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

Tom lived in western Poland in an area that had been part of Germany until the end of World War 2. He describes how his grandmother settled...

On 1 July 1960, a United States RB-47H reconnaissance plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing signals...

Honecker emerged as an ambitious political player and became the shadowy mastermind behind the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a...

Tom Sullivan was a tank platoon commander in Korea in the early 1980s responsible for six tanks and their crewWe hear why he joined the US...

In February 1983 US soldier Manuel Alzager was sent to a mysterious posting to the British Zone in the north of West Germany a long way...

Now have you ever heard of Dickey Chapelle? No, I hadn’t either, but I’m delighted to bring you the unknown story of this trailblazing...

I speak with author Ethan Scheiner whose book “Freedom to Win” describes the gripping story of a group of small-town young men who would...

The BBC Wartime Broadcasting Service (WTBS) is a little-known piece of Cold War history that would have been for many the last human voice...

Jonny Whitlam has been a Berlin tour guide since 2010, and since then he’s been showing travellers from across the world the fascinating...

South Africa in the 1980s is a brutal, racist Apartheid regime. Those who oppose it risk their lives. Apartheid was a system of...

South Africa in the 1980s is a brutal, racist regime. Those who oppose it risk their lives.Sue Dobson, was a young white South African...

In November of 1982, at the height of the Cold War, Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old girl from Manchester, Maine, wrote to the Soviet leader...

Communist Poland had universal conscription and the armed forces were huge by contemporary standards. The Polish People’s Army, Navy, and...

It’s 1966 in Berlin and the city has now been divided for 5 years by an almost impenetrable wall erected by the communist German Democratic...

Colonel Terry Chester’s flying career spanned some 42 years, and 10,000 flying hours. He joined the RCAF in Sept 1964 and in 1968 was...

The second part of Svetlana’s story starts shortly after her arrival in West Germany with her husband Oleg who is the Chief Editor of the...

Svetlana came from a dissident Jewish family opposed to Soviet rule in Latvia. Her parents survived World War 2, but during the Stalin era...

We continue Steffen’s story where he tells of serving in three armies – firstly, the NVA, secondly the East German Army between the first...

Steffen was born in Karl Marx Stadt and was conscripted into the NVA (East German Army) in 1988.When he left school he started an...

During the Cold War, the awesome power of nuclear weapons and its deadly fallout meant that every town, village and home in Britain fell...