Cold War Conversations Podcast
Episodes
The first female CIA officer in Cold War Moscow (236)
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Marti Peterson was the first female CIA operative to be assigned to Moscow, probably the most challenging posting during the Cold War. Her story begin...
The 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students in Pyongyang, North Korea (235)
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students was held from 1–8 July 1989 in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. It was the largest international...
Britain’s Cold War Human Chemical Warfare Experiments (234)
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Foulkes was exposed to the deadly nerve agent Sarin in 1983 at the Porton Down Chemical & Biological Defence Establishment., one of the UK's most...
Flying for the CIA's Air America in South East Asia (233)
29 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1964, pilot Captain Hansen found himself unemployed. He began to send out feelers to several companies including one that had placed an ad in the W...
A photojournalist in Cold War Eastern Europe (232)
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
During the 1970s and 1980s, Arthur Grace travelled extensively behind the Iron Curtain, working primarily for news magazines. One of only a small corp...
Escaping from Cold War Romania (231)
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Zsolt Akos Pall was 17 when he decided to flee Cold War Romania for a better life in the West. It’s a heart-warming story of the generosity of str...
A Hungarian childhood in Cold War Romania (230)
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Zsolt Akos Pall was born in a small town in the Hungarian speaking part of Romania. For ordinary people, life in Romania in the 1980s was very hard ...
The shooting down of KAL007, the Able Archer exercise and the nuclear war scare of 1983 (229)
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1983 was one of the most dangerous in human history. While the Cuban crisis was exceptionally dangerous and both the United States and the So...
Charlotte Philby talks about her grandfather Soviet spy Kim Philby & her book "Edith & Kim" (228)
26 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1934, Kim Philby met his Soviet handler, the spy Arnold Deutsch. Kim Philby was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Sovi...
The first woman to graduate from French Commando school (227)
19 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Maura McCormick was posted to Berlin as a Signals Intelligence voice interceptor (Russian). Her workplace was the Teufelsberg U.S. listening station,...
Betrayed by comrades (226)
12 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Liz Kohn has been researching Alice Glasnerová, who was imprisoned as part of the early Cold War Czechoslovak show trials known as the Slansky trials...
My father, the KGB spy (225)
05 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1978, Ieva Lesinska was a university student in Soviet Latvia with dreams of becoming a writer. She had just spent a heady month in New York visiti...
"Three, Two, one, detonation..." a Royal Navy nuclear test veteran remembers (224)
26 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) is the Charity for UK Nuclear Veterans and last year they very kindly invited me to the annual c...
The Stasi Poetry Circle (223)
19 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982 the East German Ministry for State Security is hunting for creative new weapons in the war against the class enemy – and their solution is s...
The start of the Cuban revolution & the launch of Apollo 8 (222)
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The phrase “history is human” was coined by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough. He says “History is about lif...
Cold War British Army fighting tactics in West Germany (221)
12 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Baldwin was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1979 and served for ten years, rising to the rank of Major. The first battlefield study he ...
The West Berlin village surrounded by the Berlin Wall (220)
05 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 tensions. ...
Tales of a West German football fan in the Soviet bloc (219)
29 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
You will remember Karl-Heinz from our episode 218 where he talked about being a signaller on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" in the late 70s. T...
Serving on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" (218)
22 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 role and ...
The CIA director responsible for creating spy devices (217)
15 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 field case ...
Vietnam War draftee to US Army Rangers (216)
08 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Wallace joined the US Army in 1968 as a reluctant conscript. He describes the draft process, and his attempts to avoid conscription. After ba...
Helping the Refuseniks (215)
01 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to ...
Eyewitness to the 1991 Soviet Coup with Brett Elliott (214)
25 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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. Polly...
Working in the nuclear missile compartment of a Cold War Royal Navy Polaris submarine (213)
18 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 from 1982...
British Army "stay behinds" the Special OP Troop (212)
11 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I speak with Colin Ferguson a veteran from the British Army‘s covert Special Observation Post Troop which was founded in 1982. The "stay behind" Sp...
A Cold War childhood in Albania (211)
03 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Sta...
The Cold War handshake in the heavens - the Apollo-Soyuz mission (210)
27 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On 17 July 1975 the first manned international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union. Millions of people around...
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev - aspiring actor and poetry fan (209)
14 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 old guy wa...
Born into a family of Canadian Communists (208)
13 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Lenin School i...
Berlin: Capital of Spies (207)
06 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 everyday life in...
