Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

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In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century—the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis—America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. Occasionally, Hastings leaves the world leaders behind completely, to give us anecdotes from average individuals living through the Crisis, powerless observers in a high-stakes game they never joined. The sheer number of viewpoints presented adds richness and depth to the proceedings.

This is a new history for a new generation, putting fresh, international context on an astonishing military and political showdown. In those throes of the Cold War, hundreds of millions of people around the world were, for some days, terrified that a nuclear holocaust was imminent. Bringing together the threads of American bellicosity and Soviet brinksmanship, it becomes clear that while both sides eventually stepped away from destruction, that does not mean disaster was not terrifyingly close. It’s not the primary source research, for there are no new revelations that have not been published elsewhere. And it’s not the ultimate judgments, for Hastings’s conclusions – that Khrushchev acted precipitously, that the American military establishment verged on the insane, and that President Kennedy handled the situation quite well – are fairly standard. Superb... reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana' Daily Mail It wasn’t until 1992 that the US learned that the Soviets had had tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons at their disposal – each with a charge similar to that detonated over Hiroshima – and that plans had been drawn up to permit their use in the event of a land invasion. Should this have happened, had Kennedy chosen to follow the recommendations of his military chiefs, a nuclear response would have been probable. The ensuing public pressure would have made it extremely hard for the US president not to retaliate in kind. Kennedy was distrustful of his military and intelligence advisers, partly because of the previous year’s Bay of Pigs fiasco – Dwight Eisenhower’s planned invasion of Cuba that Kennedy had felt obliged to carry through – and we should only be thankful that some in his circle, under his calm leadership, were able to stem their hubris and sabre-rattling.Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded. Hastings sets the scene for the crisis by starting with the story of Castro and the Cuban revolution and of course the Bay of Pigs disaster. He then moves to describe the political and social situation in both the US and the Soviet Union and also briefly goes over the biography of Khrushchev and Kennedy. Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard. A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.

In January this year, Russia’s deputy foreign minister threatened to deploy “military assets” to Cuba if the US continued to support Ukrainian sovereignty. As has become all too apparent in the past weeks, tactical nuclear missiles are still a threat, along with chemical weapons and supersonic missiles. It’s as if Russia’s desperate scramble to maintain influence will stop at nothing and, as Hastings points out, “the scope for a catastrophic miscalculation is as great now as it was in 1914 Europe or in the 1962 Caribbean”. Abyss provides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted.This was the first real test of the MAD concept, and indeed it stayed the hand of the warring adversaries of the Cold War. It is worth being reminded that this happened despite a belligerent and foolhardy American military, doomed to delve disastrously into Vietnam a decade later. From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph Nearing eighty, Hastings still writes with the pungent style that suffused his earlier books. At one point, for instance, he refers to Ernest Hemingway as “the big bullshitter with the mustache.” He also makes frequent references to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, connecting the past with the present in a way that feels unforced. In between the meetings of great leaders and the movement of ships and submarines he added the recollections of regular Cuban and Russian people that were stationed in Cuba during the time of the crisis. These eye witnesses were interviewed for the book and they are a fantastic addition because they add a much needed ground level view. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is widely considered to be the closest the world has come to a full nuclear exchange. In a ploy apparently meant to taunt the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev sent medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles to the Caribbean nation, along with enough atomic warheads to devastate America’s eastern seaboard.

