One Minute to Midnight

By Michael Dobbs

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days, veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reveals just how close we came to Armageddon.

Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the handling of Soviet nuclear warheads on Cuba; and the extraordinary story of a U-2 spy plane that got lost over Russia at the peak of the crisis.

Written like a thriller, One Minute to Midnight is an exhaustively researched account of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called “the most dangerous moment in human history,” and the definitive book on the Cuban missile crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 3, 2008
• ISBN: 9780307269362

Michael Dobbs

Bestselling author Michael Dobbs was at Mrs Thatcher’s side as she took her first step into Downing Street as Prime Minister and was a key aide to John Major when he was voted out. In between times he was bombed in Brighton, banished from Chequers and blamed for failing to secoure a Blair-Major television debate. He is now one of the country’s leading political commentators.

Reviews for One Minute to Midnight

[traumleben_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A well researched book that brings new light to a crisis that was mythologized in the immediate aftermath and in the decades following. It gives a very balanced view of events from the three main perspectives: American, Russian, and Cuban. With the addition of declassified US and Soviet records of military activities as well as conversations among senior leadership, we see Kennedy and Kruschchev as the cooler heads who prevailed over institutions that had a lot of inertia moving them towards war. It wasn't the macro level brinksmanship of placing the missiles in Cuba nor the American blockade that brought the world to the brink, but rather several small events beyond anyone's real control that could have triggered a tumble into a nuclear exchange; from a Soviet sub skipper ordering the "lock and load" of a nuclear torpedo to a US U-2 pilot inadvertently straying 300 miles into the USSR at just the wrong time, things could've gone very badly. A final chapter on lessons-learned for the US and USSR would have been interesting, in terms of improved protocols for military encounters at sea, airspace incursions, and direct communications between the heads of state.

[jespercfs2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Never read in detail about the Cuba Crisis. So after reading Dobbs book I actually was a bit shaken.

So many things could have gone wrong, so many things beyond control from JFK or Khrusjtjov, so many close calls, so many series of events having their own life and momentum. The way USAF planes with atomic weapons was dispersed throughout USA on airfields utterly unsuitable for the task. Atomic weapons that could be launched by individuals, not needing a second person or code to confirm. From both sides.

Fortunately common sense prevailed. And, according to Dobbs, both JFK and Khrusjtjov should be credited.

I know, a story has many facets and this is my first and - so far – only book on the subject. And one book may not be enough to get the true picture, if there is a true picture. But still a can’t help thinking: I was born in August 1962 and I could have lived my life in an atomic winther, if my family had survived.

Read the book and draw your own conclusions. Mr. Dobbs writes in a very readable manner and the book is highly recommendable.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One Minute to Midnight is an hour by hour reconstruction of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dobbs has done original archival research and brings to the page new facts never before published. His main thesis is that there was no "eyeball to eyeball and the Soviets blinked", that was propaganda by the Kennedy team. Rather he shows that both sides came closer to war than they realized, were in less control of events then they thought. It's a great lesson of history and instructive about the complexity of events. It leads to the pessimistic conclusion that an accidental nuclear detonation or war was (and still is) very possible.

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent and absorbing piece of work. And although we all know the outcome there is palpable tension and menace in the air as the events unfold. Although I knew the basic facts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were a number of elements that I wasn't aware of and that really surprised me. Firstly, the hungriness for preemptive nuclear strikes from so many of the Excomm - a point of view that seems madness to us with the benefit of hindsight. Whether this was replicated in Moscow we don't know - Dobbs spends more time on the US and even Cuban response, presumably because it is better documented. The second is the potential for random human error to trigger a chain reaction - the world might expect its leaders such as Kennedy and Khrushchev to act responsibility but you can't legislate for Soviet air crews to decide to shoot down an American U2 over Cuba or for another U2 to wander off course over Soviet territory in the Arctic. And the third is how much of the crisis was caused, and resolved by poor communications. The US and Soviet leaders constantly misinterpret each others actions and communiques take hours to be delivered - and yet this leads to a happy conclusion. Its interesting to consider how the crisis might have played out in a modern world of much better communications and less room for creative interpretationI also thought that Dobbs conclusions about how the "success" of the Cuban Missile Crisis informed less successful actions in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf were very well thought through . Highly recommended all round

