khrushchev stressed throughout the U.S. to cease plans for invading Cuba. We feel, he concluded, that the aggressor came out the loser. It made preparations to attack Cuba, but was stopped and forced to recognize before the

world public opinion that it won't attack at this stage. We view this as a great victory. The imperialists, of course, will not stop their struggle against communism, but we also have our plans. This process of struggle will continue as long as there are two political and social systems in the world, until one of these, and we know it will be our communist system, wins and triumphs throughout the world. And I've seen it written recently that Castro didn't want the Soviet missiles, which we've shown is false. He and the Cuban leadership welcomed them, were delighted by them, even if they had doubts about the secrecy factor of Operation Anadir. And indeed, in Castro's reply to this Khrushchev letter,

Fidel, in fact, stressed the sorrow Cubans felt in seeing the missiles go. Raou Roakori, Cuban diplomat and friend of the show, echoed this sentiment from the time in an interview with us. We believed, and it's a fact of life, that had the missiles stayed in Cuba, the U.S. would have to change its attitude towards Cuba and towards peace with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, because the balance, strategic balance, would have changed. Now, missiles, Soviet missiles would be near the United States, as the American missiles were near the Soviet Union. And that was the basis for negotiation. Now, what happened later was something

quite different. So Khrushchev realized he had to repair relations with the Cubans, but he also needed them to play ball on this de-escalation he'd wrangled out of Kennedy. The general secretary dispatched to Cuba someone with credibility, one of the first Soviets to do business on the island after the revolution. Anastas Mikoyan. Mikoyan would be sent to Havana with the somewhat unpleasant task of selling the Cubans on the missile withdrawal. And tonight, just a few minutes ago, the White House announced that the Cuban naval quarantine will be resumed at dawn. And in the absence of UN arrangements, the hemisphere, meaning the United States primarily, will carry the responsibility for continued surveillance.

Well, in present danger continues after this message. Hershey, Hershey, Betty Crocker puts Hershey, lots of Hershey's Coco in the box with a big red spoon. Yes, there's lots of Hershey's Coco in this new dark chocolate fudge cake makes. And the chocolate fudge cake you get from it is so dark and so moist and so chocolate. Some folks may say... It tastes just sinfully rich. It tastes just sinfully rich.

An equally rich tasting with Heavenly Hershey's Coco is this new dark fudge frosting mix that lets you top off your cake with the glory of a smooth, chocolatey fudge frosting. It's the greatest fudge flavor ever found in a frosting mix. Yes, the rich new fudge taste in mixes is Hershey, and you get it only in these new Betty Crocker dark chocolate fudge mixes. Two new mixes. Meanwhile, after all of this, when it comes from the box with the big red food, it always comes up better. Meanwhile, after all of this, after the delicate move back from the brink,

after the collective relief of almost everyone involved, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff were still holding out for a Cuban invasion, and maybe more. quote, the possibility that the Soviets might have ground troops equipped with tactical nuclear weapons did not dampen the enthusiasm of most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, right, Naftali and Fersenko. Quote, Curtis LeMay believed that once his pilots had finished with Cuba, the invasion would be a, quote, walk-in. Russia's deputy premier Mikhailan, an experienced negotiator, leaves Moscow tomorrow for Cuba. He is expected to spend tomorrow in New York going on to Havana on Friday. Nothing official has been said, but his job apparently will be to bring Caspro into line as gracefully as possible.

Anastas Mikoyan arrived in Cuba to an understandably awkward reception. But the Cubans respected him personally, and Fidel treated him cordially. The proceedings only became more dramatic when Mikoyan, early on in the talks, was handed an urgent note. Back home in the Soviet Union, his wife had died. But Mikoyan, conscious of the importance of his mission, stayed in Havana to see it through. Fido Castro, who would also be engaged in talks with the head of the UN Security Council, was open with Mikoyan about his disdain for the current climate of post-crisis talks,

which had taken a turn for the worse, hours before Mikoyan got to Havana. During Mikhailan's stop in New York, the Americans, at the last minute before he went to Cuba, handed the Soviet minister a new demand, the set of IL-28 Soviet bomber jets found in Cuba were also to be removed along with the missiles. Until then, the U.S. said, no lift of the military blockade. To these apparently wanton American demands for inspections and further disarmament of Cuba, Castro pointed out that at no point in this entire escapade did Cuba violate any law or commit any aggression. Now it was being told not only are the missiles shipping out, but that UN inspectors are shipping in,

who will no doubt be infiltrated by U.S. spies. Just as a little callback to season one, we remember in the 1990s in Iraq, the U.S. absolutely did plant spies among the weapons inspection teams. It's one of the reasons why Saddam kicked them out. So Fidel was not keen on these inspections, and you throw in the demand to remove these IL-28 bombers, jets that had never been used to attack anyone, let alone America, and you had a clear sense of this overriding American arrogance. Fidel wanted much more than, quote-unquote, peace.

