Who's to blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis?
So... what do you think?
Kennedy? Khrushchev? Castro?
Harry Truman.
for not taking care of this communist problem in December 1945 when World War 2 was over and the United States was the world's only nuclear power. We were warned, even by Hitler and the Nazi's, about the communist enemy. We were warned, and we did nothing. We stood by and divided Germany in half and allowed the USSR to dominate Eastern Europe. We had the bombs, folks. This could have been solved a long time ago.
Wow you must be waaaaay over on the left side of things. Therefore, what a typical answer. Plus, it makes no sense. So you're pretty much saying Truman should have nuked Russia? Or threatened to nuke Russia? Haven't we nuked enough? I'm not sure if I understand what you're trying to explain here...
shareEisenhower
Well, you can never nuke enough. But, the fact is that the world was war weary, the country was war weary. Pushing the Soviets out of east europe looked like it would take a lot to do.
sharePushing the Soviets out of Europe would have been nearly impossible... even WITH nuclear weapons (which, in 1945 the US didn't have enough of).
The Soviet was a crack fighting unit by 1945. It was just as weary as the rest of the world, but would have been able to fight back and probably take ALL of Europe had they needed to.
SpiltPersonality
Just remember which side the USSR was fighting for at the onset of WW2. Germany signed a secret non-aggression pact with Russia. They had pre-planned borders for the division of Poland and such.
We should have told Russia, take your butt all the way back to your pre-war border. Germany, and all of Europe, will be free and democratic. If you don't like it, you can complain. However, our memory will become quite refreshed to the fact that you had planned to invade and divide alongside Nazi Germany, your former ally. We will also remember how many millions died at the hands of Stalin.
No Berlin Wall, USSR would not have been the same superpower, perhaps no cuban missile crisis. Russia was in no position to argue when they were evidently GUILTY of MANY war crimes and the USA now had the big bad bomb.
For this thread I think its important to remember that Truman declined to invade Russia, declined to take MacArthurs advice, declined to contest the division of Korea and China did "go Communist" under his watch. Having said that, I think the present administration could learn a lot from Truman. His willingness to sacrifice his approval ratings for the sake of a larger issue at home is what keeps him consistently in the top ten for ratings of presidencies by historians. While he was seen as weak by his contemporaries, history has treated him much kinder. Sometimes I think that, as much of a bastard as Sadam was, keeping him in power would have provided a strong balance against the Shiites (Iran) in the middle east. Going it alone has only alienated a large portion of the world against us and gotten us into a quagmire. I can't speak for the American People, I would not be so presumptuous, but I think after 9/11, we wanted Bid Laden and we wanted him dead. Instead, Cheney and Rumsfeld got us into a mess.
You don't mention the fact that the Russian army was twice the size of the Western army at the time, that the American public was sick of war at this point and wanted their boys home.
If the US had told Russia what you're suggesting Stalin would have laughed in Truman's face. the ONLY way to have taken the Russians out of Eastern Europe was through war. Which the USA and Britian did not want. Remember, at that point Britian was a mess. Their people were starving, most of Europe was in ruins and there was still a little pesky war against the Japenese to be won.
In an ideal world, the Western powers could have kept the USSR in its own borders, but 1945 Europe was NOT an ideal world.
Those pesky Japs were defeated by the end of 1945. We were the world's only country with an atomic bomb. Stalin quickly sent all of Soviet Russia in a frenzy to develop their own bomb and it would take them a decade to do it. They were in no position to argue.
shareThe French and British for not letting Adolf Hitler take the Soviet Union and Communism out in World War 2, the allies joined the Russians and now the world is always under threat of neclear war because the west couldn't stay of Germany's business in 1939. So ultimatley, Chamberlin is to blame for the whole thing.
