Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On Paper 1 prescribed subject 3 you stand the risk of getting documents relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In your book, Todd, you have a chronology of the crisis, but I have found a better one on the web.

I have found “key” documents on the crisis and put them in chronological order. From reading these you can catch the tone of how close to a nuclear war the world actually was, those October days in 1962.

Content:

1. A Timeline from http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports/Cuba/timeline.shtml

2. Note from Sec of State McNamara on the what options the US were discussing from http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/19621021mcnam.pdf

3. Letter from Kennedy to Khrushchev from oct 22 http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kenlet.htm

4. Kennedy’s address to the American People, announcing the quarantine, oct 22. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kencuba.htm

5. Letter number one from Khrushchev to Kennedy, oct 24. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nikita.htm

6 and 7. In the UN evidence was presented oct 25. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/zorin3.htm

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/adlai.htm

8. Khrushchev’s second letter oct 27. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nikita3.htm

9. “The Letters” again, a bit more comprehensible from http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/10/documents/kennedy.khrushchev.letters/

10. The Soviet Ambassadors telegram after meeting with General Attorney Robert Kennedy. Oct 27. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/621027%20Dobrynin%20Cable%20to%20USSR.pdf

11. Khrushchev’s reply to Kennedy, oct 28. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nikita5.htm

Now, when you read these documents, don’t study them as a textbook! Try to get the tone and see the big changes, the development of the crisis rather than the details. The Key Questions are “How close to WW3 were the world” and “What role did the US and USSR play in the different parts of the crisis?”