He wanted the undeclared war on his country by the United States to end. He also thought that the USSR didn't really get anything out of this deal with Kennedy. Of course, at this point, Khrushchev could not tell Fidel about the deal to remove the Jupyters from the Soviet's backyard. All of this was made clear to Mikoyan. Che Guevara himself told the Soviet, quote, you offended our feelings by not consulting us,

but the main danger is you as if recognized the right of the USA to violate international law. This is great damage done to your policy. This fact really worries us. Mikoyan professed his genuine admiration for the Cuban Revolution, but insisted that the third, threat of nuclear war from the United States had been so urgent that this deal needed to be cut, and he tried to persuade his Cuban host, bit by bit, to meet him halfway on the final negotiations

coming together with the Americans. Quote, there will come a time when we show our enemies, he said. But we don't want to die beautifully. Socialism must live. In the end, after a lot of back and forth, the demand for on-site inspections was dropped. The IL-28 bombers would go, but the USSR could take their time doing it. The military blockade was lifted, but the economic embargo, along with the U.S. base in Guantanamo, of course, exists to this day. Throughout this process, the Kennedy brothers had used Soviet backdoor channels to try and quote, accelerate Moscow's policy process so that the White House received an answer in time. RFK interfaced with Georgi Bolshekhoff and the advisor John McCloy met with a Soviet negotiator.

And during these final moments of negotiation, in a phrase that caught the Soviets' attention, McCloy said that, quote, extremist groups were pressuring the president of the United States to reverse this peaceful track, and he needed some give, quick. On November 20th, as things were coming together, Khrushchev asked Kennedy, via Georgi Bolshekhov, how should we deal with the matter now so that we and you could soon bring joy to humanity with the news that the crisis over Cuba is completely liquidated. John Kennedy opted for a news conference, where he would announce the resolution of the crisis. At 6 p.m., he told the world that the Soviet nukes in Cuba were gone.

This was at this point half true. Kennedy himself did not know about the tactical nukes, which would not leave for another month. The president could also announce that the IL-28s would also be withdrawn, and that the missiles and the bases and the ships were going home. Additionally, the Pentagon announced 15,000 Air Force reserves had been called off. Naftali and Fersinko note, Kennedy did not tell his audience that he had canceled, the low-level flights over Cuba that had angered Fido Castro so much. In the final days of November 1962, Mikoyan, just off his mission in Cuba,

went to Washington for a sit-down with Kennedy. Now, quote here from Cuban diplomat and U.N. representative Carlos Lichuga. It was clear that Kennedy wasn't interested in discussing Cuba with Mikoyan, for he repeated all of his previous statements about the crisis, and repeated what his representatives in New York had told Mikoyan. Every time Mikoyan tried to direct the conversation toward Cuba, the president spoke of the situation in Laos, where the Soviet and U.S. leaders were at loggerheads.

Kennedy said it would be better if the Soviet Union stopped thinking it had the mission of lighting the torch of revolution all over the world. It would be better than signing 40 treaties. Mikoyan replied that the Soviet Union wasn't responsible for revolution, and that the Soviet Union hadn't brought about the Cuban revolution. He went on to defend the guarantees Fido Castro demanded and criticized the United States' aspiration of legitimizing its violations of Cuban airspace. After this meeting, Kennedy would also ignore Khrushchev's request

to go to the UN and publicly affirm the hands-off Cuba pledge Kennedy had made during the crisis. to the disappointment of many Cubans and the Soviet troops who were with them on the island. On Christmas Day, 1962, the tactical nukes, the last trace of Operation Anadir, set sail for home and left Cuba. Because the ex-com tapes you've heard on the show wouldn't be made public for years, there were several active efforts by many men in the XCOM to revise the history of the crisis. The most influential history of the crisis, however, wasn't written by a participant.

It was a 1971 book published by the political scientist Graham Allison. This sort of became the Bible of analysis of the crisis. And one of Allison's key takeaways was that the Soviet Union was spoiling for a fight, and that for Khrushchev it wasn't about the Cubans one way or another. The Cold War historian Jim Hirshberg wrote a major critique of Allison in the early 1990s, drawing on government documents that showed the extent of American planning for a Cuban invasion, right up until the events of the crisis. Here's what he told us.

It's funny. I mean, because you got in touch with me, for the first time in decades, just to prepare for this interview, you know, I went back and reread my art. about the planning, you know, before the missiles of October. And absolutely, when cruise ship said openly in December that we saved Cuba and, you know, therefore, you know, the missile crisis, you know, was a success, you know, this was disregarded as self-serving propaganda. It's only, I think, really since the revelation of the intensity of the U.S. military planning

for a potential attack against Cuba, this was seriously. Curious contingency planning, moving forces, operational planning, exercising. Kennedy wanted the option to attack Cuba even before the missiles, the Soviet missiles were discovered there in mid-October. But it's only in the last 30 years or so that the defense of Cuba motive has been taking seriously as one of Khrushchev's motives. In the waning months of 1962, after the crisis, exile attacks on Cuba continued. Carlos Lichuga records an attack on November 5th and another on November 20th, December 6th, December 8th, December 21st. The counter-revolutionaries were in fact, devastated that the crisis did not deliver the final full military invasion of Cuba.

And in the coming months, the Kennedy administration will attempt to rein in these Cuban exile groups, who will not take kindly to the Kennedy brothers pulling their support, especially the hardline groups such as the DRE and Alpha 66, the groups controlled by the CIA officer who went by Maurice. Bishop. But something else would begin to develop in 1963, something that only a while before seemed unthinkable. The Kennedy administration, or at least elements of it, would open up a back channel to begin talks of normalizing relations with the Cuban government and Fidel Castro. The

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