What Is a Summary of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

A summary of the Cuban Missile Crisis would be that there was a 13-day worrisome military and political standoff in October of 1962 due to the nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, which ended when the United States allowed the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to remove the Cuban missiles as long as the U.S. did not invade Cuba. It began when the U.S. discovered that the revolutionary leftist leader Fidel Castro of Cuba, who had aligned his country with the Soviets, had missiles.

At the time, the U.S. was in a Cold War with the Soviets. The Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1991 and was a series of political and economic disagreements. Both countries spied on one another, and this is how the missiles were first discovered in Cuba. Khrushchev was the first to propose the offer to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the U.S. was quick to accept.

What many people do not know is that U.S. President John F. Kennedy also agreed to remove the U.S. missiles that were in Turkey in order for Khrushchev to take the missiles out of Cuba. This was a frightening time in the U.S. history and in the world as many people thought that there was going to be a nuclear world war.