The Cuban Missile crisis was perhaps the closest the world has gone to the point of all out nuclear war, and for 13 days in October the world was watching a dangerous game of ideological brinkmanship. The intensity of the situation was probably best described by Soviet General and Army Chief of Operations, Anatoly Gribkov as, "nuclear catastrophe was hanging by a thread ... and we weren't counting days or hours, but minutes."
The trigger for the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when reconnaissance photos taken by the United States of Cuba showed a significant Soviet build-up of strategic missiles. …
