Dan Snow's History Hit - JFK's Darkest Hour: The Cuban Missile Crisis

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

In October 1962 the world came very close to annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the autumn of 1962, a U2 reconnaissance aircraft produced clear evidence that the Soviet Union and the Cuban authorities were building medium-range ballistic missile facilities on the island of Cuba and only around 100 miles from the coast of Florida. The resulting confrontation between the USA under JFK and the Soviet Union led by Nikita Khrushchev lasted just over a month and it's often considered to be the closest that the Cold War came to escalating to full-scale nuclear war. Serhii Plokhy, author of Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, is Dan's guest on the podcast today. Serhii's research, using new archive material, has shown that during the crisis we came even closer than previously thought to the Cold War going hot.

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the USA under JFK, its youthful president, and the Soviet Union under that Stalingrad veteran Nikita Khrushchev. It's often considered to be the closest that the Cold War came to escalating to full-scale nuclear war. And the happy news for you folks is that Sergei Plokhy is coming back on the podcast. He's written a new book to tell us that it actually came closer than we previously thought our lives are hanging on a thread it's a goddamn miracle that i'm talking to you at all actually in more ways than one in the autumn of 1962 a u-2 reconnaissance aircraft produced very clear evidence that the Soviet Union and the Cuban authorities were building medium-range ballistic missile facilities on the island of Cuba, which was only about 100 miles from the Florida coast. This is when it all kicked off. So hey, Ploche has been

on this podcast before. He's a Ukrainian-American. He teaches at Harvard. He's fantastically distinguished. His new book is very, very brilliant indeed. It's called Nuclear Folly. And he's got a really good kicker. The really good kicker is that we should all be a lot more scared than we are about the nuclear situation at the moment. So I'll tell you what, this is unusual here. Just don't listen to this podcast if you just don't want to be made to feel slightly nervous about the geopolitical situation that we all face. Just don't want to be made to feel slightly nervous about the geopolitical situation that we all face. Just don't listen to it. Go and listen to something else. But if you're ready for that, enjoy this conversation. And if you wish to cheer yourself up after listening to

it, just go back and luxuriate in our wonderful history. Go to historyhit.tv. It's our new digital history channel. I met a listener the other day to this podcast he said man i've heard a lot of adverts for your history hit tv and i said have you subscribed and he said no so that was a good interaction uh if you wish to subscribe however you can go to history hit dot tv sign up there the netflix of history all the documentaries you could ever want and all the back episodes of this podcast and you'll be supporting everything we're doing here at team history at a super exciting time but in the meantime everybody here is the very wonderful sahe ploki talking about the cuban missile crisis say thank you very much for coming back on the podcast well i'm really really happy to be back

well this is one of those strange revisionist histories that tells us that we already thought So, hey, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Well, I'm really, really happy to be back. Well, this is one of those strange revisionist histories that tells us that we already thought the Cuban Missile Crisis was the nearest that mankind has come to a deliberate nuclear strike during the Cold War, certainly post Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And you're saying it's even worse than we ever thought. So how close did we come? How bad was it? Well, I was certainly surprised myself to find what I found, in particular in the new documents, but also in memoirs.

And with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the basic narrative is that we have this young, but very wise president who is John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And he withstands the pressure coming from the military. He keeps control over his military and situation in general. And eventually Nikita Khrushchev retreats. And we have a victory. And then things started popping up. It turned out that there was a secret deal that Kennedy agreed to remove American missiles from Turkey.

So it wasn't just the Soviets who removed their missiles. Then the secret tapes that were made by JFK come to the fore. And it turns out that the story that was told by his brother, Robert Kennedy, in 13 days is at best a self-serving narrative that was put together for Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. used to be Iron Curtain, with the memoirs of the Soviet participants in the events, and recently KGB materials and KGB archives that I was lucky to work with. And the image that we get is actually something very different from this dominant narrative. And indeed, we were much closer to the accidental Cold War. And the reason for that was, first of all, that both leaders, Kennedy and Khrushchev, really misread each other. There was lack of reliable information. They were really moving in the dark, in a very dark room. And on the top of that, both of them,

they actually lost control over some of the elements of their troops on the ground, which again, not to shed any negative light particularly on them, but that's the nature of any kind of a crisis, any kind of a conflict, where there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people involved. So yes, it turned out to be more scary than I thought originally it was. You only have to think about the sort of slightly bizarre beginnings of what we might loosely call the Second World War in Asia, the standoff between the Japanese and the Chinese and sort of accidental gun battles breaking out. So yes, the crumbling frontier is as important as the