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a systematic account of the Cuban missile crisis from the American, Soviet and Cuban points of view.  It is hard for those of us born after this time (the 50th anniversary of which is almost upon us) to understand how close the world came to nuclear destruction, especially on so called Black Saturday, 27 October 1962. Leading figures seriously wondered whether they would live to see another dawn. What emerges clearly, despite their faults and weaknesses, is the essential humanity and statesmanship of both Jack Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchov. Both had seen warfare at first hand and were ultimately determined that they would not destroy future generations by allowing nuclear weapons to be used first by their respective countries and thereby condemn the rest of the world as well as their opponents. Kennedy was held back by the belligerence of many of the top military echelon, especially Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, who openly advocated as a matter of general policy a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union; while Khrushchov was held back by the adventurism and rashness of Castro, who saw no reason why nuclear holocaust should not be risked if it meant destruction of American imperialism and who advocated a nuclear first strike by the Soviets to achieve this. Both Kennedy and Khrushchov were held back more generally by the mad logic of nuclear deterrence and international diplomacy which permitted no admission of weakness or public backing down. On Black Saturday, a US plane accidentally entered Soviet airspace without Kennedy's knowledge, while a US reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba without Khrushchov's knowledge, either of which incidents could have triggered off nuclear armageddon.Some of the statistics of the weapons of mass destruction here are astonishingly sobering and horrible - just one Soviet ship (the Aleksandrovsk) heading for Cuba had on it nuclear weapons with the destructive capacity of some 1700 Hiroshima bombs - over three times the total amount of explosive ever detonated in all the wars in human history put together. This book combines horrific details like this together with the personal stories of low level participants on all three sides, in a day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute account that truly brings across the horror of those days when we came closer than ever before or since to the End of the World. 5/5

[beej415 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked this book up because I had very little knowledge of the events that comprised the Cuban Missile Crisis. I really was only expecting a well-written history lesson. What I got was an emotionally engaging and dramatic re-enactment of those thirteen days. Michael Dobbs does an excellent job of creating and maintaining suspense while conveying fact after fact after fact. Sometimes the facts alone sufficed to establish drama, especially where, for example, Dobbs described the amount of firepower available to the United States on the second Sunday of the standoff. "By midday Sunday, [the U.S. Strategic Air Command] would have a 'cocked'--meaning 'ready to fire'--nuclear strike force of 162 missiles and 1,200 airplanes carrying 2,858 nuclear warheads." Add to this the fact that a single warhead carried by a B-52 bomber had a destructive power that was seventy times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the drama is set.The most valuable aspect of the book, and clearly the author's purpose in writing it, was the frequent portrayal of both Krushchev and Kennedy as seeking a peaceful resolution, but clearly and knowingly dealing with problems beyond their immediate control. The description of the hugely inflated times that it took messages to travel through diplomatic channels (many, many hours) demonstrated the point. How were Krushchev and Kennedy going to avoid nuclear war when diplomatic messages took so long to be received, yet missiles were on 15 minute alert? The smallest screw-up by anyone, even down to a soldier or pilot, could ignite the flame that began World War III.The "Afterword" alone is worth reading. In it, Dobbs persuasively argues that many American military decisions since the Cuban Missile Crisis have been premised on a mis-reading of its lessons. According to conventional wisdom, Kennedy's cool, clear decision-making strategy and strong showing of military might forced Krushchev to back down. As the book demonstrates, however, nothing was further from the truth. Yet, we can see remnants of that popular belief in the Vietnam War and even in Iraq.While One Minute to Midnight is not perfect (at times the level of detail is overwhelming and a bit gratuitous), it is an entertaining and eye-opening read about a series of events that brought us one small accident away from nuclear devastation.