"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
-Buffy Anne Summers
'The Gift'
The French and British for not letting Adolf Hitler take the Soviet Union and Communism out in World War 2, the allies joined the Russians and now the world is always under threat of neclear war because the west couldn't stay of Germany's business in 1939. So ultimatley, Chamberlin is to blame for the whole thing.
A few problems with this:
- Adolf wasn't only interested in conquering the USSR. Fascism hates Communism and Capitalism. Hitler's plan for the Third Reich (Greater Germania) included all of Europe.
- The West didn't side with the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union was attacked...which by the way was after Hitler had conquered most of mainland Europe.
- Most historians agree that Hitler would've gotten bogged down in the Soviet Union and it would've turned into a decades long war with eventual Germany resources running out (unless Germnay conquered all of Europe,the Middle East, and the New World prior to attacking the Soviet Union.) Fighting in the USSR (especially Siberia) is equal to trying to win a land war in China.
- Even if Germany had conquered the Soviet Union, you would've ended up with an American-Germany Cold War. Germany had given up nuclear science around 1942 due to its excessive cost and not putting stock into what Hitler termed the "Jew Science". However, with the Americans developing and using a bomb, don't you think Hitler would revisit it??? Plus, if Hitler had still been that successful in Europe in 1945, most likely the first destination for "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" would've been Europe...not Japan! share
Well, it did not precisely include all of Europe. Hitler wanted to unite the german people. After Poland he tried to negotiate a peace, but found the allied terms for negotiations (with war-loving churchill) unacceptable. His attack against Russia was also much because of the lack of trust between the countries and not only because of ideological hatred.
Most historians is a rather vague source. Bogged down in the Soviet Union? It would prolong the war but not by that much, as Germany had already lost the war in Stalingrad before "the West", as you call the allies, started doing something vaguely significant on their border. Also after a peace in the west Stalin would surely prepare his forces, something he did not do with catastrophic results. Its fleets with T34s and KV's were unbeatable by the Germans tanks, but lacked maintenance.
Also, in response to some other comments, the production of nuclear bombs were initially very low in 1945 and after fat boy they did not have the ability to produce another one for some time. And trust me, communist physicists was and is still quite common and not easy to get rid off like that.
[deleted]
What's a few million people lives...( women, children, etc.) ..........even if we did eventually win the COLD WAR without nuking anyone....It would have felt so much BETTER to NUKE RUSSIA ( women, children) and anyone else ( women, children) that looked at us cross eyed.....
As far as basic factual integrity.....THe Russians did not "take a decade" to get the bomb after WWII...They set off their first Atomic Bomb just 4 years after we did.
Yeah, but with help from the U.S.!
Those rascally Rosenbergs!
Oh, how I wish I could believe or understand that.
The Bay of Pigs was about 18 months prior to the missile crisis. The Kennedys were also exploring other ways of getting rid of Castro. The soviets put the missiles in to "protect" castro - castro claims in a new book coming out this year that they didn't even ask him about it. In "Brothers" by David Talbot, he claims that after the assassination of RFK, Ethel Kennedy met with Castro and told him that her husband never planned to assassinate him, and he told her "I know that." But the soviets were certainly concerned that the Kennedys, under immense political pressure in the US from many sides, would love to have toppled Castro prior to the 1964 elections.
share[deleted]
Caprediem2020, we had exactly ZERO A-bombs left after Nagasaki. Nada. It took
a long time to build up a stockpile & get good delivery systems.
There was ZERO popular support in either party for attacking USSR in 1945.
The Soviet threat did not register with the American public until 1947-8,
but it hit with a bang then. Truman courageously ordered the Berlin Airlift,
Marshall Plan, NATO and our whole national security posture that confronted
the USSR to the extent possible at the time.
Your Hindsight is indeed 2020, but in 1945, the GOP was more isolationist
(especially with respect to Europe)
than the Hawkish Democrats (ask Bob Dole). It was Eisenhower & Nixon, neither
of them traditional Republicans, who created the internationalist, hawkish
party of the late 1940's.