metropolitan centre, I guess, here. So I guess the top level question is, unlike Robert Kennedy's assertion, no one comes out as the great, you know, the Kennedy. I remember JFK had been reading Guns of August or something, hadn't he, by Barbara Tushman. And sort of in the end, he decided he would take a different path from those rulers in 1914. But does anybody come out as a sort of grand strategist, the person who extricated the world from this? Was it just luck and contingency and anti-aircraft missiles, luckily missing those photographic reconnaissance flights over Cuba? anti-aircraft missiles, luckily missing those photographic reconnaissance flights over Cuba? Well, first of all, really, Kennedy was someone who was very conscious of this possibility of missteps, mistakes, misunderstandings. He kept talking about that all the time. And he was given to his generals around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis,

book The Guns of August. And I write in my introduction that really what happened can be called by the title of another Barbara Techman's award-winning book, The March of Folly. So that's the title that I would love to have for my book, but it was already taken. So it is Nuclear Folly as opposed to March of Folly, because there were so many missteps and misunderstandings. as opposed to March of Folly, because there were so many missteps and misunderstandings. The real reason for that was that the communication system was not there. It would take forever, for example, to transmit a letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy. So that's why Khrushchev, to speed things up, would actually make a broadcast by Radio Moscow, make a broadcast by Radio Moscow, knowing that it would get to the White House much faster than if it would be delivered to the American embassy in Moscow, translated, and then passed, and so on,

and so forth. But the problem with Stockholm was just one of many reasons for those really, really touch-and-go situations. Again, one of them was when the Soviet commanders, against the orders from Moscow, explicit orders from Moscow, decided to shut down American U-2 airplane over Cuba. And they tried to get in touch with their own commander, commander-in-chief on Cuba. The guy was sleeping at that time after the sleepless night. So they decided to do that on their own. And the conflict really turned into a sort of a shooting war. And there were more cases like that, really, in that situation. The Soviet commander of a Soviet submarine given a command to prepare for firing nuclear torpedo. The American U-2 plane

being lost over the Soviet Union, concern being that the Soviets would believe that this is actually the first spy flight over the Soviet Union before a nuclear attack. So again, there were a lot of cases like that. And really, the commanders-in-chief were sometimes almost the last people to learn about what was going on the ground. Yes, the bit of your book that scared me the most, I think, was the lively debate that happened inside the Soviet nuclear submarine whilst the Americans were depth charging it off Cuba about whether or not they should respond with nuclear ordnance.

I mean, wow. Well, the Americans were actually dropping practice charges. Okay. But the problem is that when you are in the 1962 submarine, sitting inside, you don't know whether this is practice charges or not. They were under impression that they were under attack. And then the commander, his last name was Savitsky, says, okay, let's surface because that's what the Americans wanted them to do.

Let's surface, but let's get our torpedoes ready. And he dissuades from doing that by a senior commander who was commander of the task force. Then they surface. They get engaged in negotiations with the Americans with the help of the searchlights and very primitive ways of communicating. And then they see that American airplane goes and actually drops flares to start its cameras to take a picture. But they believe that they're under attack. And Savitsky again shouts the order, but now the order to get ready the nuclear torpedo to get fired.

And the bizarre thing is that he gets from the bridge of the submarine into the submarine. He barks this order, but there is a senior guy who is still left. His last name was Arhipov, is left on the bridge. And the signal man in the middle with his searchlight got stuck in the hatch of the submarine. What that means that there were additional 30 seconds for the arhip of the senior commander to see that the Americans are signaling that that was a mistake, and he overruled Sovetsky. So if the Soviet signalman would actually get a better training and would get faster into the submarine, the chances are extremely high that there would be a nuclear exchange in the Sargasso Sea again near Cuba. And then imagine Kennedy receiving information that there is a nuclear attack.

that there is a nuclear attack. I don't think that politically he would be able to respond with anything else but actually another nuclear torpedo, nuclear missile, nuclear attack on the Soviets, at least in Cuba and maybe beyond that.

This is an audio platform, so you can't see that I've got my head in my hands while I'm listening to Sergei here. And also at the time, of course, there was this insane, it feels insane, idea that you could have this kind of escalation of nuclear responses. Like you might get away with having a nuclear war in Europe or around Cuba, where you had this kind of

finely choreographed ballet of only releasing tactical nuclear weapons and that the other side would kind of get that and keep their strategic arsenal. I mean, that feels like you're skating on the thinnest possible ice. Well, the person who actually is responsible for building more nuclear bombs than anybody else on the surface of the Earth was, of course, General Eisenhower, when he became the president of the United States. And he was the only really world leader who had the first-hand experience of the war, of fighting the war. And he never believed that actually there can be a limited nuclear war.

