Thirteen Days, Two Stories
The Cuban Missile Crisis as Washington and Moscow told it, and the threads that run from it to scripture and to SpaceX
In October 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union came closer to nuclear war than at any other moment of the Cold War. Each government explained the crisis to its own public in its own way. This chapter follows both accounts side by side, then what the records of both sides confirm, and then some of the less obvious lines that lead out of those thirteen days.
Every line drawn below is a sourced link. Lines marked “according to” are one side’s account, not established fact.
16 Oct 1962
16 October 1962. In Washington, President Kennedy is briefed on Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba. For the next thirteen days Washington, Moscow, Havana and, less visibly, Turkey are at the center of the world.
The US story. On 22 October Kennedy told the nation that offensive missile sites were being built in Cuba. According to the US government, the crisis was caused by this secret Soviet deployment, which Moscow had code-named Operation Anadyr.
The Soviet story. On 27 October Khrushchev answered with a different map: US Jupiter missiles already stood in Turkey, on the Soviet border. According to the Soviet government, that deployment was the real cause of the crisis.
25 Oct 1962
On 25 October Pope John XXIII made a radio appeal for peace to the leaders of both blocs. He headed the Catholic Church, of which Kennedy was a member; the Holy See later recalled the appeal as a plea made with humanity “on the brink of an atomic world war”.
Apr 1963
What both sides confirm. Robert Kennedy’s memo and Ambassador Dobrynin’s cable, written for rival governments, both record that the missiles in Turkey were part of the settlement. The Jupiters came out in April 1963, so this link carries sources from both perspectives.
20 Jun 1963
During the crisis the two leaders struggled to read each other’s intentions. In June 1963 their governments agreed on a direct link between Washington and Moscow, the hotline, which began as a teletype circuit rather than a telephone.
11 Apr 1963
Spring 1963 closes the story. The Jupiters leave Turkey in April; on 11 April the Pope issues the encyclical Pacem in Terris, addressed to “all men of good will”; the hotline agreement follows in June.
The long tail. The Jupiter was developed under Wernher von Braun, who in 1960 moved to NASA as first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. In 2006 NASA funded a young company, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Each line is a sourced link, not a judgment.
One more thread. Around 1455 Johannes Gutenberg printed the Latin Bible in Mainz, the scripture of Christianity, whose largest church was led in 1962 by the Pope who appealed for peace. A connection is not evidence of influence, but every step of it can be checked.
The two accounts disagree about the cause. A third voice spoke to both sides at once.
The crisis did not stay in 1962. The same weapons, people and institutions connect to stories that seem to have nothing to do with it.
Explore further: open any shot in the explorer, switch the perspective between the US and Soviet governments, and compare which claims each side makes.