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NOTE TO READERS
"Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.

The Yalta Conference took place in a Russian resort town in the Crimea from February 4-11, 1945, during World War Two. At Yalta, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions regarding the future progress of the war and the postwar world.

World Leaders at the Yalta Conference

The Allied leaders came to Yalta knowing that an Allied victory in Europe was practically inevitable but less convinced that the Pacific war was nearing an end. Recognizing that a victory over Japan might require a protracted fight, the United States and Great Britain saw a major strategic advantage to Soviet participation in the Pacific theater. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill discussed with Stalin the conditions under which the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan and all three agreed that, in exchange for potentially crucial Soviet participation in the Pacific theater, the Soviets would be granted a sphere of influence in Manchuria following Japan's surrender. This included the southern portion of Sakhalin, a lease at Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou), a share in the operation of the Manchurian railroads, and the Kurile Islands. This agreement was the major concrete accomplishment of the Yalta Conference.

The Allied leaders also discussed the future of Germany, Eastern Europe and the United Nations. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed not only to include France in the postwar governing of Germany, but also that Germany should assume some, but not all, responsibility for reparations following the war. The Americans and the British generally agreed that future governments of the Eastern European nations bordering the Soviet Union should be "friendly" to the Soviet regime while the Soviets pledged to allow free elections in all territories liberated from Nazi Germany. Negotiators also released a declaration on Poland, providing for the inclusion of Communists in the postwar national government. In discussions regarding the future of the United Nations, all parties agreed to an American plan concerning voting procedures in the Security Council, which had been expanded to five permanent members following the inclusion of France. Each of these permanent members was to hold a veto on decisions before the Security Council.

Initial reaction to the Yalta agreements was celebratory. Roosevelt and many other Americans viewed it as proof that the spirit of U.S.-Soviet wartime cooperation would carry over into the postwar period. This sentiment, however, was short lived. With the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman became the thirty-third president of the United States. By the end of April, the new administration clashed with the Soviets over their influence in Eastern Europe, and over the United Nations. Alarmed at the perceived lack of cooperation on the part of the Soviets, many Americans began to criticize Roosevelt's handling of the Yalta negotiations. To this day, many of Roosevelt's most vehement detractors accuse him of "handing over" Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia to the Soviet Union at Yalta despite the fact that the Soviets did make many substantial concessions.

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Milestones: 1937-1945 - Office of the Historian

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NOTE TO READERS
"Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.

With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.

The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech delivered by President Truman before a joint session of Congress on . The immediate cause for the speech was a recent announcement by the British Government that, as of March 31, it would no longer provide military and economic assistance to the Greek Government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Truman asked Congress to support the Greek Government against the Communists. He also asked Congress to provide assistance for Turkey, since that nation, too, had previously been dependent on British aid.

At the time, the U.S. Government believed that the Soviet Union supported the Greek Communist war effort and worried that if the Communists prevailed in the Greek civil war, the Soviets would ultimately influence Greek policy. In fact, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had deliberately refrained from providing any support to the Greek Communists and had forced Yugoslav Prime Minister Josip Tito to follow suit, much to the detriment of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. However, a number of other foreign policy problems also influenced President Truman's decision to actively aid Greece and Turkey. In 1946, four setbacks, in particular, had served to effectively torpedo any chance of achieving a durable post-war rapprochement with the Soviet Union: the Soviets' failure to withdraw their troops from northern Iran in early 1946 (as per the terms of the Tehran Declaration of 1943); Soviet attempts to pressure the Iranian Government into granting them oil concessions while supposedly fomenting irredentism by Azerbaijani separatists in northern Iran; Soviet efforts to force the Turkish Government into granting them base and transit rights through the Turkish Straits; and, the Soviet Government's rejection of the Baruch plan for international control over nuclear energy and weapons in June 1946.

In light of the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union and the appearance of Soviet meddling in Greek and Turkish affairs, the withdrawal of British assistance to Greece provided the necessary catalyst for the Truman Administration to reorient American foreign policy. Accordingly, in his speech, President Truman requested that Congress provide $400,000,000 worth of aid to both the Greek and Turkish Governments and support the dispatch of American civilian and military personnel and equipment to the region.

Truman justified his request on two grounds. He argued that a Communist victory in the Greek Civil War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would undermine the political stability of the Middle East. This could not be allowed in light of the region's immense strategic importance to U.S. national security. Truman also argued that the United States was compelled to assist "free peoples" in their struggles against "totalitarian regimes," because the spread of authoritarianism would "undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States." In the words of the Truman Doctrine, it became "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Truman argued that the United States could no longer stand by and allow the forcible expansion of Soviet totalitarianism into free, independent nations, because American national security now depended upon more than just the physical security of American territory. Rather, in a sharp break with its traditional avoidance of extensive foreign commitments beyond the Western Hemisphere during peacetime, the Truman Doctrine committed the United States to actively offering assistance to preserve the political integrity of democratic nations when such an offer was deemed to be in the best interest of the United States.

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Milestones: 1945-1952 - Office of the Historian

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As the war-torn nations of Europe faced famine and economic crisis in the wake of World War II, the United States proposed to rebuild the continent in the interest of political stability and a healthy world economy. On June 5, 1947, in a commencement address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall first called for American assistance in restoring the economic infrastructure of Europe. Western Europe responded favorably, and the Truman administration proposed legislation. The resulting Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 restored European agricultural and industrial productivity. Credited with preventing famine and political chaos, the plan later earned General Marshall a Nobel Peace Prize.

Shown here are the first and last pages of the resulting law, most commonly known as the Marshall Plan.

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Enlarge George C. Marshall [NWDNS-306-PS-50-13476] As the war-torn nations of Europe faced famine and economic crisis in the wake of World War II, the United States proposed to rebuild the continent in the interest of political stability and a healthy world economy. On June 5, 1947, in a commencement address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C.

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The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 - 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin.

The Western Allies organised the Berlin Airlift ( German: Berliner Luftbrücke, "Berlin Air Bridge") from 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949 to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city and the population. American and British air forces flew over Berlin more than 250,000 times, dropping necessities such as fuel and food, with the original plan being to lift 3,475 tons of supplies daily. By the spring of 1949, that number was often met twofold, with the peak daily delivery totalling 12,941 tons. Among these was the work of the later concurrent Operation Little Vittles in which candy-dropping aircraft dubbed " raisin bombers" generated much goodwill among German children.

Having initially concluded there was no way the airlift could work, the Soviets found its continued success an increasing embarrassment. On 12 May 1949, the USSR lifted the blockade of West Berlin, due to economic issues in East Berlin, although for a time the Americans and British continued to supply the city by air as they were worried that the Soviets would resume the blockade and were only trying to disrupt western supply lines. The Berlin Airlift officially ended on 30 September 1949 after fifteen months. The US Air Force had delivered 1,783,573 tons (76.4% of total) and the RAF 541,937 tons (23.3% of total), totalling 2,334,374 tons, nearly two-thirds of which was coal, on 278,228 flights to Berlin. In addition Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African air crews assisted the RAF during the blockade. The French also conducted flights, but only to provide supplies for their military garrison.

American C-47 and C-54 transport airplanes, together, flew over 92,000,000 miles (148,000,000 km) in the process, almost the distance from Earth to the Sun. British transports, including Handley Page Haltons and Short Sunderlands, flew as well. At the height of the airlift, one plane reached West Berlin every thirty seconds.

Seventeen American and eight British aircraft crashed during the operation. A total of 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 40 Britons and 31 Americans, mostly due to non-flying accidents.

The Berlin Blockade served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe. It played a major role in aligning West Berlin with the United States and Britain as the major protecting powers, and in drawing West Germany into the NATO orbit several years later in 1955.

The red area of Germany (above) is Soviet controlled East Germany. German territory east of the Oder-Neisse line (light beige) was ceded to Poland, while a portion of the easternmost section of Germany East Prussia, Königsberg, was annexed by the USSR, as the Kaliningrad Oblast.

From 17 July to 2 August 1945, the victorious Allies reached the Potsdam Agreement on the fate of postwar Europe, calling for the division of defeated Germany, west of the Oder-Neisse line, into four temporary occupation zones each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union (thus re-affirming principles laid out earlier by the Yalta Conference). These zones were located roughly around the then-current locations of the allied armies. As the seat of the Allied Control Council, Berlin was also divided into four occupation zones, despite the city's location, which was fully located 100 miles (160 km) inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. The United States, United Kingdom, and France controlled western portions of the city, while Soviet troops controlled the eastern sector.

Soviet zone and the Allies' rights of access to Berlin

Sectors of divided Berlin

The only three permissible air corridors to Berlin

In the eastern zone, the Soviet authorities forcibly unified the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the Socialist Unity Party ("SED"), claiming at the time that it would not have a Marxist-Leninist or Soviet orientation. The SED leaders then called for the "establishment of an anti-fascist, democratic regime, a parliamentary democratic republic" while the Soviet Military Administration suppressed all other political activities. Factories, equipment, technicians, managers and skilled personnel were removed to the Soviet Union.

In a June 1945 meeting, Stalin informed German communist leaders that he expected to slowly undermine the British position within their occupation zone, that the United States would withdraw within a year or two and that nothing would then stand in the way of a united Germany under communist control within the Soviet orbit. Stalin and other leaders told visiting Bulgarian and Yugoslavian delegations in early 1946 that Germany must be both Soviet and communist.

The Soviets also granted only three air corridors for access to Berlin from Hamburg, Bückeburg, and Frankfurt. In 1946 the Soviets stopped delivering agricultural goods from their zone in eastern Germany, and the American commander, Lucius D. Clay, responded by stopping shipments of dismantled industries from western Germany to the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviets started a public relations campaign against American policy and began to obstruct the administrative work of all four zones of occupation.

Until the blockade began in 1948, the Truman Administration had not decided whether American forces should remain in West Berlin after the establishment of a West German government, planned for 1949.

Berlin quickly became the focal point of both US and Soviet efforts to re-align Europe to their respective visions. As Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov noted, "What happens to Berlin, happens to Germany; what happens to Germany, happens to Europe." Berlin had suffered enormous damage; its prewar population of 4.3 million people was reduced to 2.8 million.

After harsh treatment, forced emigration, political repression and the particularly harsh winter of 1945-1946, Germans in the Soviet-controlled zone were hostile to Soviet endeavours. Local elections in 1946 resulted in a massive anti-communist protest vote, especially in the Soviet sector of Berlin. Berlin's citizens overwhelmingly elected non-Communist members to its city government.

The US had secretly decided that a unified and neutral Germany would inevitably fall under Soviet domination, with Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower that "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements." American planners had privately decided during the war that it would need a strong, allied Germany to assist in the rebuilding of the West European economy.

To coordinate the economies of the British and United States occupation zones, these were combined on 1 January 1947 into what was referred to as the Bizone (renamed "the Trizone" when France joined on 1 August 1948). After March 1946 the British zonal advisory board (Zonenbeirat) was established, with representatives of the states, the central offices, political parties, trade unions, and consumer organisations. As indicated by its name, the zonal advisory board had no legislative power, but was merely advisory. The Control Commission for Germany - British Element made all decisions with its legislative power. In reaction to the Soviet and British advances, in October 1945 the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) encouraged the states in the US zone to form a co-ordinating body, the so-called Länderrat (council of states), with the power to legislate for the entire US zone. It created its own central bodies (Ausschüsse or joint interstate committees) headed by a secretariat seated in Stuttgart. While the British and Soviet central administrations were allied institutions, these US zone committees were not OMGUS subdivisions, but instead were autonomous bodies of German self-rule under OMGUS supervision.

Representatives of these three governments, along with the Benelux nations, met twice in London ( London 6-Power Conference) in the first half of 1948 to discuss the future of Germany, going ahead despite Soviet threats to ignore any resulting decisions. Eventually the London Agreement on German External Debts, also known as the London Debt Agreement (German: Londoner Schuldenabkommen), was concluded. Under the London Debts Agreement of 1953, the repayable amount was reduced by 50% to about 15 billion marks and stretched out over 30 years, and compared to the fast-growing German economy were of minor impact.

After a 9 March meeting between Stalin and his military advisers, a secret memorandum was sent to Molotov on 12 March 1948, outlining a plan to force the policy of the western allies into line with the wishes of the Soviet government by "regulating" access to Berlin. The Allied Control Council (ACC) met for the last time on 20 March 1948, when Vasily Sokolovsky demanded to know the outcome of the London Conference and, on being told by negotiators that they had not yet heard the final results from their governments, he said, "I see no sense in continuing this meeting, and I declare it adjourned."

The entire Soviet delegation rose and walked out. Truman later noted, "For most of Germany, this act merely formalised what had been an obvious fact for some time, namely, that the four-power control machinery had become unworkable. For the city of Berlin, however, this was an indication for a major crisis."

On 25 March 1948, the Soviets issued orders restricting Western military and passenger traffic between the American, British and French occupation zones and Berlin. These new measures began on 1 April along with an announcement that no cargo could leave Berlin by rail without the permission of the Soviet commander. Each train and truck was to be searched by the Soviet authorities. On 2 April, General Clay ordered a halt to all military trains and required that supplies to the military garrison be transported by air, in what was dubbed the "Little Lift."

At the same time, Soviet military aircraft began to violate West Berlin airspace and would harass, or what the military called "buzz", flights in and out of West Berlin. On 5 April, a Soviet Air Force Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter collided with a British European Airways Vickers Viking 1B airliner near RAF Gatow airfield, killing all aboard both aircraft. Later dubbed the Gatow air disaster, this event exacerbated tensions between the Soviets and the other allied powers.

Internal Soviet reports in April stated that "Our control and restrictive measures have dealt a strong blow to the prestige of the Americans and British in Germany" and that the Americans have "admitted" that the idea of an airlift would be too expensive.

Creation of an economically stable western Germany required reform of the unstable Reichsmark German currency introduced after the 1920s German inflation. The Soviets continued the debasing of the Reichsmark, which had undergone severe inflation during the war, by excessive printing, resulting in many Germans using cigarettes as a de facto currency or for bartering. The Soviets opposed western plans for a reform. They interpreted the new currency as an unjustified, unilateral decision, and responded by cutting all land links between West Berlin and West Germany. The Soviets believed that the only currency that should be allowed to circulate was the currency that they issued themselves.

Anticipating the introduction of a new currency by the other countries in the non-Soviet zones, the Soviet Union in May 1948 directed its military to introduce its own new currency and to permit only the Soviet currency to be used in their sector of Berlin if the other countries brought in a different currency there. On 18 June the United States, Britain and France announced that on 21 June the Deutsche Mark would be introduced, but the Soviets refused to permit its use as legal tender in Berlin. The Allies had already transported 250,000,000 Deutsche marks into the city and it quickly became the standard currency in all four sectors. Stalin looked to force the Western nations to abandon Berlin.

