Experience the Cold War like never before with Cold War Conversations — an award-winning podcast recommended by The New York Times.
Each week, host Ian Sanders brings you raw, firsthand accounts from the people who lived through one of history’s most tense and transformative eras — soldiers, spies, civilians, and more.
These aren’t stories from textbooks. They’re unfiltered voices from the frontlines of history — emotional, gripping, and deeply human.
This is Cold War history, told from the inside out.
We cover subjects such as spies, spying, the Iron Curtain, nuclear weapons, warfare, tanks, jet aircraft, fighters, bombers, transport aircraft, aviation, culture, and politics.
We also cover personalities such as Fidel Castro, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Mikhail Gorbachev, Konstantin Chernenko, Margaret Thatcher, John F. Kennedy, Josef Stalin, Richard Nixon, Lech Walesa, General Jaruzelski, Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Other subjects include Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, West Berlin, East Berlin, Cuban missile Crisis, Berlin Airlift, Bay of Pigs, SALT, Perestroika, Space Race, superpower, USSR, Soviet Union, DDR, GDR, East Germany, SDI, Vietnam War, Korean War, Solidarność, Fall of the Wall, Berliner Mauer, Trabant, Communist, Capitalist, Able Archer, KGB, Stasi, STB, SB, Securitate, CIA, NSA, MI5, MI6, Berlin Wall, escape, defection, Cuba, Albania, football, sport, Bulgaria, Soviet Union, Poland, China, Taiwan, Austria, West Germany, Solidarity, espionage, HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT, IMINT, GEOINT, RAF, USAF, British Army, US Army, Red Army, Soviet Army, Afghanistan, NVA, East German Army, KAL007, T-72, T-64, Chieftain, M60
The podcast is for military veterans, school teachers, university lecturers, students and those interested in Cold War history, museums, bunkers, weapons, AFVs, wargamers, planes, A Level, GCSE students studying Superpower Relations and the Cold War.
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In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. I talk with acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer Whose...
Richard was 6 years old when he was uprooted from a school in the United States to a Soviet school 700 miles East of Moscow. In 1988 the Soviet Union was opening up following Michael Gorbachev’s policy of Perestroika and American firms began looking at the possibility of trading with the Soviet Union. It was politically and economically sensitive and his family was chosen to be sent to the USSR to open a factory in the industrial town of Nizhnekamsk in Tartarstan. They lived in a special apartme...
Brian Regal entered the US Army in 1977 and served on the M60A1 tank initially as a driver. The M60A1 was America's primary main battle tank during the Cold War, with initial deployment in 1960 and combat service through to 1991. After tank school, Brian was sent to West Germany where he was assigned to the 3/35 Armor in the Bamberg Garrison as part of the 1st Armored Division US Army, where the 3/35 was tasked to fight a Warsaw Pact attack across the Czechoslovak and East German borders. Brian ...
In 1987 Martin received a letter informing him of his conscription into the Dutch Army. A number of European NATO countries had conscription during the Cold War. Holland’s applied to men over the age of 18 and included service for about a year, after which you were placed on the reserve. Martin objected to military service as a conscientious objector on religious grounds. Conscientious objectors could perform alternative civilian service instead of military service. However to get to be an offic...
Mark Baker was featured in episode 9 where he told us about working in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s as a journalist for a small publishing company called Business International (BI). He was the company’s Czechoslovakia expert and with his Czech minder Arnold he travelled to Prague and other cities to report on significant economic and political developments. In 2021, he published “Čas Proměn” (“Time of Changes”), written in Czech, it is a collection of stories about Central and Eastern Europe in ...
We return to Dirk’s story from episode 278 with a move to East Berlin following his mother’s divorce from his father. Dirk finds school life more relaxed where pupils are allowed to wear Western clothing and to speak more openly, even questioning their teachers about the existence of the Berlin Wall. After leaving school, Dirk starts work in a factory from which he can see into West Berlin and he longs for a life away from the restrictions of East Germany. His mother’s new partner is a conscript...
Dirk lived in the town of Bernau about 15 miles from East Berlin. Just outside Bernau was Wandlitz the residential estate of the East German leadership. As a result, Bernau had one of the highest densities of Stasi facilities in East Germany. Dirk shares details of his childhood growing up in a Plattenbau block of flats where his school friends were children of NVA officers, Stasi officers, and Soviet Army officers. He shares some fascinating details of school life and visits the homes of his sc...
Ana Montes was the most damaging female spy in US history. For nearly 17 years, Montes was one of the government's top Cuba experts, with easy access to classified documents. By night, she was working for Fidel Castro's Cuba, listening to coded messages over shortwave radio, passing US secrets to handlers in local restaurants, and slipping into Havana wearing a wig. Her only sister, Lucy, worked for the FBI helping the FBI flush Cuban spies out of the United States. Little did Lucy or her family...
