Crisis over Berlin and Bay of pigs

by Silvia Verdoglia

The 1960 Presidential election led Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy to the white house and soon after his inauguration in 1961, the new president faced two great international crisis one after another.
Just two year before, the revolutionary Fidel Castro had established a Communist government in the island of Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida.
Former president Eisenhower had recognized the new government, since Castro had promised democracy t his followers, but soon the reality about his plan was known, when the Cuban leader put under his government's control a lot of farms and American and British owned oil refineries.
On the top of that, Castro required soon the Soviet Union's aid.
This new regime led about 10% of the people to leave their country and reach the United States.
Here, soon CIA, under the Eisenhower administration, started a program to train them as an army to invade Cuba and defeat Castro.
However, after his election, Kennedy found out about the program just a few days before it was put into action and he had to approve it.
Unfortunately, the plan failed: many of the Cuban exiled soldiers were killed, or captured the Cuban air force resisted the attacks and the group that should have assassinated Castro never arrived to his destination.
The disaster became famous as the Bay of Pigs, the name of the place where American boats arrived.
President Kennedy took responsibility for the failure, so even if what happened signed a big victory for Communism and would led to the Crisis of Cuban missile, it increased the young President's popularity.

He also negotiated with Castro to have the CIA trained Cuban exiled back in the US and promised them to free their home state.

In the same time, another crisis was taking place, on the other side of the world.

After World War II Germany was divided into four zones controlled by the allies and the capital city, Berlin, was not an exception.

By the '60s, the United States, France and Great Britain had left Germany, with the hope to reunite the country and help its economic growth, but the Soviet Union did not.

Eastern Germany was loosing all its professional class, since 20% of the people (3 millions) were escaping in Western Germany, reporting the failure of the Communist government.

To find a compromise to the will of Kruschev to close the access to Berlin, in June 1961 President Kennedy went to Vienna and met Nikita Kruschev, the Soviet prime minister.

The American president was trying to keep an access open to help the Germans but just a few months after, on August 13rd 1961, Kruschev ordered the construction of the Berlin wall, who would divide Germany until Novmeber 9, 1989.

This second victory of the Communism increased the already great tension of the Cold War.