The day after the 18 June 1948 announcement of the new Deutsche Mark, Soviet guards halted all passenger trains and traffic on the autobahn to Berlin, delayed Western and German freight shipments and required that all water transport secure special Soviet permission. On 21 June, the day the Deutsche Mark was introduced, the Soviet military halted a United States military supply train to Berlin and sent it back to western Germany. On 22 June, the Soviets announced that they would introduce the East German mark in their zone.

On 24 June, the Soviets severed land and water connections between the non-Soviet zones and Berlin. That same day, they halted all rail and barge traffic in and out of Berlin. The West answered by introducing a counter-blockade, stopping all rail traffic into East Germany from the British and US zones. Over the following months, this counter-blockade would have a damaging impact on East Germany, as the drying up of coal and steel shipments seriously hindered industrial development in the Soviet zone. On 25 June, the Soviets stopped supplying food to the civilian population in the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin. Motor traffic from Berlin to the western zones was permitted, but this required a 23-kilometre (14 mi) detour to a ferry crossing because of alleged "repairs" to a bridge. They also cut off the electricity relied on by Berlin, using their control over the generating plants in the Soviet zone.

At the time, West Berlin had an estimated 36 days worth of food, and 45 days worth of coal. Militarily, the Americans and British were greatly outnumbered because of the postwar scaling back of their armies. The United States, like other Western countries, had disbanded most of its troops and was largely inferior in the European theatre. The entire United States Army had been reduced to 552,000 men by February 1948. Military forces in the western sectors of Berlin numbered only 8,973 Americans, 7,606 British and 6,100 French. Of the 98,000 American troops in West Germany in March 1948, only 31,000 were combat forces, and only one reserve division was immediately available in the United States. Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector that surrounded Berlin totaled 1.5 million. The two United States regiments in Berlin could have provided little resistance against a Soviet attack. Because of the imbalance, US war plans were based on using hundreds of atomic bombs, but only about 50 Fat Man-specification bombs, the only version available to the US military, existed in mid-1948. In March 1948, only 35 " Silverplate" atomic-capable Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers-just over half of the 65 Silverplate specification B-29 aircraft built through the end of 1947-and a few trained flight and assembly crews were available. Three B-29 groups arrived in Europe in July and August 1948. Despite the intention to signal the threat of the West's ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons if necessary, the Soviets possibly knew that none of the bombers were atomic-capable. The first Silverplate bombers only arrived in Europe near the end of the crisis in April 1949.

General Lucius D. Clay, in charge of the US Occupation Zone in Germany, summed up the reasons for not retreating in a cable on June 13, 1948, to Washington, D.C.:

There is no practicability in maintaining our position in Berlin and it must not be evaluated on that basis... We are convinced that our remaining in Berlin is essential to our prestige in Germany and in Europe. Whether for good or bad, it has become a symbol of the American intent.

Believing that Britain, France, and the United States had little option other than to acquiesce, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany celebrated the beginning of the blockade. General Clay felt that the Soviets were bluffing about Berlin since they would not want to be viewed as starting a Third World War. He believed that Stalin did not want a war and that Soviet actions were aimed at exerting military and political pressure on the West to obtain concessions, relying on the West's prudence and unwillingness to provoke a war. General Curtis LeMay, commander of United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), reportedly favored an aggressive response to the blockade, in which his B-29s with fighter escort would approach Soviet air bases while ground troops attempted to reach Berlin; Washington vetoed the plan.

Although the ground routes had never been negotiated, the same was not true of the air. On 30 November 1945, it had been agreed in writing that there would be three twenty-mile-wide air corridors providing free access to Berlin. Additionally, unlike a force of tanks and trucks, the Soviets could not claim that cargo aircraft were a military threat.

The airlift option critically depended on scale and effectiveness. If the supplies could not be flown in fast enough, Soviet help would eventually be needed to prevent starvation. Clay was told to take advice from General LeMay to see if an airlift was possible. "We can haul anything," LeMay responded, after initially taken aback by the inquiry, "Can you haul coal?"

When American forces consulted Britain's Royal Air Force about a possible joint airlift, they learned the RAF was already running an airlift in support of British troops in Berlin. General Clay's counterpart, General Sir Brian Robertson, was ready with some concrete numbers. During the Little Lift in April 1948, British Air Commodore Reginald Waite had calculated the resources required to support the entire city.

Based on a minimum daily ration of 1,990 kilocalories (July 1948), the American military government set a total of daily supplies needed at 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In all, 1,534 tons were required each day to sustain the over two million people of Berlin. Additionally, for heat and power, 3,475 tons of coal, diesel and petrol were also required daily.

C-47 Skytrains unloading at Tempelhof Airport during the Berlin Airlift

The postwar demobilisation left the US forces in Europe with only two groups of C-47 Skytrain transports (the military version of the Douglas DC-3, which the British called the "Dakota"), nominally 96 aircraft, each of which could carry about 3.5 tons of cargo. LeMay believed that "with an all-out effort" of 100 daily round trips these would be able to haul about 300 tons of supplies a day. The RAF was somewhat better prepared, since it had already moved some aircraft into the German area, and they expected to be able to supply about 400 tons a day.

This was not nearly enough to move the 5,000 tons a day that would be needed, but these numbers could be increased as new aircraft arrived from the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. The RAF would be relied on to increase its numbers quickly. It could fly additional aircraft in from Britain in a single hop, bringing the RAF fleet to about 150 Dakotas and 40 of the larger Avro Yorks with a 10-ton payload.

With this fleet, the British contribution was expected to rise to 750 tons a day in the short term, albeit at the cost of suspending all air traffic except for the airlift to Berlin. For a longer-term operation, the US would have to add additional aircraft as soon as possible, and those would have to be as large as possible while still able to fly into the Berlin airports. Only one aircraft type was suitable, the four-engined C-54 Skymaster and its US Navy equivalent, the R5D, of which the US military had approximately 565, with 268 Air Force and Navy Skymasters in MATS, 168 in the troop carrier groups, and 80 Navy R5Ds in miscellaneous commands. Planners calculated that including C-54s already ordered to Germany and drawing on those flying with civilian carriers, 447 Skymasters could be available for an "extreme emergency".

Given the feasibility assessment made by the British, an airlift appeared to be the best course of action. One remaining concern was the population of Berlin. Clay called in Ernst Reuter, the mayor-elect of Berlin, accompanied by his aide, Willy Brandt. Clay told Reuter:

Look, I am ready to try an airlift. I can't guarantee it will work. I am sure that even at its best, people are going to be cold and people are going to be hungry. And if the people of Berlin won't stand that, it will fail. And I don't want to go into this unless I have your assurance that the people will be heavily in approval.

Reuter, although skeptical, assured Clay that Berlin would make all the necessary sacrifices and that the Berliners would support his actions.

General Albert Wedemeyer, the US Army chief of plans and operations, was in Europe on an inspection tour when the crisis broke out. He had been the commander of the US China Burma India Theater in 1944-45 and he had a detailed knowledge of the previously largest airlift-the World War II American airlift from India over the Hump of the Himalayas to China. His endorsement of the airlift option gave it a major boost. The British and Americans agreed to start a joint operation without delay; the US action was dubbed "Operation Vittles", while the British action was called "Operation Plainfare". The Australian contribution to the airlift, begun in September 1948, was designated " Operation Pelican".

The British asked Canada to contribute planes and crews. It refused, primarily on the grounds that the operation risked war and Canada had not been consulted.

Loading milk on a West Berlin-bound aircraft

On 24 June 1948 LeMay appointed Brigadier General Joseph Smith, headquarters commandant for USAFE at Camp Lindsey, as the provisional task force commander of the airlift. Smith had been chief of staff in LeMay's B-29 command in India during World War II and had no airlift experience. On 25 June 1948, Clay gave the order to launch Operation Vittles. The next day, 32 C-47s lifted off for Berlin hauling 80 tons of cargo, including milk, flour and medicine. The first British aircraft flew on 28 June. At that time, the airlift was expected to last three weeks.

On 27 June, Clay cabled William Draper with an estimate of the current situation:

I have already arranged for our maximum airlift to start on Monday [June 28]. For a sustained effort, we can use seventy Dakotas [C-47s]. The number which the British can make available is not yet known, although General Robertson is somewhat doubtful of their ability to make this number available. Our two Berlin airports can handle in the neighborhood of fifty additional airplanes per day. These would have to be C-47s, C-54s or planes with similar landing characteristics, as our airports cannot take larger planes. LeMay is urging two C-54 groups. With this airlift, we should be able to bring in 600 or 700 tons a day. While 2,000 tons a day is required in normal foods, 600 tons a day (utilizing dried foods to the maximum extent) will substantially increase the morale of the German people and will unquestionably seriously disturb the Soviet blockade. To accomplish this, it is urgent that we be given approximately 50 additional transport planes to arrive in Germany at the earliest practicable date, and each day's delay will of course decrease our ability to sustain our position in Berlin. Crews would be needed to permit maximum operation of these planes.

By 1 July, the system was getting under way. C-54s were starting to arrive in quantity, and Rhein-Main Air Base became exclusively a C-54 hub, while Wiesbaden retained a mix of C-54s and C-47s. Aircraft flew northeast through the American air corridor into Tempelhof Airport, then returned due west flying out on through the British air corridor. After reaching the British Zone, they turned south to return to their bases.

Germans watching supply planes at Tempelhof

1950s film by the British Government about the Berlin airlift

The British ran a similar system, flying southeast from several airports in the Hamburg area through their second corridor into RAF Gatow in the British Sector, and then also returning out on the center corridor, turning for home or landing at Hanover. However, unlike the Americans, the British also ran some round-trips, using their southeast corridor. To save time many flights didn't land in Berlin, instead air dropping material, such as coal, into the airfields. On 6 July the Yorks and Dakotas were joined by Short Sunderland flying boats. Flying from Finkenwerder on the Elbe near Hamburg to the Havel river next to Gatow, their corrosion-resistant hulls suited them to the particular task of delivering baking powder and other salt into the city. The Royal Australian Air Force also contributed to the British effort.

During the first week, the airlift averaged only ninety tons a day, but by the second week it reached 1,000 tons. This likely would have sufficed had the effort lasted only a few weeks, as originally believed. The Communist press in East Berlin ridiculed the project. It derisively referred to "the futile attempts of the Americans to save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin."

Despite the excitement engendered by glamorous publicity extolling the work (and over-work) of the crews and the daily increase of tonnage levels, the airlift was not close to being operated to its capability because USAFE was a tactical organisation without any airlift expertise. Maintenance was barely adequate, crews were not being efficiently used, transports stood idle and disused, necessary record-keeping was scant, and ad hoc flight crews of publicity-seeking desk personnel were disrupting a business-like atmosphere. This was recognised by the United States National Security Council at a meeting with Clay on 22 July 1948, when it became clear that a long-term airlift was necessary. Wedemeyer immediately recommended that the deputy commander for operations of the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, command the operation. When Wedemeyer had been the commander of US forces in China during World War II, Tunner, as commander of the India-China Division of the Air Transport Command, had reorganised the Hump airlift between India and China, doubling the tonnage and hours flown. USAF Chief of Staff Hoyt S. Vandenberg endorsed the recommendation.

On 28 July 1948, Tunner arrived in Wiesbaden to take over the operation. He revamped the entire airlift operation, reaching an agreement with LeMay to form the Combined Air Lift Task Force (CALTF) to control both the USAFE and RAF lift operations from a central location, which went into effect in mid-October 1948. MATS immediately deployed eight squadrons of C-54s-72 aircraft-to Wiesbaden and Rhein-Main Air Base to reinforce the 54 already in operation, the first by 30 July and the remainder by mid-August, and two-thirds of all C-54 aircrew worldwide began transferring to Germany to allot three crews per aircraft.

A C-74 Globemaster plane at Gatow airfield on 19 August with more than 20 tons of flour from the United States

As a result of Black Friday, Tunner instituted a number of new rules; instrument flight rules (IFR) would be in effect at all times, regardless of actual visibility, and each sortie would have only one chance to land in Berlin, returning to its air base if it missed its approach, where it was slotted back into the flow. Stacking was completely eliminated. With straight-in approaches, the planners found that in the time it had taken to unstack and land nine aircraft, 30 aircraft could be landed, bringing in 300 tons. Accident rates and delays dropped immediately. Tunner decided, as he had done during the Hump operation, to replace the C-47s in the airlift with C-54s or larger aircraft when it was realised that it took just as long to unload a 3.5-ton C-47 as a 10-ton C-54. One of the reasons for this was the sloping cargo floor of the "taildragger" C-47s, which made truck loading difficult. The tricycle geared C-54's cargo deck was level, so that a truck could back up to it and offload cargo quickly. The change went into full effect after 28 September 1948.

Having noticed on his first inspection trip to Berlin on 31 July that there were long delays as the flight crews returned to their aircraft after getting refreshments from the terminal, Tunner banned aircrew from leaving their aircraft for any reason while in Berlin. Instead, he equipped jeeps as mobile snack bars, handing out refreshments to the crews at their aircraft while it was being unloaded. Airlift pilot Gail Halvorsen later noted, "he put some beautiful German Fräuleins in that snack bar. They knew we couldn't date them, we had no time. So they were very friendly." Operations officers handed pilots their clearance slips and other information while they ate. With unloading beginning as soon as engines were shut down on the ramp, turnaround before takeoff back to Rhein-Main or Wiesbaden was reduced to thirty minutes.

An RAF Short Sunderland moored on the Havel near Berlin unloading salt during the airlift

The Berliners themselves solved the problem of the lack of manpower. Crews unloading and making airfield repairs at the Berlin airports were made up almost entirely of local civilians, who were given additional rations in return. As the crews increased in experience, the times for unloading continued to fall, with a record set for the unloading of an entire 10-ton shipment of coal from a C-54 in ten minutes, later beaten when a twelve-man crew unloaded the same quantity in five minutes and 45 seconds.

"Operation Little Vittles"

US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen, who pioneered the idea of dropping candy bars and bubble gum with handmade miniature parachutes, which later became known as "Operation Little Vittles"

Gail Halvorsen, one of the many airlift pilots, decided to use his off-time to fly into Berlin and make movies with his hand-held camera. He arrived at Tempelhof on 17 July 1948 on one of the C-54s and walked over to a crowd of children who had gathered at the end of the runway to watch the aircraft. He introduced himself and they started to ask him questions about the aircraft and their flights. As a goodwill gesture, he handed out his only two sticks of Wrigley's Doublemint Gum. The children quickly divided up the pieces as best they could, even passing around the wrapper for others to smell. He was so impressed by their gratitude and that they didn't fight over them, that he promised the next time he returned he would drop off more. Before he left them, a child asked him how they would know it was him flying over. He replied, "I'll wiggle my wings."

