Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.

FIDEL CASTRO

Fidel Castro, center, with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces at his base of operations at the Australia Sugar Refinery in Jaguey, near Playa Giron, during the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. (AP Photo/Str) — Fidel Castro, Mitte, spricht mit Angehoerigen der Revolutionsarmee auf seiner Kommandobasis, der Australia Zuckerraffinerie bei Playa Giron, Jaguey zur Zeit der Invasion der Schweinebucht, im April 1961. (AP Photo/Str).