Having been a former political commissar in the Red Army, Khrushchev understands the power of words. He tells the world that the Soviet Union has “a moral and legal justification” for placing missiles in Cuba. Soviet ships have every right to enter Cuban waters and unload any cargo they like and that the American naval quarantine—a fancy way of saying “blockade,” which is an act of war—is reprehensible. Khrushchev feels persecuted by the Americans. He is outraged that the Soviet Union has suffered two world wars on its soil, while the United States has suffered very little homeland devastation. Khrushchev also knows quite well that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had an explosive force equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. That makes the Soviet dictator smile: his nuclear warheads are equivalent to 1 million tons.
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev collaborated with Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro to challenge President Kennedy in the Western Hemisphere, far from the seat of Soviet power. (Associated Press)
Nikita Khrushchev is no stranger to mass death. He served at the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II, where more than a million men died—including many of the German soldiers Khrushchev personally interrogated. But those killings pale next to the sadistic methods a younger Khrushchev employed to climb the Communist Party ladder in the early 1930s.
When Joseph Stalin, the serial killer who ran the Soviet Union for thirty years, ordered a “Great Purge” of his enemies in 1934, Nikita Khrushchev was an eager participant in this plan. Millions of suspected disloyal Communists were executed or relocated to Siberian prisons. Khrushchev personally ordered thousands of murders and authorized the killing of some of his own friends and colleagues. He gave a speech in 1936 stating that the executions were the only way to rid the Soviet Union of the dissidents striving to undermine its grand success. The following year, Stalin appointed Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party in Ukraine. By the time World War II ended his tenure there in 1939, Khrushchev had overseen the arrest and murder of almost every member of the local party leadership. Hundreds of Ukrainians were murdered. Few politicians survived.
Now Nikita Khrushchev’s relentless quest for power has put the world on the brink of nuclear war.
But there’s a problem: Khrushchev is surprised to learn that his adversary, John Kennedy, is deadly serious about defending his country at all costs. But Khrushchev tells associates he will not back down. He is a firm believer in the old Russian adage, “Once you’re in a fight, don’t spare yourself. Give it everything you’ve got.”
John Kennedy was ignorant of that adage eighteen months ago, during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Now Nikita Khrushchev is gambling that the president of the United States will make the same mistake once again.
On the evening of October 24, Khrushchev orders that his letter be transmitted to Kennedy. In it the Communist leader states calmly and unequivocally that the president’s proposed naval blockade is “a pirate act.” Soviet ships are being instructed to ignore it.
* * *
President Kennedy receives Premier Khrushchev’s letter just before 11:00 P.M. on October 24. He responds less than three hours later, coolly stating that the blockade is necessary and placing all blame for the crisis on Khrushchev and the Soviets.
It’s becoming clear that Kennedy will never back down. The U.S. Navy soon boards a freighter bound for Cuba. Appropriately, the destroyer USS Joseph Kennedy Jr., named for the president’s late brother, is the ship tasked with enforcing the risky quarantine.
“Did you send it?” Jackie asked her husband, referring to the ship, when she learned of this coincidence.
“No,” the president replied. “Isn’t that strange?”
* * *
While the Soviet leadership waits for JFK to crack, he instead goes on the offensive. The president spends Friday, October 26, planning the invasion of Cuba. No detail is too small. He requests a list of all Cuban doctors in Miami, just in case there will be a need to airlift them into Cuba. He orders that a U.S. naval vessel loaded with sensitive radar be moved farther off the coast of the island nation, to make it less vulnerable to attack. Kennedy knows where each invasion ship will assemble, and even scrutinizes the wording of the leaflets that will be dropped to the Cuban people. All the while, the president frets that “when military hostilities first begin, those missiles will be fired at us.”
JFK is privately telling aides that it’s now a showdown between him and Khrushchev, “two men sitting on opposite sides of the world,” deciding “the end of civilization.”
It’s a staring contest. The loser blinks first.
But John Kennedy has seen Nikita Khrushchev blink before. In the early days of Kennedy’s presidency, shortly after the Bay of Pigs incident, the two men held a summit meeting in Vienna. Khrushchev tried to bully his younger adversary on the subject of West Berlin, hoping to take control of the entire city because more and more citizens of Soviet-controlled East Berlin were risking their lives in the name of freedom by escaping into the adjacent territory controlled by the United States and her World War II allies. Kennedy refused to back down, and a chastened Khrushchev began construction of the Berlin Wall to save face.
But time is on Khrushchev’s side on this occasion. Construction of the missile launch facilities in Cuba is nearly complete.
So, while the rest of the world prepares for imminent doom, Nikita Khrushchev spends the early evening of October 26 at the Bolshoi Ballet. “Our people and the foreigners will see this, and it will have a calming effect,” he exhorts his comrades in the Soviet leadership. “If Khrushchev and the other leaders are going to the theatre at a time like this, then it must be possible to sleep peacefully.”
But Nikita Khrushchev is the most anxious man in Moscow, and there’s no way he can rest now. At least a dozen Soviet ships have either been intercepted by U.S. warships or turned back of their own accord. The lightly armed Russian vessels are no match for the American firepower.
After the ballet, Khrushchev spends all night in the Kremlin—just in case something violent transpires. The Soviet leader is uncharacteristically pensive. Something is on his mind. Shortly after midnight, he sits down and dictates a new message to President Kennedy.
* * *
It is 6:00 P.M. in Washington and 2:00 A.M. in Moscow when the message is delivered. JFK has spent the day fine-tuning the upcoming invasion of Cuba. He is bone tired, running on a hidden reserve of energy. His aching body is in a state of chaos. The president has long suffered from a condition known as autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS-2), which has caused not only his hypothyroidism (insufficient thyroid hormone) but also his Addison’s disease, which must be closely monitored at all times. Addison’s causes his body to fail to produce the necessary hormones, such as cortisol, that regulate blood pressure, cardiovascular function, and blood sugar. Left unchecked, Addison’s causes exhaustion, weight loss, weakness, and even death. In 1946, before the disease was diagnosed, Kennedy collapsed at a parade and turned so blue and yellow that he was thought to be suffering from a heart attack.
That must not happen now.
So JFK is receiving injections of hydrocortisone and testosterone to battle his Addison’s. He is taking antispasmodic drugs to ward off his chronic colitis and diarrhea. And the president is suffering from another painful urinary tract infection, which requires antibiotics. All of this is in addition to relentless excruciating back pain. A less driven man would have taken to bed long ago, but John Kennedy refuses to let his constant pain and suffering interfere with his performing his duties.