Russian Missile Problem

The Cuban Missile Crisis took place in 1962 in October. It was caused when the United States learned that Cuba was building missile stations for nukes for the Russians. The Russians and the U.S. were enemies then during the cold war. When the U. S. found out about the missile bases, it told Cuba to stop building the bases. It also told them that we would stop all the ships in the world from going in or out of Cuba while Cuba made up it’s mind. It was an important time in U.S. history.

Our president was John F. Kennedy. Cuba’s leader was Fidel Castro. His brother is still in power. The Russians were led by Nikita Kruschev. Kennedy was killed by an assassin the year after the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy had generals from the army telling him that we should just attack Cuba and get it over with but Kennedy thought that would be to risky and he didn’t want to use force so he bought some time by keeping ships away from Cuba.

The Russians didn’t like this. They didn’t like the U.S. because we had tried to overthrow Castro in 1961. Russia wanted us to stop trying to change things in Cuba that’s why it sent the missiles their in the first place. Two weeks later the Russian leader decided that he didn’t want to start a nucular war so he agreed to the terms. The Americans would leave Cuba alone and the missiles would be taken away by the Russians. The Cubans did not have a say in this.

The Cuban missile crisis nearly led to the worlds first nucular war. Fortunatly, the leaders had calm heads and did not push the button. Today new information is constantly coming out about what really happened. It makes you wonder about what could have happened and breath a sigh of relief that nothing bad happened.

“Cuban Missile Crisis” Wikipedia.