Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis

From 1941 to 1944, General George S. Patton had run through Europe like a lawn mower, arriving in the heart of Germany and leaving devastation in his wake.   My father drove a tank in his Third Army from Normandy all the way in, parking his tank every evening and digging a foxhole to be sure he survived any nightly shelling.   By no means was General Patton ready to stop at Germany.  He was ready to plow on into Soviet Russia and take care of Stalin.  General Eisenhower halted the Third army, but in retrospect, perhaps Patton should have had his way.

In 1944 Stalin and Soviet Russia were feeling their oats.  The Russians were bloodthirsty for revenge against their former ally, Nazi Germany.   Hitler and his troops had followed the footsteps of Napoleon and invaded the Russian juggernaut at the wrong time, suffering defeat from the weather, and lack of supplies rather than the combat skills of the Soviet army.  Even with an ultimate failure, the German soldiers managed to wreak havoc and mayhem on the unfortunate Soviets.  Hitler’s military defeat was not nearly revenge enough, and when the Russian soldiers arrived in Berlin, every intelligent German ran for their life to avoid the raping and pillaging.  Russian troops were often bivouacked with the local Berliners who had survived the war and the Soviet pillage. Many Russian soldiers had never seen flushing toilets.   They would flush them repeatedly, sticking their feet into the water and shrieking with delight.  Meanwhile, their leaders were systematically gobbling up the Eastern bloc countries, intent on spreading socialism throughout that area.   Our former allies were becoming most uncooperative and unfriendly.  The Cold War had been birthed and would last far beyond our childhood decades.

The city of Berlin had been divided into sectors under allied control after the capitulation of Germany.  By 1961, East Berliners in the Soviet sector  were defecting in embarrassing droves.  The Berlin wall was erected to contain them and prevent them from going over to the “fascist” NATO allies.  It was built quickly.  It was a gauntlet thrown down in challenge, but unfortunately not much could be done by the NATO allies except to fulminate self righteously.  

Our parents followed the erection of the Berlin Wall on the evening news and in the daily newspapers.  Their indignation became our indignation.  Stalin was long gone by 1961, but he had been replaced by the shoe pounding Khrushchev.  We enjoyed drawing pictures of him as an evil, overweight and balding villain.  He was good for caricatures.  

Many of our parents were still active duty military and some were pilots.  They had flown supplies into West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade of 1948 and 1949.  Their scars were fresh.

Enter Fidel Castro, who took over the island nation of Cuba in 1959.  Cuba was a different playing field entirely.  This was no Eastern bloc country halfway across the world, but lay only about 90 miles from Florida.  It was beyond disconcerting.  Merely fulminating would not do.

Batista, Cuba’s former ousted and corrupt dictator, was friend and ally to our country and had made it extremely easy for American Sugar Companies and gambling enterprises to operate in Cuba.  With Batista run off the island, the disturbing figure with the beard and cigar welded to his mouth, was a complete unknown except that he was Marxist.  Castro had visited the United States shortly after his takeover, making friendly overtures but receiving cold shoulders.  He was still allowing the American run sugar plantations and oil refineries to operate.  Relations deteriorated rapidly as Castro cast his eyes East and began to align himself with the Soviet Union.  On our shores, pressure on John F. Kennedy to restore American business onto the island was ramping up.  Castro needed to go, and quickly.

The Bay of Pigs and John Kennedy’s faithlessness to the CIA-run Cuban invasion force was American dinner table fodder for weeks.  How could we have even thought of doing such a thing?  Morever, why did it fail so miserably?  It was years before I truly understood the logistics of what had happened, but I was fully aware of the shame and dishonor that everyone felt.    My father was infuriated night after night at the dinner table.  Had he slogged across Europe from 1941-45 to come home and watch this?  Cuba was becoming a dark cloud hanging over us that was not going away soon.  Like many American children, I envisioned the Bay being full of squealing farm pigs. 

It was hard being knocked from the pedestal of world leader and savior down to incompetent as well as sneaky.  The media and government did its best to spin the story and absolve us from blame, but it was impossible.

