War was prevented for two reasons, and the ExComm's members were responsible for neither. The first, and most important, is that Khrushchev did not want a war. His objective was to protect Castro's government by deterring, not fighting, the United States.
Khrushchev believed that if the US did nothing over the missile deployments in Cuba, he could muscle the West out of Berlin using said missiles as a deterrent to western countermeasures in Berlin.
In October 1962, the Kennedy Administration faced its most serious foreign policy crisis. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev saw an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro's Cuba and make good its promise to defend Cuba from the United States.
Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов, IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ arˈxʲipəf], 30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Naval officer who prevented a Soviet nuclear torpedo launch during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies. He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites.
By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This emboldened his potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict.
Without atomic spies such as Harry Gold, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and Klaus Fuchs the rate in which the Soviet Union achieved nuclear weaponry would have been impossible. Gold's work as a spy came to an end in 1950 when he was arrested by the FBI.
On 22 June 1941, German forces began their invasion of the Soviet Union, nearly 129 years to the day after Napoleon Bonaparte had done the same.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was keen to show off the U.S.S.R.'s military prowess, so he ordered the creation of the most powerful bomb ever made.
On October 26, Khrushchev agreed to remove the Russian missiles in exchange for Kennedy's promise not to invade Cuba. On October 27, Kennedy's agreement was made public, and the crisis ended.
During the crisis, the Americans and Soviets had exchanged letters and other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy in which he offered to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba.
Though Kennedy is most to blame in terms of the increasing in hostility in the region, Khrushchev was the individual that created the crisis as it existed. Kennedy's actions were a direct cause of Soviet interference, yet Khrushchev's decision to place nuclear weapons on the island is the cause of the crisis.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles there to deter future harassment of Cuba. An agreement was reached during a secret meeting between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in July 1962 and construction of a number of missile launch facilities started later that summer.
Many nuclear historians agree that 27 October 1962, known as “Black Saturday”, was the closest the world came to nuclear catastrophe, as US forces enforced a blockade of Cuba to stop deliveries of Soviet missiles.
Combined, the United States and Russia now possess approximately 89 percent of the world's total inventory of nuclear weapons, and 86 percent of the stockpiled warheads available for use by the military.
The German assistance
In contrast to American military administration in their atomic bomb project, the Russians' program was directed by political dignitaries such as Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, Georgii Malenkov, and Mikhail Pervukhin—there were no military members.
When Sino-Soviet relations cooled at the end of that decade, China moved forward on its own and successfully tested its first nuclear weapon in October 1964. The PRC is the last of the five nuclear weapon states recognized under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to develop a nuclear program.
Tsar Bomba, (Russian: “King of Bombs”) , byname of RDS-220, also called Big Ivan, Soviet thermonuclear bomb that was detonated in a test over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961. The largest nuclear weapon ever set off, it produced the most powerful human-made explosion ever recorded.
Colonel (later General) Paul Tibbets was the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Top Image: The devastated downtown of Hiroshima with the dome of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall visible in the distance.
Some estimates name Maine, Oregon, Northern California, and Western Texas as some of the safest locales in the case of nuclear war, due to their lack of large urban centers and nuclear power plants.
Most Americans are unaware that in 1983, in the midst of President Ronald Reagan's first term, the world came close to nuclear Armageddon. The 1983 incident was at least as dangerous as the Cuban Missile face-off in October 1962.
Russia Has The Most Nuclear Weapons In The World—Here Are The Other Countries With The Largest Nuclear Arsenals.