He never believed that you can use tactical nuclear weapons and then that there would be no escalation. So he, till the very end, thought that if there is a nuclear exchange, it will be a global all-out war. And again, the discomforting thing is that he was the only person who had experience of being in the fight. And he knew that if the fight starts, you throw everything that you have, that you got. But Kennedy really was looking at this whole situation as a possibility of not just local conflict, nuclear or otherwise, over Cuba, but a global one. Because he expected that even with the quarantine, even with the

blockade that the US eventually put forward and implemented around Cuba, he thought that the response would be the blockade of West Berlin. And he was saying, okay, what is going next? And then we are sending our planes, and then they actually close those air corridors. And then we use our tactical weapons, and so on and so forth. So they were looking at all these scenarios. And the concern was that really, it could start at Cuba, but it wouldn't end at Cuba. It was a real concern. And then you've got Curtis LeMay, who probably shares Eisenhower's view of war is hell.

Once you're in it, you've got to win it as quickly as possible. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I've got the Harvard professor, Sahe Ploche, on the podcast, talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis and how we almost were all destroyed. That's nice. More after this. Okay, Tristan, you've got 50 seconds. Go. Right. So Dan's given me a few seconds to sell the Ancients podcast. What is the Ancients, I hear you say?

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we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. so we got all of these opportunities for nuclear exchange on the ground on the front line but also considered by the politicians barring the accidental thing and the fat guy getting stuck in the hatch of the submarine on the strategic level why did we not have a nuclear exchange who did back down or blink is that even a helpful conclusion from what you've researched?

I think it is helpful. And the simple answer, and it sounds simple, but it's really deeper maybe and broader than it sounds. The reason why we didn't get the nuclear war in 1962 was fear. The fear that was shared by Kennedy and by Khrushchev. So that was a generation of leaders that went through the Kassel-Bravo, the first test of the American hydrogen bomb with the need to evacuate islands in the Pacific that were contaminated by the fallout, when the yield was actually significantly larger than it was expected. In 1961, Khrushchev tested the so-called Tsar Bomb, the biggest hydrogen bomb that was ever exploded. So they knew what would happen, that the world actually could be destroyed, at least half of the world. And they were really concerned. They made, in my opinion, almost every mistake possible in terms of misjudging their intentions, in terms of getting the wrong information, making wrong

conclusions on the basis of that. But they did everything in their power to avoid the war. Khrushchev was acting very recklessly. He misjudged, certainly, the reaction that would come from the United States. But once he realized what was going on, he started actually retreating from the first day, from the day ago. The problem is that he wasn't able just to communicate that to Kennedy. And Kennedy got scared as well. So at the end, they were basically exchanging these messages where one was outbidding almost another in terms of what concessions they were prepared to make. So there is a scene when Khrushchev already decided to take the deal that officially Kennedy offered him, withdrawal of the nuclear missiles in exchange for the pledge not to invade Cuba.

And in the middle of that, a new message arrives through the back channel that Kennedy says, yes, and I'm going actually to remove Turkish missiles as well. So Khrushchev says, OK, wonderful, let's add that as well. So those two leaders were really, really scared of the situation that they found themselves in. And that eventually was what saved the world. My concern is that, again, with the change of generations, in terms of the leaders, in terms of the politicians, in terms of the public at large, 30 years after the Cold War, we kind of lost that fear of the nuclear. We don't think it's actually real anymore. And that is a big, big, big psychological factor

that was there in 1962. And that in my atlas treating of the events turned out to be crucial. Yes, let's talk about that huge, big radioactive elephant in the room in a second, the contemporary world and the fact that nuclear arsons are now growing and unregulated by many of the deals made during the Cold War. So we'll talk about that in a second. But can I ask about democracy and Kennedy? Because I always find this a very troubling aspect of nuclear diplomacy in the 20th century. Did you come away with the impression that Kennedy actually

was disadvantaged by having to face voters? Was Khrushchev acting in the way that some of the European monarchs were during the so-called cabinet wars of the 18th century? He was able to make those decisions without worrying how it would play on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. And actually, in a very dark way, being modern liberal democracies made Kennedy have to walk that nuclear tightrope, almost have to play chicken hard than he otherwise might have done. Well, absolutely.

Again, to quote Churchill, that democracy is the worst form of government except every other form of government. Yes, Khrushchev had much more freedom to make his decisions, to decide what to do, what not to do. Again, he abused that ability by putting the world on the brink of the nuclear war because he didn't have advisors that would be relatively independent. His Politburo, people around him were really handpicked. And he misjudged not Kennedy, he misjudged actually the democratic system as a whole. He didn't know how it functioned.

