A question about the movie 13 Days

Cafe Society
1

Just watched this movie again for the first time in ages, there is one scene that had me wondering. I assume this incident actually occurred in reality as the movie was based off audio tapes recorded during the crisis (well the movie was based of a book based off the audio tapes to be precise…I know what this place is like) :wink:

Anyway, throughout the movie the military is depicted as pushing for a military response to the crisis and in fact even attempting to manufacture a casus belli to justify launching one, and one of the most prominent of these hawks is depicted as General Curtis LeMay.

However at a critical moment a U2 pilot has been shot down and killed, the military and others are again pushing for a retalitory strike against the SAM site, President Kennedy is under pressure but does not agree to the strike, there is a moment of tension where things could go either way but at this point General LeMay speaks up only to agree with President Kennedy that they should not immediately retaliate and they will simply get the SAM site later during the planned airstrikes and invasion.

Unless I’m missing something this goes against everything LeMay had been pushing with the other military leaders all along and I’m wondering what the rationale behind it was? He had the perfect opportunity to start the war he seemed to want but passed it up.

2

Not really, if he assumed a war was a foregone conclusion no need to show their hand too soon. As he said they will get it later anyway.

3

Thanks, that makes sense, it was a tactical error on his part though because he didn’t get the war he apparently wanted.

Though I don’t know enough about the subject to say how accurate the civilian/military split shown in the movie was.

4

I encourage you to read Robert Kennedy’s Thirteen Days, and Graham Allison’s The Essence of Decision - both good books about the Cuban Missile Crisis; the first obviously by the President’s brother, who lived through it as a member of EXCOMM.

The movie isn’t entirely historically accurate, but it’s true that JFK was under pretty steady pressure from the military to take a more aggressive approach. Because he felt he’d been burned by their bad advice on the Bay of Pigs early the year before, Kennedy was a bit more skeptical than he might have been otherwise, and thus we didn’t endure World War III in October 1962.

When one general (it might’ve been LeMay) assured the President that the Soviets wouldn’t respond if he bombed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, JFK grimly joked to another advisor, saying something to the effect of, “If he’s wrong, he’ll never have to apologize, because we’ll all be dead.”