History 156 13: Camelot and the Sixties

1. History 156 13: Camelot and the Sixties “Camelot,” performed by Richard Burton, 1960

2. President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) • A Democrat, but a fierce cold warrior • At 43, youngest elected president in history (TR had been 42, but not elected) • First Catholic president

3. The Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960, the first of a long-line of image-conscious televised presidential debates where style will often outweigh substance

4. The rain may never fall till after sundown.By eight, the morning fog must disappear.In short, there's simply notA more congenial spotFor happily-ever-aftering than hereIn Camelot. American royalty, John and Jacqueline Kennedy King Arthur (Richard Burton) and Queen Guinevere (Julie Andrews) in the hit Broadway musical, Camelot

5. John F. Kennedy’s younger brother, Robert, briefly joined Joseph McCarthy’s Senate investigative committee, though he later resigned because he was disturbed by McCarthy’s tactics

6. Senator Kennedy’s 1956 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage—“more the work of a ‘committee’ than of any one person,” but JFK received the prize and the political accolades

7. Photo from a 1957 Life magazine spread suggesting that JFK (who is throwing the football to his brother Robert) was fit and youthful

8. Kennedy in 1961 after lifting a shovel of dirt exacerbated his chronic back problems

9. Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense) and Dean Rusk (Secretary of State)—the “best and the brightest”?

10. Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Stalinism and Stalin’s crimes during the 20th Soviet Congress in 1956 • Despite considerable resistance within the Kremlin, Khrushchev attempts to improve relations with the United States • Builds up considerable trust for Eisenhower, who he considered a friend • U-2 incident in 1960 derails progress toward detente, as do growing tensions over Berlin

11. Popular magazine article on JFK’s flexible solution to Cold War Containment: Special Forces or Green Berets, 1961

12. Fulgencio Batista, a former elected president of Cuba who then led a military coup in 1952 that made him the dictator of the nation

13. Fidel Castro, the fiery young Cuban nationalist and revolutionary who led the widely supported popular revolt against Batista in the late 1950s

14. Castro addresses an enthusiastic crowd of Cubans in May of 1961

15. Cuban tanks and planes meet the Bay of Pigs invaders, April 15, 1961

16. Kennedy and Khrushchev meet in person for the first time in Vienna, June 1961—Khrushchev’s belief that he can push around the young president heightens tensions over the issue of Berlin

17. The Berlin Wall goes up, August 1961

18. One American response to growing tensions with USSR in the early 1960s: Atlas nuclear warhead rockets in underground silos of hardened concrete strong enough to withstand a first-strike nuclear attack

19. American submarine with open launch tubes for carrying Polaris missiles, which could be equipped with nuclear warheads

20. Family fun time in a backyard bomb/radiation shelter

21. School children practicing the “Duck and Cover” atomic bomb Civil Defense drill

22. Frame timber house built to study the effects of atomic blasts on civilian populations, Nevada Test Site, June 1953

25. American U-2 spy photo of the Cuban atomic missile base, October 14th 1962

26. “Every idiot can start a war, but it is impossible to win this war . . . therefore the missiles have one purpose—to scare them, to restrain them . . . to give them back some of their own medicine. The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at them.” --Nikita Khrushchev, 1962 Soviet Union Previously classified U.S. government map showing the 1962 deployment of American atomic missiles in Turkey, immediately south of the Soviet Union

27. Robert Kennedy John Kennedy Ex-Comm (Executive Committee) meeting during Cuban Missile Crisis, October 14-27, 1962

28. October 22, 1962, JFK goes on national television to tell the American people of the Cuban crisis and his plans for a naval “quarantine” and demand for immediate removal of the missiles

29. One of the Soviet submarines surfacing near the quarantine line about 500 miles off the Cuban coast

30. Khrushchev’s long (eight pages) and emotional letter to JFK, writing “We are of sound mind and understand perfectly well that if we attack you, you will respond the same way.” Khrushchev offers to withdraw the missiles if JFK ends the blockade and promises not to invade Cuba.

31. New recruits to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam

32. American “advisors” and pilots evacuate ARVN soldiers from a jungle outpost

33. An American officer leading ARVN soldiers into battle, c. 1963

34. One of Diem and Nhu’s ill-advised Strategic Hamlets, 1963

35. American schematic of the general design for Strategic Hamlets

36. Ngo Dinh Nhu, Diem’s brother and head of Secret Police, c. 1960

37. Madame Nhu on the cover of Life magazine, 1963, and practicing her aim