Every weekday on the History Daily podcast, Lindsay Graham takes you back in time to explore a momentous moment that happened ‘on this day’ in history. 1989 was a pivotal year for the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall, free elections in Poland, and the almost bloodless revolutions in the other Warsaw Pact countries apart from Romania. However, two other important events occurred in 1989 and this bonus episode will cover those events. So here is the 1989 US Invasion of Panama and the 1989 Tia...
Tim Lyon was an officer assigned to the 400th Strategic Missile Squadron located in Cheyenne Wyoming. The Squadron was maintained 50 Peacekeeper ICBM missiles based in underground silos in farmers’ fields in remote areas of Wyoming. Tim was one of two launch officers who were responsible for 10 of these missiles. He and his colleague would descend forty to sixty feet below ground to a concrete capsule that housed the Launch Control Centre. There he would spend 24-hour alerts ready to launch 100 ...
Warning: This episode does cover the subject of suicide. If you need help please use these links: UK https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/ Rest of the World https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp Dean Reed was an American actor, singer and songwriter, director, and Socialist who became a huge star in Latin America and the Eastern Bloc. Neil Jacobs is a guitarist who first met Dean Reed briefly while renting accommodation from Will Roberts, who directed the documentary of Dean R...
On 10 February 1962, Gary Powers, the American pilot whose U2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, was released on “The Bridge in Spies” in Berlin by his captors in exchange for one Colonel Rudolf Abel, aka Vilyam Fisher - one of the most extraordinary characters in the history of the Cold War. Born plain William Fisher in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the UK this British grammar schoolboy was the child of revolutionary parents who had fled tsarist oppression in Russia. Their son returned to hi...
Marie-Claude Hawkes continues her story with her return to Berlin in 1985 as a French teaching assistant at the Havel School RAF Gatow, teaching French and taking part in school activities in West and East Berlin. Between September 86 and August 87 Marie-Claude was employed as a cartoonist for the Berlin Bulletin, the weekly magazine for the British Forces in Berlin. Marie Claude describes her experiences as a French citizen working for the British Army as well as the challenges of being a Frenc...
In 1981 Marie-Claude Hawkes was an 18-year-old living in Amiens, France when she embarked on a trip to East Germany looking for adventure… Among her experiences was working in a lignite coal mine. Lignite is considered the lowest rank of coal and the most harmful coal to human health but was a major fuel source for East German power stations. Marie-Claude travelled from Paris to Leipzig on an overnight train, staying at the International Youth Camp in Borna. From there she travelled every day to...
Part 2, of a two part recording. Part 1 is here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode268 In October of 2022, I was asked by the West Pennines Military Vehicle Trust to moderate a Q&A session with a number of BRIXMIS veterans. Attending were Drivers Neil Walton, Pete Curran, Dave Collins and Kev Smith, plus Sandy Saxton-Warne (Joint operations & weapons) , Mike Hill (Tour officer), Mike Corcoran (Weapons), and Dave Butler (Senior Non Commissioned Officer, Tourer). It was an amazing aft...
In 1986 Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev said “Never perhaps, in the post-war decades has the situation in the world been explosive and hence more difficult and unfavourable as in the first half of the 1980s. “ He was referring to a period of immense tension between the Soviet Union and NATO when in 1983 a NATO exercise called Able Archer was believed to have almost accidentally started World War 3. We delve into the Able Archer archives to talk about the most recent documents with Francesca Akht...
In October of 2022, I was asked by the West Pennines Military Vehicle Trust to moderate a Q&A session with a number of BRIXMIS veterans. Part 2 is here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode270 Attending were Drivers Neil Walton, Pete Curran, Dave Collins and Kev Smith, plus Sandy Saxton-Warne (Joint operations & weapons) , Mike Hill (Tour officer), Mike Corcoran (Weapons), and Dave Butler (Senior Non Commissioned Officer, Tourer). It was an amazing afternoon of reminiscing about their...
Sean Kelly is the author of Home Bases: Memories & Stories of US Military Bases Around London which for the first time, puts the spotlight on the history of many of the US Military’s lesser-known command and support bases that were located either in or close to London. The bases (often known as ‘Little Americas’) are furthermore brought to life in a series of ‘snapshot’ memories. We hear about the heroism of US personnel who were awarded the George Medal for bravery in rescuing people caught...
