Just Finished Reading: One Minute to Midnight – Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs

I do find it more than a little odd reading about an historical event I lived through. Not that I actually have any memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was after all only 2 ½ years old in October 1962. What became very clear in this fascinating volume was how close I came to not seeing my 3rd birthday.


I think that most of my regulars know something about the events that almost led up to the world’s first nuclear exchange. Cuba, no friend to the USA, was offered nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union in retaliation for American nukes based on their border with Turkey. A U2 spy plane spotted them before they had become operational and before Khrushchev could announce it to the world. The US responded with a naval blockade, frantic diplomacy and threats of both bombing the sites and an invasion of the island. After several tense days the Soviet Union agreed to dismantle the weapons and sail them home to Mother Russia. The world breathed a sigh of relief; I saw my 3rd birthday and the American nukes came home from Turkey.


Most of the above I was aware of before opening the pages of this book. What I was unaware of was the detail behind those headlines and just how close we came to nuclear war. Not through the acts of desperate or evil men but through accident, misunderstand and fear. Looking back almost 50 years it is difficult to credit just how unconnected the world was back then. At the height of the tensions created by the discovery of nuclear weapons a few hundred miles from American territory it sometimes took days – yes, days – for messages to travel between the major players. When life and death decisions for millions of people could be made in seconds it took hours – yes, hours – for information to pass between President Kennedy, Premier Khrushchev and the troops on the front line. What was even more interesting, to say nothing of disturbing, was the way that decisions on all three sides where being made in either the absence of information or based on the wrong information. From the God’s eye view of an author privy to details of conversations taking place in the White House, the Kremlin and in Havana the reader is allowed to see exactly what all three sides could not see. This ramped up the tension already inherent in a very tense story. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the reader is shown a number of isolated incidents that could, if treated differently, have caused buttons to be pressed and missiles to fly. When a U2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba and another strays into Soviet airspace, when a nuclear armed Russian submarine is forced to the surface captained by a man at the end of his tether and when a simulated attack on Miami is flashed to NORAD and believed, for a few moments, to be the real thing. All of these things could have been the final straw.


This is undoubtedly a masterful work of historical writing. Not many history books can claim to be gripping. This was definitely one of them. The first 30 pages set the scene over the preceding weeks. The next five chapters (about 150 pages) covered the time from October 22nd to ‘Black Saturday’ October 27th. You can imagine the amount of detail the author goes into. The next 260 pages cover the weekend of 27-28th October hoping back and forth between events in Washington, Moscow, Cuba and the various military commands. Giving an almost minute by minute account of the events in such a way that the tension is almost overwhelming, this seemed like one of the best political thrillers I’ve ever read – and yet it was all real, which made it both more mesmerising and more appalling. If you know something about the Missile crisis you need to read this book to fill in the gaps to your knowledge. If this incident is new to you then you really need to read this book to see just how close we came to nuclear annihilation. It is a frightening and sobering read but one I enjoyed a great deal. Highly recommended.