Here’s a good weekend read for students of history. Days ago, the German newspaper Die Welt reported on documents newly-released by the German Intelligence Service which reveal that during the period leading up to and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro sought to circumvent dependence on Soviet military aid and training by hiring former Nazis and by purchasing German-made weapons. Furthermore, documents released by the estate of Stalin’s former envoy to Cuba reveal deep concern in the Kremlin about allowing nuclear weapons to fall into Castro’s hands.
The report by Die Welt’s Sven Felix Kellerhoff starts off this way:
The revolutionary leader wanted to keep Soviet tactical nuclear weapons, and was angry at the Kremlin.
Never was the world as close to a nuclear war as at the end of October, 1962. The Soviet Union had stationed medium-range missiles in Cuba and was preparing them to be fired; in Washington, U.S. generals planned air strikes against these positions and a subsequent invasion of the island. Published before the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, newly-released documents show that the situation was far more explosive than previously assumed, because Fidel Castro was playing his own game. This may well have worsened already-dangerous tensions between the U.S. and the USSR.
At the height of the crisis, on October 26, 1962, the German Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND) in Pullach learned that Castro had recruited former members of the Waffen-SS. According to the report, the men were instructed to come to the Caribbean to be instructors for the Cuban military. Former German paratrooper officers and technical troops – so-called pioneers – were also welcome. The pay offered was approximately four times more than the average German income: around 1000 deutsche marks in Cuban currency a week [about $4000 in 1962 dollars], and the mercenaries were to receive another 1000 deutsche marks in the Western currency of their choice, payable to any European bank account. Up to the time of the BND report, four former SS-men had accepted the offer, although only two can be shown to have reached Cuba. Bodo Hechelhammer, director of historical investigations at the BND, concludes: “This shows clearly that the Cuban revolutionary army had little fear of recruiting staff with a Nazi past when it served their own cause.”
READ ON IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US