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

In today’s episode we return to Czechoslovakia and one of the most iconic moments of the Cold War – The Prague Spring of 1968. We have with us Lani Seelinger of Socialism Realised which an excellent website and learning environment that uses multimedia content as teaching aids about the communist regimes in Europe. I do recommend you check them out at Socialismrealised.eu Some of you will have see...

 Michael Rafferty was posted to Berlin in 1988. He served in the 287th Military Police Company at Checkpoint Charlie and was there through to the historic opening of the Berlin Wall and the removal of the checkpoint in 1990.   I have always been intrigued by a video posted on YouTube filmed in the 1980s by a young US Army soldier documenting his first days in Berlin for his family back at home.   ...

We’re chatting with Mark Reeder a musician and music producer who has been involved in the Berlin and international music scene since 1978, starting as Factory Records German representative from 1978-1983. Through contacts in the GDR he put on several secret punk gigs behind the Iron Curtain and his Stasi file is described as “as thick as a phone book”. He is however, denied access to the full fil...

Today we’re covering a British Cold War civil defence unit called the Royal Observer Corps. We’re talking to Alistair McCann who has preserved a Royal Observer Corps monitoring post as a museum in Northern Ireland. We talk about the museum, the difficulties of the Northern Ireland Royal Observer Corps during “The Troubles” and what the reality would have been for these men and women should the Col...

Jeremy Poynton was a 16 year old school boy in 1968 when he embarked on a memorable trip by road from Leningrad to Odessa. He vividly describes a Soviet Union still struggling with poverty and a diverse range of peoples from city dwellers to remote Chechen villagers. It’s a unique story as Jeremy details his experiences and the sights of a 1960s Soviet Union just as the Prague Spring was being sup...

Mark Baker is an independent journalist and travel writer who’s lived in Central Europe for more than two decades.   I heartily recommend his travel website www.markbakerprague.com which is an eclectic mix of stories about his adopted hometown of Prague and stories from when Central Europe was the “Eastern bloc” and he was a full-time journalist trying his best to cover it.   Mark tells an intrigu...

Welcome to Episode 8 of Cold War Conversations where we talk about the armoured fighting vehicles of the Warsaw Pact.   Russell Phillips has written several books on Warsaw Pact military equipment and our conversation is an interesting exchange covering the evolution in design, tactics and the deployment of Warsaw Pact armoured forces should the Cold War have turned hot.   It also covers a slightl...

We speak with David Young who has written the Stasi Child - Karin Müller series of crime thrillers set in East Germany in the mid 1970s. Support the project! https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/ Youtube https://youtube.com/@ColdWarCo...

We talk about the relatively little known Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.  A lot of focus justifiably is on the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it can be argued that the Uprising of 1953 sowed the seeds for the eventual demise of the GDR.We chat with Dr Richard Millington who has studied the Uprising and shares with us some fascinating research including eyewitness accounts and details from the Sta...

Welcome to episode 5 which is part 2 of our Cold War Conversation with Shane Whaley of Spybrary .  Show notes at coldwarconversations.com/episode5/  We talked for some time ,so I have split this interview into two parts.  I hope you find this second half as interesting as I did – settle in for a wide ranging and hopefully interesting conversation with my good friend Shane Whaley.  Support the proj...

Welcome to episode 4 (part 1) of Cold War Conversations. Today we’re talking about Cold War espionage, East Germany and Berlin with Spybrary host, Shane Whaley.  Shane runs the Spybrary podcast at spybrary.com. Their goal is to encourage people to read new spy novels, revisit an old espionage classic and discuss them with our community of like minded spy fans. It’s great fun if you like spy books...

Welcome to Episode 3 of Cold War Conversations where we hear about the strange world of football in East Germany and even if you are not interested in football it’s a fascinating chat.  Craig McCracken runs the website, Beyondthelastman.com, described as 20th century football writing and nostalgia in a skilled and cultured groove.  One of his areas of interest is football in the GDR and from our c...

Welcome to the first full episode of Cold War Conversations where we start with a fascinating eyewitness account of Berlin during the Cold War.  Michael lived in Berlin as a child of US Airforce personnel in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently joined the US Airforce himself and worked in Signals Intelligence during the 1980s.  In a wide-ranging chat, we talked about life for American families...

Experience the Cold War through the voices of the people who were there.  From soldiers to spies and civilians there are hundreds of unique stories told with humour, sadness, and all the emotions in between.  Listen at coldwarconversations.com or search Cold War Conversations in your podcast app. Cold War Conversations is a unique award-winning project dedicated to creating an archive of first-han...