Wes Cowan of PBS's History Detectives learns about the role of aerial reconnaissance and aerial photography in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Historian Sheldon M. Stern, author of Averting the Final Failure, discusses the secret Executive Committee meetings among President Kennedy and his most trusted advisors during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His presentation includes video footage of Kennedy.
Professor and author Noam Chomsky discusses the current "War on Terrorism" in the context of earlier perceptions of terrorism and national threat, including the Cold War and World War II.
The link provides direct access to the video, as no visual webpage exists as a gateway.
NBC Nightly News looks back at the Cuban Missile Crisis, showing how close America came to nuclear war with Russia in 1962.
The documentary clip may not appear on the first page.
This site focuses on an abrupt change in U.S. policy toward Cuba in 1963. The site includes an audio file of a conversation (3.5 minutes) between Kennedy and his national Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, that took place 17 days before Kennedy was assassinated. Kennedy and Bundy discussed taking a softer approach toward Fidel Castro and Cuba, and Kennedy agreed to have secret talks with Castro under the right circumstances. Castro claimed to be open to the idea as well.
The site includes several other supporting items, including eight recently declassified top-secret documents and memoranda supporting and setting up talks between Kennedy and Castro.
The documents indicate that Kennedy saw little advantage in continuing the hard line stance of the U.S. against Castro and Cuba, and believed that a softer approach held strategic value in normalizing relations between the two countries. The papers make it equally clear that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, retracted Kennedy's offer.
This site offers three CIA briefing papers and a transcript of a message from Castro to Kennedy. A mini-scorecard allows visitors to track the key figures in the talks. This site allows researchers, students, and teachers access to previously unavailable material, and would be a useful resource for Cold War studies.
From The Library of Congress Webcasts site:
"In the annual Kislak Lecture, Miguel Bretos looks at the Cuban presence in 'La Florida' from the time of Ponce de Leon, almost 500 years ago, through the late 20th century."
Carlos Eire of Yale University discusses his experiences as one of the 14,600 children airlifted to the U.S. from Cuba between 1960-1962 and the U.S. misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Cuba's condition under Castro that motivated Eire to write his memoirs—arguing that Cuba continues to labor under severe human rights violations. To appreciate and comprehend the benefits of freedom, students need to know what it's like to live without freedom—or worse, in conditions of harsh repression, even genocide. To help teachers teach students about life without freedom, FPRI's Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, in cooperation with the National Constitution Center and the National Liberty Museum, assembled some of the world's leading analysts—and witnesses—of countries without freedom. The conference helped teachers define totalitarianism while examining the history of the idea of freedom.
To listen to this lecture, scroll to "When Repression Masquerades as Social Justice: Confessions of a Cuban Boy" under "Speakers and Topics." Audio and video options are available.
There is a political cartoon of Kennedy arm wrestling Khrushchev, and they are both sitting on hydrogen bombs. I would like to know who drew that, when it was drawn, and where was it first seen.
Welsh-born cartoonist Leslie Gilbert Illingworth drew the famous cartoon of John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev arm wrestling while sitting on hydrogen bombs. It appeared in the October 29, 1962 edition of the British newspaper The Daily Mail.
Born in 1902, Illingworth started drawing cartoons for the famous British news magazine Punch in 1927. The Daily Mail hired him as well in 1937 and he continued to provide cartoons for both publications for the rest of his career. He gained a measure of national fame for the effective cartoons he drew during England's dogged stand against Nazi Germany.
Illingworth was not an overtly political cartoonist and this is evident in this arm wrestling cartoon. One notices the characteristic Illingworth preference for detail rather than commentary on who is right or wrong. The intensity of the struggle is captured both by the energy that radiates out of Kennedy and Khrushchev's gripped hands, but also by the fact that each is sweating profusely. Each man still has his finger on the button that will detonate the bombs.
Illingworth's drawings contrast sharply with those of Edmund Valtman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning and fiercely anti-communist cartoonist for The Hartford Times. On October 30, after the crisis had seemingly passed, his paper published a Valtman cartoon of Khrushchev yanking missile-shaped teeth out of a hideous-looking Castro's mouth. The caption above the illustration reads, “This Hurts Me More Than It Hurts You” and the cartoon clearly represents a moment of American gloating over the communists.
That the Illingworth cartoon was published in a British newspaper bears witness to the fact that the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis affected the fate of populations beyond those of the United States and the Soviet Union. Indeed the whole world was watching. The publication date of October 29 is also significant since on October 28, Khrushchev announced that he was withdrawing the missiles out of Cuba and the crisis seemingly had passed. Illingworth's cartoon reminded readers that the superpower struggle would continue and that the possibility of nuclear annihilation remained.
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: The Penguin Group, 2005.
Frankel, Max. High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Presidio Press, 2004.
Library of Congress. "Prints and Photographs Collection Online Catalog." Accessed January 2011.
Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.
University of Kent. "British Cartoon Archive, Illingsworth Collection" Accessed January 2011.
Dobbs, Michael. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.
Illingsworth, Leslie Gilbert. "Kennedy/Khrushchev". The Daily Mail, October 29, 1962. Accessed January 2011.
Valtman, Edmund. "This hurts me more than it hurts you." The Hartford Times, October 30, 1962. Accessed January 2011.
This NBC Today Show in-depth profile of President Jimmy Carter explores his rise to political power and his career as a humanitarian.
Feature no longer available.
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss discusses the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba are pointed at the United States, and JFK is faced with the prospect of nuclear war.
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