The award-winning podcast preserving the stories of the Cold War before they are lost…subscribe for free. Produced by Ian Sanders FRHistS
Mark Brayne studied in Moscow 71-72, travelling the country with fellow UK students and spending silly amounts of time in the bathhouses with salted fish and very poor quality beer. He returned in 1974-75 as Reuters trainee journalist where he became very close to Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and … Read more
Welcome to Cold War Conversations – if you’re new here, you’ve come the right place to listen to firsthand Cold War history accounts. Do make sure you subscribe in your podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. Alan Baker worked and studied in the GDR and the USSR from the 1970s … Read more
Anthony enlisted in the British Army in 1987 and after 9 months he was posted to West Berlin. He tells the story of life as a Private in Berlin from the drinking (and the fighting) to the urban warfare training in Ruhleben & Dough Boy City. We also hear of the reality of knowing … Read more
Harry served as a soldier in the Intelligence Corps in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. His role was that of an Intelligence and Security Operator, focused on the identification of foreign and other malign activities which might undermine the effectiveness of the UK’s military presence in the country. Accordingly, he had the experience of … Read more
Charlie Flowers was 18 in 1988. He travelled by train across a divided Eastern Europe that was starting to show signs of the changes that manifested themselves in 1989. He shares stories of the interesting encounters he had along the way. Now I’d like to thank some of our recent 5 star reviewers in Apple … Read more
This is Part 2 of our conversation with Colin Munro who was the British Deputy Head of Mission in East Berlin from 1987 to 1990. In this episode we move to the monumental events of 1989 as the GDR was wrought by internal protest prior to the opening of the Wall in Berlin. It’s a … Read more
Colin Munro was the British Deputy Head of Mission in East Berlin from 1987 to 1990. Although the UK did not recognise East Berlin as part of the GDR in 1973 it established an Embassy “to” the GDR (not in the GDR) in East Berlin to provide a diplomatic presence. As Deputy Head of Mission … Read more
When the Berlin Wall came down, the files of the East German secret police, the much-dreaded Stasi, were opened and read. And among the shocking stories revealed was that of the Stasi’s infiltration of the Church. The Lutheran Church was the only semi-free space in East Germany, where those who rebelled against the regime … Read more
John Tarver was born into a middle-class family. He joined the British Communist Party on his 18th birthday in 1948 because he felt the Soviet Union had made the most effective resistance to fascism. He worked as a party activist in Britain and made several trips to the GDR where he would get a … Read more
Michael Paterson first visited East Germany just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and provides a vivid account of its subsequent decline and fall during the move to reunification with West Germany. Michael is a military historian, author, researcher and illustrator. He began his career on the military magazine ‘Battlefields Review’ as a writer … Read more