We’re back with Alan Hodges, a Royal Tank Regiment Chieftain tank commander, and Mick Hadfield who was his 17-year-old gunner. In this episode we talk in detail about their deployment within a kilometer of the East German border and their tasks should H Hour have come as well as emergency deployment from barracks. There is no affection for their main training area at Soltau described as “the moon with a few trees and also in less polite terms. However, these training periods are made better by t...
Alan Hodges was a Royal Tank Regiment Chieftain tank commander and troop SGT in West Germany. Mick Hadfield was his 17-year-old gunner. The affection between the two is still apparent even today and Mick still calls Al his army Dad. Mick met Al in 1987 straight out of his armoured corp gunnery training at Catterick. They served for 3 years together in 1st Royal Tank Regiment in Hildesheim from August 87 to December 90. They share detailed insights into the operations of the Chieftain, the traini...
In the early 1970s, the athletes of East Germany started to achieve incredible sports results, winning medals and setting new world records with astonishing frequency. For many years, their sporting supremacy was hailed as a triumph of the socialist government's commitment to scientific research and innovative training methods. However, after the Cold War ended, the Stasi archives revealed a sinister secret behind the successes: a perverse doping system imposed by the government itself. Drugs we...
From the moment East Germany was formed in 1949, many of its citizens chose to leave to start a new life in the West. By the mid-1950s, the trickle had turned into a flood as large numbers rejected Walter Ulbricht’s Communist paradise. His ‘Workers’ & Peasants’ State’ could not afford to lose the skills and productivity of these key workers, so he proposed a radical solution - to physically fence in the whole population. I speak with Andrew Long, the author of a series of books about Cold Wa...
Dave Phillips is a Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London. The Yeoman Warders have been guarding the Tower since Tudor times. Dave joined the British Army aged 16 into the Royal Irish Rangers. We hear of his early years in the Army in Northern Ireland and his posting to West Berlin. In West Berlin Dave is part of the force that guarded Rudolf Hess, a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany and appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933. On 10 May 1941, Hess made a solo flight to Scot...
We continue the story of Richard Stachurski from the previous episode. Part 1 is here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode260 In 1971 Richard left NASA and was assigned to the Drone/Remotely Piloted Vehicle Systems Program Office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. From 1975-1978 Richard did a tour of duty with the Air Staff at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and between 1978-1981: he was Deputy Program Manager, Ground Launched Cruise Missile Program (GLCM) System Program Office-enga...
Richard Stachurski joined the US Air Force in 1962, on the cusp of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a security police officer guarding nuclear-armed B-58 Hustler bombers. Within two years he volunteered for the Minuteman nuclear missile program where he served as a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander with the 68th Strategic Missile Squadron at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota. Richard was the junior officer on a two-man crew in a launch control capsule buried beneath the South Dakota prairie who was char...
The Home Service Force or HSF was UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Cold War version of the World War 2 Home Guard. An almost forgotten unit, the HSF was established in 1982 and recruited from ex-regular Army, ex-territorial and ex-uniformed service personnel aged up to 60 years old. Its mission was to guard key points in the UK as the perceived threat from Warsaw Pact special forces increased towards the end of the Cold War. I speak with Richard Coles, who served as an officer in the HSF Co...
Back in the 1970s, migrating from the Soviet Union was an unattainable dream for many, particularly Jews wanting to leave for Israel. To leave the Soviet Union for another country, it was necessary to obtain exit visas. In practice, many people found them impossible to get. On the morning of June 15, 1970, 16 Soviet Jews who had been refused exit visas appeared at Smolny Airport near Leningrad to hijack a plane. They posed as a group going to a wedding — hence the name of the operation. The plan...
Trevor Howie’s role at RAF Gatow was advising the Station Commander on Station defence during times of war, tension or terrorist threat as well as the defence of 26 Signals Unit at the Teufelsberg listening post. RAF Gatow’s western side was located right against the Berlin Wall which was clearly visible from the control tower. Beyond the Wall was the Döberitz training area for the Soviet and East German Army. Soviet jets regularly overflew West Berlin emitting sonic booms to underline the immed...
Following his RAF Regiment officer training Trevor Howie was posted to 34 Sqn at Raf Akrotiri in Cyprus, commanding C Flight. The RAF regiment was effectively the Royal Air Force’s infantry, providing ground defence for air operations. 34 Sqn had a dual role of providing defence at Akrotiri and in the event of war at RAF Wildenrath in Germany. Trevor vividly describes his time at Akrotiri, including terrorist threats and realistic anti-riot training exercises the enthusiasm of the Argyle and Sut...
The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is reckoned to be one of the most perilous events in history, when the World faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. I speak with Sir Max Hastings whose new history Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. The period is brought ...
