When the world was at the atomic abyss

At first glance he hadn't recognized anything, nor at the second - and even the 20th didn't bring a breakthrough. Dino Brugioni had to stare at the photos for hours before he noticed the crucial detail. On October 15, 1962, the 40-year-old intelligence specialist bent over pictures taken the previous day by a U-2 spy plane flying over Cuba.

Suddenly he spotted exactly what he was looking for: at least three unusually elongated, relatively narrow objects were rolling along a country road as part of a convoy of vehicles, and a little to the east of them stood six other similar structures on what appeared to be recently moved earth. Brugioni from Cuba had never seen comparable equipment before: At more than 24 meters, it was too long for trucks, and everything else that could reach that length was significantly wider.

Brugioni's find must have caused some excitement. There is no other explanation for the fact that the coordinates now noted on the recording were swapped: instead of the correct 22 degrees 40 minutes West 83 degrees 15 minutes North, it said "22 40 N 83 15 W". At least the name of the nearest town was correct: Los Palacios.

So disturbed by the discovery was Brugioni's superior, Arthur Lundahl, that he made an emergency appointment at the White House the following morning. As director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), effectively the aerial photo analysis of the CIA secret service, the 47-year-old had the right to do so - of course only if something really important was involved. "Mr. President, I'm as sure as any photo interpreter can be," Brugioni later quoted his boss's verdict to John F. Kennedy on October 16: "I'm convinced they're missiles!"

And what kind: Using comparative images, Brugioni and his colleagues were able to show that the objects could only be medium-range missiles of the Soviet type R-12, in NATO code: SS-4. The Kremlin is actually stationing nuclear weapons on the Caribbean island, as CIA boss John McCone had been warning for weeks. A source in the British secret service in Moscow had already pointed out such plans in August 1962. Informers in Cuba confirmed in September that Soviet troops were to be reinforced enormously - by more than 50,000 men. So it was certain that something was brewing on the south-east flank of the USA.

Brugioni's discovery now brought clarity. As soon as he and his colleagues knew what to look for in the U-2 images, they struck gold: near San Diego de Los Banos, about 20 kilometers to the north-west, they recognized eight other missile transporters and four objects that they for launch pads, as well as tents. The photos showed that the weapons were not yet ready for use. But that could change in a matter of days.

John F. Kennedy immediately appointed a committee of strategy and military experts, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm), which included Arthur Lundahl. For now, the disturbing information should remain classified. The President had complied with the request of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to receive him on October 18, 1962. Though Moscow's chief diplomat was a habit of lying, Kennedy still wanted to personally assess his intentions.

Conversely, Gromyko planned to put the president to the test. This is what the emeritus of the University of Dresden, Reiner Pommerin, writes in his recently published account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the series “Wars of the Modern Age” by the Bundeswehr Center for Military History and Social Science (Reclam Verlag, 160 pages, 14.95 euros): “Finally the foreign minister came to speak of the weapons delivered to Cuba by the Soviet Union. He emphatically emphasized that these weapons were in no way offensive, but merely defensive in nature.”

Kennedy reiterated that he did not intend to invade Cuba, then read from a statement he had made six weeks earlier. In particular, he stressed that there would be "serious consequences" if the Soviet Union were to bring offensive surface-to-surface missiles to Cuba. "Obviously Gromyko didn't understand this warning," says Pommerin. "Rather, he reported to Moscow that the American position on Cuba was entirely satisfactory."

In the coming days, the ExComm – if John F. Kennedy could not be present, his brother Robert took the chair – discussed all possible options. The obvious one from a military point of view was a surprise attack on the missile sites before they were operational, and a subsequent invasion of Cuba. However, hundreds if not thousands of Soviets would perish in the process, which would have unforeseeable foreign policy consequences. The other extreme was: ignore. However, this was bound to enrage the hardliners in the US state apparatus, who had little or nothing to do with the liberal Kennedys anyway – with fatal domestic political consequences.

Faced with this alternative, Kennedy opted for an option that actually did not exist: He relied on a combination of public protest, military pressure to the point of complete escalation, diplomatic attack and secret negotiations. On October 22, 1962, the President addressed the nation and announced a "quarantine" of Cuban military supplies to prevent the Soviet forces there from being fully equipped. The White House received formal approval for this from the Organization of American States, albeit worthless under international law.

Perhaps most important, however, was the war of words that Kennedy's former competitor in the Democratic Party, Adlai Stevenson, sought in the Security Council. The two-time presidential candidate, who was deported as US ambassador to the United Nations (UN), attacked the Soviet UN ambassador Valerian Sorin head-on: “Do you deny, Mr. Ambassador, that the USSR is installing medium-range missiles in Cuba? Yes or no? Don't wait for the translation! Yes or no?” Sorin, who was the rotating chairman of that session, was on the defensive rhetorically and could only reply, “I'm not in an American courtroom, sir, so I don't feel like answering a question that I'm being treated like I'm standing before the prosecutor."

Stevenson replied: "You stand before the court of world opinion and you can answer. Yes or no? I'm willing to wait for my answer until all hell freezes over.” Then he had the diplomats and thus the world public shown greatly enlarged photos of the missile sites in Cuba, which the NPIC had labeled. They proved that Sorin had lied - just like Gromyko before.

That was the turning point of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When alleged hardliners from the ranks of the Soviet units in Cuba shot down another Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, the political pressure on Kremlin gentleman Nikita Khrushchev increased further. But although Soviet submarines with nuclear weapons were cruising off Cuba, meaning the world was closer to the nuclear abyss than ever before (and never since, at least until the Ukraine war), things ended lightly.

Because John F. Kennedy had better nerves: In private negotiations between his brother Robert and the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Drobynin, it was agreed that the USSR would withdraw its secretly stationed missiles from Cuba. For the public, this was a clear defeat for Khrushchev.

World opinion was of little interest to the Soviet ruler. But he had to be careful not to be seen as a weakling in the CPSU. In order for Khrushchev to have something to sell as a success in the Politburo, Robert F. Kennedy agreed to withdraw US missiles stationed in Turkey by April 1963. A clever maneuver, because the Kennedys were doing something they had planned for a long time. Although these rockets were not installed until 1961, a good year later they were already considered obsolete.

Of course, there were also protests against Washington's strategy in the West. Supposed pacifists sided with the Soviet Union with slogans like “Hands off Cuba”. But that did little to change the success of the US government: since 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis has rightly been regarded as an event in which the West prevailed over the Eastern bloc. The trade in US missiles in Turkey did not save Khrushchev: two years after the near-escalation in the Caribbean, his own pupil Leonid Brezhnev overthrew him.

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