[callmecayce · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been listening to this for a few months and I learned a lot. But the thing that struck me is how very, very close we were to the end of the world. At one point, I called up my sister to explain to her exactly just how amazed I was that we were still alive. The reader, Bob Walter, was not great, but he was very good. He conveyed, at least to me, the emotions that Dobbs wrote into the text. I'm glad I read this book, but holy crap. There was a lot I didn't know about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, finally, this isn't a book just about that event, it's about the built up and aftermath, as well as views from the Russians and the Cubans. Dobbs leaves no stone unturned and for that I applaud him.

[keylawk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the single month of October 1962, Fidel Castro, Jack Kennedy, and Nikita Khrushchev nearly annihilated the world in a nuclear conflagration. The Ireland-born American Harvardian scholar-journalist, Michael Dobbs, limns the details and touches upon the background which led to the confrontation.In 1897, the United States invaded the most prosperous island in the Carribean. The invasion of Cuba did result in an expansion of the Middle Classes on the island and one colonial power was removed, but the American invaders had no real plan for what would happen after their “splendid little war”. World politics polarized into Fascist/Marxist factions, and at the turn of the century, fascists took over the island. Cuba became a haven for opportunistic criminals. In the mid-1950's, the island became the target of a hybrid manipulator who now holds the record for longevity among all living dictators.Fidel Castro promised “liberation” from the fascists who were his predecessors. From hideouts in the Sierra Maestro Mountains of eastern Cuba, “Fidelistas” launched an uprising against the 50,000-man army of the dictator, Fulgencia Batista, who fled the island in December 1958. While President Eisenhower was concluding his term, and at the height of the Cold War, Castro received the support of the American government. However, Castro began widespread persecution of his “opposition”. Many Cubans fled the island. Castro broke off relations with the United States which offered refuge to fleeing Cubans, and declared Cuba a Marxist paradise.During the 1960 presidential election, a Democratic Party candidate, Senator Jack Kennedy, used the fact that the Republicans had supported Castro, as a campaign point, and he won the election. The Cuban refugees organized and lobbied for American support of an armed revolt against Castro. In April 1961, with a series of miscalculations and mis-communications, an attack was launched, now known as the “Bay of Pigs”. This infamous example of idealist ineptitude ended in a military disaster for the rebels, largely as a result of the failure of the Kennedy Administration to understand or support the assault. After the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro became convinced that the Yanqui devils and Middle class Cubans whose property he had confiscated, would try again for regime change. At the height of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev, the Chairman of the USSR, rose to power in his country as a provocateur and a bully. Castro turned to the Soviet Union for aid. The United States, after years of NATO and UN discussions, announced that long-range Jupiter missiles would be placed in Turkey. Under cover of denials and secrecy, and after the Bay of Pigs attack, the USSR shipped and deployed both tactical and strategic nuclear missiles into Cuba. In addition, more than 60,000 well-armed Russian soldiers accompanied the warheads. After the war footing on the island was discovered by the Americans, Castro and Khrushchev announced a mutual defense agreement. After claiming himself a nuclear power, in 1962 Castro declared war against the United States. He wrote to Khrushchev, insisting that he launch missiles against cities in the United States due to the “necessity” of a first strike to avert the “inevitable” invasion of his country. The crisis began.Fortunately, Khrushchev and Kennedy were veterans of hostilities and were sane. Their character almost alone averted a nuclear conflagration. [353] In the 46 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis took place, many thousands of books have been written on this subject, and almost all of them agree that the world almost destroyed itself. Most, however, were not written with the full availability of the records and facts which were ventilated by Mr. Dobbs in this work. He read recently-released archives and interviewed eye-witnesses across the linguistic and political barriers. Although US Air Force and Cuban sources remain closed, the CIA and Cuban-American community, and many Russian records have been released. This is the first book written with the benefit of transcripts of secretly recorded meetings in the Kennedy White House. The following are facts and conclusions are among those derived from the details marshaled in this undertaking:__ The idea that President Kennedy heroically confronted Soviet imperialism “eyeball to eyeball” is part of a parochial myth around a President who was murdered in 1963 by a leftist Castro-sympathizer within a year of the Crisis. [343 role of Schlesinger and the lesser acolytes; 345]. (Widely believed accounts never happened; “beliefs are untrue”. Nothing was “brilliantly controlled” [344].)__ The deployment of nuclear weapons in Cuba by the USSR had little strategic impact. [99]__ The USSR deployed fully armed tactical and strategic missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba [124 ff] and on submarines in the Carribean Sea. __ There is no evidence that Kennedy tried to use the mafia to assassinate Castro. (The single source of that myth is Harvey/CIA who hated the Kennedy brothers). [153-155]__ The reason a nuclear bomb was not released during the crisis is the “good luck” that Kennedy and Khrushchev were sane and sufficiently controlled their military forces. [353]__ The exact location of the nuclear war heads in Cuba is revealed, where they were “hidden in plain view”, never discovered by the Americans. [175] (What is in plain view becomes lost for lack of any interest by the so-called experts.)__ The USSR targeted the US base at Guantanamo for a nuclear first strike. [179]__ The US seriously over-estimated the USSR military capability (to justify Pentagon spending) in the world [190], but seriously under-estimated the extent of its deployment in Cuba. (For example, estimating 5000 troops, when in fact there were 40,000. [352]).__ President Kennedy was at all times keenly aware of the limits on his knowledge of the facts and on his power to get things done. [270] This compares with the hubris of President Bush and the chaotic US military operations in Iraq. [347, 348, 350]__ Soviet experts were convinced that the Pentagon was the center of power in the US. [323]__ Who won? Kennedy achieved his basic objective of removing nuclear missiles from Cuba, but within a year was assassinated by a Cuban sympathizer (“Fair Play for Cuba” activist trained in USSR). Khrushchev was removed from his office and forced into retirement by the Kremlin, largely because of his Cuban “adventure”. Castro, whose views were given almost no consideration during the Crisis, obtained a guarantee against invasion [348] and used this to strangle the most prosperous people in the Carribean region under his personal power. He alone survives.__ 1962 marks a turning point in the debate over whether a nuclear war was winnable. [349]__ The Curtis LeMay US Air Force had no fire control system in place for delivery of the many nuclear weapons it acquired and inadequate review of its surveillance products. The process of ramping up for a war footing was accompanied by a series of unintended consequences and risks. [349]__ The US military did not, and President Reagan did not, defeat the USSR; the Soviets defeated themselves. [350] ___ The conventional and institutional wisdom is either wrong or seriously corroded. [354]