How a Soviet conscript became a NATO General (206)
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1985, an eighteen-year-old named Riho Terras arrived at the Soviet armed forces’ large conscript assessment facility in Tallinn obeying his consc...
Terrorism in the Cold War (205)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Polish Militar...
Emanuela - a Cold War Romanian Childhood (204)
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Emanuela Grama was born in the mid-1970s’ in a small provincial town in Eastern Romania. She provides us with a great insight into life in the Roman...
Pete - a BRIXMIS driver behind enemy lines in East Germany (203)
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Pete Curran served with BRIXMIS, the British Military Liaison Mission in East Germany. Their operation was established by a post-WWII Allied occupatio...
MKUltra - the CIA’s mind control project & the mysterious death of Frank Olson (202)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Olson was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and employee of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. In 1...
Flying into nuclear mushroom clouds (201)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Squadron Leader John Robinson AFC (ret’d) was an RAF pilot who was tasked to fly into the mushroom clouds of nuclear bomb tests to capture samples a...
Life in the underground Soviet music scene Part 3 (200)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We hear of Joanna's heartbreak when her visa is refused, preventing her from marrying Yuri. However, using an ingenious method she manages an emotion...
Life in the underground Soviet music scene Part 2 (199)
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joanna is questioned by the KGB and the FBI, falls in love with Yuri and starts to smuggle the bands' music out of the Soviet Union to produce the al...
Life in the underground Soviet music scene Part 1 (198)
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joanna Stingray was only 23 years old when she first set foot in the USSR and started meeting now-legendary musicians and artists of the Soviet underg...
Popular Cold War culture of the 1980s (197)
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past, nearly two decades, the Stuck in the 80s podcast has emerged as the go-to for all aspects of 1980s nostalgia from a North American poin...
Soviet and U.S. Military Liaison Missions & US Counterintelligence SOXMIS & USMLM (196)
03 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I speak with Aden Magee who operated as the commander of a highly specialized Counterintelligence (CI) unit in West Germany during the last decade of ...
Ron - a veteran of the Korean War & the Malayan Emergency (195)
27 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ron Knight served in the Royal Marines on HMS Belfast during the Korean War of 1950-53. He was a gunner and describes the shore bombardments and how h...
The Gouzenko Affair - the start of the Cold War (194)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Igor Gouzenko exposed Soviet intelligence's efforts to steal nuclear secrets as well as the technique of planting sleeper agents. The "Gouzenko Affair...
Flying the F-111 nuclear bomber (193)
13 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rick Shreve was a USAF F111 pilot based at RAF Lakenheath in the UK. We hear about his early USAF career as a fighter pilot, then we move onto his tra...
The forgotten cosmonaut (192)
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week it's the 60th anniversary of the flight of Gherman Titov on Vostok 2. The forgotten 2nd cosmonaut overshadowed by the exploits of his friend...
A workers view of Poland from Łódź in 1986 (191)
06 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Evan McGilvray has written a number of books on Poland as well as biographies. He is well versed in Poland and Polish society and away from the usual ...
Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin (190)
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On November 18, 1965, U.S. Navy pilot Willie Sharp ejected from his F-8 fighter after being hit while positioned over a target in North Vietnam. With ...
Philippe - A French soldier in Cold War Berlin (189)
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The French Forces in Berlin were the units of the French Armed Forces stationed from 1945 until the end of the Cold War-era in West Berlin according t...
A Czechoslovak family's escape to Austria (188)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We continue Drea Hahn’s story with her family’s escape to Austria and the realities of being a refugee. In 1986, under the pretext of a “ski t...
Drea - A Cold War Czechoslovak childhood (187)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Drea Hahn was born in Czechoslovakia in 1980 in Teplice. Her mother was a secretary and her father was an engineer but refused to join the communist p...
An evening with Kim Philby (186)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Brown is the writer of A Splinter of Ice, a play that portrays the meeting in Moscow in 1987 of one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century,...
Behind enemy lines in East Germany with a US Military Liaison Mission driver Part 2 (185)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We return to the 2nd part of Tom Favia’s story with the US Military Liaison Mission which the Soviet Union permitted to operate in East Germany, ost...
Ethel Rosenberg (184)
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ethel Rosenberg is a controversial figure and generates polarising views varying from an innocent mother caught up in Cold War hysteria to a willing a...