A Douglas C-54 Skymaster dropping candy over Berlin, c. 1948/49

The next day on his approach to Berlin, he rocked the aircraft and dropped some chocolate bars attached to a handkerchief parachute to the children waiting below. Every day after that, the number of children increased and he made several more drops. Soon, there was a stack of mail in Base Ops addressed to "Uncle Wiggly Wings", "The Chocolate Uncle" and "The Chocolate Flier". His commanding officer was upset when the story appeared in the news, but when Tunner heard about it, he approved of the gesture and immediately expanded it into "Operation Little Vittles". Other pilots participated, and when news reached the US, children all over the country sent in their own candy to help out. Soon, major candy manufacturers joined in. In the end, over three tons of candy were dropped on Berlin and the "operation" became a major propaganda success. German children christened the candy-dropping aircraft " raisin bombers" or candy bombers.

The Soviets had an advantage in conventional military forces, but were preoccupied with rebuilding their war-torn economy and society. The US had a stronger navy and air force, and had nuclear weapons. Neither side wanted a war; the Soviets did not disrupt the airlift.

As the tempo of the airlift grew, it became apparent that the Western powers might be able to pull off the impossible: indefinitely supplying an entire city by air alone. In response, starting on 1 August 1948, the Soviets offered free food to anyone who crossed into East Berlin and registered their ration cards there, and almost 22 thousand Berliners received their cards until 4 August 1948. In 1949 more than 100 thousand West Berliners were receiving Soviet supplies in Eastern Berlin. Some West Berliners rejected Soviet offers of food.

During the early months of the airlift, the Soviets used various methods to harass allied aircraft. These included buzzing by Soviet planes, obstructive parachute jumps within the corridors, and shining searchlights to dazzle pilots at night. Although the USAFE reported 733 separate harassing events, including flak, air-to-air fire, rocketing, bombing, and explosions, this is now considered to be exaggerated. None of these measures were effective. Former RAF Dakota pilot Dick Arscott described one "buzzing" incident. " Yaks (Soviet fighter aircraft) used to come and buzz you and go over the top of you at about twenty feet which can be off-putting. One day I was buzzed about three times. The following day it started again and he came across twice and I got a bit fed up with it. So when he came for the third time, I turned the aircraft into him and it was a case of chicken, luckily he was the one who chickened out."

Attempted Communist putsch in the municipal government

In the autumn of 1948 it became impossible for the non-Communist majority in Greater Berlin's citywide parliament to attend sessions at city hall within the Soviet sector. The parliament ( Stadtverordnetenversammlung von Groß-Berlin) had been elected under the provisional constitution of Berlin two years earlier (20 October 1946). As SED-controlled policemen looked on passively, Communist-led mobs repeatedly invaded the Neues Stadthaus, the provisional city hall (located on Parochialstraße since all other central municipal buildings had been destroyed in the War), interrupted the parliament's sessions, and menaced its non-Communist members. The Kremlin organised an attempted putsch for control of all of Berlin through a 6 September takeover of the city hall by SED members.

Three days later RIAS Radio urged Berliners to protest against the actions of the communists. On 9 September 1948 a crowd of 500,000 people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate, next to the ruined Reichstag in the British sector. The airlift was working so far, but many West Berliners feared that the Allies would eventually discontinue it. Then- SPD city councillor Ernst Reuter took the microphone and pleaded for his city, "You peoples of the world, you people of America, of England, of France, look on this city, and recognise that this city, this people, must not be abandoned-cannot be abandoned!"

Berlin's parliament decided to meet instead in the canteen of the Technical College of Berlin-Charlottenburg in the British sector, boycotted by the members of SED, which had gained 19.8% of the electoral votes in 1946. On 30 November 1948 the SED gathered its elected parliament members and 1,100 further activists and held an unconstitutional so-called "extraordinary city assembly" ( außerordentliche Stadtverordnetenversammlung) in East Berlin's Metropol-Theater which declared the elected city government ( Magistrat) and its democratically elected city councillors to be deposed and replaced it with a new one led by Oberbürgermeister Friedrich Ebert Jr. and consisting only of Communists. This arbitrary act had no legal effect in West Berlin, but the Soviet occupants prevented the elected city government for all of Berlin from further acting in the eastern sector.

The city parliament, boycotted by its SED members, then voted for its re-election on 5 December 1948, however, inhibited in the eastern sector and defamed by the SED as a Spalterwahl ("divisive election"). The SED did not nominate any candidates for this election and appealed to the electorate in the western sectors to boycott the election, while the democratic parties ran for seats. The turnout amounted to 86.3% of the western electorate with the SPD gaining 64.5% of the votes (= 76 seats), the CDU 19.4% (= 26 seats), and the Liberal-Demokratische Partei (LDP, merged in the FDP in 1949) 16.1% (= 17 seats).

On 7 December the new, de facto West-Berlin-only city parliament elected a new city government in West Berlin headed by Lord Mayor Reuter, who had already once been elected lord mayor in early 1946 but prevented from taking office by a Soviet veto. Thus two separate city governments officiated in the city divided into East and West versions of its former self. In the east, a communist system supervised by house, street, and block wardens was quickly implemented.

West Berlin's parliament accounted for the de facto political partition of Berlin and replaced the provisional constitution of Berlin by the Verfassung von Berlin (constitution of Berlin), meant for all Berlin, with effect of 1 October 1950 and de facto restricted to the western sectors only, also renaming city parliament (from Stadtverordnetenversammlung von Groß-Berlin to Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin), city government (from Magistrat von Groß-Berlin to Senate of Berlin), and head of government (from Oberbürgermeister to Governing Mayor of Berlin).

Although the early estimates were that about 4,000 to 5,000 tons per day would be needed to supply the city, this was made in the context of summer weather, when the airlift was only expected to last a few weeks. As the operation dragged on into autumn, the situation changed considerably. The food requirements would remain the same (around 1,500 tons), but the need for additional coal to heat the city dramatically increased the total amount of cargo to be transported by an additional 6,000 tons a day.

To maintain the airlift under these conditions, the current system would have to be greatly expanded. Aircraft were available, and the British started adding their larger Handley Page Hastings in November, but maintaining the fleet proved to be a serious problem. Tunner looked to the Germans once again, hiring former Luftwaffe mechanics.

C-54s stand out against the snow at Wiesbaden Air Base during the Berlin Airlift in the Winter of 1948-49

Another problem was the lack of runways in Berlin to land on: two at Tempelhof and one at Gatow-neither of which was designed to support the loads the C-54s were putting on them. All of the existing runways required hundreds of labourers, who ran onto them between landings and dumped sand into the runway's Marston Mat (pierced steel planking) to soften the surface and help the planking survive. Since this system could not endure through the winter, between July and September 1948 a 6,000 ft.-long asphalt runway was constructed at Tempelhof.

Far from ideal, with the approach being over Berlin's apartment blocks, the runway nevertheless was a major upgrade to the airport's capabilities. With it in place, the auxiliary runway was upgraded from Marston Matting to asphalt between September and October 1948. A similar upgrade program was carried out by the British at Gatow during the same period, also adding a second runway, using concrete.

The French Air Force, meanwhile, had become involved in the First Indochina War, so it could only bring up a few French built Junkers Ju 52s (known as A.A.C. 1 Toucan) to support its own troops, and they were too small and slow to be of much help. However, France agreed to build a complete, new and larger airport in its sector on the shores of Lake Tegel. French military engineers, managing German construction crews, were able to complete the construction in under 90 days. Because of a shortage of heavy equipment, the first runway was mostly built by hand, by thousands of labourers who worked day and night.

For the second runway at Tegel, heavy equipment was needed to level the ground, equipment that was too large and heavy to fly in on any existing cargo aircraft. The solution was to dismantle large machines and then re-assemble them. Using the five largest American C-82 Packet transports, it was possible to fly the machinery into West Berlin. This not only helped to build the airfield, but also demonstrated that the Soviet blockade could not keep anything out of Berlin. The Tegel airfield was subsequently developed into Berlin Tegel Airport.

To improve air traffic control, which would be critical as the number of flights grew, the newly developed ground-controlled approach radar system (GCA) was flown to Europe for installation at Tempelhof, with a second set installed at Fassberg in the British Zone in West Germany. With the installation of GCA, all-weather airlift operations were assured. November and December 1948 proved to be the worst months of the airlift operation for the Western Allies. One of the longest-lasting fogs ever experienced in Berlin blanketed the entire European continent for weeks. All too often, aircraft would make the entire flight and then be unable to land in Berlin. On 20 November 1948, 42 aircraft departed for Berlin, but only one landed there. At one point, the city had only a week's supply of coal left. However, the weather eventually improved, and more than 171,000 tons were delivered in January 1949, 152,000 tons in February, and 196,223 tons in March.

By April 1949, airlift operations were running smoothly and Tunner wanted to shake up his command to discourage complacency. He believed in the spirit of competition between units and, coupled with the idea of a big event, felt that this would encourage them to greater efforts. He decided that, on Easter Sunday, the airlift would break all records. To do this, maximum efficiency was needed and so, to simplify cargo-handling, only coal would be airlifted. Coal stockpiles were built up for the effort and maintenance schedules were altered so that the maximum number of aircraft were available.

On 21 April, the tonnage of supplies flown into the city exceeded that previously brought by rail.

Berlin Airlift Monument in Berlin-Tempelhof, displaying the names of the 39 British and 31 American airmen who lost their lives during the operation. Similar monuments are located at the military airfield of Wietzenbruch near the former RAF Celle and at Rhein-Main Air Base.

Base of the Berlin Airlift Monument in Berlin-Tempelhof with inscription "They gave their lives for the freedom of Berlin in service of the Berlin Airlift 1948/49"

Near the start of the blockade, the Western powers had established an embargo on exports from the entire Eastern bloc, severely hampering the East German economy in particular. The embargo had been exacting a higher toll on the Soviets than the airlift was costing the Western bloc, leading Stalin to recognize the futility of continuing the blockade.

On 15 April 1949, the Soviet news agency TASS reported a willingness by the Soviets to lift the blockade. The next day, the US State Department stated that the "way appears clear" for the blockade to end. Soon afterwards, the four powers began serious negotiations, and a settlement was reached on Western terms. On 4 May 1949, the Allies announced an agreement to end the blockade in eight days.

The Soviet blockade of Berlin was lifted at one minute after midnight on 12 May 1949. A British convoy immediately drove through to Berlin, and the first train from West Germany reached Berlin at 5:32 a.m. Later that day, an enormous crowd celebrated the end of the blockade. General Clay, whose retirement had been announced by US President Truman on 3 May 1949, was saluted by 11,000 US soldiers and dozens of aircraft. Once home, Clay received a ticker tape parade in New York City, was invited to address the US Congress, and was honoured with a medal from President Truman.

Nevertheless, supply flights to Berlin continued for some time in order to build up a comfortable surplus, though night flying and then weekend flights could be eliminated once the surplus was deemed to be large enough. By 24 July 1949, three months' worth of supplies had been amassed, ensuring that there was ample time to restart the airlift if needed.

On 18 August 1949, Flt Lt Roy Mather DFC AFC and his crew of Flt Lt Roy Lewis Stewart Hathaway AFC, Flt Lt Richardson and Royston William Marshall AFM of 206 squadron, flew back to Wunstorf for the 404th time during the blockade, the record number of flights for any pilot of any nationality, either civilian or military.

A total of 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 40 Britons and 31 Americans, mostly due to non-flying accidents. One Royal Australian Air Force member was killed in an aircraft crash at Lübeck while attached to No. 27 Squadron RAF. Seventeen American and eight British aircraft crashed during the operation.

The cost of the airlift was shared between the US, UK, and German authorities in the Western sectors of occupation. Estimated costs range from approximately US$224 million to over US$500 million (equivalent to approximately $2.87 billion to $6.4 billion now).

Operational control of the three Allied air corridors was assigned to BARTCC (Berlin Air Route Traffic Control Center) air traffic control located at Tempelhof. Diplomatic approval was granted by a four-power organisation called the Berlin Air Safety Center, also located in the American sector.

Berlin crises 1946-1962

Millions of East Germans escaped to West Germany from East Germany, and Berlin became a major escape route. This led to major-power conflict over Berlin that stretched at least from 1946 to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Dwight D. Eisenhower became US President in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet leader in the same year. Khrushchev tried to push Eisenhower on Berlin in 1958-59. The Soviets backed down when Eisenhower's resolve seemed to match that of Truman. When Eisenhower was replaced by Kennedy in 1961, Khrushchev tried again, with essentially the same result.

In the late 1950s, the runways at West Berlin's city centre Tempelhof Airport had become too short to accommodate the new-generation jet aircraft, and Tegel was developed into West Berlin's principal airport. During the 1970s and 1980s Schönefeld had its own crossing points through the Berlin Wall and communist fortifications for western citizens.

The Soviets' contravention by the blockade of the agreement reached by the London 6-Power Conference, and the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, convinced Western leaders that they had to take swift and decisive measures to strengthen the portions of Germany not occupied by the Soviets.

The US, British and French authorities also agreed to replace their military administrations in their occupation zones with High Commissioners operating within the terms of a three-power occupation statute. The Blockade also helped to unify German politicians in these zones in support of the creation of a West German state; some of them had hitherto been fearful of Soviet opposition. The blockade also increased the perception among many Europeans that the Soviets posed a danger, helping to prompt the entry into NATO of Portugal, Iceland, Italy, Denmark, and Norway.

It has been claimed that animosities between Germans and the Western Allies were greatly reduced by the airlift, with the former enemies recognising common interests. The Soviets refused to return to the Allied Control Council in Berlin, rendering the four-power occupation authority set up at the Potsdam Conference useless. It has been argued that the events of the Berlin Blockade are proof that the Allies conducted their affairs within a rational framework, since they were keen to avoid war.

In 2007, Tegel was joined by a re-developed Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport in Brandenburg. As a result of the development of these two airports, Tempelhof was closed in October 2008, while Gatow became home of the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History - Berlin-Gatow Airfield and a housing development. In October 2020, the expansion of Schönefeld into the larger Berlin Brandenburg Airport was completed, making Tegel mostly redundant as well.

A Douglas C-54 Skymaster, called Spirit of Freedom, operated as a flying museum. It is owned and operated by the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation.

In the early days, the Americans used their C-47 Skytrain or its civilian counterpart Douglas DC-3. These machines could carry a payload of up to 3.5 tons, but were replaced by C-54 Skymasters and Douglas DC-4s, which could carry up to 10 tons and were faster. These made up a total of 330 aircraft, which made them the most used types. Other American aircraft such as the five C-82 Packets, and the one YC-97A Stratofreighter 45-59595, with a payload of 20 tons-a gigantic load for that time-were only sparsely used.

