# Chapter Thirty-Five — The Cold War

![](images/00056.jpg)

## The Space Race

On the night of October 4, 1957, a glittering shape rose from the ground, a flame shooting from its tail. On the ground below, people began to cheer, “She’s off! Our baby is off!”

They were actually cheering in Russian, because the Soviet Union had just launched a satellite, called *Sputnik*, into space. *Sputnik* (a Russian word that means “fellow traveler” or “companion”) would circle around the Earth once every hour and a half, beeping constantly and sending radio waves back to Earth. It was the first man-made satellite to ever be launched into space, and the first to *orbit* (circle) around the Earth.

A month later, the Soviets launched a second satellite into orbit. This time the satellite, *Sputnik II*, had a passenger, a dog named Laika. The Soviets wanted to see whether living creatures could survive in space; one day, they hoped to send a human being into space.

Over in the United States, the news that the Soviet Union had managed to send two satellites into space—one with a living creature on board!—caused Americans to react with awe and fear. American and Soviet scientists had both been working for several years to design a satellite that could go into space. Both countries wanted to be the first to launch a satellite. The Americans thought that they were well ahead of the Soviets in this “race to space.” When they realized that the Soviets had better and more powerful space technology, they were frightened.

By the middle of the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were firm enemies. After World War II, both countries had wanted to spread their own form of government through Western Europe and Asia. The struggles over the divisions of Germany and Korea showed that the two countries had begun to hate and fear each other.

This hatred never erupted into open war. Instead, Americans and Soviets fought a battle without weapons. They tried to steal each other’s allies. They refused to cooperate on anything. The United States called the Soviet Union repressive, tyrannical, and evil. The Soviet Union called the United States greedy, overbearing, and obsessed with money. Both countries were sure that the other was trying to figure out a way to attack.

This conflict became known as the “Cold War.” When *Sputnik* flew into space, the Cold War was at its height. The United States at once began to worry that, if the Soviets could invent satellites that could make it to outer space, they could also use those rockets to carry powerful weapons over to the United States. In fact, on November 5, 1957, two days after Laika the dog went into space, a *New York Times* reporter wondered if the Soviets were planning to explode a nuclear weapon on the moon. (They weren’t.)

Even though the United States managed to launch its own satellite two months later, the U.S. rockets were less powerful, and its satellites were smaller. The Soviets were winning the “Space Race,” and the Americans needed to catch up. As soon as *Sputnik* launched, American engineering schools were flooded with students who wanted to learn to build rockets. Congress created a new government agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to oversee a program that would get Americans into space as soon as possible. That same year, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which gave schools more money to spend on teaching science. If Americans were going to win the Space Race, young scientists needed to be trained!

Americans hadn’t been so determined to triumph over an enemy since the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. In fact, that’s what the launching of *Sputnik* felt like to many Americans: an attack. The Space Race wasn’t just a race. It was a war, and America was losing.

The Soviet Union managed to stay in the lead for several years. They became the first country to put a human being into space. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in a rocket called *Vostok 1*. His flight lasted 108 minutes. He later said that as he passed over the Atlantic Ocean, he found himself thinking about his mother, and how she would feel when she learned about his space trip. He hadn’t told her that he was flying into space, and she didn’t know about his trip until she saw it on the news. Yuri Gagarin landed in a field in Siberia. A few cows and a few peasants were there to watch him land.

The news that a Soviet “astronaut” had been to outer space made Americans determined to work even harder at their space program. The president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, challenged the Soviet government to a competition: Who could get a man to the moon first?

Six weeks after Yuri Gagarin’s flight, President Kennedy asked Congress to find enough money for NASA to send men to the moon within eight years. Kennedy knew that this would be almost impossible. It would take an enormous amount of money, discipline, and hard work. But he believed Americans could pull it off. To the people of the United States, President Kennedy said, “The exploration of space will go ahead whether we join in it or not. … We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do all the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Kennedy’s wish came true. The United States did get a man on the moon in the 1960s. On July 16, 1969, the *Apollo 11* spaceship was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida—NASA’s headquarters, named after the president. The *Apollo 11* mission had one goal: Land on the moon, step out, and then come back.

Four days later, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climbed into a smaller vehicle called the *Eagle*. It was designed to separate from *Apollo 11* and land on the moon. The two men piloted it to the moon’s surface and touched down on a low, even plain called the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong sent a message back to Earth: “The *Eagle* has landed.”

Then Armstrong and Aldrin climbed out of the *Eagle*. Americans across the country watched them on television as they descended the ladder, down to the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong was the first astronaut to put his foot on the moon’s surface. As he took his first step, he said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

![](images/00026.jpg)

The astronauts walked around the moon for almost twenty-one hours, wearing special suits that kept them warm and supplied them with oxygen to breathe. There was very little gravity on the moon, so the astronauts could jump high and take huge steps. They performed scientific experiments, and collected soil to take back to Earth. Before they left, they planted an American flag on the moon—a sign that although the Soviets had launched the first satellite, the Americans had won the Space Race. But they also left a plaque on the moon that said, “We came in peace for all mankind”—as a reminder that something greater than a simple political victory had been accomplished. For the first time, man had left the surface of the earth where he lived.

