The showdown had been coming ever since Fidel Castro and his communist rebels overthrew the government of Cuba. The U.S. had strongly opposed the new regime and, in 1961, had backed an invasion of Cuba by anticommunist exiles. The invasion at the Bay of Pigs ended in complete failure. Khrushchev saw this defeat as proof of America’s inherent weakness and was emboldened to build missile bases on the island to keep the U.S. permanently on the defensive.

The Soviets parade one of their long-range missiles during the annual May Day parade in Red Square

In August 1962, a team of Soviet engineers arrived in Cuba and began hurriedly constructing launchpads that would enable the Soviets to drop a thermonuclear warhead almost anywhere in the U.S. If Khrushchev could get the missile sites working quickly, the U.S. would not be able to remove them without risking nuclear attack. Khrushchev planned to repeat the operation in Europe to force Americans from their outpost in West Berlin.

A Russian ship carrying missile-launching systems on its way to Cuba.

Round 1
On October 20, President Kennedy took action, announcing the U.S. would block any Soviet ships from reaching Cuba, beginning at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, October 24.

On that morning, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm) began its long watch for the USSR’s response. As Alsop and Bartlett address, “Reports came in which indicated that some of the Soviet ships appeared to have changed course, and that others had gone dead in the ocean. No one recalls a precise and jubilant moment when it became apparent that Khrushchev’s ships were not going to challenge the American blockade after all.” Secretary of State Dean Rusk nudged an aide and murmured “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

A Navy reconnaissance plane shadows a Russian freighter approaching the quarantine line set by the U.S.

Round 2
Khrushchev might have hesitated, but he was still determined. On Friday night, he sent a letter to Kennedy that contained threats but also an appeal to be reasonable. The following day, spy planes over Cuba showed launchpad construction proceeding at full speed. In a Moscow broadcast, Khrushchev demanded that the U.S. dismantle its missiles in Turkey, which were pointed at the Soviet Union. Later that day, a U.S. spy plane was shot down with a Soviet surface-to-air missile—the first one fired from Cuba.

Khrushchev appeared to be stalling until the missiles were operational. “The next Tuesday, only three days away, was fixed as the [last] date for destroying Khrushchev’s missile and antiaircraft rockets with an air strike,” Alsop and Bartlett wrote, “clearly the next rung on the ladder to nuclear war.”

President Kennedy consults with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

It was Robert Kennedy who came up with a way to move beyond the standoff. He suggested that the president publicly interpret Khrushchev’s Friday letter as a proposal to negotiate. President Kennedy agreed and immediately replied, explaining that the U.S. would take no action against Cuba and would end the blockade if the USSR removed its missiles.

What Alsop doesn’t report, and perhaps didn’t know at the time, was Kennedy’s secret offer to remove U.S. missile bases across the border in Turkey. With the message sent, ExComm’s meeting broke up and everyone went home that Saturday night not knowing whether the following morning would bring peace or—as millions of Americans feared—nuclear attack.

On Sunday, to everyone’s immense relief, Khrushchev agreed to the terms of Kennedy’s offer. In a Post article, written the following month, Stewart Alsop said, “This was, of course, the final, unmistakable blink. It proved once and for all that Khrushchev was not ready to go to nuclear war over Cuba.”

It was clear that war had been averted. The missiles would be dismantled. There would be no new threats to West Berlin. The threat of nuclear holocaust, which had been so close, had passed.

Blow-by-Blow Reporting on the Cuban Missile Crisis The Saturday Evening Post

From October 24-28, 1962, the world held its breath and waited for the news that the Soviet Union and the United States had launched nuclear weapons at each other. This was no media-manufactured event; the Cuban missile crisis had people glued to their television sets, crowding into churches, and pondering how they’d like to spend their last minutes on earth.

If Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev had not backed down from President Kennedy’s blockade of Cuba, the two countries would probably have launched their nuclear weaponry at each other—and half of you wouldn’t be alive to read this. (According to one study, the fatalities of a nuclear war in 1962 could have reached 100 million, more than half of the country’s population.)

President Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara confer in the White House Rose Garden.

For those not old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis, it’s hard to believe how close the world came to Armageddon during those few tense days.

The entire crisis was covered in depth in a November 1962 Post article by Stewart Alsop and Charles Bartlett. The story, “In Time of Crisis” (December 18, 1962), recounts the long deliberations by Kennedy’s ExComm (Executive Committee of the National Security Council), which worked long, tense days from the start of the crisis to the first steps toward its resolution.

As the authors explained, when ExComm first learned the Soviets were building missile sites in Cuba, they weighed every option: invasion, bombing, and negotiation. Eventually they chose a strategy that was muscular enough to counter the perception that Kennedy was weak on foreign policy, but appeared reasonable enough to avoid immediate war. They would block Soviet ships from bringing the missiles to Cuba. “The option of destroying the missiles, and even of invading Cuba, would definitely be maintained,” Alsop and Bartlett wrote. “If the blockade did not cause Khrushchev to back down, then the missiles could and would be destroyed before they became operational.”

Reconnaissance photo of a missile site under construction in Cuba.

It was a risky move. The Soviet Union had a reputation for pushing its luck and rarely backing down. Very likely, it would consider the blockade reason enough to launch nuclear weapons toward America. Attorney General Robert Kennedy said, “We all agreed in the end that if the Russians were ready to go to nuclear war over Cuba, they were ready to go to nuclear war, and that was that. So we might as well have the showdown then as six months later.”

It might have been easy for Robert Kennedy to sound so certain a month after the crisis. At the time, the members of ExComm were anything but resigned to war. For five, nerve-wracking days, they sat with the president, trying out one idea after another, considering every possible move that would keep up the pressure without pushing the Russians too far.

Alone in his office, the president makes the final, fateful decisions.

In the end, to their unimaginable relief, Khrushchev backed down. He accepted a deal from Kennedy that would enable him to present the dismantling of the Cuban missile sites as a constructive move.

Alsop also recalls the evening after the crisis had passed that an elated and relieved John F. Kennedy chatted with his brother Robert. Savoring the moment of achieving peace, he was reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s brief enjoyment of victory between the end of the Civil War and his assassination. “Perhaps,” he quipped, “this is the night I should go to the theater.”

Nuclear Showdown: The Cuban Missile Crisis 50 Years Later The Saturday Evening Post