Kennedy in Crisis NOTES

The Space Race

- Post WWII: US and USSR poaches German scientists
- Sputnik
- Gagarin
- Reasons for fear in the US
- NASA
- Kennedy promises to send man into space by the end of the decade in 1961
Two events in Cuba
- Bay of Pigs (Show Bay of Pigs video)
o Who was the CIA training?
Cuban Exiles
o What were they hoping for?
The Cuban people to rise up against Castro
o What did the CIA promise Kennedy?
An easy victory
o What ultimately happened to the invasion force?
Quickly defeated
No Civilian uprising ever happened
-

Cuban missile crisis

o What it was: the USSR puts missiles in Cuba
13 Days
o Why was the United States nervous about the missiles, according to the clip?
o What was Kennedy advised to do at the beginning?
Why did he resist it?
o What strategy did they finally choose?
A blockade

Back to Germany
- Building of the Berlin Wall
o State of East Berlin under Communist rule
Soviet Rape
Berlin Airlift
o East Berlin Brain drain
o August 1961 The Soviet Union seals off East Berlins border crossings, and
starts building a wall.
o Kennedy goes to West Berlin to show support for it, and makes the statement
Ich Bin ein Berliner, which really meant I am a jelly doughnut