[delphica · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm woefully ignorant of much of 20th century history, so occasionally I make tepid attempts to shore that up. This was a fairly comprehensive review of the Cuban Missile Crisis, following an hour by hour format that covered events in Washington DC, Moscow, and Cuba. As one would expect, there is a lot of very specific information about types of missiles and where they were moving to and from. I, um, skimmed over much of this. There was plenty of focus on Kennedy and his administration and how they were dealing with the situation as it unfolded. One key difference between this book and the way the Cuban Missile Crisis is often presented is that Dobbs gives a much more evolving, collaborative picture of how the President and his advisers developed their responses, and in particular, highlights RFK's changing views between the initial discovery of the missiles and the ultimate resolution. Overall, the author credits both JFK and Khrushchev with being thoughtful, responsible leaders who approached their duties to their nations and the international community with gravitas.It also ends with an extremely chilling foreshadowing of the Kennedy assassination (there's no way that's a spoiler, right?) that was probably a little maudlin but really effective anyway. Here I am, reading this entire book and it's the last paragraph that grabs me.There was also an afterword that compares the leadership during the crisis with the Bush administration's actions in the Middle East, and it is not favorable. I could have done without this. I agree, actually, with the assessment but the tone was too shrill and scolding and I felt it took away from the book overall.Grade: BRecommended: It's certainly comprehensive and successfully organizes a great deal of information into a reasonable narrative. People interested in military history will no doubt appreciate the level of detail more than I was able to. There were only a few, very scant, accounts of the response of the general public -- the focus was almost entirely on the military and the political players.(less)