With Cuba so close and potentially dangerous, the CIA had trained some Cuban ex-patriots and set them up for an invasion.  It was assumed that the common Cubans would flock to their support and assist them in overthrowing Castro.  The United States could then resume profitable business as usual.  During the invasion, Kennedy refused at the last minute to provide air support for the failing rebels and they were pinned in at the Bay of Pigs, and all chances of success were annihilated.  Kennedy had been caught between a rock and a hard place.  He could not be seen by the world allowing the Marxist demon to operate so closely to our shores, but he could also not been seen openly contributing to his overthrow.  In one movement, he sent the invasion force in, and then pulled the plug on them.  It was mind boggling.

The next act in the drama was the Cuban Missile Crisis.    After the Bay of Pigs, Castro felt well justified in defending himself against the giant in the North and began building secret silos to house Russian built nuclear missiles.  When our spy planes detected the silos, the crisis erupted in October of 1963.  Many families panicked, especially the Catholic family living next door to us who ranked our president just under a living saint.  John F. Kennedy had told us to prepare for a possible nuclear threat and prepare they did.   They walked me through their house showing us the canned goods they had stocked in the bathroom, and the inner room where they would hide, pushing mattresses against the door to keep out the nuclear radiation.  

I was impressed.  When I went home and asked my parents why we were not preparing for the imminent nuclear devastation, I was greeted with complete indifference.  That fop of a Catholic president wasn’t really going to start a war, and if he did, we were all dead anyway.  I asked my father that if a nuclear bomb landed on nearby Fort Sam Houston, would we be Ok at our house about two miles from ground zero?  He just laughed and informed me we would not even be piles of dust.    

Since my parents were not worried, neither was I.  In retrospect, in 1963 we were on the brink of a nuclear disaster and we were not.  Khrushchev and Kennedy were certainly rattling sabers, and it was close to the next election and JFK needed to look his best and his fiercest, but in reality it would have been total folly for the Soviets to launch anything at us.  At that time in history, our nuclear arsenal was far superior to that of the Soviet Union, and it would have been suicide for them to attack us.   Nonetheless, it was high drama and a lot of good books and movies came out of those few weeks in October.

Unbeknownst to us, JFK WAS steadily cranking up Vietnam during these years, but this would not come around to bite us until a few years later, when we would gleefully and self-righteously protest.

During all these years, we were living with the threat of nuclear proliferation and annihilation.   The nuclear genie had been released from the bottle in 1945 and at school time we were doing bomb drills.  We sheltered under our desks as if they could protect us from fallout.  Underground bunkers went up in backyards all over the country.  At one point, we did a different kind of school bomb drill.  Instead of hiding under our desks, the moms all came to school in their cars and parked them around the entire perimeter of the school.  We practiced calmly walking out to the cars, and loading up, five to six students per car.  Our teachers slammed the doors shut and then opened them and we marched back into school.  The intent was to get us comfortable with a full evacuation  out of the city in case Fidel decided to launch his missiles at us.  The intent was certainly noble, but what would they have done with us once we were out of the city limits and our parents were all toast? 

Public fallout shelters sprang up all over cities and towns.  The  triangle signs advertising them were everywhere.  It simply became a way of life to live that that.  If our parents were alarmed, they showed it very little.  My father had lived for many years with the possibility of death looking him in the face on a daily basis.  He had survived the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of the Bulge.  He could handle it better than most people, and we probably took our cue from him.

We understood the logistics of nuclear annihilation, yet we didn’t.  We knew what the nuclear blast was and to get underground.  We understood fallout and the need to stay hidden and not to eat contaminated food or drink the water.  What we did not understand and could probably never fathom was the complete breakdown of infrastructure that would have occurred weeks and months after the blast and initial fallout.  Until that time, danger had been in the faces of people.  It stood before them.  It was hard to imagine the mass starvation and illness that would have occurred over the weeks and months that would follow.  So, we blithely went on with our lives and our schooling and our enjoyment of life even with this threat over our heads.  What else could we do?

After a tense week or so and a blockade in the Atlantic Ocean, Khrushchev backed off and Kennedy became an instant hero.  Our American military went off defcon status and we continued on with our lives.  Nuclear war had been averted, but the Cold War would continue for many decades.  A lesson had been learned, however and we never went to close to the brink again.  Nuclear disarmament got a toe hold and slowly spread as communications between the Soviet Union and the United States improved.  We could breathe a little easier as the year passed, but we could never feel totally secure.