the 60s

The Cuban Missile Crisis

I was in Europe at the time of the crisis. I had gone there as a break from college, and was working at the time as a laborer, helping to construct a house in Hamburg, Germany. Since I was in a foreign country, I did not keep up with current events, except for sometimes reading a weekly newsmagazine. I remember seeing headlines in a German newspaper about “bomben” (bombs), but I didn’t know what it was about. But when I arrived at work, everyone told me about it and explained that the world was close to war. Since I was American, they seemed to assume that I would know all about it, and they kept asking me questions which I couldn’t answer. After that, I saw the effect the crisis had in a country whose fate was tied to that of the United States. I didn’t get the feeling that they were watching something happening which was far away, but instead that we were all in danger. By the time I was able to read about the events in English, the worst...