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

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 a Senior Advisor to a Vietnamese Ranger unit and the second as a rifle company commander in the 101st Airborne.   Keith used the experience of his first tour to write ‘Just another day in Vietnam’ which gives a vivid first-hand account of a jungle ope...

During her first visit to Poland in 1980, Dr Jacqueline Hayden met the leading members of the free trade union ‘Solidarność’, including the future president Lech Wałęsa. As a freelance journalist at that time, she reported the events in Gdańsk in August 1980, when the shipyard workers went on strike to demand the creation of Free Trade Unions. Our chat includes some vivid descriptions of what she...

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 in New York and in the former East Germany. Sue was posted to East Germany in 1976 and tells of her work, friendships, and life as a single woman in the diplomatic community of 1970s East Berlin. She reveals the fascinating contents of her Stasi file,...

Today we speak with Ian Ballantyne, the author of “Hunter Killers”, also known as “Undersea Warriors” in the United States. Hunter Killers’ tells the incredible, true inside story of the Royal Navy’s Cold War beneath the waves. Buy the book and support the podcast here https://amzn.to/3jalire We talk about the forgotten role Royal Navy submarines played in the Cuban Missile Crisis while also learn...

Today, we speak with Richard Crowder, the author of “Détente – the chance to end the Cold War”. Help support the podcast by buying the book here  UK listeners https://amzn.to/34yNeB2 US listeners https://amzn.to/3kHU3pO Between 1968 and 1975, there was a subtle thawing of relations between East and West, for which Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev coined the name Détente.  The leaders of the United St...

Guy Burgess was the most important, complex, and fascinating of The Cambridge Spies, brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret...

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 school to find secret police in her living room. Her father’s protest against the regime had changed her life forever. This is her story. This is one of the most powerful stories I have recorded so far. What you will hear in Carmen’s own words is an incr...

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 Don served in a number of roles but most noticeably he was assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fulda, one of the locations where it was assumed that Warsaw Pact units would attack through.  He also trained as a Foreign Area Officer special...

Barry Mullen was a Navigator Radar on the legendary Royal Air Force nuclear bomber, the Vulcan. The Navigator Radar (Nav Radar) had the responsibility for coordinating bombing from the aircraft. This role was performed entirely via instrumentation and was achieved via the ground-facing radar and the Navigation Bombing System a direct successor of the WW2 H2S system used in aircraft such as the Lan...

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 set at the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War.  Coercion is set in 1962 against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall while it is still barbed wire and a fragile wall. Escape attempts are frequent and these attempts are the major the...

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 Vietnam and the book he has written entitled "The Blackhorse in Vietnam: The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam and Cambodia, 1966–1972”. Don was born in Brooklyn New York but followed his Father’s postings around the globe as an ‘Army brat’. Don was...

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 Soviet airpower 1949-89”.  Michael also flew the Tornado during the Cold War and served during the 1980s at 14 Sqn and 31 Sqn at RAF Brüggen in West Germany where he talks about nuclear QRA, low-level training in Germany, Canada and Exercise Red Flag in the US...

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 member of the KGB illegals programme that operated during the Cold War. In this episode we talk about his first days in the US, his mission and how he managed build his cover enabling him to live and work as a US citizen. He honestly and candidly talks...

If you’ve seen the TV drama series, “The Americans” you’ll be fascinated by this episode. Albrecht Dittrich was an East German graduate student and a true believer in the Communist cause when he was recruited by the KGB in 1970. He spent ten years as an undercover KGB agent in the United States. He is the longest surviving known member of the KGB illegals programme that operated during the Cold Wa...

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 cases of the Cold War. The story continues with the dramatic arrest of three of the KGB spies outside the Old Vic theatre in London and the discovery of the amazing espionage career of the Krogers, the innocent-looking couple in suburbia… We also talk abo...

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 cases of the Cold War. In 1960 it was discovered that crucial secrets from the world-leading submarine research base at Portland in Dorset were being stolen by a British man and his mistress. The couple were tailed by MI5 'watchers' to a covert meeting wi...

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. We join as I ask what were the British Army’s plans in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of West Berlin.  We also talk about the momentous night of 9th November 1989 and a fascinating tale of a situation, which if handled differently could have sen...

Major General Sir Robert Corbett, KCVO, CB was the last Commandant of the British Sector in Berlin. We start his story with the description of his first experience of Berlin as a young Army officer commanding a military train across East Germany into West Berlin just weeks after the Berlin Wall had been built.  We also talk about his subsequent Army career including his interview with British Fore...

Born in Communist Czechoslovakia, Eva Caletkova has written an honest and unflinching account of her childhood in Bratislava. Eva’s parents were Catholics, and the communist regime began to persecute the Catholic Church right from the start in 1948. They had to hide their faith from anyone outside of their home. Eva provides us with an insightful and emotional conversation that captures her experi...

Werner Stiller’s spectacular defection to the West in 1979 inflicted one of the Cold War’s most serious blows to the Stasi. At the time he was working as a case officer for the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence division, where he was in charge of scientific espionage in the West. We speak with Stiller’s son Andy, who although he was 11 months old at the time of...

Tim Phillips travelled the route of the former Iron Curtain from deep inside the arctic circle to the meeting point in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. On his journey, he explored both the surviving traces of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. The people he meets bear vivid witness to a time of change. There are some who now look on the Cold War with nostalgia and affection, but many more who st...

Vashi Nedomanský is the son of Czechoslovak former legendary ice hockey forward Václav Nedomanský aka “Big Ned” who is best known as the first ice hockey player to defect to North America to play.  We hear a dramatic true story that combines sports, politics, espionage, corruption, and life-changing events that played out on a global stage. Among the stories we hear are the vivid descriptions of t...

Robert Perschmann describes himself as an anti-Cold War activist. His political views started to form while serving in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War period where he saw first hand the toll on the US military and the racism prevalent in the American South.  An interview with a Soviet journalist which was broadcast on PBS radio (the US equivalent of the BBC) was the catalyst for an almost...

Susan Morrison is Professor of English at Texas State University. In the late 1980’s she taught in Rostock in the former GDR and then lived in West Berlin but frequently crossed back into the East to teach and meet friends. In this episode we talk to her about her experiences and her impression of the two Germanys in 1989.  During her time in Rostock, Susan got in trouble with the authorities over...

Hans de Vreij is a Dutch journalist who has worked in Berlin , Brussels, Geneva and Prague. Whilst working at the United Nations in Geneva Hans was the subject of attempted recruitment by the KGB to develop an ‘agent of influence’ to disseminate Soviet points of view. In addition, they analysed the ‘targeted journalist’ in terms of possible blackmail: ‘kompromat‘ (compromising material). This espe...