Behind enemy lines in East Germany with a US Military Liaison Mission driver Part 1 (183)
18 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Favia served with the USMLM, The US Military Liaison Mission which the Soviet Union permitted to operate in East Germany at the end of World War 2...
Ralph - A prisoner in an East German jail (182)
11 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is the third and final part of Ralph Hänel’s story of his life in East Germany. In this episode, we hear his time in the Stasi prison in Cottb...
Ralph - Arrested and interrogated by the Stasi (181)
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this second part of Ralph Hänel’s story of his life in East Germany. We hear of Ralph’s arrest by the Stasi and subsequent interrogation for 1...
Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown that Shaped the Modern World (180)
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We speak with author Giles Milton about his new book Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown that Shaped the Modern World. In 1945 at the end of Wo...
Bonus - The state funeral of Josef Stalin (179)
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is sponsored by MUBI, a curated streaming service with an ever-changing collection of hand-picked cinema. From new directors to award-win...
Spy who was left out in the Cold: The Secret History of Agent Goleniewski (178)
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We speak with author Tim Tate about his new book the Spy who was left out in the Cold: The Secret History of Agent Goleniewski Michal Goleniewski rema...
Ralph - DJing and Kung Fu in East Germany (177)
14 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ralph Hänel tells some unique, strange and funny short stories about childhood and youth in East Germany. We talk about the experiences of his pare...
Irish Army peacekeeping in the Lebanon (176)
07 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Adrian Jones was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Irish Army in 1983. As a 23 year old officer he served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Force U...
Codename Hero - Soviet double agent Oleg Penkovsky (175)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1960, a Soviet colonel called Oleg Penkovsky contacted the West to offer to work as a 'soldier warrior for the free world. MI6 and the CIA ...
Korean war veteran & prisoner of war (174)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
70 years ago today would have been the middle of a desperate battle by outnumbered British forces at the battle of the Imjin River in Korea. The Korea...
A journalist in apartheid South Africa (173)
16 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John Matisonn is a South African journalist who grew up in the suburbs in Johannesburg. In 1979 he was sentenced to jail for refusing to reveal his n...
Yuri Gagarin - The first human in space (172)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union’s most powerf...
Confrontation at the Stößensee (171)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1966, a state-of-the-art Soviet aircraft, the Yak-28P crashed into the British Sector of West Berlin. This intelligence gift to the Allied fo...
A 22 year old Briton working in East Germany (170)
27 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We speak with Chris Summers who as a 22 year old was sent by his employers to East Germany in a Ford Escort to install British factory machinery. He p...
Bonus - Soviet Tours (169)
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Soviet Tours is a Berlin-based tour operator focussed on off-the-beaten-path destinations across the globe. Their core area, as the name suggests, l...
Commanding a Cold War Royal Navy Polaris Nuclear Missile Submarine (168)
20 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our conversation with Rob Forsyth continues when he became Executive Officer - and in command on occasions - of HMS Repulse, a Polaris nuclear missile...
Cold War Royal Navy Diesel Submarine officer during the 1960s and 70s (167)
13 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Commander Rob Forsyth joined submarines in1961. By March 1962 as a young officer, he joined HMS Auriga a 1945 vintage diesel submarine. Within 7 month...
Jan - Greenham Common Peace Protester (166)
06 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was a protest camp established in 1981 to protest against the deployment of USAF controlled Ground Launched nuclear...
The China civil war and the independence of Taiwan (165)
27 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The events of 1949 in China reverberated across the world and throughout the rest of the century. That tumultuous year saw the dramatic collapse of Ch...
The Happy Traitor - The Life of Soviet Spy George Blake (164)
20 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed author and journalist Simon Kuper, has written The Happy Traitor, the story of British spy and Soviet Union double agent George Blake, the l...
From Foe to Friend - the British Army in Cold War Germany (163)
13 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Germany has been at the heart of the British Army's story since 1945. After the Second World War, the Army helped rebuild a devastated and divided nat...
On Her Majesty's Cold War Nuclear Submarine Service (162)
06 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Commodore Eric Thompson MBE is the author of the book “On Her Majesty’s Nuclear Service. He is a career nuclear submarine officer who served from ...
Advanced English studies in Moscow during the 1970s and 80s (161)
30 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Vadim was at school in Moscow during the 1970s and 80s. He attended an Advanced English Studies School where all subjects were taught, however the foc...
US Army Intelligence gathering in the unified Germany (160)
23 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We continue the story of Bill, a US Army Intelligence Analyst with Combined Analysis Detachment-Berlin (CAD-B) from episode 127. Germany has now been ...
