CHH712 The Cold War, Part 3: Paying any Price 1961-1969

In his inaugural address in January 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that the United States was prepared to ‘bear any burden … to assure the survival and the success of liberty’. As Part 3 of the Cold War series will demonstrate, that commitment would lead the US and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war, and take America into Vietnam. The main developments in the Communist world in this decade was the growing rift between China and the Soviet Union, and the crushing of the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968. More hopefully, there was friendly competition in the so-called ‘Space Race’, also inaugurated by John F. Kennedy, to take a man to the moon.