So he believed that he could actually push Kennedy into the corner and Kennedy would actually do nothing. And Kennedy's intention was really not to do much about missiles on Cuba. his intention was really not to do much about missiles on Cuba. He's saying at some point that, well, last week we said that we would react. The right thing to do last week was to say that actually we didn't care, because everyone believed that missiles on Cuba didn't change the balance as a whole. The Europeans and British in particular were looking at the Americans and saying, OK, why are you so paranoid? Khrushchev couldn't understand why they were paranoid when American missiles were in Turkey. And that was considered to be OK.

What is so wrong with the Soviet missiles in Cuba? And Kennedy realized that. He kept talking about, OK, Europeans would not understand us. Europeans would not understand our reaction. talking about, okay, Europeans would not understand us, Europeans would not understand our reaction. But there was this thing called American democracy. There were people in the Republican Party, in the Democratic Party, who were criticizing him. And at some point, when they made the decision to start with the blockade, there is a conversation between John and Robert Kennedy that was caught by mistake on those tapes that Kennedy had. And John says to Robert that, well, we had to do that.

Otherwise, there would be impeachment. And that's something that, again, certainly limited Kennedy's possibilities, forced him to conduct secret diplomacy through the back channel, forced him to lie to everybody, including his predecessors. He called three of his predecessors, Truman, Eisenhower, and Hoover, and didn't mention the Turkish deal, the Turkish missile deal, to any of them. So it really was a factor. Democracy was a factor in all that story. So it really was a factor. Democracy was a factor in all that story. And in terms of crucial not understanding it and Kennedy really, really not having a free hand to behave how he wanted to behave.

Does this mean that actually democracy is a negative factor in any nuclear confrontation? I wouldn't go as far and I would circle back to Churchill's definition of democracy. Yeah, as we tragically always do. Let's talk now about the point you've just raised. I can never understand why everyone regards the Cold War and nuclear standoffs as consigned to the history and how wonderful it is and we can all dance around the garden with flowers in our hair. There are still enough nuclear warheads sitting fueled up in silos around the world and in submarines deep blow operations to destroy the human race multiple times over so why do we not make movies about it anymore and hear rock songs about it if the cultural context is important in

these politicians remaining fearful of nuclear should we all be talking more should we be updating dr strange love should we be watching watching Netflix series about nuclear fallout and trying to create an atmosphere where we're still basically terrified about what we've created here? Well, excellent question. When it comes to nuclear, we still live in the world that was defined by Francis Fukuyama as the end of history. So it's the victory of liberalism and the end of the Cold War moment, where there is not just arms control, there is disarmament, there are reductions of nuclear arms, there is major progress with non-proliferation. South Africa gives up nuclear bomb, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan are forced into giving up their nuclear arsenals as well. And we kind of got stuck mentally in that period, in that stage of the late 80s and early 90s, thinking that, OK, the nuclear age ended.

Today, people are talking about the coming of the second nuclear age, suggesting that, OK, the one already came to an end. And the majority of the public believes that it came to an end. The nuclear age never came to an end. We still live in the world where there are two superpowers, nuclear superpowers, the United States and Russia. It's difficult to imagine. Russia is not even a member of the 10 largest economies club, but it is a nuclear superpower. And that's kind of a disconnect that's difficult for us really fully to comprehend. And only now we start actually going back and talking about that. The reason for that is that we are at the start of the new nuclear arms race. The United States and Russia are leading it. China is there, and most recently

in a modest way, but Britain actually joining it as well. And France is there as well. So it's time to wake up. It's time to come out of this liturgical type of a situation that we are. So it's not late 80s, it's not early 90s anymore. There are so-called programs of modernization. And I don't want to dismiss that altogether, the nuclear weapons have to be upcapped, some modernization has to be made there. But modernization is used really as euphemism for rearmament. And we are now in the stage of rearmament with new technologies coming in with the caps on the nuclear stockpiles being removed or moved somewhere. So again, we are in a new world today. And I didn't know that before I started to research this book and

look around. Again, I was attracted to the subject for its historical importance. What I discovered when I was writing introduction and conclusions was that it's actually much more than of historical importance. Well, yeah, you can say that again. Thank you very much indeed. I urge everyone to go and read your book. It's fantastic and jaw-dropping. Tell us what it's called. Nuclear Folly, The New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. So this is the title. It's a wonderful book.

I hope you win even more prizes and garner even better reviews. It's going brilliantly so far. Thank you very much, Saeed, for coming on. Thank you, Dan. It was a pleasure. Thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders.

All these traditions of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast.

If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful.

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