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Fidel and Raul Castro, with 123 rebel fighters, assaulted Moncada Barracks and lost the battle. Fidel’s second-in-command was executed along with several other rebels, and Fidel was imprisoned with the rest.
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Fidel was sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison. However, he only spent 2 years in prison since Cuba’s government was pressured to release him and the rest of Cuba’s political prisoners in 1955.
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Fidel and Raul fled to Mexico where they joined forces with the local exiles and revolutionaries. They formed the ‘26th of July Movement’ in reference to their attack on Moncada Barracks.
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Fidel and his revolutionary group were attacked by Cuba’s military. Only one fourth of the original 82 men survived the military attack, and the survivors ended up wandering the mountains looking for each other.
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Fidel joined up with Raul and the rest of the survivors of the attack to build a small army within the mountains. They would then attack small towns and squads of military personnel over the next few years.
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A separate group of revolutionaries, composed mostly of college students, assaulted the palace in Havana and attempted to assassinate the president and overthrow the government. They failed miserably and all the survivors fled.
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The U.S pulled out of Cuba and withdrew support for the president. As a result of this, many Cubans lost support for the president as well and left to join the 26th of July Movement.
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The Castro brothers gained full control of the mountains using execution and propaganda - notably the ‘Rebel Radio’, set up by an acquaintance of Fidel’s, and designed to give information about the rebel's victories, defeats, etc.
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Operation Verano was launched in 1958 by the Cuban government. This was an event where 12,000 soldiers, half of them untrained, were sent to defeat Castro’s 200 men in the mountains. The government was utterly defeated, Castro’s forces lost only 3 men.
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On July 29, Cuba’s soldiers pinned down and nearly defeated the rebels. In a cease fire where negotiations were to take place, Castro’s men escaped back into the mountains and Operation Verano was perceived as a failure.
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Finally, the revolutionaries took over most of Cuba. The president, hearing that the rebels were approaching, fled to the Dominican Republic. The rebels stormed Havana and assumed full control over Cuba, where they began constructing a new Communist government and executing war criminals.
