te that was an ally of the USSR. Kennedy and other Western leaders protested, but the wall was built. Kennedy had already asked for more military spending and had called up reserve troops for duty in Europe. When East German soldiers began blocking the Allied route through East Germany into Berlin, Kennedy sent a force of 1500 soldiers marching along the route into West Berlin. The troops went uncontested. Communist interference stopped, allowing Allied forces travel to and from Berlin. Amongst other problems President Kennedy faced, none was more serious than this one. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the world's closest approach to nuclear war. In 1960 Soviet Premier Khrushchev decided to supply Cuba with nuclear missiles that would put the eastern United States within range of nuclear missile attack. Khrushchev, when asked, denied that any missiles were being supplied to Cuba, but in the summer of 1962 U.S. spy planes flying over Cuba photographed Soviet-managed construction work and spotted the first missile on October 14. For seven days President Kennedy consulted secretly with advisers, discussing the possible responses while in public his administration carried on as though nothing was wrong. Finally, on October 22, Kennedy told the nation about the discovery of the missiles, demanded that the Soviet Union remove the weapons, and declared the waters around Cuba a quarantine zone. Kennedy called upon Khrushchev 12"to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations" and warned that an attack from Cuba on any nation in the western hemisphere would be considered an attack by the USSR on the United States itself. At the same time, United States troops were sent to Florida to prepare for invading Cuba, and air units were alerted. American vessels blockaded Cuba with orders to search all suspicious-looking Soviet ships and ...
