Explain how and why the Cuban Missile Crisis almost resulted in WWIII.

The Cuban Missile crisis was perhaps the closest the world has gone to the point of all out nuclear war, and for 13 days in October the world was watching a dangerous game of ideological brinkmanship. The intensity of the situation was probably best described by Soviet General and Army Chief of Operations, Anatoly Gribkov as, "nuclear catastrophe was hanging by a thread ... and we weren't counting days or hours, but minutes." The trigger for the …

…be removed. The Soviet ships turned back and on October 28 Khrushchev announced that he had ordered the removal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Satisfied that the Soviets had removed the missiles, President Kennedy ordered an end to the quarantine of Cuba on November 20. As part of the deal he agreed not to invade Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro and to withdraw the US tactical nuclear missiles from Turkey. The crisis had been safely averted.