America's initial suspicions that the Soviets were putting missiles in Cuba came about because a CIA consultant noticed soccer fields along the coast in Cuba. He said he was concerned because he said, “Cubans play baseball, Russians play soccer.” This led to President Kennedy approving U2 flights over Cuba, which obtained photographs proving the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba. 1)
The Cuban Missile Crisis is widely regarded as the most dangerous moment in postwar history when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. The resolution of the crisis, which is described as the dramatic “thirteen days,” was the result of an agreement, worked out through hours of talks between top officials in Washington and the Kremlin. 2)
The Soviet side increasingly expressed the hope that in the near future Soviet communism would become the system of more countries in the West. Cuba, which had in a sense voluntarily embarked on the path of socialism, was not to be allowed to fall back under Washington's domination. 3)
Fidel Castro reluctantly agreed to the installation of missiles in Cuba. He knew that it would exacerbate the conflict with the United States, particularly because the entire action was to be carried out in strict secrecy. What he feared most, however, was the impact that the presence of the missiles on the island would have on the image of the Cuban Revolution. The coup had been carried out without outside help, and Cuba was to become a Soviet military base. In the end, he agreed, mainly to strengthen the entire socialist bloc. 4)
In early August, the first ships from the USSR began arriving in Cuba. The operation was given the code name “ANADYR,” after the name of a river in the Asian part of the Soviet Union, in northeastern Siberia, flowing into the Pacific Ocean. 5)
Thanks to modern military technology, the U.S. government learned of the presence of ballistic missiles in Cuba even before Nikita Khrushchev's planned letter to President Kennedy. 6)