History 342

Devine

Study Questions: Hershberg, “The Cuban Missile Crisis”

1. What is Hershberg getting at when in discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis he refers to the “ludicrous dissonance between the crisis’s nearly apocalyptic outcome and [its] ephemeral causes”? (66) Why did this “ludicrous dissonance” inspire dark satire from figures such as Stanley Kubrick and Tom Lehrer?

2. What was Operation ANADYR? What were the various geostrategic motivations for launching this operation?

3. How does China factor into the Cuban Missile Crisis?

4. What economic and even personal motivations might have spurred Khrushchev to place missiles in Cuba?

5. Why did the Kennedy administration move from an air strike to a blockade when considering an appropriate response to the Soviets’ placing of missiles in Cuba?

6. How did Khrushchev’s public bluster differ from his private caution once Kennedy had demanded he remove the missiles?

7. What role did the American Jupiter missiles in Turkey play in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

8. What was the “Trollope ploy” (81) and what did it consist of?

9. Why does it seem that Khrushchev decided to remove the missiles from Cuba? How would you describe Khrushchev’s attitude toward Castro?

10. Looking back, how close does Hershberg believe the world came to nuclear war in 1962? Why does he draw a distinction between intentional and inadvertent escalation?

11. How did the outcome of the crisis affect Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Castro?

12. How did the crisis influence various aspects of the Cold War in the years to come?