Me and Honest John - The Nuclear Secret Rich Kept for 60 Years (480)
At twenty-one, Rich was trusted with a nuclear-capable rocket—but forbidden to tell even his family what he did. Then one failed to launch,...
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Cold War Conversations
Real stories of the Cold War told by those that were there. We're capturing the unknown stories of the Cold War before they are lost...
Episodes
20 of 481 episodes
Hungary 1956: Twelve Days That Shook the Soviet Empire (479)
At 5:20 on the morning of 4 November 1956, Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy went on the radio with a desperate announcement: Soviet forces...
What did Jacqueline Kennedy privately believe about the JFK Assassination? (478)
What did Jacqueline Kennedy privately believe happened in Dallas on 22 November 1963? In the second part of Peter Lamas’s extraordinary stor...
My Cuban Encounters with Hemingway, Batista, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (477)
What happens when a Cuban teenager who has lost his homeland finds himself sitting across the lunch table from Fidel Castro? Peter Lamas rec...
From Mao's Red Guard to conscription into the Chinese People's Liberation Army (476)
At twelve years old, Bing became a Red Guard—and for a few intoxicating months, he felt invincible. Growing up in Mao’s Beijing, Bing was ta...
The Birth of Poland's Free Trade Union Solidarity (475)
One morning in August 1980, the noise of 10,000 shipyard workers suddenly stopped. Something extraordinary was happening. As a young shipbui...
Growing Up Under Communism on Cold War Poland’s Baltic Coast (474)
Bogdan was born just a month before the Berlin Wall went up—and left communist Poland a month before it came down. In between lay a childhoo...
If the Soviets Invaded : Sweden's Secret Underground Resistance Plan (473)
For decades, ordinary Swedes secretly prepared for the day Soviet forces might occupy their country. Farmers, factory workers, gamekeepers a...
Bandit Country - The IRA and South Armagh (472)
During the Cold War, British soldiers fought a Provisional IRA insurgency in Northern Ireland. Probably the toughest location was South Arma...
A Czech Border Guard’s Daring Escape to the West (471)
What happens when the man guarding the Iron Curtain decides to escape through it himself? In 1975, Jiří Barteček was a Czechoslovak border g...
Twenty-Six Years Apart: A Family Reunited Behind the Iron Curtain (470)
For twenty-six years, war, exile and the Iron Curtain kept one Polish family apart. Torn from his homeland and sent into Stalin’s labour cam...
Announcing Cold War Conversations History Tours
I’m delighted to tell you about Cold War Conversations History Tours I'm exploring the idea of hosting a Cold War history tour via a special...
Between Two Air Forces: From East German Officer to German Captain (469)
After German reunification, former East German Air Force officer Roland faced an extraordinary transformation: joining the military alliance...
MiGs, Helicopters and Ideology: Life as an East German Air Force Officer (468)
What did it mean to train as an officer in the East German Air Force, where technical skill, military discipline and socialist ideology were...
Growing Up Grey: Childhood in Cold War Romania (467)
Romania in the 1980s was a country of empty shops, power cuts, rationing and fear—but for one little girl it was also home. In this episode,...
Defection, Spies and the Shadow of Georgi Markov (466)
In 1986, Oggy Boytchev made a split-second decision that would change his life forever. Sent to Egypt by a Bulgarian shipping company, he se...
My Father - The Enemy of the People: A Bulgarian Family’s Cold War Story (465)
Oggy Boytchev is a former BBC journalist with more than three decades of experience reporting from conflict zones across the Middle East, th...
Face to Face with the Srebrenica War Criminals (464)
Richard Lyntton’s life has taken him from Cold War Moscow to the deserts of the Gulf War and the shattered streets of Sarajevo. In this powe...
Inside a Cold War USAF Fighter Squadron (463)
Step behind the wire of one of NATO’s most elite tactical fighter squadrons—the 10th Tactical Fighter Squadron—during the tense final years...
The Cambridge Five - new files reveal untold stories (462)
Antonia Senior’s new book, "Stalin’s Apostles", challenges what you may have believed about the Cambridge Five, a group of British citizens...