Episode 8.18

An introduction to my new podcast series which will be published from September dealing with the wars of German unification and influence of Otto von Bismarck on Germany and Europe.  The first series will deal with the Revolutuion of 1848 and the First Schleswig War.  Later series will deal with the Second Schleswig War, the Seven Weeks War between Austria and Prussia and the Franco - Prussian War, then it will finish with the final years of Bismarck as Germen chancellro. This first episode deals with Prussia before 1848.  You can listen to this and further episodes on a different feed from September onwards.

In this final episode of this season, I will be discussing nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear war which hung over the world during the cold war.

After Che Guevara left Cuba, he would try to led two revolutions in the Congo and in Bolivia, neither of which would succeed.  He would be captured by the Bolivian Army and murdered in cold blood but he death, he would become an idea to many young people with left wing values.

An American U2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba by a Soviet Surface to Air missile.  The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union increases but President Kennedy decides not to bomb Cuba.  He uses a message from the Soviet leader to end the crisis and the Soviet nuclear missiles are withdrawn from Cuba.

An American U2 spy fight discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba.  The American military chiefs wanted an invasion of Cuba but President Kennedy decides above a naval blockade of Cuba instead.  President Kennedy address the nation on television to tell them of the Soviet missiles now based in Cuba.

The Soviets send nuclear weapons and fifty thousand military personal to Cuba, all without being observed by the Americans.  The Soviet nuclear missiles pose a serious danger to the United States.  A biography of the Soviet military commander in Cuba, General Pliev.  In October 1963, an American U2 flight will plunge the world into crisis.

Cuban exiles with the secret support of the American Government would in 1961, attempt a landing on the south coast of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.  The invasion was crushed by the Cuban Army, President Kennedy would not allow the American military to become directly involved, although the American Government involvement soon became known. 

When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, his mask of being a liberal and a democrat fell.  There would be no free elections in Cuba.  Those who had fought in the Cuban revolution for a free and democratic Cuba would become the victims of repression, imprisonment and execution, another revolution was eating its children.

1958 saw the Guerrilla armies in Cuba grow in number.  The Cuban Army was sent to crush Fidel Castro and his rebels in operation summer, it nearly success but Fidel Castro led his men out of a trap.  The American Government turn against the Cuban dictator and he is forced to flee.  In December 1958, the rebels overcame the Cuban Army.

During 1957, Fidel Castro guerrilla band would grow in numbers, they attacked isolated Army garrisons in Eastern Cuba and the Cuban Army would abandon parts of the countryside to the rebels.  Fidel Castro would prove to  a master of public relations and reassure the world he was a democrat not a Communist.  A biography of his brother Raul.