The British used a considerable variety of aircraft types. Many aircraft were either former bombers or civil versions of bombers. In the absence of enough transports, the British chartered many civilian aircraft. British European Airways (BEA) coordinated all British civil aircraft operations. Apart from BEA itself, the participating airlines included British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and most British independent airlines of that era-e.g. Eagle Aviation, Silver City Airways, British South American Airways (BSAA), the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation, Airwork, Air Flight, Aquila Airways, Flight Refuelling Ltd (which used their Lancaster tankers to deliver aviation fuel), Skyways, Scottish Airlines and Ciro's Aviation.

Altogether, a total of 692 aircraft were engaged in the Berlin Airlift, more than 100 of which belonged to civilian operators.

Other aircraft included Junkers Ju 52/3m which were operated briefly by France.

1. Smoler, Fredric (April/May 2003). "Where Berlin and America Meet Archived 28 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine" American Heritage. Retrieved 29 July 2010.

2. ^ Berlin Airlift: Logistics, Humanitarian Aid, and Strategic Success Archived 16 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine, Major Gregory C. Tine, Army Logistician

3. ^ Daum, Andreas W. (2000). "America's Berlin, 1945‒2000: Between Myths and Visions". In Trommler, Frank (ed.). Berlin: The New Capital in the East (PDF). The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University. pp. 49-73.

4. ^ Layne, Christopher (2007). The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Cornell University Press. pp. 63-67. ISBN 9780801474118.

5. ^ Clarks, Delbert (6 April 1948). "Soviet-British Plane Collision Kills 15; Russian Apologizes". The New York Times. p. 1.

6. ^ Thody, Phillip Malcom Waller (2000), "Berlin Crisis of 1948-1949 and 1958-1962", Europe since 1945, London: Routledge. N. pag. Print.

7. Young, Ken (January 2007). "US 'Atomic Capability' and the British Forward Bases in the Early Cold War". Journal of Contemporary History. 42 (1): 117-136. doi:10.1177/0022009407071626. JSTOR 30036432. S2CID 159815831.[page needed ]

8. spiritoffreedom.org: The Berlin Airlift

9. ^ Partos, Gabriel (1993). The World That Came in from the Cold. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs. p. 33.

10. ^ Fifty years ago, a massive airlift into Berlin showed the Soviets that a post-WW II blockade would not work, C.V. Glines

11. ^ Wetzlaugk U. Berliner Blokade 1948/49. Berlin, 1998. S.54

12. ^ BBC Radio 4 programme "The Reunion, The Berlin Airlift," first broadcast 22 August 2014

13. ^ MacDonogh, G "After the Reich" John Murray London 2007 p. 533

14. ^ Roger G. Miller (2008). To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949 (PDF). Texas A&M University Press. pp. 110-111. ISBN 978-1-60344090-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 March 2020. Over 17,000 Berliners, working three shifts for slightly over a mark an hour and a hot meal, did the work. Alt URL

15. The Berlin Airlift - Facts & Figures, National Cold War Exhibition. Retrieved 2 January 2013

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17. 1634-1699: ^ McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700-1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800-present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800-".

18. ^ "Occupation of Germany, including the Berlin air lift, cost the UK taxpayer £35 million in 1948" (PDF).

19. ^ Theodore D. Raphael (1 September 1982). "Integrative Complexity Theory and Forecasting International Crises: Berlin 1946-1962". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 6 (3): 423-450. ISSN 0022-0027. Wikidata Q64022945.

20. ^ Berlin Airport Company - Special Report on Air France's 25th Anniversary at Berlin Tegel, March 1985 Monthly Timetable Booklet for Berlin Tegel Airport, Berlin Airport Company, West Berlin, 1985 (in German)

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Cherny, Andrei (2008), The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN 978-0-399-15496-6

Daum, Andreas (2008), Kennedy in Berlin, New York: Cambridge University Press

Harrington, Daniel F. Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War (2012), University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, KY, ISBN 978-08131-3613-4.

Larson, Deborah Welch. "The Origins of Commitment: Truman and West Berlin," Journal of Cold War Studies, 13#1 Winter 2011, pp. 180-212

Miller, Roger Gene (1998), To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949 (PDF), US Government printing office, 1998-433-155/92107

Schrader, Helena P. The Blockade Breakers: The Berlin Airlift (2011)

Stent, Angela (2000), Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-05040-9

Tunner, LTG (USAF) William H. (1998) [1964], Over the Hump, Duell, Sloan and Pearce (USAF History and Museums Program)

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Defrance, Corine; Greiner, Bettina; Pfeil, Ulrich, eds. (2018), Die Berliner Luftbrücke. Erinnerungsort des Kalten Krieges (in German), Berlin: Christoph Links, ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , in German

Fenton Jr, Robert. "The Berlin Airlift and the Use of Air Mobility as a Function of U.S. Policy." (Air War College, Air University Maxwell AFB, 2016) online.

Grehan, John. The Berlin Airlift: The World's Largest Ever Air Supply Operation (Pen and Sword, 2019).

Giangreco, D. M.; Griffin, Robert E. (1988). Airbridge to Berlin: The Berlin Crisis of 1948, Its Origins and Aftermath. Presidio Press. ISBN 0-89141-329-4. Archived from the original on 6 March 2002.

Launius, Roger D.; Cross, Coy F. (1989). MAC and the Legacy of the Berlin Airlift. Scott Air Force Base IL: Office of History, Military Airlift Command. OCLC 21306003.

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O'Connell, Kaete M. "'Uncle Wiggly Wings': Children, chocolates, and the Berlin Airlift." Food and Foodways 25.2 (2017): 142-159.

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Windsor, Philip. "The Berlin Crises" History Today (June 1962) Vol. 6, pp. 375-384, summarizes the series of crises 1946 to 1961; online.

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The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 - 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control.

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the Prime Minister of Slovenia Robert Golob to NATO Headquarters on Thursday (21 March 2024).

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The Communist Revolution in China was a civil war between the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Nationalist Party that occurred in 1949 and 1950. On Oct. 1, 1949, Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the country was now the People's Republic of China, and the two sides began open warfare. The Communists quickly gained the upper hand, taking over the country while the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan.

The Communist and Nationalist forces had been in conflict for decades, but the two sides entered into a truce in order to concentrate their efforts against Japan before and during World War II. After the surrender of Japan, the United States attempted to broker a coalition government, but the effort soon collapsed and the civil war began.

The civil war in China was one of the first proxy conflicts of the Cold War. The Soviet Union did not trust Mao Zedong and his party apparatus fully, but they supported the Chinese Communists in their revolution. The United States supported the Nationalist side, mostly with financial aid and military equipment. However, the Nationalists made a number of political missteps which eroded their support, such as a crackdown on dissent that alienated the liberals in the country. Hyperinflation in the economy also destroyed the middle class, which had been a traditional supporter of the Nationalist side.

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What Was the Chinese Communist Revolution?

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The Communist Revolution in China was a civil war between the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Nationalist Party that occurred in 1949 and 1950. On Oct. 1, 1949, Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the country was now the People's Republic of China, and the two sides began open warfare.

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A " Red Scare" is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism or anarchism by a society or state. The First Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War I, revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement, anarchist revolution and political radicalism.

See further detail related to it here.

In this regard, when did the Red Scare start?

1917 - 1920

Additionally, what was the Cold War and how did it start? In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People's Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option.

Beside above, what were the causes of the Red Scare quizlet?

Which factors were the major causes of the Red Scare and the Palmer Raids, which followed World War I? The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and workers' strikes in the United States. Jeopardized the rights of individuals suspected of un-American activity. Nativist fears of foreign influence in the United States.

What was the first Red Scare quizlet?

was caused by a series of strikes, the formation of the COMMUNIST LABOR PARTY, the triumph of the Bolsheviks revolution, and propaganda of fighting for democracy during world war one. The first red scare was used by business people to destroy unions.

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A 'Red Scare' is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism or anarchism by a society or state. The First Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War I, revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement, anarchist revolution and political radicalism.

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Formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, the Warsaw Pact was created on 14 May 1955, immediately after the accession of West Germany to the Alliance. It complemented the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which was the regional economic organisation set up by the Soviet Union in January 1949 for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Warsaw Pact embodied what was referred to as the Eastern bloc, while NATO and its member countries represented the Western bloc.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact were ideologically opposed and, over time, built up their own defences starting an arms race that lasted throughout the Cold War.

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Formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, the Warsaw Pact was created on 14 May 1955, immediately after the accession of West Germany to the Alliance. It complemented the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which was the regional economic organisation set up by the Soviet Union in January 1949 for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe.

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History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit Earth on its elliptical path.

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Cuban Revolution, armed uprising in Cuba that overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. The revolution's leader, Fidel Castro, went on to rule Cuba from 1959 to 2008.

Prelude to the revolution

U.S. rule and the creation of the Cuban Republic

As a result of the Spanish-American War, control of Cuba passed from Spain to the United States on January 1, 1899, and it was governed by direct U.S. military administration until May 20, 1902. During these years, Cubans filled more public offices than they had under Spanish rule, and much was done for public works, sanitation, and education. Most notable of all, yellow fever was eradicated where it had been endemic for centuries.

A constitutional convention met at Havana from November 5, 1900, to February 21, 1901. The constitution that was adopted contained certain provisions known as the Platt Amendment; these were imposed by the U.S. as a condition for accepting the constitution and were approved by Cuba on June 12, 1901. By these provisions Cuba promised not to incur debts its current revenues could not bear, to continue the sanitary administration undertaken by the U.S. military government, to lease naval stations to the U.S., and, if necessary, to permit the U.S. to intervene in order to preserve Cuban independence and a government adequate to protect life and property.

In May 1902 Tomás Estrada Palma became the first president of the new republic, and material prosperity came to certain segments of the Cuban population. This was due to a reciprocal trade treaty, requested by the outgoing U.S. authorities, that permitted more Cuban sugar to enter the U.S. Sugar exports would dominate the Cuban economy throughout the first half of the 20th century, and the U.S. was Cuba's chief trading partner.

Independence, instability, and continued U.S. intervention

Estrada Palma's administration attempted to implement progressive measures, but it was plagued by instability. His party, the Conservatives (later known as the Moderates), emerged victorious in the elections of December 1905, but the opposition Liberals accused the government of rigging the vote. This charge, along with widespread pension fraud and the failure to bring about proposed governmental reforms, triggered a revolution in July 1906. The insurrection spread rapidly, and Estrada Palma requested intervention by the U.S., which sent commissioners to mediate. The mediation failed, Estrada Palma resigned, and on September 29, 1906, U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt named his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, governor of Cuba. Taft proclaimed that he would lead a provisional government to last "long enough to restore order and peace and public confidence." Government was maintained under the Cuban flag, regular constitutional forms remained outwardly unchanged, and the insurrectionists promptly disbanded. U.S. administration ceased on January 28, 1909, and the republic was inaugurated a second time. U.S. troops were withdrawn on April 1, 1909.

Three presidents governed Cuba from 1909 to 1925 with little distinction and much corruption. They were José Miguel Gómez (1909-13), Mario García Menocal (1913-21), and Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso (1921-25). During this period the U.S. interfered twice in Cuba and threatened to intervene several more times. During the Gómez administration the country prospered, but charges of corruption in the government rose. The government was accused of giving few offices to Afro-Cubans and also of favouring those who had supported the Spanish cause in the war for independence. Protests by Afro-Cubans against a law prohibiting political organization by race or religion led to a bloody government crackdown that claimed the lives of thousands. The Liberal party split, and in the election of 1912 the Conservative candidate, Menocal, won.

Menocal's administration oversaw much material progress, but with prosperity came new charges of government corruption, including accusations of nepotism. Menocal won reelection in 1916 by employing fraud and violence, and, as a result, war broke out against him in February 1917. The rebels had hoped for intervention by the U.S., but it was too occupied with the situation in Europe, and Menocal was able to put down the rebellion. Menocal's government declared war on Germany on April 7, 1917, the day after the U.S. entered World War I.

Until 1919 Cuba enjoyed phenomenal prosperity, thanks to the high price of sugar. By 1920, however, a severe financial crisis had struck the country, and, despite a moratorium, many banks and other business concerns went bankrupt. Zayas introduced financial reforms and was given a $50 million loan by the U.S. in January 1923. The economic situation rapidly improved, but charges of corruption against Zayas intensified, and revolts broke out against him, led in part by war veterans. When Zayas tried to get himself renominated, he ran into stiff opposition from his own party. He therefore made a pact with the Liberal candidate, Gen. Gerardo Machado y Morales, against Menocal, who ran as the Conservative candidate in the election of 1924.

Machado was elected overwhelmingly and assumed office on May 20, 1925. He was to become Cuba's first full-fledged dictator. Pledged to a program of reform, he made good only a few of his promises during his first term. With the beginning of his second term, in 1928, a rule of terror began. Martial law was proclaimed, and Congress allowed him to suspend freedom of speech, press, and assembly. Political opposition, allayed by an adroit distribution of patronage in 1928, revived against Machado as the economic depression of the early 1930s hit Cuba. An attempt to stabilize the price of sugar, always the mainstay of Cuba's economy, failed, and no substantial relief came from a public-works program. As the opposition increased, Machado adopted increasingly harsher methods against it. Cuban exiles fled to the U.S., and, as violence intensified, the U.S. offered to mediate. An amnesty was declared, and constitutional and political reforms were promised. With the economic crisis deepening and with Machado apparently determined to stay in office in spite of promises to resign, the army forced him to flee the country in August 1933.

Cuba had many presidents in the following years, but they were usually made and unmade by Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, a sergeant who gained control of the army at the time of Machado's downfall. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, son of Cuban revolutionary leader Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, was the first president to serve on a provisional basis. He set aside the constitution and tried to bring about modest reforms, but critics feared that he was too closely allied to the U.S. He was overthrown after just a few months, and Ramón Grau San Martín was installed in his place. Grau San Martín's attempts at reform were also short-lived, and his four months in office were characterized by bloody strife. A military junta, headed by Batista, then conferred the presidency on Col. Carlos Mendieta, who seemed to have the approval of most factions. The U.S. and other countries granted him prompt recognition.

Under the auspices of U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, a treaty was concluded in June 1934 that abrogated the Platt Amendment. That document, which had been issued to preserve peace, had had the opposite effect, as discontented factions had frequently risen against Cuban governments in order to bring about U.S. intervention. It also had been used by such leaders as Zayas to get the people to support them as champions of Cuban liberty against U.S. aggression.

Disorder and strikes continued, but Mendieta and his chief of staff, Batista, used dictatorial measures and postponed elections until December 1935. Batista continued to rule Cuba through two presidents-Jose Barnet y Vinageras (December 1935-May 1936) and Federico Laredo Brú (December 1936-October 1940). Miguel Mariano Gómez y Arias was elected in May 1936 but served only to December.