A freedom fighter in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (159)
16 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie was 19 in 1956. A trip home from work by tram ended up with him being thrust into the heart of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a nationwide ...
Witness to the Eastern Bloc revolutions of the 1980s with Professor Timothy Garton Ash (158)
09 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Timothy Garton Ash is a British historian, author, commentator and Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Professor Garton Ash ...
Ian Black - Flying the English Electric Lightning (157)
02 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Black is a former RAF Fighter Pilot with a passion for photography and motorcycles. He began his flying career with the legendary McDonnell Dougla...
Sovietisation of Estonia (156)
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Zdanowski was born and raised in the UK, but his interest with the Cold War goes back generations. His grandfather having emigrated from Pola...
Deputy Head of UK Mission in East Berlin - Part 2 (155)
26 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is Part 2 of our conversation with Colin Munro who was the British Deputy Head of Mission in East Berlin from 1987 to 1990. In this episode we ...
Deputy Head of UK Mission in East Berlin - Part 1 (154)
19 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Munro was the British Deputy Head of Mission in East Berlin from 1987 to 1990. Although the UK did not recognise East Berlin as part of the GDR ...
Just another day in Vietnam (153)
12 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we talk with Col. Keith Nightingale who served in the US military from 1965 to 1993. He completed two tours of Vietnam; the first as ...
With Solidarity in Gdansk in 1980 (152)
05 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
During her first visit to Poland in 1980, Dr Jacqueline Hayden met the leading members of the free trade union ‘Solidarność’, including the futu...
Sue Boyd - Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in East Berlin (151)
28 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sue Boyd has been the head of Australian diplomatic missions in Fiji, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Bangladesh. She also had postings at the United Nations i...
Cold War Royal Navy submarine missions (150)
21 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak with Ian Ballantyne, the author of “Hunter Killers”, also known as “Undersea Warriors” in the United States. Hunter Killers’ ...
Détente – the chance to end the Cold War (149)
14 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak with Richard Crowder, the author of “Détente – the chance to end the Cold War”. Help support the podcast buy the book here UK ...
Guy Burgess and the Cambridge Spy Ring (148)
07 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of The Cambridge Spies, brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their countr...
A Childhood under the eye of the Secret Police (147)
31 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
At 2 a.m. on 10 March 1983, 12-year-old Carmen Bugan was home alone after her father had left for Bucharest. That afternoon, Carmen returned from scho...
Don - Cold War 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fulda (146)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this second episode with Don Snedeker we talk to him about his time after his tour of Vietnam when he served in West Germany. From 1974 to 1986 D...
Navigator aboard the Cold War Vulcan nuclear bomber (145)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Barry Mullen was a Navigator Radar on the legendary Royal Air Force nuclear bomber, the Vulcan. The Navigator Radar (Nav Radar) had the responsibility...
1962 Berlin fiction - author interview (144)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this bonus episode, we talk again with Paul Grant, author of "Coercion" the fourth book about the Schultz family who live in Berlin. His books are...
Don - Vietnam war Armoured Cavalry Platoon Leader (143)
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first of two episodes we have following Don Snedeker’s experiences through the Cold War. In this episode, we hear about his time in Vie...
In Cold War Skies – NATO and Soviet airpower 1949-89 (142)
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is brought to you by Osprey publishing and we’re speaking with Michael Napier, the author of “In Cold War Skies – NATO and Sov...
I was a deep cover KGB spy Part 2 (141)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is part 2 of our chat with Jack Barsky who spent ten years as an undercover KGB agent in the United States. He is the longest surviving known mem...
I was a deep cover KGB spy Part 1 (140)
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve seen the TV drama series, “The Americans” you’ll be fascinated by this episode. Albrecht Dittrich was an East German graduate studen...
Portland Spy Ring Part 2 (139)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is the 2nd episode with Trevor Barnes, the author of “Dead Doubles, a new book on the Portland Spy Ring, one of the most infamous espionage cas...
Portland Spy Ring Part 1 (138)
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we talk with Trevor Barnes, the author of “Dead Doubles, a new book on the Portland Spy Ring, one of the most infamous espionage cas...
The Last British Commandant in Cold War West Berlin Part 2 (137)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is the 2nd part of our conversation with Major General Sir Robert Corbett, KCVO, CB who was the last Commandant of the British Sector in Berlin. ...