Obviously – as we do not yet inhabit a world of radioactive ash – the missiles of October never flew. Still, the margins were so thin, and the human element so pronounced, that it is unsurprising that this event has been the subject of numerous, sometimes excellent books. He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005. Rather, two things jumped out to me. First, there is an expanded scope that gives Cuba equal billing with the Soviet Union and the United States. Second, there is Hastings himself, whose writing is imbued with sharp observations, idiosyncratic tangents, and no shortage of confidence. Kennedy had many, by now, well known and copiously documented faults.His willingness however, to refrain from the lethal and precipitate action pressed so hard upon him by his military advisors while he pursued a diplomatic solution, I believe, represents his ‘finest hour’. It is a strange paradox that so many of the men who performed so well during this crisis exercising cool nerves and sound judgement such as McNamara, Ru Hastings correctly argues that the Kennedy brothers became Castro haters due to the Bay of Pigs, an emotion they did not feel previously. They felt humiliated and became obsessed with Cuba as they sought revenge – hence Operation Mongoose to get rid of Castro which Robert Kennedy was put in charge of. As the narrative unfolds a true portrait of Castro emerges. He was considered a beloved politician in Cuba at the time but a poor administrator. He had overthrown Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and at the outset was a hero for his countrymen. However, the crisis highlighted a delusional individual who at times believed his own heightened rhetoric and whose actions scared Khrushchev.A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph It is hard for many of us to imagine, 60 years on from the Cuban missile crisis, the atmosphere of a time in which many assumed all-out war between the superpowers was coming and that such a clash would necessarily be nuclear. But as the journalist and historian Max Hastings reminds us in Abyss, relations between China, Russia and the US are as fractious now as ever. Levels of mutual understanding, and the will to accommodate new understandings, are hardly better than in 1962; the scope for an irreversible error – even a deliberate act – remains.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. Despite their certainty of success, the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed strangely unconcerned that their overwhelming conventional forces might require the Soviet Union to escalate to the use of nuclear missiles and bombs. They were also unaware that tactical nukes had been sent to Cuba and – in the high heat of an amphibious assault – could very well have been used on the beaches. JS Tennant is the co-author with Richard Hollis of Cuba ’62: Preludes to a World Crisis, published this month by Five Leaves Publications

From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph During the crisis, Robert McNamara contended that the fundamental issue at stake was political, not strategic or tactical. Hastings is in agreement with this, and provides some convincing analysis on this point: "three leaders and their nations marched towards a fateful rendezvous in the Caribbean, with hapless allies such as the British trailing behind. Fidel Castro was driven by a craving to secure for his small country a celebrity and importance to which it could lay claim only by promoting sensation and even outrage. Nikita Khrushchev cherished no desire for war, but was happy to use the threat of it as a means of asserting the Soviet Union's right to be viewed on the world stage as the equal of the United States. His conduct represented the negation of statesmanship but was, instead, the bitter fruit of the Russian experience since 1917, and arguably even before. Khrushchev probably recognized that he had little prospect of securing the love of his people, never mind that of his Presidium colleagues. However, he needed at least their respect, which he sought by presenting himself as standard-bearer for Russian greatness and socialist revolution. Unfortunately for the cause of peace, however, such a display mightily alarmed the peoples of the West, and especially Americans...John F. Kennedy was one of the most enlightened men ever to occupy the presidency of the United States. But his instinct towards moderation and compromise, fostered by sophistication and international experience, stood at odds with the conservative worldview of a substantial proportion of his fellow-countrymen, who demanded that America should be seen to be strong. Whereas Khrushchev, in making foreign policy decisions, was seldom obliged to consider a domestic public, as distinct from political, opinion, Kennedy could never neglect his own. His presidency, and above all his conduct of the approaching Crisis, would be characterized by a tension between personal rationality and a determination to be seen by his people to conduct himself in a fashion that did not injure his 1964 re-election prospects. The most frightening aspect of this was that more than a few Americans, especially those who wore uniforms with stars on their shoulders, were less fearful of war than was the rest of the planet." JS Tennant in his review of ABYSS in The Guardian, October 16, 2022 points out that “In January this year, Russia’s deputy foreign minister threatened to deploy “military assets” to Cuba if the US continued to support Ukrainian sovereignty. As has become all too apparent in the past weeks, tactical nuclear missiles are still a threat, along with chemical weapons and supersonic missiles. It’s as if Russia’s desperate scramble to maintain influence will stop at nothing and, as Hastings points out, ‘the scope for a catastrophic miscalculation is as great now as it was in 1914 Europe or in the 1962 Caribbean.’ Abyss provides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted.” Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.