In 1940, Batista, then a colonel, undertook his own candidacy and defeated Grau San Martín. During his presidential term, 1940-44, Cuba entered World War II on the side of the Allies and established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Batista's candidate, Carlos Saladrigas y Zayas, ran in 1944 but was defeated by Grau San Martín, and Batista soon left the country. Grau San Martín's administration began with much emphasis on "political house cleaning" but failed to achieve any kind of concrete reform.

Carlos Prío Socarrás became president in 1948, but his ambitious domestic agenda stalled in the face of economic troubles and government corruption. Batista, a candidate for the June 1952 election, anticipating his defeat, overthrew the government in March without bloodshed. He closed Congress and called for elections in 1954. He was elected president without opposition for a four-year term beginning February 24, 1955. He reinstated the 1940 constitution, which contained many liberal pro-labour reforms, and tried to return the country to normalcy, but strong opposition developed against him. Among the primary concerns of large landowners was the Sugar Act of 1956, U.S. legislation that sharply curtailed Cuban sugar imports to the benefit of domestic producers. With Cuban sugar exports facing an uncertain future, support for Batista within both the government and the influential agriculture industry virtually collapsed. Militant anti-Batista elements denied the validity of the 1955 election and organized a campaign of harassment and sabotage in the provinces. Chief among these groups was the 26th of July Movement under the leadership of the charismatic revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

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Cuban Revolution | Summary, Facts, Causes, Effects, & Significance

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Cuban Revolution, armed uprising in Cuba that overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. The revolution had as its genesis a failed assault on the Santiago de Cuba army barracks on July 26, 1953. That attack's leader, Fidel Castro, went on to rule Cuba from 1959 to 2008.

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The Campaign and Election of 1960

The election of 1960 brought to the forefront a generation of politicians born in the twentieth century, pitting the 47-year-old Republican vice president Richard M. Nixon against the 43-year-old Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy's chief rival for the nomination was Hubert H. Humphrey from Minnesota, whose steadfast liberalism played well with many in the Midwest. The two fought it out in thirteen primaries. Humphrey's best hope rested on winning in his "back yard" of neighboring Wisconsin, and then painting himself as the new favorite. But Kennedy's superior planning, financing, and political instincts won out, and he beat Humphrey in his own region.

The nomination's turning point occurred in the West Virginia primary. A working-class, heavily Protestant state, West Virginia was critical for Kennedy, who had to show that a wealthy Catholic was electable there. Humphrey desperately threw all his remaining resources into the fray, even tapping a savings fund for his daughter's upcoming wedding. But the Kennedy machine overwhelmed him with money and savvy. In West Virginia, the only state in which it was legal for a campaign to pay workers and voters money for showing up at the polls, Kennedy's financing gave him a distinct advantage. Dispirited and broke, Humphrey abandoned the race.

At the Democratic National Convention held in Los Angeles in early July, Kennedy defeated his nearest rival, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the Senate majority leader, on the first ballot. Kennedy then invited Johnson to become his running mate, a controversial move made ostensibly to placate the South, bypassing other party leaders such as Humphrey and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri. In his acceptance speech, Kennedy pledged to "get the country moving again." Americans, he said, stood "on the edge of New Frontier-of the 1960s-a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils-a frontier of unfilled hopes and threats."

The Republicans, meeting a few weeks later in Chicago, nominated Nixon, making him the first vice president in the history of the modern two-party system to win the presidential nomination in his own right. Nixon chose Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the chief US delegate to the United Nations, as his running mate.

Once he had won the nomination of his party, Kennedy undertook the task of convincing American voters that he would make a better president than his rival. Kennedy cast himself as a Cold War liberal and promised to lead America out of what he called the "conservative rut" into which he accused Eisenhower, and by implication Nixon, of running the country. It was apparent throughout the campaign that the election would be close. A Gallup poll in late August put Nixon and Kennedy tied at 47 percent each, with 6 percent undecided.

Kennedy faced two great hurdles in his quest for the White House: his youth and his religion. Polls revealed that many Americans balked at the prospect of such a young man, untested on the world stage, leading the nation at a time of threatening Cold War peril, especially after Dwight Eisenhower, who projected a comforting grandfatherly image. For Nixon, although he was only four years older than Kennedy, this issue was less acute since he had the advantage of having served as vice president for the duration of Eisenhower's two terms and was therefore a more familiar face.

Even more unsettling to many Protestants was the prospect of a Roman Catholic, whom the Catholic Church might "control," as the nation's president. Kennedy chose to tackle the religious issue openly and directly, giving a series of speeches designed to address any misgivings about his faith and voluntarily subjecting himself to a round of questioning about his views on church-state relations by leading Protestant clergy in Houston. The group's conclusion that they were satisfied with his answers provided a degree of comfort for many non-Catholic voters.

Televised Debates

In order to overcome Nixon's advantage in public recognition, Kennedy challenged Nixon to a series of televised debates. Nixon, an experienced debater, accepted. The series of debates between the two candidates became the first extensive use of what would thereafter become a staple medium of American political campaigns-television. Broadcast live on national television in late September and early October, the four debates ultimately provided the Kennedy campaign with a huge boost.

Seventy million people watched the first debate. The Richard Nixon that viewers saw on their black-and-white television sets appeared pallid, tense, and uncomfortable. Just out of the hospital for the treatment of an infected cut, he wore a light-colored suit that blended into the gray background; in combination with the harsh studio lighting that left Nixon perspiring, he offered a less-than commanding presence. By contrast, Kennedy appeared relaxed, tanned, and telegenic.

A mythology has taken root about post-debate opinion polls and their revelations about popular perceptions of the two candidates. Allegedly, those who had listened to the debates on the radio thought that Nixon had won, with the larger television audience being generally more impressed with Kennedy. No such comparative polls exist, however, and the market research on which those conclusions rest incorporated too few radio listeners to be statistically valid.

Both candidates traveled extensively and spent freely. Nixon, however, was hamstrung by an unfortunate early pledge to campaign in every state of the union. The trips to vote-poor states took precious time and money, while Kennedy focused his resources and time on the states with the most electoral college votes.

On Election Day, November 8, Kennedy won the popular vote by less than 120,000 votes out of a record 68.8 million ballots cast. Kennedy won the electoral college vote more clearly, winning 303 votes to Nixon's 219 (with Virginia's Harry F. Byrd winning 15). The closeness of the election naturally fueled speculation of tampering on both sides. In Chicago, Democratic mayor Richard Daley delivered an unusually good result for Kennedy-a result that came under scrutiny when Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes. Citing voting irregularities, the Republican National Committee unsuccessfully challenged the Illinois vote in federal court, although Nixon carefully distanced himself from the various legal challenges presented by his party and his supporters. Suspicious results also emerged in Texas and elsewhere. Kennedy was initially believed to have won California, but after absentee ballots had been counted, that state's electors declared for Nixon.

Inauguration and Transition

On a cold January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy took the oath of office. After such a close campaign, Kennedy knew his inaugural address would have to reach out to his opponents. In the days and weeks before it was to be delivered, he carefully studied famous American speeches, such as the Gettysburg Address, and copied their terse, vivid style. Departing from the pattern of many inaugural addresses, Kennedy pulled few punches and focused almost exclusively on matters outside the nation's borders. In addition, he claimed that his election signaled a fundamental generational shift in America:

"We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom-symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning-signifying renewal, as well as change . . . Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage-and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

And he recalled the nation's revolutionary origins: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear in burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." In forming his administration, Kennedy surrounded himself with liberal intellectuals and, in light of the close popular vote, moderate conservatives espousing strong executive governance, rational planning, and a belief in the virtues of social science. An elite group of young, rich professionals, dubbed the "New Frontiersmen," poured into Washington, adding to the tone of a White House seeking counsel from the nation's best and brightest.

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John F. Kennedy: Campaigns and Elections | Miller Center

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The Campaign and Election of 1960 The election of 1960 brought to the forefront a generation of politicians born in the twentieth century, pitting the 47-year-old Republican vice president Richard M. Nixon against the 43-year-old Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's chief rival for the nomination was Hubert H.

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power. Since 1959, officials at the U.S. State Department and the CIA had attempted to remove Castro. Finally, on April 17, 1961, the CIA launched what its leaders believed would be the definitive strike: a full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled their homes when Castro took over. However, the invasion was doomed from the start. The invaders were badly outnumbered by Castro's troops, and they surrendered after less than 24 hours of fighting.
WATCH: Dogfights on HISTORY Vault
Castro Seizes Power

On January 1, 1959, a young Cuban nationalist named Fidel Castro drove his guerrilla army into Havana and overthrew Fulgencio Batista, the nation's American-backed president.

Many Cubans welcomed Castro's 1959 overthrow of the dictatorial Batista, yet the new order on the island just about 90 miles from the United States made American officials nervous. Batista had been a corrupt and repressive dictator, but he was considered to be pro-American and was an ally to U.S. corporations.

At that time, American businesses and wealthy individuals owned almost half of Cuba's sugar plantations and the majority of its cattle ranches, mines and utilities. Batista did little to restrict their operations. He was also reliably anticommunist.

Castro, by contrast, was a communist who disapproved of the approach that Americans took to their business and interests in Cuba. It was time, he believed, for Cubans to assume more control of their nation. "Cuba Sí, Yanquis No" became one of his most popular slogans.

Did you know? Castro's regime was considered such a threat to U.S. interests that secret American operatives even tried to have him assassinated.

Eisenhower and the Cold War

Almost as soon as he came to power, Castro took steps to reduce American influence on the island. He nationalized American-dominated industries such as sugar and mining, introduced land reform schemes and called on other Latin American governments to act with more autonomy.
WATCH VIDEO: Fidel Castro
In response, early in 1960 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to recruit 1,400 Cuban exiles-living in Miami and led by José Miró Cardona, a former Castro government official-and begin training them to overthrow Castro.

In May 1960, Castro established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and the United States responded by prohibiting the importation of Cuban sugar. To prevent the Cuban economy from collapsing-sugar exports to the United States comprised 80 percent of the country's total-the U.S.S.R. agreed to buy the sugar.

Kennedy Inherits the Invasion Plan

In January 1961, the U.S. government severed diplomatic relations with Cuba and stepped up its preparations for an invasion. Some State Department and other advisors to the new American president, John F. Kennedy, maintained that Castro posed no real threat to America.

Nonetheless, the new president believed that masterminding the Cuban leader's removal would show the Soviets, China and skeptical Americans that he was serious about winning the Cold War.

Kennedy had inherited Eisenhower's CIA campaign to train and equip a guerrilla army of Cuban exiles, but he had some doubts about the wisdom of the plan. The last thing he wanted, he said, was "direct, overt" intervention by the American military in Cuba: Soviets would likely see this as an act of war and might retaliate.

However, CIA officers told him they could keep U.S. involvement in the invasion a secret and, if all went according to plan, the campaign would spark an anti-Castro uprising on the island.

Bay of Pigs Invasion Begins

The first part of the plan was to destroy Castro's tiny air force, making it impossible for his military to resist the invaders. On April 15, 1961, a group of Cuban exiles took off from Nicaragua in a squadron of American B-26 bombers, painted to look like stolen Cuban planes, and conducted a strike against Cuban airfields.

However, it turned out that Castro and his advisers knew about the raid and had moved his planes out of harm's way. Frustrated, Kennedy began to suspect that the plan the CIA had promised would be "both clandestine and successful" might in fact be "too large to be clandestine and too small to be successful."

But it was too late to hit the brakes: On April 17, the Cuban exile brigade began its invasion at an isolated spot on the island's southern shore known as the Bay of Pigs.

Almost immediately, the invasion was a disaster. The CIA had wanted to keep it a secret for as long as possible, but a radio station on the beach (which the agency's reconnaissance team had failed to spot) broadcast every detail of the operation to listeners across Cuba. Unexpected coral reefs sank some of the exiles' ships as they pulled into shore. Backup paratroopers landed in the wrong place.

Before long, Castro's troops had pinned the invaders on the beach, and the exiles surrendered after less than a day of fighting; 114 were killed and over 1,100 were taken prisoner.

Aftermath of the Bay of Pigs

According to many historians, the CIA and the Cuban exile brigade believed that President Kennedy would eventually allow the American military to intervene in Cuba on their behalf. However, the president was resolute: As much as he did not want to "abandon Cuba to the communists," he said, he would not start a fight that might end in World War III.

His efforts to overthrow Castro never flagged-in November 1961, Kennedy approved Operation Mongoose, an espionage and sabotage campaign-but never went so far as to provoke an outright war. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis inflamed American-Cuban-Soviet tensions even further.
READ MORE: The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Timeline
Sources

The Bay of Pigs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion and its Aftermath, April 1961-October 1962. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
After 60 years, Bay of Pigs disaster still haunts veterans who fought. National Geographic.

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power. Since 1959, officials at the U.S. State Department and the CIA had attempted to remove Castro.

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The construction of the Berlin Wall - Berlin.de

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Around 2.7 million people left the GDR and East Berlin between 1949 and 1961, causing increasing difficulties for the leadership of the East German communist party, the SED. Around half of this steady stream of refugees were young people under the age of 25. Roughly half a million people crossed the…

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During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

Discovering the Missiles

After seizing power in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba in 1959, leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro, Cuba grew dependent on the Soviets for military and economic aid. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviets (and their respective allies) were engaged in the Cold War (1945-91), an ongoing series of largely political and economic clashes.

Did you know? The actor Kevin Costner (1955-) starred in a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis titled Thirteen Days. Released in 2000, the movie's tagline was "You'll never believe how close we came."

The two superpowers plunged into one of their biggest Cold War confrontations after the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Major Richard Heyser making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation.

President Kennedy was briefed about the situation on October 16, and he immediately called together a group of advisors and officials known as the executive committee, or ExComm. For nearly the next two weeks, the president and his team wrestled with a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union.

A New Threat to the U.S.

For the American officials, the urgency of the situation stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed so close to the U.S. mainland-just 90 miles south of Florida. From that launch point, they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U.S. If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had gambled on sending the missiles to Cuba with the specific goal of increasing his nation's nuclear strike capability. The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. The Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island-the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961-and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.S. aggression.

Kennedy Weighs the Options

From the outset of the crisis, Kennedy and ExComm determined that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge facing them was to orchestrate their removal without initiating a wider conflict-and possibly a nuclear war. In deliberations that stretched on for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options, including a bombing attack on the missile sites and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. But Kennedy ultimately decided on a more measured approach. First, he would employ the U.S. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. Second, he would deliver an ultimatum that the existing missiles be removed.

In a television broadcast on October 22, 1962, the president notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact the blockade and made it clear that the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this public declaration, people around the globe nervously waited for the Soviet response. Some Americans, fearing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded food and gas.

