Introducing The Bomb: Kennedy and Khrushchev

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The world is on the brink of nuclear war. How can the Soviet Union and the USA prevent it? Hosts Nina Khrushcheva and Max Kennedy, relatives of the superpower leaders President John F Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev, tell the personal and political history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Together Nina and Max explore what drove JFK and Khrushchev during the darkest days of October 1962. And when the crisis moves beyond their control, as a U-2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba, how do they avoid global catastrophe?  To hear more, search for The Bomb, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:08.5	It's October 1961, and a plane carries a bomb towards an island in the Arctic Circle.
0:15.6	It's going to be detonated in the air, thousands of meters above the remote archipelago.
0:22.3	It's a test to see what happens.
0:27.5	A hydrogen bomb with an uncontrolled, self-sustaining chain reaction.
0:33.7	A mushroom cloud rises 40 miles high.
0:41.3	A seismic wave circles the Earth's crust three times. It's almost 4,000 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb.
0:46.3	The test has been ordered by the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Christian.
0:52.3	As the United States and the Soviet Union struggle for supremacy during the Cold War,
0:58.0	it sends a clear message.
1:02.0	A year later, in October 1962, the atomic bomb will bring the world very close to total destruction.
1:10.0	Closer than at any point in history.
1:14.7	We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the course of worldwide nuclear war,
1:21.9	in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth.
1:25.7	U.S. President John F. Kennedy sits in the Oval Office of the White House
1:29.4	and makes a televised address to the world.
1:32.5	The Cuban Missile Crisis has begun.
1:35.7	But neither will we shrink from that risk
1:38.0	at any time it must be faced.
1:41.4	Two men, the leaders of the two superpowers, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev,
1:47.9	stand between the bomb and nuclear annihilation.
1:52.1	And here it is, more explosive power than has ever been used in the history of warfare
	...

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