Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

Today we are going to look into the closest the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. ever got to nuclear war.

Multiple Choice

What was the period from 1945 to 1991 where tension escalated between the Soviet Union and the United States called?

• World War I

• Spanish-American War

• Cold War

• World War II

Multiple Choice

The Cold War was an ideological battle for influence between

• capitalism and communism.

• Socialism and Populism.

• the Allies and the Soviet Union.

• Germany and the Allies.

Cold War Review

• after WWII, the Truman Doctrine gave countries tanks & other military equipment needed to resist communism

• An "iron curtain" fell across Europe

• Berlin was divided between communist and capitalist powers

• The U.S. settled on a plan of "containment" to keep nations from falling like "dominos"

US Presidential Election of 1960

• in 1960, a 43 year old Massachusetts Senator named John F Kennedy became the Democratic candidate for President

• JFK ran against current Vice President Richard Nixon, a Republican

• 1st ever televised debate between Presidential candidates, 70 million Americans watched

• despite being younger & less experienced in foreign policy, JFK had been coached & spoke + looked better on camera

Crisis in Cuba

• 2 weeks before JFK was sworn in, the US cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba because of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro

• Fidel Castro led the overthrow of Cuban Dictator Bautista in 1959

• the US was suspicious, but accepted Castro UNTIL Castro began seizing American sugar plantations

• Castro turned to the Soviet Union for aid

• some Cuban exiles fled Castro's regime & immigrated to Florida, only 90 miles away

Bay of Pigs:

US Attempts to Overthrow Castro

• on April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles supported by the US military landed in the Bay of Pigs

• every part of the invasion went wrong

• attempted overthrow failed & Castro celebrated "defeating America"

Failed Bay of Pigs invasion blew up in JFK's face.

• The event pushed Cuba to look to the Soviet Union for more aid and defense.

In the summer of 1962,

the CIA spotted nuclear missile bases in Cuba that could launch nuclear bombs and hit every major US city in minutes.

Open Ended

What does the red dotted circle represent?

Open Ended

List two major U.S. cities that would have been in range of Soviet missiles:

Open Ended

What does the pink shaded circle represent?

As you watch the video...

• How did JFK respond to the news of Soviet missile sites being set up in Cuba?

• Why didn't JFK order airstrikes to destroy Soviet missile sites in Cuba?

• Why did the Soviets even want to put nuclear missiles in Cuba?

Multiple Choice

How did JFK respond to the news that the Soviets had placed nuclear weapon installations in Cuba?

• Asking the United Nations to approve economic sanctions for Cuba

• Blockading ships from entering or exiting Cuba

• Closing the US border

• Asking Congress to declare war on Cuba

Open Ended

Why did Kennedy order a naval blockade of Cuba rather than launch an airstrike targeting Cuba like his advisors recommended?

Multiple Choice

Why did the USSR want to put missiles on Cuba?

• To have more missiles because they couldn't match the nuclear power of the US

• To counter the Warsaw Pact countries that were overthrowing communism

• To counter the US missiles in Italy and Turkey

• To counter the power of NATO

Diplomacy Prevents Nuclear World War

• Diplomats from the US & USSR met in secret to negotiate an agreement that would avoid nuclear world war

• USSR removed missiles from Cuba in exchange for the US removing missiles from Italy & Turkey

• US promised not to invade Cuba

• JFK & Nikita Khrushchev were criticized by their people, BUT today historians think that their willingness to engage in diplomacy saved the world

Document work/ Asynchronous Time

• On google classroom I have posted two documents from around the Cuban missile crisis.

• Read each document and answer the corresponding questions on the last page.

• There is no document C so ignore the questions related to it.

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