Harold MacMillan's War of Dissuasion

Macmillan, who became the British Prime Minister in the 1950s, paid great attention to cultivating good relations between Britain and the United States. He loved America and was close to Kennedy.

In World War II, MacMillan went to North Africa to serve as Eisenhower's resident minister for the Allied Forces. MacMillan later said: "I was like Eisenhower's son, so my relationship with Kennedy was also unusual." He also often told American leaders that his mother was American, and the reason why he liked the United States was because of his blood. relationship. If a full-scale war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union, the impact on him would be unimaginable.

McMillan's ambiguous attitude towards the crisis was revealed in an unpublished document at the time. The document, marked top secret, recorded the content of a meeting of senior British generals held on October 27, less than a day after MacMillan received Kennedy's call. In the document, which is kept at the National Archives in London, a defense official told the chief of the air force and navy: "The Prime Minister is very firm that he does not believe that this is the right time to take any obvious military preparatory action, such as A general mobilization. But he wanted the Air Force to take appropriate measures—it was necessary." A transcript of the phone call shows how the older McMillan calmed the younger President Kennedy. They discussed whether military action against the Soviet Union was necessary and whether the United Nations would order the dismantling of military bases in Cuba. MacMillan suggested that if we could get the Soviet Union to stop dangerous actions, in exchange we could temporarily dismantle nuclear bomb bases on British soil.

Few people were more grateful to Prime Minister MacMillan for this advice than former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Peter West. As a young officer, waiting for orders next to fighter jets at weekends, he worried about his family and before the ordeal began, he begged his wife to take their three children to the west of Scotland, away from the air base. Hiding. However, his wife refused. She believes that if the Kremlin were to use nuclear weapons against London and British military bases, the British Isles would not be spared. The young mother decided to stay home and hold her children so they could die together as a family.

Of course, thankfully, such a fate did not happen. It’s just that now we know that I Was Blinking to the End of the World was quietly quelled by Harold MacMillan.