HISTORY Vault: Nuclear Terror

Showdown at Sea: U.S. Blockades Cuba

A crucial moment in the unfolding crisis arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba neared the line of U.S. vessels enforcing the blockade. An attempt by the Soviets to breach the blockade would likely have sparked a military confrontation that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange. But the Soviet ships stopped short of the blockade.

Although the events at sea offered a positive sign that war could be averted, they did nothing to address the problem of the missiles already in Cuba. The tense standoff between the superpowers continued through the week, and on October 27, an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a U.S. invasion force was readied in Florida. (The 35-year-old pilot of the downed plane, Major Rudolf Anderson, is considered the sole U.S. combat casualty of the Cuban missile crisis.) "I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see," recalled U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009), as quoted by Martin Walker in "The Cold War." A similar sense of doom was felt by other key players on both sides.

A Deal Ends the Standoff

Despite the enormous tension, Soviet and American leaders found a way out of the impasse. During the crisis, the Americans and Soviets had exchanged letters and other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy in which he offered to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The following day, the Soviet leader sent a letter proposing that the USSR would dismantle its missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile installations in Turkey.

Officially, the Kennedy administration decided to accept the terms of the first message and ignore the second Khrushchev letter entirely. Privately, however, American officials also agreed to withdraw their nation's missiles from Turkey. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy (1925-68) personally delivered the message to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, and on October 28, the crisis drew to a close.

Both the Americans and Soviets were sobered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following year, a direct "hot line" communication link was installed between Washington and Moscow to help defuse similar situations, and the superpowers signed two treaties related to nuclear weapons. The Cold War was and the nuclear arms race was far from over, though. In fact, another legacy of the crisis was that it convinced the Soviets to increase their investment in an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. from Soviet territory.

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Cuban Missile Crisis - Causes, Timeline & Significance | HISTORY

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The Cuban Missile crisis was a 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over Soviet missiles in Cuba.

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On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally was also wounded in the attack but recovered. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was hastily sworn in as president two hours and eight minutes later aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field.

After the assassination, Oswald returned home to retrieve a pistol; he shot and killed lone Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit shortly afterwards. Around 70 minutes after Kennedy and Connally were shot, Oswald was apprehended by the Dallas Police Department and charged under Texas state law with the murders of Kennedy and Tippit. Two days later, at 11:21 a.m. on November 24, 1963, as live television cameras covered Oswald's being moved through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, he was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Like Kennedy, Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though the decision was overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial.

After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, and that there was no evidence that either Oswald or Ruby was part of a conspiracy. In 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison brought the only trial for Kennedy's murder, against businessman Clay Shaw; Shaw was acquitted. Subsequent federal investigations-such as the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee-agreed with the Warren Commission's general findings. In its 1979 report, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that Kennedy was likely " assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". The HSCA did not identify possible conspirators, but concluded that there was "a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President". The HSCA's conclusions were largely based on a police Dictabelt recording later debunked by the U.S. Justice Department.

Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned many conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios; polls found that a majority of Americans believed there was a conspiracy. The assassination left a profound impact and was the first of four major assassinations during the 1960s in the United States, coming two years before the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and five years before the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Kennedy's brother Robert in 1968. Kennedy was the fourth U.S. president to be assassinated and is the most recent to have died in office.

Background

Kennedy delivering his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University, 1962

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, was elected the 35th president of the United States with Lyndon B. Johnson as his vice presidential running mate. Kennedy's tenure saw the height of the Cold War, and much of his foreign policy was dedicated to countering the Soviet Union and communism. As president, he authorized operations to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba, which culminated in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, during which he declined to directly involve American troops. The following year, Kennedy deescalated the Cuban Missile Crisis, an incident widely regarded as the closest that humanity has come to nuclear holocaust.

In 1963, Kennedy decided to travel to Texas to smooth over frictions in the state's Democratic Party between liberal U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough and conservative Governor John Connally. The visit was first agreed upon by Kennedy, Johnson, and Connally during a meeting in El Paso in June. The motorcade route was finalized on November 18 and announced soon thereafter. Kennedy also viewed the Texas trip as an informal launch of his 1964 reelection campaign.

Lee Harvey Oswald (born 1939) was a former U.S. Marine who had served in Japan and the Philippines and had espoused communism since reading Karl Marx at the age of 14. After accidentally shooting his elbow with an unauthorized handgun and fighting an officer, Oswald was court-martialed twice and demoted. In September 1959, he received a dependency discharge after claiming his mother was disabled. A 19-year-old Oswald sailed on a freighter from New Orleans to France and then traveled to Finland, where he was issued a Soviet visa.

Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, and in January 1960 he was sent to work at a factory in Minsk, Belarus. In 1961, he met and married Marina Prusakova, with whom he had a child. In 1962, he returned to the United States with a repatriation loan from the U.S. Embassy. He settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where he socialized with Russian émigrés-notably George de Mohrenschildt. In March 1963, a bullet narrowly missed General Edwin Walker at his Dallas residence; a witness observed two conspicuous men. Relying on Marina's testimony, a note left by Oswald, and ballistic evidence, the Warren Commission attributed this assassination attempt to Oswald.

In April 1963, Oswald returned to his birthplace, New Orleans, and established an independent chapter of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which he was the sole member. While passing out pro-Castro literature alongside unknown compatriots, Oswald was arrested after scuffling with anti-Castro Cuban exiles. In late September 1963, Oswald traveled to Mexico City, where, according to the Warren Commission, he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies. On October 3, Oswald returned to Dallas and found work at the Texas School Book Depository on Dealey Plaza. During the workweek he lived separately from Marina at a Dallas rooming house. On the morning of the assassination, he carried a long package (which he told coworkers contained curtain rods) into the Depository; the Warren Commission concluded that this package contained Oswald's disassembled rifle.

November 22

Kennedy's arrival in Dallas and route to Dealey Plaza

On November 22, Air Force One arrived at Dallas Love Field at 11:40 a.m. President Kennedy and the First Lady boarded a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine to travel to a luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. Other occupants of this vehicle-the second in the motorcade-were Secret Service Agent Bill Greer, who drove; Special Agent Roy Kellerman in the front passenger seat; and Governor Connally and his wife Nellie, who sat just forward of the Kennedys. Four Dallas police motorcycle officers accompanied the Kennedy limousine. Vice President Johnson, his wife Lady Bird, and Senator Yarborough rode in another convertible.

The motorcade's meandering 10-mile (16 km) route through Dallas was designed to give Kennedy maximum exposure to crowds by passing through a suburban section of Dallas, and Main Street in Downtown Dallas, before turning right on Houston Street. After another block, the motorcade was to turn left onto Elm Street, pass through Dealey Plaza, and travel a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway to the Trade Mart. The planned route had been reported in newspapers several days in advance. Despite concerns about hostile protestors-Kennedy's UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been spat on in Dallas a month earlier-Kennedy was greeted warmly by enthusiastic crowds.

Kennedy's limousine entered Dealey Plaza at 12:30 p.m. CST. Nellie Connally turned and commented to Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, "Mr. President, they can't make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love and appreciate you, can they?" Kennedy's reply - "No, they sure can't" - were his last words.

From Houston Street, the limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm, passing the Texas School Book Depository. As it continued down Elm Street, multiple shots were fired: about 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. The Warren Commission concluded that three shots were fired and noted that most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together. Shortly after Kennedy began waving, some witnesses heard the first gunshot, but few in the crowd or motorcade reacted, many interpreting the sound as a firecracker or backfire.

Within one second of each other, Governor Connally and Mrs. Kennedy turned abruptly from their left to their right. Connally-an experienced hunter-immediately recognized the sound as that of a rifle and turned his head and torso rightward, noting nothing unusual behind him. He testified that he could not see Kennedy, so he started to turn forward again (turning from his right to his left), and that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, he was struck in his upper right back by a shot he did not hear, then shouted, "My God. They're going to kill us all!"

According to the Warren Commission and the HSCA, Kennedy was waving to the crowds on his right when a shot entered his upper back and exited his throat just beneath his larynx. He raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and leftward. Mrs. Kennedy, facing him, put her arms around him. Although a serious wound, it likely would have been survivable.

According to the Warren Commission's single-bullet theory-derided as the "magic bullet theory" by conspiracy theorists-Governor Connally was injured by the same bullet that exited Kennedy's neck. The bullet created an oval-shaped entry wound near his right shoulder, struck and destroyed several inches of Connally's right fifth rib, and exited his chest just below his right nipple, puncturing and collapsing his lung. That same bullet then entered his arm just above his right wrist and shattered his right radius bone. The bullet exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm and finally lodged in his left thigh.

As the limousine passed the grassy knoll, Kennedy was struck a second time, by a fatal shot to the head. The Warren Commission made no finding as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired, and concluded-as did the HSCA-that the second shot to strike Kennedy entered the rear of his head. It then passed in fragments through his skull, creating a large, "roughly ovular" [] hole on the rear, right side of the head, and spraying blood and fragments. His brain and blood spatter landed as far as the following Secret Service car and the motorcycle officers.

Secret Service Agent Clint Hill was riding on the running board of the car immediately behind Kennedy's limousine. Hill testified to the Warren Commission that he heard one shot, jumped onto the street, and ran forward to board the limousine and protect Kennedy. Hill stated that he heard the fatal headshot as he reached the Lincoln, "approximately five seconds" after the first shot that he heard. After the headshot, Mrs. Kennedy began climbing onto the limousine's trunk, but she later had no recollection of doing so. Hill believed she may have been reaching for a piece of Kennedy's skull. He jumped onto the limousine's bumper, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital. After Mrs. Kennedy crawled back into her seat, both Governor and Mrs. Connally heard her repeatedly saying: "They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand."

Bystander James Tague received a minor wound to the cheek-either from bullet or concrete curb fragments-while standing by the triple underpass. Nine months later, the FBI removed the curb, and spectrographic analysis revealed metallic residue consistent with the lead core in Oswald's ammunition. Tague testified before the Warren Commission and initially stated that he was wounded by either the second or third shot of the three shots that he remembered hearing. When the commission counsel pressed him to be more specific, Tague testified that he was wounded by the second shot.

Aftermath in Dealey Plaza

Civilians shielding their children after hearing shots and dropping to the grass. The grassy knoll and its picket fence are visible in the background.[note 7]

As the motorcade left Dealey Plaza, some witnesses sought cover, and others joined police officers to run up the grassy knoll in search of a shooter. No shooter was found behind the knoll's picket fence. Among the 178 witnesses who testified to the Warren Commission, 78 were unsure of the shots' origin, 49 believed they came from the Depository, and 21 thought they came from the grassy knoll. No witness ever reported seeing anyone - with or without a gun (except policemen) - immediately behind the knoll's picket fence at the time of the shooting.

Lee Bowers was in a two-story railroad switch tower 120 yards (110 m) behind the grassy knoll's picket fence; he was watching the motorcade and had an unobstructed view of the only route by which any shooter could flee the grassy knoll; he saw no one leaving the scene. Bowers testified to the Warren Commission that "one or two" men were between him and the fence during the assassination: one was a familiar parking lot attendant and the other wore a uniform like a county courthouse custodian. He testified seeing "some commotion" on the grassy knoll at the time of the assassination: "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around, but something occurred in this particular spot which was out of the ordinary, which attracted my eye for some reason which I could not identify".

At 12:36 p.m., Black teenager Amos Euins approached Dallas police Sergeant D.V. Harkness to report having seen a " colored man ... leaning out of the window [with] a rifle" on the sixth floor of the Depository during the assassination; in response, Harkness radioed that he was sealing off the Depository. Witness Howard Brennan then approached a police inspector to report seeing a shooter-a white man in khaki clothing-in the same window. Police broadcast Brennan's description of the man at 12:45 p.m. Brennan testified that, after the second shot, "This man... was aiming for his last shot ... and maybe paused for another second as though to assure himself that he had hit his mark." Witness James R. Worrell Jr. also reported seeing a gun barrel emerge from a sixth floor Depository window. Bonnie Ray Williams, who was on the fifth floor of the Depository, stated that the rifle's report was so loud and near that ceiling plaster fell onto his head.

Oswald's flight, killing of J. D. Tippit, and arrest

When searching the sixth floor of the Depository, two deputies found an Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle. Oswald had purchased the used rifle the previous March under the alias "A. Hidell" and had it delivered to his Dallas P.O. box. The FBI found Oswald's partial palm print on the barrel, and fibers on the rifle were consistent with those of Oswald's shirt. A bullet found on Governor Connally's hospital gurney and two fragments found in the limousine were ballistically matched to the Carcano.

Oswald left the Depository and traveled by bus to his boarding house, where he retrieved a jacket and revolver. At 1:12 p.m., police officer J. D. Tippit spotted Oswald walking in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff and called him to his patrol car. After an exchange of words, Tippit exited his vehicle; Oswald then shot Tippit three times in the chest. As Tippit lay on the ground, Oswald fired a final shot into Tippit's right temple. Oswald then calmly walked away before running as witnesses emerged.

As Dallas police officers conducted a roll call of Depository employees, Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly realized that Oswald was absent and notified the police. Based on a false identification of Oswald, Dallas police raided a library in Oak Cliff before realizing their mistake. At 1:36 p.m., the police were called after a conspicuous Oswald, tired from running, was seen sneaking into the Texas Theatre without paying. With the film still playing, Dallas policemen arrested Oswald after a brief struggle in which Oswald drew his fully loaded gun. He denied shooting anyone and claimed he was being made a " patsy" because he had lived in the Soviet Union.

Kennedy declared dead; Johnson sworn in

Cecil Stoughton's photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as President as Air Force One prepares to depart Love Field in Dallas. Jacqueline Kennedy, still in her Chanel suit (the blood spatters not visible here), looks on.

At 12:38 p.m., Kennedy arrived in the emergency room of Parkland Memorial Hospital. Although Kennedy was still breathing after the shooting, his personal physician, George Burkley, immediately saw that survival was impossible. After Parkland surgeons performed futile cardiac massage, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., 30 minutes after the shooting. CBS host Walter Cronkite broke the news on live television.

The Secret Service was concerned about the possibility of a larger plot and urged Johnson to leave Dallas and return to the White House, but Johnson refused to do so without any proof of Kennedy's death. Johnson returned to Air Force One around 1:30p.m., and shortly thereafter, he received telephone calls from advisors McGeorge Bundy and Walter Jenkins advising him to depart for Washington, D.C., immediately. He replied that he would not leave Dallas without Jacqueline Kennedy and that she would not leave without Kennedy's body. According to , Johnson did "not want to be remembered as an abandoner of beautiful widows".

At the time of Kennedy's assassination, the murder of a president was not under federal jurisdiction. Accordingly, Dallas County medical examiner Earl Rose insisted that Texas law required him to perform an autopsy. A heated exchange between Kennedy's aides and Dallas officials nearly erupted into a fistfight before the Texans yielded and allowed Kennedy's body to be transported to Air Force One. At 2:38 p.m., with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side, Johnson was administered the oath of office by federal judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes aboard Air Force One shortly before departing for Washington with Kennedy's coffin.

