Cuban Missile Crisis Vs. the Salem Witch Trials

The way many events in the world today are depicted although entertaining and good news stories are not necessarily true. We must go beyond the news and find the real facts of what happened before jumping to conclusions and panicking. As with all popular culture people believe what the news tells them, whether it is true or not, it is a crucial that the true facts are provided to prevent events of mass hysteria such as the Salem Witch Trials and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Salem Witch Trials in “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller and the Cuban Missile Crisis are both great examples of widespread panic leading to mass hysteria, major events of chaos in history, and two situations that eventually were resolved whether the outcome was bad or good.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Salem Witch Trials are two instances of mass hysteria in history. To begin, the United States had never had a communist country near it’s borders and with the Soviet Union constructing Nuclear Launch sites in Cuba “the imminent threat of nuclear war had never seamed so near to home”(McConnell 13). In the Salem witch trials the people of Salem had never before dealt with any instances of the devil in their town until this time, when the girls of the town began to claim that they were bewitched. Many of the events in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Salem Witch Trials could have been completely avoided if there had been more honest people at the time. If the girls from Salem had admitted that they were not possessed by Lucifer and that they were just faking it to get back at someone there would never have been the Salem Witch Trials and innocent people would not have been hanged. If the United States, Soviet, and Cuban governments had been honest with each other during and before the Cuban Missile Crisis there is a very strong possibility that none of it would have ever happened. To conclude, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Salem Witch Trials are two obvious events of mass hysteria in history.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Salem Witch Trials had very in depth stories on their causes and also on what really happened. The Cuban Missile crisis is the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear war. When the Soviets installed nuclear missiles just 90 miles of the coast of the United States in Cuba U.S. armed forces were put at their highest state of readiness. The United States government insisted that the missiles were placed in Cuba as offensive weapons. The government officials “justified every move by the United States with the charge that the missiles Cuba received were offensive weapons” (Cannon 153). But, as Fidel Castro Stated “’A knife in the hands of one of the Playa Giron invaders is an offensive weapon’, Fidel said over television at the height of the crisis, making the point that it is the use to which a weapon is put that makes it offensive. In real life one must consider to what actual purpose the Cuban missiles were installed, not merely what was possible” (Cannon 153). When examining all sources it is hard not to wonder if maybe the United States did over react and that the missiles were only there for Cuba to use as defensive weapons.