![](images/00056.jpg)

## Thirteen Days in October

For thirteen days in October of 1962, it seemed that the world was about to end. The Cold War grew so hot that the United States and the Soviet Union almost declared war.

The conflict boiled up on the island of Cuba, just south of Florida. After the Spanish-American War, Cuba had been given the right to govern itself. It became the “Republic of Cuba.” But in fact, the United States claimed to have certain powers over Cuba. According to U.S. law, the United States government could interfere in Cuban politics whenever it seemed that the government of Cuba might not be respecting “independence. … life, property, and individual liberty.” And the U.S. could also keep naval bases in Cuba.

The people of Cuba disliked this law. This meant that the United States could interfere in Cuban affairs whenever it pleased. But the United States had insisted that this law be written into the Cuban constitution.

For the next forty years, American soldiers were stationed in Cuba. If the United States approved of the Cuban president, American troops would help him stay in power. Americans ran many of Cuba’s biggest businesses—including the telephone company and the sugar plantations.

This was exactly the sort of interference in another country’s affairs that the United States had objected to during the Suez Crisis! Finally, the United States agreed to repeal the law that allowed America so much say in Cuba’s government. In 1940, just after the beginning of World War II, Cubans voted on a new constitution, without the hated provision that gave the U.S. its power. Elections were held again, this time without American help. Cuba had actually become a real democracy.

But not for long. In 1952, an army general named Fulgencio Batista led a military revolt against the president of Cuba. He and his men drove the president out of office and announced that the constitution was no longer in effect.

Cubans were no happier about Batista than they had been about the influence of the United States. A young lawyer named Fidel Castro led a group of Cuban citizens in an armed attack on Batista’s men. But the attack was a disaster. Most of the Cuban citizens were killed. The rest were put on trial for treason.

Castro, then twenty-six years old, was convicted in just four hours. But at his trial, he spoke for two of those four hours against Batista’s government. He called Batista’s government “a single illegitimate power which has usurped and concentrated in its hands the legislative and executive powers of the nation.” He demanded the return of the Cuban constitution, and an end to military government over Cuba. “I know that I shall be silenced for many years!” he shouted. “I know that there will be conspiracy to force me into oblivion. But my voice will never be drowned. … Condemn me, it does not matter! History will absolve me!”

And then he was thrown into prison, sentenced to fifteen years.

If he had served all fifteen years, the history of Cuba might have been entirely different. But after only two years, Batista felt confident enough in his power and in his control over the country to agree to set his political prisoners free. If he set them free, he would be able to demand favors and power from those who opposed him, because he would be doing them a favor.

Castro and the others were released. Fidel Castro left Cuba for Mexico—along with other revolutionaries who were determined to overthrow Batista’s unjust, illegal dictatorship. Castro wrote, before he left, “I am convinced more than ever of the dictatorship’s intention to remain in power. … I believe the hour has come to take rights and not to beg for them, to fight instead of pleading for them.”

Twenty-five thousand copies of this message were spread around Cuba. Meanwhile, in Mexico, Castro and a small group of rebels in exile were preparing to fight for Cuba’s rights. They practiced shooting, climbing mountains, swimming across rivers, surviving in the wilderness on what food they could find, and other guerilla tactics. Castro and his allies—including a rebel named Che Guevara, an expert on guerilla warfare—knew that when they returned to Cuba, they would have to launch a guerilla war, fighting from hiding against Batista’s regular army.

After a year of training, Castro, Che Guevara, and eighty other Cuban rebels got on a tiny wooden boat, set sail across the Gulf of Mexico, and headed for Cuba. Eighty-two people wasn’t much to start a war with. But back in Cuba, others gathered to join them. Fighting broke out between Batista’s army and the revolutionaries who wanted Cuba’s constitution restored. Batista’s soldiers killed more than twenty-five thousand rebels. But the revolutionaries kept on fighting. They cut telephone lines to keep army units from talking to each other. They burned fields of sugar cane and sugar mills that were owned by foreigners. They launched surprise attacks on army outposts and stole weapons. Che Guevara directed the attacks. “Never stay in the same place,” he told his warriors. “Never spend two nights in the same spot. Distrust your friends, your informers, your guides, your contacts, your own shadows. Never sleep under a roof. Never sleep in a house that can be surrounded.”

Using these techniques, Castro’s little army held its own against Batista’s—which was twenty times as big. The United States, watching in dismay, decided that Batista’s government had become far too tyrannical to survive. The U.S. could no longer legally interfere in Cuban affairs. But the U.S. had long sent weapons to the Cuban army. Now, it announced that Batista could buy no more weapons or ammunition for its troops from the United States.

Batista’s soldiers began to leave him and join the rebels. On January 1, 1959, Batista fled from Cuba. Now Castro and his allies—men who had been insisting that Cuba should be ruled by its constitution—were in charge.

