The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust

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The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust by Robert L. O'Connell is an alternative history essay in which the 1962 Cuban missile crisis developed into war. The essay was published in What Ifs? of American History, edited by Robert Cowley.

War breaks out after a senior Soviet naval captain uses a "nuclear torpedo" against the USS Randolph off the Cuban coast on October 27, 1962. (Soviet authorities had earlier decided that senior captains could fire such torpedoes in certain circumstances without first obtaining authorisation from higher up; this is the "what if" detail which could have altered history as we know it.) The US immediately initiates airstrikes upon the Soviet missile bases inside Cuba, which succeed in destroying most, but not all, of the completed missiles. Two remaining Soviet missiles are launched from Cuba, apparently by local commanders exercising their own launch authorities granted from Moscow rather than on a specific order approved by Moscow. The lone functioning missile destroys Washington, D.C. and kills President John F. Kennedy, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, and most other key decision-makers.

This act seals the Soviet Union's doom: had Kennedy survived, he might have ordered a measured response; since he didn't, surviving American generals at NORAD, upon learning that the US was under nuclear attack and that the National Command Authority was defunct, initiate the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), which orders a full-scale response before the Soviet leadership is even able to understand what has happened in Washington and begin their own strategic responses. Key Soviet strategic commands are destroyed within minutes, crippling the USSR's ability to respond to the US attack, but the immense reserves of US nuclear warheads in 1962 ensures that retaliation continues well past the destruction of any Soviet military capacity. In the course of The Two Days' War, Cuba is completely destroyed, with 95% of its population being killed; heavy radiation spreads throughout the Caribbean and also damages southern Florida. The Soviet Union is also destroyed, not just militarily crushed, with some 80-90% of its population perishing in the nuclear attacks themselves and the ensuing large-scale famines and radiation sickness. The East European countries are also severely damaged and lose a large part of their populations.

The aftermath of the war results in severe, though temporary, environmental changes due to nuclear fallout. Famines occur in India and China and severe food shortages occur in Europe and North America. The US soon comes to be viewed as malefactor rather than victim, and eventually becomes completely isolated and ostracised in the post-war world and is accused of having perpetrated genocide, the "Second Holocaust" of the title. The situation is exacerbated by Richard Nixon being elected president in 1964, refusing to make any apology and also refusing to give up nuclear arms as required by a treaty signed in Geneva by all other surviving nations on Earth. NATO collapses with all other members leaving, and the United States leaves the United Nations, where resolutions were adopted accusing it of war crimes; the United States orders the UN to leave New York City. Eugene McCarthy, elected president by a landslide in 1968, offers partial concessions which fail to satisfy the rest of the world.

The story is presented as a summary of the report prepared by a high-level US commission of inquiry which thoroughly investigated the course of the war and how it came to have such a horrific result, and reached the conclusion that the US must give up its nuclear arms in order to be re-accepted in the International Community.

After years of being classified it is presented to the public by Newt Gingrich, who in this history is the Chief Archivist of the US and who had never gone into politics.

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