The Cuban Missile Crisis
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2022
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A 13-day political and military standoff took place in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba was in fruition. But how did the leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union evade this near-catastrophic escalation? In this episode, James is joined by presidential crisis historian Michael Dobbs. Michael takes us through the intense standoff and the happenings around it. From the roles played to evert nuclear war to the final decisions made by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy. Just how close were we to a state of armageddon?
Micheal Dobbs, Author of One Minute To Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone happy new year welcome back to the history hit warfare |
| 0:03.9 | podcast i'm your host |
| 0:05.6 | James Rogers and each week twice a week all through 2022 we're going to bring you |
| 0:10.0 | brand new original episodes on military history. History that spans from Napoleonic |
| 0:16.0 | battles and Cold War confrontations through to the Normandy landings and the War on Terror. |
| 0:22.3 | It is truly a podcast that stretches from Napoleon to now and we like to say |
| 0:26.5 | we're on the front line of military history and we're excited for you to join us through |
| 0:30.0 | 2022. We're going to start the new year with a bang with an episode about the Cuban |
| 0:35.2 | missile crisis, which of course didn't end in a bang. Thank goodness. It was for 13 days in October |
| 0:41.3 | 1962 that the world waited, seemingly on the brink of nuclear war. |
| 0:46.8 | A crisis that had occurred because American U2 spy planes secretly photographed nuclear missile |
| 0:52.0 | sites being built by the Soviet Union on Cuba. |
| 0:55.8 | And Cuba is located just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. |
| 0:58.8 | And you didn't want to have nuclear missiles 90 miles off the coast of the United States. |
| 1:05.0 | Well, Khrushchev did, but of course Kennedy didn't. |
| 1:08.4 | And this brings him into the most tense standoff in history as these world leaders go head to head. To tell us all about this |
| 1:15.2 | amazing history of nuclear brinksmanship we're joined by the brilliant Michael Dobbs, |
| 1:19.7 | a historian of presidential crisis and the author of one minute to midnight. |
| 1:24.6 | Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro, and the brink of nuclear war. |
| 1:28.8 | Now make sure that you follow along on Twitter and on Instagram during this new year. We have some |
| 1:35.0 | amazing content where you can follow me around the battlefields of Europe as we |
| 1:38.8 | film for brand new history hit TV shows. You can follow on Instagram at James Rogers History. We've got some |
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