Latest Berlin wall Podcast Episodes
My friend the Bridge of Spies spy - Part 2 (342)
Cold War Conversations - April 19, 2024 23:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsBurt recounts the surreal experience of learning about Fisher's true identity from a newspaper headline, the subsequent FBI interrogations, and the emotional courtroom testimony where he struggled to reconcile his friendship with the stark reality of espionage. Burt's journey leads him to Moscow ...
My friend the Bridge of Spies spy - Part 1 (341)
Cold War Conversations - April 12, 2024 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsIn a riveting episode that peels back the layers of Cold War espionage, we sit down with Burt, an artist who unwittingly befriended a man better known as Colonel Abel, the infamous Bridge of Spies Spy who was exchanged for shot down US U2 pilot Gary Powers. Burt knew Abel as Emil Goldfuss but hi...
A Diver Sapper in the Cold War Soviet Navy (340)
Cold War Conversations - April 05, 2024 23:00 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsValeriy was a Soviet Navy diver sapper and was born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine. I have used a human translator for this episode so the main voice you will hear is my translator Galina Ryabova who was kindly funded by one of my financial supporters Valeriy opens up about his childhood, the impact...
Gymnastics and Pills: An East German Childhood (339)
Cold War Conversations - March 30, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsSirka offers a comprehensive exploration of life in East Germany, detailing the experiences of growing up in Neubrandenburg, the influence of the East German state and the Stasi, and the societal impacts of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She also talks of...
The Soviet Afghan War (338)
Cold War Conversations - March 23, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThe Soviet-Afghan War lasted ten years between 1979-1989 and led to the deaths of between 500k and 2m Afghan civilians. I speak with Nick Geering a Russian history and language teacher. From his memories of the haunting sight of uniformed amputees in St Petersburg to the complex origins of the ...
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War on Netflix Podcast (337)
Cold War Conversations - March 20, 2024 00:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTurning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War, is a nine-part documentary series from director Brian Knappenberger, that provides a comprehensive appraisal of the events that led to the Cold War and traces the conflict around the world and through the decades. While the Cold War ended in 1991, even a ...
Sex, spies and scandal : the John Vassall affair (336)
Cold War Conversations - March 16, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsAlex Grant’s new book Sex, Spies and Scandal The John Vassall Affair has everything: a honey trap, industrial-scale espionage, journalists jailed for not revealing their sources and the first modern tabloid witch-hunt, which resulted in a ministerial resignation and almost brought down Harold Mac...
V-Bombers: Britain's Nuclear Frontline in the Cold War (335)
Cold War Conversations - March 09, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsV-Bombers: Britain's Nuclear Frontline in the Cold War is a new book by Dr Tony Redding that takes a deep dive into Britain's V-bomber force's operational nuclear war role. Tony reveals the intense preparations and the stark realities faced by the aircrews, who lived in a perpetual state of wart...
On the Streets of Cold War Estonia fighting for Independence (334)
Cold War Conversations - March 02, 2024 00:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTimo takes us on a journey through the tumultuous events of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, as experienced from the streets of the Baltic States. As the coup unfolds, Timo finds himself in Lithuania, planning to covertly visit the closed city of Kaliningrad. He shares the tension sharing a dining t...
Borderlands and Battles: A Finnish Town's Cold War Story (333)
Cold War Conversations - February 24, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTimo takes us to the remote Finnish border town of Kuusamo. He paints a vivid picture of a childhood overshadowed by his grandparent’s memories of their home lost during World War II and their proximity to the Soviet Union. As a child, he was fascinated by the invisible line that marked the end ...
Australian Cold War Maritime Air Patrols (332)
Cold War Conversations - February 17, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsLeigh joined the RAAF in 1978 to train as a pilot but was scrubbed after a few months and transitioned to training as an Air Electronics Officer (AEO) at the RAAF School of Air Navigation. He flew on the P-3C Orion and was employed in operations across the Indo-Pacific region on maritime patrol s...
A traumatic childhood journey from Cold War Poland to the United States (331)
Cold War Conversations - February 10, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsIn this deeply personal episode, our guest, Norbert, vividly recounts his traumatic childhood journey from Cold War Poland to the United States. With vivid recollections, he describes the struggles of his parents amid food shortages and the poignant decision of the family to leave everything behi...
Planning for a Hot War in the Cold War (330)
Cold War Conversations - February 03, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsDan served in the War Plans office of the US Army VII Corps working on counterattack plans and reorganization of the US Army’s General Defence Plan. He describes the debriefing of a Polish Special Forces operator who had defected to the West and who revealed surprising knowledge of US plans and o...
The Picnic That Ripped Open The Iron Curtain (329)
Cold War Conversations - January 27, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsIn August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable: they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain - and held a picnic. Word had spread of what was going to happen. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German 'holiday-makers' had made their way to the border betw...
US Army Anti-Aircraft Missile Battery Command in Cold War West Germany (228)
Cold War Conversations - January 20, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsDan served as a lieutenant and captain in a US Army air defence artillery battalion in West Germany from 1980 until 1985. He describes details of Soviet overflights deep into West Germany and we discuss how the Warsaw Pact attempted to track their units. Now who knew that the US Army experiment...
