History 342

Devine

Cuban Missile Crisis Study Questions

 

 

Ex-Comm Transcripts

 

  1. During the first two meetings, what are the major topics of discussion?  What specific topics seem to preoccupy President Kennedy?

 

  1. What options do Kennedy’s advisers offer the President?  What are the pros and cons of each suggestion?

 

  1. To what extent do the advisers seem to have thought through the consequences of each option?

 

  1. Why do the advisers have to say about Soviet motivations for putting missiles in Cuba?

 

  1. What is President Kennedy’s assessment of the situation?

 

  1. What impressions do you get from reading these transcripts over fifty years after the fact?  Anything surprising, particularly revealing, troubling?

 

  1. What impression do you get of Castro just from reading the short excerpt of his letter to Khrushchev?

 

  1. What is the tone of the Khrushchev letters? How does the first differ from the second?

 

  1. Why does Khrushchev say the Soviets sent the missiles to Cuba? 

 

  1. In the second set of transcripts, why are the President and his advisers against removing the missiles from Turkey as a quid pro quo? Why must the two issues be separate?

 

  1. What are the various contingencies Kennedy and his advisers must take into account in dealing with this crisis – in Europe, in Turkey in Cuba?

 

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