Do you think they restored Cuba’s constitution?

They didn’t. Instead of holding elections and bringing the constitution back, Fidel Castro and his allies took control of the country. Castro ordered hundreds of Cubans who had supported Batista killed. He asked the Soviet Union for money to help Cuba recover from the war, and the Soviets agreed. Now Castro began to turn Cuba into a communist country. He took large companies away from their owners and made them the property of the state. He took large farms away from wealthy landowners, divided them up, and parcelled them out to the poorest Cubans. The state took over schools. Eventually, Castro made almost every business in Cuba government-owned.

As had happened in so many other countries, the man who drove out a tyrant became one. Fidel Castro had his own “secret police”—groups called “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.” The committee members were supposed to spy on their neighbors and tell the government if they heard anything critical of Castro’s ideas. Anyone who opposed Castro risked arrest, exile, and execution. Castro’s takeover of businesses meant that thousands and thousands of small business owners—owners of corner stores, little dress shops, and even hot dog vendors—lost their businesses.

Castro had not been in power long before thousands—and then tens of thousands—of Cubans began to leave the island. They left because they had lost their businesses, or because they were afraid of arrest, or because they could no longer say freely what they thought. Most of these went to the United States. Many of them settled down in Florida, where Cuban Spanish, Cuban food, and Cuban music soon became part of America.

The United States didn’t like what it saw of Cuba’s government. Cuba’s friendly relationship with the Soviets was even more troubling, because Cuba was so close to the United States. So the U.S. government, led by President Kennedy, began to plan an invasion of Cuba.

The invasion was planned for April of 1961. The soldiers who actually invaded Cuba were all Cubans who had fled from Cuba to the United States—because the United States couldn’t legally interfere with Cuba’s affairs by invading with American soldiers. But the Cubans were trained by United States military officials and given weapons by the United States. They were to land at a horseshoe-shaped beach called the Bay of Pigs, set up a junta (military government), and try to convince Cubans to join them against Castro.

But the invasion was a disaster. Word leaked out ahead of time, so that when the invasion force arrived, Castro’s soldiers were waiting. His planes sailed overhead, sinking the boats that brought the invaders to the shore. Tanks rolled in, firing. Every Cuban in the invasion force was either killed or taken prisoner.

Castro knew that the United States had sponsored the invasion. So he turned to the Soviet Union, America’s enemy, and bought more weapons to protect Cuba. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, wrote the president of the United States an angry letter about the invasion of Cuba. He warned that if the U.S. tried to interfere with Cuba again, the Soviet Union would “reply in full measure.” Kennedy wrote back an equally testy letter, insisting that the United States had the right to protect its own hemisphere against Soviet influence.

In other words, the real fight was between the U.S. and the Soviet Union—not just between Fidel Castro and America.

Only six years earlier, in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev had lost his temper at the U.S. representative during a meeting of the United Nations. The British prime minister was making a speech when Khrushchev grew so angry that he pulled his shoe off, banged it on the desk, and shouted “We will bury you!” at the American statesman.

When he heard the noise, the prime minister turned around, looked at Khrushchev’s banging shoe, and remarked, “I will have to have that translated!” His joke made the meeting end without any more shouting, but Khrushchev had made his position clear. America was his enemy.

In October of 1962, American spy planes, flying over Cuba, took pictures of weapons that had apparently just arrived in Cuba from the Soviet Union. The photos showed nuclear missiles, enough to destroy cities all through the United States.

Nuclear weapons in Cuba were a terrifying prospect for the United States. Cuba was so close to America that missiles could easily be fired at Washington DC, wiping out the whole city. Worst of all, although the missiles were in Cuba, the controls—the “red buttons” that would launch them—were over in the Soviet Union.

Immediately, John F. Kennedy sent U.S. ships to surround Cuba and keep any more weapons from coming in. He warned the Soviet Union and the people of the United States that if a nuclear weapon were dropped on the United States, the United States would launch a “full retaliatory attack on the Soviet Union.” The Soviet Union prepared its own troops and announced that it would fight back.

For thirteen days, the Soviet Union and the United States were at a stand-off over the missiles. Nuclear war seemed inevitable. This was what the whole world had dreaded ever since the first atomic bomb had exploded over Hiroshima. Nuclear weapons were so powerful, and so deadly, that if the United States and the Soviet Union attacked each other, the entire world could be poisoned and destroyed. People prayed, hoped, and held their breath. Men driving to work wondered whether they would drive home that night. Families eating breakfast didn’t know whether their world would still exist at dinnertime.

Later, an American politician would remark that the United States and the Soviet Union were standing toe to toe, having a staring contest—and that the Soviet Union blinked first. On October 29, the Soviet Union offered to take its nuclear missiles back, as long as the United States would promise not to invade Cuba. The United States agreed.

The “Cuban Missile Crisis” was over, but the Cold War still raged on.

![](images/00083.jpg)