Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY Times

The British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) is the Charity for UK Nuclear Veterans and last year they very kindly invited me to...

In 1982 the East German Ministry for State Security is hunting for creative new weapons in the war against the class enemy – and their...

The phrase “history is human” was coined by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough. He says “History is...

Frank Baldwin was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1979 and served for ten years, rising to the rank of Major. The first...

When the Cold War split Berlin in half, between East and West, one neighbourhood was trapped in the middle and became a symbol of Cold War...

You will remember Karl-Heinz from our episode 218 where he talked about being a signaller on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" in the...

Karl-Heinz served in the Bundesmarine as a Signalman on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" in the late 70s. He talks of his training, his...

After service in the US Army during the Vietnam War Bob Wallace was recruited into the CIA. In the CIA his initial assignments were as a...

Bob Wallace joined the US Army in 1968 as a reluctant conscript. He describes the draft process, and his attempts to avoid conscription....

Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate,...

Today’s episode is different. Brett Elliott died earlier this year and I was contacted by his ex-wife Polly who offered me a cassette tape....

John Andrews joined the Royal Navy in 1981 and went on to serve aboard the HMS Repulse, one of the UK’s Polaris nuclear missile submarines...

I speak with Colin Ferguson a veteran from the British Army‘s covert Special Observation Post Troop which was founded in 1982.The "stay...

Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania,...

On 17 July 1975 the first manned international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union. Millions of...

Now, what do you think of when you hear the name Leonid Brezhnev who ruled the Soviet Union for 18 years from the 1960s to the 1980s? An...

Fred Weir was a third-generation red diaper baby from Toronto and a long-time member of the Communist Party. His uncle, trained at the...

For almost half a century, the hottest front in the Cold War was right across Berlin. From summer 1945 until 1990, spying was part of...

In 1985, an eighteen-year-old named Riho Terras arrived at the Soviet armed forces’ large conscript assessment facility in Tallinn obeying...

I talk with the writers and editors of Terrorism in the Cold War a new two volume book that uses a wide range of case studies including...