[santhony_35 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was born in 1961, so was only a small child when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. I was only passingly familiar with both the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Missile Crisis prior to reading this book and therefore learned many new and interesting facts. After reading this account, I can only say that it must have been terrifying to have lived through the Crisis, the more you knew, the more frightening it must have been. The world was literally on the door step of a large scale nuclear exchange.Kennedy was a young, inexperienced President, fresh off the Bay of Pigs disaster and having been completely dominated by Khrushchev at their summit in Vienna. He was surrounded by an eclectic crew of advisors, from those equally as naïve and inexperienced as himself (namely his brother Bobby), egghead bureaucrats (such as Robert McNamara) and aging Cold Warriors (LeMay) who were eager for a showdown with the Soviets.Most troubling was the “chain of command” and delegation of authority as a result of which the lowest level bureaucrat or member of the armed forces (on either side) could have triggered a sequence of events leading to ultimate launching of missiles. When a national leader such as Castro and top level U. S. military advisors can be so adamantly in favor of a nuclear exchange, it certainly causes one to reflect upon our current world situation in which unstable democracies such as Pakistan and aspiring nuclear club members such as the theocracy governing Iran and the dysfunctional regime in Pyongyang virtually hold the world hostage through their possession of nuclear material and the devices to deliver them.This book should be required reading for anyone aspiring to leadership of a “nuclear club” member, and anyone dealing with such a member. After reading this book, and reflecting upon the impending nuclear proliferation, I must admit to a high degree of pessimism as it relates to the world’s ability to avoid a nuclear exchange.

[whjensen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Those of us who grew up in the 80's lived with a specter of nuclear war. But that's all it was. For our parents, the defining event of the Cold War will be the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 - a time where people expected war to break out. This event has been studied ad naseum. I spent nearly a quarter in college studying it with a view to games theory - how rational actors can make irrational decisions based on incomplete information. How can anything new be said about it?Well, it turns out that all of us doing the studying were the ones with incomplete information. Michael Dobbs spent two years traveling to Cuba and studying more information - including previously unavailable documentation and interviews from the former Soviet Bloc. The truth is far more frightening than we - or Kennedy - knew. Dobbs reveals such revelations that the Soviets were preparing to destroy Guantanemo Bay with tactical nuclear weapons. Dobbs also makes use of previously classified information to build out the story.So how does he make use of this new information? Dobbs creates a compelling narrative. Not venturing a strong analysis into Kennedy's judgement making process (such as you normally see in Political Science classes using game theory), he does make the point that Kennedy was not as firmly decided as has been portrayed before. In the end, this is a good solid outline of the Crisis, why it happpened, and how both sides went about their decision making process. Dobbs trick? We all know this story but he keeps it moving fast and with new revelations. This is a keeper.

[bezoar44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Narrative history of the Cuban missile crisis that focuses particularly intently on Saturday, October 27. The work reflects impressive historical research and presents new information on Soviet troop placements and the location of nuclear weapons in Cuba. More importantly for a general reader like me, the book does a particularly adept job of tracing the ways events threatened to escape the control of Kennedy and Khrushchev and propel the United States and the USSR into what would have been a devastating war. The book's new historical research reinforces the sense that the world was extraordinarily fortunate to make it through this crisis unscathed.