Britain's first Cold War Nuclear Attack Warning Station at Jodrell Bank (327)
Cold War Conversations - January 13, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThe Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire in the UK played a significant secret role during the Cold War. It was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. We hear some intriguing details ...
The East German Tank Commander (326)
Cold War Conversations - January 06, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsIn the mid-1980s Dag was a T72 tank commander in the NVA, the East German Army and is now a volunteer at the Tank Museum at Bovington in the UK. He describes his initial tank commander training, the battle readiness of the NVA, and the challenges of a conscript army as well as a startling revel...
Twilight of the Soviet Union – Memoirs of a British Journalist in Moscow (325)
Cold War Conversations - December 30, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsKate is sent to Moscow in 1985 to write articles for The Morning Star, a left-wing British daily newspaper founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain. She lives in a block of flats alongside Soviet citizens and enrols her 3 children in Soviet schools. Three weeks ...
Further Cold War Tank Tales from the Land Down Under (324)
Cold War Conversations - December 23, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTim participates in Kangaroo 89, a huge military exercise with the entire Australian Army using an area the size of Western Europe and we hear about the Australian equivalent of Wolfgang the Bratty Man who used to turn up on British exercises in Germany. Tim was also part of an exchange program w...
How To Catch A Cold War Spy (323)
Cold War Conversations - December 16, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsSince 1985, Ana Montes has been an asset of the Cuban intelligence service. In that time, she’s risen through the ranks to become one of the Pentagon’s most respected voices on Cuban affairs with easy access to classified documents. Peter Lapp reveals Montez's tradecraft and how the FBI found th...
Cold War, Warm Hearts - Hitchhiking behind the 1960s Iron Curtain (322)
Cold War Conversations - December 09, 2023 00:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsIn 1966 most of Bridget’s friends, in their early twenties, were settling down with jobs and/or husbands… She, on the other hand, set off alone to travel across Poland relying on the kindness of strangers. Fascinated by what she experienced she continued to wander the highways and byways of, Hung...
Cold War Tank Tales from the Land Down Under (321)
Cold War Conversations - December 02, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsMany of Tim’s family had served in WW1 and WW2 and from a young age, he was determined to follow their path. Overcoming huge competition for places he became a driver of the Leopard AS1 MBT at 1st Armoured Regiment of the Australian Army. Australia is largely ignored in most Cold War histories, ...
Jack's dramatic Cold War escape across the fortified Inner German border (320)
Cold War Conversations - November 25, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsJack Wesolek was born in East Germany in 1966. His grandfather was a member of the Red Orchestra, a Communist Anti-Nazi resistance organisation in Germany during World War 2. He later became Chief of the Signals Service of the Volksmarine, the East German Navy. In the 1980s an East German Army si...
How President Kennedy's assassination almost started World War 3 (319)
Cold War Conversations - November 22, 2023 00:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsOn 23rd Nov 1963 at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea a detachment of US Air Force B-57 Canberra bombers were parked on an alert pad each with a live nuclear weapon in their bomb bay and ready to fly at a moment’s notice. At 0400 klaxon horns aroused the crews from their slumber and they rushed to the...
The lazy schoolboy who became a Cold War Vulcan nuclear bomber pilot (318)
Cold War Conversations - November 18, 2023 00:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsKevin was born in Wigan in North West England and joined the RAF as an apprentice in 1956 with only 3 O Levels. He came top of his course but was posted into supplies at RAF St Mawgan. However, he quickly became in charge of their clothing stores and via a fortuitous route became a trainee pilot....
Across the Iron Curtain in a yellow MG Midget sports car (317)
Cold War Conversations - November 11, 2023 00:00 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsAndrew McNeile decided to travel through Eastern Europe in a yellow MG Midget Sports car, a car that's going to stand out no matter where you are! He recalls his adventures travelling through East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia He talks about the warmt...
1983 - the year the Cold War almost turned hot (316)
Cold War Conversations - November 04, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThis week is the 40th anniversary of the Able Archer NATO Exercise where it is reckoned that the Soviet Union and NATO almost started a nuclear war. 1990 an investigation by the US President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, culminating in its highly secret report “The Soviet ‘War Scare’” Th...
Serving in a Cold War Danish Reconnaissance Squadron (315)
Cold War Conversations - October 27, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsDenmark joined NATO as a founding member in 1949. However, it originally laid down limitations to NATO membership, effectively excluding the country from full military integration. The conditions were threefold: no non-Danish bases, no nuclear warheads, and no Allied military activity on Danish t...
The Cold War Atomic Spies (314)
Cold War Conversations - October 20, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsOn 29 August 1949 at 7:00 a.m. the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. The test stunned the Western powers. American intelligence had estimated that the Soviets would not produce an atomic weapon until 1953, while the British did not expect it until 1954. The speed at which the Soviet U...
Spying on NATO from a Cold War East German Army radio monitoring base Part 2 (313)
Cold War Conversations - October 13, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThis is the second part of my chat with Thomas who worked in a secret East German radio monitoring base. He describes how a BRIXMIS or another Allied Military Liason Mission vehicle had once got into the base and what the East German Army was told about MLM capabilities. When the officers aren’t ...
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