Immediate aftermath

President Kennedy's autopsy was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland on the night of November 22. Jacqueline Kennedy had selected a naval hospital as the postmortem site as President Kennedy had been a naval officer during World War II. The autopsy was conducted by three physicians: naval commanders James Humes and J. Thornton Boswell, with assistance from ballistics wound expert Pierre A. Finck; Humes led the procedure. Under pressure from the Kennedy family and White House staffers to expedite the procedure, the physicians conducted a "rushed" and incomplete autopsy. Kennedy's personal physician, Rear Admiral George Burkley, signed a death certificate on November 23 and recorded that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the skull.

Three years after the autopsy, Kennedy's brain-which had been removed and preserved for later analysis-was found to be missing when the Kennedy family transferred material to the National Archives. Conspiracy theorists often claim that the brain may have shown that the headshot entered from the front. Alternatively, the HSCA concluded that an assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother, likely removed the footlocker holding the brain and other materials at his direction, and he "either destroyed these materials or otherwise rendered them inaccessible" to prevent "misuse" of said material or to hide the extent of the president's chronic illnesses and consequent medication. Some autopsy X-rays and photographs have also been lost.

Most historians regard the autopsy as the "most botched" segment of the government's investigation. The HSCA forensic pathology panel concluded that the autopsy had "extensive failings", including failure to take sufficient photographs, failure to determine the exact exit or entry point of the head bullet, not dissecting the back and neck, and neglecting to determine the angles of gunshot injuries relative to body axis. The panel further concluded that the two doctors were not qualified to have conducted a forensic autopsy. Panel member Milton Helpern- Chief Medical Examiner for New York City-said that selecting Humes (who had only taken a single course on forensic pathology) to lead the autopsy was "like sending a seven-year-old boy who has taken three lessons on the violin over to the New York Philharmonic and expecting him to perform a Tchaikovsky symphony".

Kennedy's coffin is carried from the Capitol, November 25.

Following the autopsy, Kennedy lay in repose in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours. President Johnson issued Presidential Proclamation 3561, declaring November 25 to be a national day of mourning, and that only essential emergency workers be at their posts. The coffin was then carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol to lie in state. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined up to view the guarded casket, with a quarter million passing through the rotunda during the 18 hours of lying in state. Even in the Soviet Union-according to a memo by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover -news of the assassination "was greeted by great shock and consternation and church bells were tolled in the memory of President Kennedy".

Kennedy's funeral service was held on November 25, at St. Matthew's Cathedral, with the Requiem Mass led by Cardinal Richard Cushing. About 1,200 guests, including representatives from over 90 countries, attended. Although there was no formal eulogy, Auxiliary Bishop Philip M. Hannan read excerpts from Kennedy's speeches and writings. After the service, Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. An eternal flame was lit at his burial site in 1967.

Killing of Oswald

Robert H. Jackson's photograph Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was being escorted by police detective Jim Leavelle (tan suit) for the transfer from the city jail to the county jail. Ruby died in prison in 1967.

On Sunday, November 24, at 11:21 a.m., as Oswald was being escorted to a car in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters for the transfer from the city jail to the county jail, he was shot by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The shooting was broadcast live on television. Robert H. Jackson of the Dallas Times Herald photographed the shooting which was titled, Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald for which he was awarded the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Photography.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Oswald was taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital; he was treated by the same surgeons who had tried to save Kennedy. The bullet had entered his lower left chest but had not exited; major heart blood vessels such as the aorta and inferior vena cava were severed, and the spleen, kidney, and liver were hit. Despite surgical intervention and defibrillation, Oswald died at 1:07 p.m.

Arrested immediately after the shooting, Ruby testified to the Warren Commission that he had been distraught by Kennedy's death and that killing Oswald would spare "Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial". He also stated he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment when the opportunity presented itself, without considering any reason for doing so. Initially, Ruby wished to represent himself in his trial until his lawyer Melvin Belli dissuaded him: Belli argued that Ruby had an episode of psychomotor epilepsy and was thus not responsible. Ruby was convicted, but the decision was overturned on appeal. While awaiting retrial in 1967, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to cancer. Like Oswald and Kennedy, Ruby was declared dead at Parkland Hospital.

Films and photographs of the assassination

The Bell & Howell Zoomatic movie camera used by Abraham Zapruder to capture footage of the motorcade and Kennedy's killing, which later came to be known as the Zapruder film. The camera is preserved within the collection of the National Archives.

Standing on the pergola wall some 65 feet (20 m) from the road, tailor Abraham Zapruder recorded Kennedy's killing on 26 seconds of silent 8 mm film - known as the Zapruder film. Frame 313 captures the exact moment at which Kennedy's head explodes. magazine published frame enlargements from the Zapruder film shortly after the assassination. The footage itself was first publicly shown at the 1969 trial of Clay Shaw, and on television in 1975 by Geraldo Rivera. In 1999, an arbitration panel ordered the federal government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs, valuing the complete film at $16 million (equivalent to $27.5 million in 2022).

Zapruder was one of at least 32 people in Dealey Plaza known to have made film or still photographs at or around the time of the shooting. Most notably among the photographers, Mary Moorman took several photos of Kennedy with her Polaroid, including one of Kennedy less than one-sixth of a second after the headshot.

As well as Zapruder, Charles Bronson, Marie Muchmore, and Orville Nix filmed the assassination, but at farther distances than Zapruder. Of the three, only Nix - who filmed the assassination from the opposite side of Elm Street from Zapruder, capturing the grassy knoll - actually recorded the fatal shot. In 1966, Nix claimed that, after he gave the film to the FBI, the duplicate that they returned had frames "missing" or "ruined". Although lower-quality duplicates exist, the original film has been missing since 1978. Previously unknown footage filmed by George Jefferies was released in 2007. Recorded a few blocks before the shooting, the film captures Kennedy's bunched suit jacket, explaining the discrepancies between the location of the bullet hole in Kennedy's back and his jacket.

Some films and photographs captured an unidentified woman apparently filming the assassination; researchers have nicknamed her the Babushka Lady due to the shawl around her head. In 1978, Gordon Arnold came forward and claimed that he had filmed the assassination from the grassy knoll and that a police officer had confiscated his film. Arnold is not visible in any photographs taken of the area, which Vincent Bugliosi-author of Reclaiming History-called "conclusive photographic proof that Arnold's story was fabricated".

Official investigations

Dallas Police

Lee Harvey Oswald in police custody.

At the Dallas Police headquarters, officers interrogated Oswald about the shootings of Kennedy and Tippit; these intermittent interviews lasted for approximately 12 hours between 2:30 p.m. on November 22 and 11 a.m. on November 24. Throughout, Oswald denied any involvement and resorted to statements that were found to be false.

Captain J. W. Fritz of the Homicide and Robbery Bureau did most of the questioning and kept only rudimentary notes. Days later, Fritz wrote a report of the interrogation from notes he made afterwards. There were no stenographic or tape recordings. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also present, including the FBI and the Secret Service, and occasionally participated in the questioning. Several of the FBI agents who were present wrote contemporaneous reports of the interrogation.

On the evening of November 22, Dallas Police performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an effort to establish whether or not he had recently fired a weapon. The results were positive for the hands and negative for the right cheek. Such tests were unreliable, and the Warren Commission did not rely on these results.

The Dallas police forced Oswald to host a press conference after midnight on November 23, and, early in the investigation, made many leaks to the media. Their conduct angered Johnson, who instructed the FBI to tell them to "stop talking about the assassination". Dallas Police, after the FBI expressed concerns that someone might try to kill Oswald, assured federal authorities that they would provide him adequate protection.

FBI investigation

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (pictured between Robert and John F. Kennedy in May 1963) wrote in a 1964 memo that "we left no stone unturned".[196]

The FBI immediately launched an investigation into the assassination, relying on a federal statute that forbade assaulting a federal officer. Within 24 hours of the killing, FBI Director Hoover sent President Johnson a preliminary report finding that Oswald was the sole culprit. After Ruby killed Oswald, Johnson decided that the Texan authorities were incompetent and instructed the FBI to conduct a complete investigation.

On December 9, 1963, the Warren Commission received the FBI's report of its investigation which concluded that three bullets had been fired‍-‌the first striking Kennedy in the upper back; the second striking Connally; and the third striking Kennedy in the head, killing him. The FBI continued to serve as the main investigative arm of the Warren Commission in the field. A total of 169 FBI agents worked on the case, conducting over 25,000 interviews and writing over 2,300 reports.

The thoroughness of the FBI's investigation is contested. Bugliosi applauded its quality and cites conspiracy theorist Harrison Edward Livingstone's praise of the FBI's commitment to following all leads. In its 1979 report, the HSCA found that the FBI's investigation of pro- and anti-Castro Cubans, and any connections to Oswald or Ruby, was insufficient. The HSCA also noted that Hoover "seemed determined [to make the case that Oswald was the lone assassin] within 24 hours of the assassination".

Warren Commission

The Warren Commission presents its report to President Johnson. From left to right: John McCloy, J. Lee Rankin (General Counsel), Senator Richard Russell, Congressman Gerald Ford, Chief Justice Earl Warren, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Allen Dulles, Senator John Sherman Cooper, and Congressman Hale Boggs.

On November 29, President Johnson established by executive order " The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" and selected Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court to chair the investigation, commonly known as the Warren Commission. Its 888-page final report was presented to Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public three days later. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding Connally, and that Jack Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald. It made no conclusions as to Oswald's motive, but noted his Marxism, anti-authoritarianism, violent tendencies, failure to form personal relationships, and his desire to be significant in history.

Upon examining the Zapruder film, commission staffers realized that the FBI's gunshot theory was impossible. The reaction times of Kennedy and Connally were too close to have been caused by two bullets from Oswald: the reaction interval was less than the 2.3 seconds that it took to reload. This was one of the commission's most crucial findings: that a single shot caused the non-fatal wounds of Kennedy and Connally, known as the "single-bullet theory". In May 1964, staffer Arlen Specter replicated the single bullet's trajectory via a reenactment in Dealey Plaza: the bullet's path was exactly consistent with Kennedy's and Connally's wounds.

Out of the eight commission members, three-Representative Hale Boggs and Senators John Cooper and Richard Russell-found the theory "improbable"; their qualms were not mentioned in the final report. Conspiracy theorists labelled this theory the "magic bullet theory", partly due to the bullet's intact and purportedly pristine state. However, the HSCA's Michael Baden noted that the bullet, despite its lack of fragmentation, was fundamentally deformed. In 2023, Secret Service Agent Paul Landis-who had stood on the running board of Kennedy's car-told The New York Times that he retrieved the "magic bullet" from immediately behind Kennedy's seat upon arrival at Parkland, and that he placed it on Kennedy's stretcher. Landis believes that the bullet dislodged from a shallow wound in Kennedy's back.

As well as the Warren Report's 27 published volumes, the commission created hundreds of thousands of pages of investigative reports and documents. Relman Morin stated that "Never in history was a crime probed as intensely"; Bugliosi concluded that the commission's basic findings have "held up remarkably well". According to Gerald Posner, the Warren report is "universally derided" by the American public. Walter Cronkite noted that, "Although the Warren Commission had full power to conduct its own independent investigation, it permitted the FBI and the CIA to investigate themselves - and so cast a permanent shadow on the answers." According to a 2014 report by CIA Chief Historian David Robarge, then-CIA director John A. McCone was involved in a "benign cover-up" by withholding information from the commission.

Trial of Clay Shaw

Clay Shaw (pictured in 1951) was acquitted by the New Orleans jury after less than an hour of deliberation.

On March 22, 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of Oswald, David Ferrie, and others. A respected businessman who had helped renovate and preserve the French Quarter, Shaw was described as "the unlikeliest villain since Oscar Wilde". Both Shaw and the neurotic, avidly anti-Castro Ferrie were members of New Orleans' gay community. Ferrie died, possibly by suicide, four days after news of the investigation broke. On The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1968, Garrison first publicly alleged that Shaw and Ferrie had been part of a larger CIA scheme to kill Kennedy and frame Oswald. In the 34-day trial conducted in 1969, Garrison played the Zapruder film and argued that the backwards motion of Kennedy's head after the fatal shot was indicative of a shooter in front on the grassy knoll.

After a brief deliberation, the jury found Shaw not guilty. Mark Lane interviewed the jurors after the trial and stated that some believed that Shaw likely was involved in a conspiracy but that there was insufficient evidence to convict. Lane's claims have been disputed by playwright James Kirkwood -a personal friend of Clay Shaw-who said that he met several jurors who denied ever speaking to Lane. Kirkwood also questioned Lane's claim that the jury believed that there was a conspiracy: jury foreman Sidney Hebert told Kirkwood, "I didn't think too much of the Warren Report either until the trial. Now I think a lot more of it than I did before."

According to academic E. Jerald Ogg, the Shaw trial is now widely regarded as a "travesty of justice"; Kirkwood likened the trial to a Spanish Inquisition hearing. Other observers have characterized the proceedings as relying on homophobia. It remains the only trial to be brought for the Kennedy assassination. In 1979, former CIA director Richard Helms testified that Shaw had been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contact Service of the CIA, through which Shaw volunteered information from his travels abroad, mostly to Latin America. However, according to Max Holland, some 150,000 Americans were contacts. In 1993, the PBS program obtained a group photograph that featured Ferrie and Oswald together at a 1955 cookout for the Civil Air Patrol: Ferrie had denied ever knowing Oswald.

Ramsey Clark Panel

The panel organized by Attorney General Ramsey Clark (pictured with President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968) found that two bullets struck Kennedy from behind.

Excluding Chief Justice Warren, the members of Warren Commission did not view the photographs or X-rays taken during Kennedy's autopsy. According to Warren, this was to avoid having to publicly release the explicit material to "sensation mongers". Due to persistent speculation, in February 1968, Attorney General Ramsey Clark convened a panel of four medical experts to examine the photographs and X-rays from the Kennedy autopsy. Their findings concurred with the Warren Commission: Kennedy was struck by two bullets, both from behind.

Rockefeller Commission

In 1975, President Gerald Ford-who had been a member of the Warren Commission a decade prior-established the United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, better known as the Rockefeller Commission after its chairman, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. The commission received a mandate to determine if any domestic activities by the CIA were unlawful and to make appropriate recommendations: accordingly, it also re-examined the Kennedy assassination.

The Rockefeller Commission first proposed that the backwards motion of Kennedy following the fatal shot-which conspiracy theorists claim is indicative of a shot from the grassy knoll-was due to a "seizure-like neuromuscular reaction".

