1960sThis was the most dangerous decade.

• A summit was planned for May 1960 to discuss Berlin and nuclear weapons.   

• President Eisenhower wanted an 'open skies' agreement

• Khrushchev refused - but Eisenhower did so anyway.

The U-2 Incident

May 1, 1960

Gary Powers

U-2 spy plane

Aftermath

• The Paris Summit between Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev collapsed.

• Eisenhower refused to make apologies over the incident, demanded by Khrushchev.

Effects of the U2 incident• 1. The Paris meeting collapsed, and

there was no Test Ban Treaty.• 2. There was no discussion of the

problem of Berlin - which led ultimately to the Berlin Wall.

• 3. The incident was seen as a defeat for the US – – so US elected John F Kennedy as

President because he promised to get much tougher on the Russians.

The Cuban Revolution

Castro!

Fidel Castro.

China

China breaks relations off with the Soviet Union!

1960

first nuclear bomb called "59-6",

China's first intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM)

Kennedy elected president!

1961

• Let every nation know that we shall pay any price, bear and burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, for the survival and success of freedom.

 • Now the trumpet calls again . . . against the

enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war. Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.  Inaugural speech of President Kennedy, 1961

Bay of Pigs

April 17, 1961

President Kennedy receives the Brigade 2506 flag in Miami in Dec. 29, 1962 and declares: "I promise to return this flag in a free Havana."

The Berlin Wall

Causes• 1.   Growing tension

• Kennedy tried to get tough on Communism.

• He financed the forces fighting the Communists in Vietnam and Laos

• In 1961 he helped an invasion of Cuba

Causes• 2.   Refugees

• West Berlin was wealthy and free.

• Many East Germans worked in West Berlin, and saw this.

• By 1961, 3 million had fled to the west through Berlin.

• by August 1961, the flow was 1,800 a day.

Causes

• 3. Sabotage

• The Russians claimed that the Americans used West Berlin for spying and sabotage

Results of Berlin Wall

• 1. Berlin was split in two. Hundreds of East Berliners died trying to cross it

• 2. America complained, but did not try to take it down – it was not worth a war.  

• 3. The West became more anti-communist.

•The Berlin Wall is the Symbol of the Cold War!!!!

Cuban Missile Crisis

October 14 – November 20, 1962

Nuclear catastrophe was hanging by a thread ... and we weren't counting days or hours, but minutes."

-Soviet General and Army Chief of Operations, Anatoly Gribkov

Causes

• 1. Superpower Tension

• 2. Fidel Castro’s Cuba

• 3. The Bay of Pigs

• October 14th – U2 spy plane took pictures of missile bases in Cuba

• Kennedy told ten days before operational

What to do?

• 1.   Nuclear Strike? It would cause a nuclear war.

• 2.   Conventional attack? There were Russian troops in Cuba, and it would probably lead to a war with Russia.

• 3.   Use the UN? Too slow.

What to do?

• 4.   Do nothing? The missile bases were too dangerous.

• 5.   Blockade? This would stop the missiles getting to the missile bases, but it was not a direct act of war.

13 Days on the Brink!!• October 22 - Kennedy announced

• that he was mounting a naval blockade of Cuba.

• October 23 - Khrushchev explained that the missile sites were ‘solely to defend Cuba against the attack of an aggressor’.  

• October 24 Russia would get ready ‘a fitting reply to the aggressor’.

13 Days on the Brink!!

• 20 Russian ships were heading for Cuba.

• October 25 - The first Russian ship reached the naval blockade. It was an oil ship and was allowed through

13 Days on the Brink!!

• More Soviet ships approached the “quarantine line”. Missiles on Board!!!

• America wondered if Khrushchev had enough time to instruct the ship captains.

• Soviet ships stopped dead in the water after receiving a radio message from Moscow.

13 Days on the Brink!!

• "We were eyeball to eyeball and the other guy just blinked." Secretary of State Dean Rusk

• Not out of the woods yet!!!!• October 25 - Military alert was raised

to DEFCON 2, the highest ever in U.S. history. The military could, at a moment's notice, launch an attack on Cuba or the Soviet Union.

13 Days on the Brink!!

• October 26 – US received a letter from Khrushchev. (letter one)

• The Soviets would remove their missiles if Kennedy publicly guaranteed the U.S. would never invade Cuba.

• Then we received another letter from Russia.

• Demanding that we remove missile bases in Turkey.

• They were old and out of date. BUT!!!!!

13 Days on the Brink!!• October 27 - Kennedy wrote to

Khrushchev that US would lift the blockade

• And agree not to invade Cuba if Khrushchev would dismantle the missile bases.   

• Kennedy also offered secretly to dismantle the Turkish missile bases.

Results• 1.

Khrushchev lost prestige – he had failed, but prevented nuclear disaster.  

• 2. Kennedy gained prestige. He was seen as the men who faced down the Russians.  

Results• 3. Both sides had had a fright.

The two leaders set up a telephone ‘hotline’ to talk directly in a crisis.

Results• 4. In 1963, they agreed a

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Cuba was the start of the end of the Cold War. 

• 5. Cuba remained a Communist dictatorship, but America left it alone.

Nuclear Test Ban

August 5, 1963

Assassination of JFK

November 22, 1963

Lee Harvey OswaldJohnson being sworn in as president.

Leonid Brezhnev

1964

Prague SpringJanuary 5 – August 20, 1968