After five months of investigation, the Rockefeller Commission submitted its report to President Ford. The report reviewed the medical evidence and agreed that Kennedy had been killed by two shots from behind. Refuting Garrison's claims that the backwards motion of Kennedy's head seen on the Zapruder film was indicative of a grassy knoll shooter, the commission found that "such a motion would be caused by a violent straightening and stiffening of the entire body as a result of a seizure-like neuromuscular reaction to major damage inflicted to nerve centers in the brain". The later HSCA suggested that the " propulsive effect resulting from brain matter" ejected from the exit wound may have been responsible. Pathologist Vincent Di Maio testified before the HSCA that the notion of a "transfer of momentum" from a grassy knoll bullet was unfounded and something from " Arnold Schwarzenegger pictures".

The Rockefeller Commission also sought to determine whether CIA operatives-particularly E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis-were present in Dealey Plaza during the assassination, and whether they were among the " three tramps" pictured shortly after the assassination. The commission found no evidence for these claims. It also inquired into purported connections between the CIA and Oswald and Ruby, for which it found no evidence and concluded was "farfetched speculation". They concluded that there was "no credible evidence of CIA involvement".

Church Committee

Church Committee report (Book II)

In 1975, following the Watergate scandal and the revelation of CIA misconduct by Seymour Hersh (the CIA's so-called " Family Jewels"), the U.S. Senate launched the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities-better known as the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church. The committee was to investigate all improper and unlawful actions by the CIA and FBI, both foreign and domestic. Due to persisting theories, the Church Committee organized a subcommittee (staffed by Senators Richard Schweiker and Gary Hart) to examine CIA and FBI conduct pertaining to the assassination.

In its final report, the Church Committee concluded that there was no evidence of a CIA- or FBI-led conspiracy. They found that the original investigation into the assassination was "deficient" and criticized the FBI and CIA for withholding information from the Warren Commission. In particular, it noted that knowledge of the CIA's many failed attempts to assassinate Castro may have significantly affected the course of the investigation. Moreover, the Church Committee revealed that the CIA had conspired with the Mafia in these plots against Castro. These revelations led to further public scrutiny of the assassination.

United States House Select Committee on Assassinations

As a result of increasing public and congressional skepticism of the Warren Commission's findings and the transparency of government agencies, in 1976 the House Select Committee on Assassinations was created to investigate the assassinations of Kennedy and that of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The HSCA conducted its inquiry until 1978 and issued its final report the following year, concluding that Kennedy was likely assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. They concluded that there was a "high probability" that a fourth shot was fired from the grassy knoll, but they stated that this shot missed Kennedy. Concerning the conclusions of "probable conspiracy", four of the twelve committee members wrote dissenting opinions.

The HSCA also concluded that previous investigations into Oswald's responsibility were "thorough and reliable" but did not adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy, and that federal agencies performed with "varying degrees of competency". Specifically, the FBI and CIA were found to be deficient in sharing information with other agencies and the Warren Commission. Instead of furnishing all relevant information, the FBI and CIA only responded to specific requests and were still occasionally inadequate. Furthermore, the Secret Service did not properly analyze information it possessed prior to the assassination and was inadequately prepared to protect Kennedy.

The chief reason for the conclusion of "probable conspiracy" was, according to the report's dissent, the subsequently discredited acoustic analysis of a police channel Dictabelt recording. In accordance with the recommendations of the HSCA, the Dictabelt recording and acoustic evidence of a second assassin was subsequently reexamined. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and a specially appointed National Academy of Sciences Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the Justice Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy" in the Kennedy assassination.

JFK Act and Assassination Records Review Board

Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK spurred the "JFK Act", which mandated the release of all relevant classified files.

In 1991, Oliver Stone's film renewed interest in the assassination and particularly in the still-classified files relating to the killing. In response, Congress passed the JFK Records Act, which called for the National Archives to collect and release all assassination-related documents within 25 years. The act also mandated the creation of an independent office, the Assassination Records Review Board, to review the submitted records for completeness and continued secrecy. From 1994 until 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board gathered and unsealed about 60,000 documents comprising over 4 million pages.

A 1998 staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records may not be of Kennedy's brain, reportedly showing much less damage than Kennedy sustained. Dr. Boswell refuted these allegations. The board also found that, conflicting with the photographic images showing no such defect, several witnesses (at both Parkland hospital and the autopsy) remembered a large wound in the back of Kennedy's head. The board, and board member Jeremy Gunn, stressed the problems with witness testimony, urging people to weigh all of the evidence, with due concern for human error, rather than take single statements as "proof" for one theory or another.

All remaining assassination-related records were scheduled to be released by October 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by succeeding presidents due to "identifiable harm... to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations... of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure." President Donald Trump said in October 2017 that he would not block the release of documents, but in April 2018-the deadline he set to release all JFK records-Trump blocked the release of some records until October 2021. President Joe Biden, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the release further, before releasing 13,173 unredacted documents in 2022. A second group of files were unsealed in June 2023, at which point 99 percent of documents had been made public.

Conspiracy theories

The Kennedy assassination has been described as "the mother of all conspiracies". For decades, polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy; some 1,000 to 2,000 books-mostly pro-conspiracy-have been written about the killing. Across different theories, Oswald's role varies from co-conspirator to entirely innocent. Common culprits include the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, Vice President Johnson, Castro, the KGB, or some combination thereof. Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused in various assassination theories.

Conspiracy theorists often argue that there were multiple shooters-a "triangulation of crossfire"-and that the fatal shot was fired from the grassy knoll and struck Kennedy in the front of the head. Individuals present in Dealey Plaza have been the subject of much speculation, including the three tramps, the umbrella man, and the purported Badge Man. Conspiracy theorists argue that the autopsy and official investigations were flawed or, at worst, complicit, and that witnesses to the Kennedy assassination met mysterious and suspicious deaths.

Conspiracy theories have been espoused by notable figures, such as L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, who believed that elements of the U.S. military and intelligence communities had conspired to assassinate the president. Governor Connally also rejected the single-bullet theory, and President Johnson reportedly expressed doubt regarding the Warren Commission's conclusions prior to his death. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his father believed that the Warren Report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship" and that John F. Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy, possibly involving Cuban exiles and the CIA. Communist rulers like Castro and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev believed that Kennedy had been killed by right-wing Americans. Former CIA director R. James Woolsey has argued that Oswald killed Kennedy as part of a Soviet conspiracy.

Political impact and memorialization

Congress authorized the minting of a new 50-cent piece, the Kennedy half dollar, in December 1963.[294]

On November 27-five days after the assassination-President Johnson delivered his " Let Us Continue" speech to Congress. Effectively an inaugural address, Johnson called for the realization of Kennedy's policies, particularly on civil rights; this effort soon materialized as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Confusion surrounding Johnson's succession led to the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S Constitution, which was adopted in 1967 and affirmed that the vice president became president upon the president's death.

On November 29, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11129, renaming Florida's Cape Canaveral-a name borne since at least 1530-to Cape Kennedy. NASA's Launch Operations Center, located on the cape, was also renamed as the Kennedy Space Center. The federal government honored Kennedy in other ways, such as replacing the Benjamin Franklin half dollar with the Kennedy half dollar, and renaming Washington, D.C.'s long-planned National Culture Center as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. New York City's airport was also renamed as the John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Kennedy's assassination also resulted in an overhaul of the Secret Service and its procedures. Open limousines were eliminated, staffing was significantly increased, and specialized teams like counter-sniper units were established. The agency's budget has also increased, from $5.5 million in 1963 (equivalent to $42 million in 2013) to over $1.6 billion by the 50th anniversary in 2013.

Cultural impact and depictions

They say they can't believe it; It's a sacrilegious shame.

Now, who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?

But you know I predicted it; I knew he had to fall.

How did it happen? Hope his suffering was small.

Tell me every detail, for I've got to know it all,

And do you have a picture of the pain?

John F. Kennedy's assassination was the first of four major assassinations during the 1960s, coming two years before the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and five years before the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. For the public, Kennedy's assassination mythologized him into a heroic figure. Although scholars typically regard Kennedy as a good but not great president, public opinion polls consistently find him the most popular post-WWII president.

Kennedy's murder left a lasting impression on many worldwide. As with the attack on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941, and, much later, the September 11 attacks in 2001, asking "Where were you when you heard about President Kennedy's assassination?" became a common topic of discussion. Journalist Dan Rather opined that the Kennedy assassination will be discussed "a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, in somewhat the same way as people discuss the . Different people read Homer's description of the war and come to different conclusions, and so it shall be for Kennedy's death."

Along with Oliver Stone's JFK, the assassination has been portrayed in several films: the pro-conspiracy, Dalton Trumbo-written Executive Action (1973) was the first feature film to depict the assassination. Besides explicit portrayals, some critics have argued that the Zapruder film-which itself has been featured in many films and television episodes-advanced cinéma vérité or inspired more graphic depictions of violence in American cinema. Many works of literature have also explored the killing, such as Don DeLillo's 1988 novel in which Oswald is a CIA agent, James Ellroy's 1995 work American Tabloid, and Stephen King's 2011 time travel novel . The assassination has also been featured in several musical compositions, such as Igor Stravinsky's 1964 piece Elegy for J.F.K. and Phil Ochs' 1966 song " Crucifixion", which reportedly brought Robert Kennedy to tears. Other songs include " Abraham, Martin and John" (1968) and Bob Dylan's " Murder Most Foul" (2020).

Artifacts, museums, and locations today

An "X" in the Dealey Plaza roadway marks where the fatal bullet struck Kennedy.[328]

In 1993, the National Park Service designated Dealey Plaza, the surrounding buildings, the overpass, and a portion of the adjacent railyard as a National Historic Landmark District. The Depository and its Sixth Floor Museum, operated by the city of Dallas, draw over 325,000 visitors annually.

The Boeing 707 that served as Air Force One at the time of the assassination is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force; Kennedy's limousine is at the Henry Ford Museum. The Lincoln Catafalque, on which Kennedy's coffin rested in the Capitol, is exhibited at the Capitol Visitor Center. Jacqueline's pink suit, autopsy X-rays, and President Kennedy's blood-stained clothing are in the National Archives, with access controlled by the Kennedy family. Other items in the Archives include Parkland Hospital trauma room equipment; Oswald's rifle, diary, and revolver; bullet fragments; and the limousine's windshield. The Texas State Archives preserve Connally's bullet-punctured clothes; the gun Ruby used to kill Oswald came into the possession of Ruby's brother Earl, and was sold in 1991 for $220,000 (equivalent to $439,000 in 2022).

At the direction of Robert F. Kennedy, some items were destroyed. The casket in which Kennedy's body was transported from Dallas to Washington was dropped into the sea, because "its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy".

Notes and references

1. ^ This photo and a similar one are known as the "backyard photographs"; according to Bugliosi, it is one of the pieces of evidence most damning for Oswald. Oswald told Dallas police that the photographs were not genuine and that someone must have superimposed his head. Marina Oswald testified that she took the pictures.

2. In 1964, KGB Agent ^ Yuri Nosenko defected to the United States. He divulged that Soviet intelligence surveilled Oswald, regarded him as mentally unstable, and had no association with him. Although the FBI trusted Nosenko, the CIA believed that he was a mole and convinced the Warren Commission not to interview him.

3. ^ Jack Dougherty, the only witness who saw Oswald enter the Depository on the morning of the assassination, testified to the Warren Commission that he did not remember seeing Oswald with any package. Bugliosi questioned his reliability as a witness: Dougherty's father told FBI agents on November 23 that his son "had considerable difficulty in coordinating his mental facilities with his speech".

4. Bugliosi notes that Lee Bowers Jr. did not mention the "commotion" in an earlier affidavit, in which Bowers did take time to list all other suspicious happenings like circling vehicles with "^ Goldwater for '64" stickers. Moreover, conspiracy theorist Jim Moore questions whether Bowers could even have seen the area. Bowers testified that he "threw [the] red-on-red [signal]" just after the fatal shot, but the grassy knoll was partially obstructed from Bowers' position at the work panel.

5. ^ Lieutenant Day of the Dallas police examined the weapon prior to its seizure by the FBI. He found and photographed fingerprints on the trigger housing. Although Day believed the prints to be those of Oswald's right middle and ring fingers, the ridges were not clear enough to make a positive identification. Day then discovered a palm-print on the barrel underneath the wooden stock. He tentatively identified it as Oswald's, but was not able to photograph or analyze it in more depth as the FBI took the Carcano. In D.C., FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona found the photographs and extant prints to be "insufficient" as to make any conclusion. The rifle was returned to the Dallas police on November 24. Five days later, the FBI made a positive identification using a card from Day.

6. In 1973, due to Floridians' discontent with the change, Florida Governor ^ Reubin Askew mandated that Cape Kennedy be referred to as Cape Canaveral on all state documents and maps. The U.S. Board of Geographic Names accepted the name change later that year.

Works cited

Government and institutional documents and reports

Hoover, J. Edgar (December 1, 1963). Reaction of Soviet and Communist Party Officials to JFK Assassination (PDF) (Report). National Archives.

Warren, Earl (1964). Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. United States Government Printing Office. ASIN B0065RJ63E.

Clark, Ramsey (1968). 1968 Panel Review of Photographs, X-Ray Films, Documents and Other Evidence Pertaining to the Fatal Wounding of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas (Report). United States Government Printing Office.

Stokes, Louis (1979). Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (Report). United States Government Printing Office. Archived from the original on April 3, 2020.

Assassination Records Review Board (September 30, 1998). "Chapter 1: The Problem of Secrecy and the JFK Act" (PDF). Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board. United States Government Printing Office. p. 6. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 11, 2021.

Report of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics. National Research Council. 1982. doi:10.17226/10264. ISBN 9780309253727. Archived from the original on December 6, 2013.

Assassination Records Review Board (September 30, 1998). Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board (PDF) (Report). United States Government Printing Office. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 11, 2021.

Warren Commission documents, exhibits, and testimonies

Journal articles

News publications and websites

External links

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Assassination of John F. Kennedy - Wikipedia

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On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by former U.S.

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1962

"We choose to go to the Moon."

The Soviet Union launched the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space on April 12, 1961. Within days of the Soviet achievement, President John F. Kennedy asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to identify a "space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win." A little over a month later, on May 25, 1961, Kennedy stood before a joint session of Congress and called for human exploration to the Moon.

July 20, 1969

"The Eagle has landed!"

After four days traveling to the Moon, the Lunar Module Eagle, carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. Neil Armstrong exited the spacecraft and became the first human to walk on the moon. As an estimated 650 million people watched, Armstrong proclaimed "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Michael Collins stayed aboard the Command Module Columbia, serving as a communications link and photographing the lunar surface.

How We Saw Neil Armstrong's First Steps

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1962 The Soviet Union launched the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space on April 12, 1961. Within days of the Soviet achievement, President John F. Kennedy asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to identify a "space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win."