The award-winning podcast preserving the stories of the Cold War before they are lost…subscribe for free. Produced by Ian Sanders FRHistS
Werner Stiller’s spectacular defection to the West in 1979 inflicted one of the Cold War’s most serious blows to the Stasi. At the time he was working as a case officer for the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence division, where he was in charge of scientific espionage in the West. We speak … Read more
Hans de Vreij is a Dutch journalist who has worked in Berlin , Brussels, Geneva and Prague. Whilst working at the United Nations in Geneva Hans was the subject of attempted recruitment by the KGB to develop an ‘agent of influence’ to disseminate Soviet points of view. In addition, they analysed the ‘targeted journalist’ in … Read more
Susan Morrison is Professor of English at Texas State University. In the late 1980’s she taught in Rostock in the former GDR and then lived in West Berlin but frequently crossed back into the East to teach and meet friends. In this episode we talk to her about her experiences and her impression of the … Read more
Mark Brayne worked as a Reuters & BBC journalist during the Cold War. This time we are in Romania in December 1989 where riots, street violence and murder in several cities over the course of roughly a week led the Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu to flee the capital city on 22 December with … Read more
In this episode we talk to Mark Brayne again in a wide ranging chat about his career as a Reuters & BBC journalist including details of his Stasi file, his time in the Soviet Union, Hungary & Poland as well as the perils of editing analogue tape in a non-digital age. Among his … Read more
Bill was a US Army Intelligence Analyst. In 1986 he was assigned to Order of Battle Branch, Soviet Section where for three years he studied the Warsaw Pact armies working closely with the US Military Liaison Mission in Berlin which led to a transfer there in November 1989 Stationed in Potsdam he became an … Read more
Vashi Nedomanský is the son of Czech former legendary ice hockey forward Václav Nedomanský aka “Big Ned” who is best known as the first hockey player to defect to North America to play. Vashi provides us with vivid descriptions of the 1969 Ice Hockey World Championships where the Czech National Team faced the Soviet national … Read more
James Stejskal served for 23 years with US Special Forces, including two tours in Berlin. Special Forces Berlin was a small detachment of 100 highly trained soldiers who, should hostilities break out, were to wreak havoc behind Warsaw Pact lines. The US government only acknowledged its existence in 2014 and James has written an … Read more
In the late 1980s Scott was a Pershing 2 nuclear missile Fire Control Officer which meant he was responsible for the launch of the missile. Aged 23 he was made platoon commander and responsible for 3 of these deadly weapons. The Pershing II was a mobile, intermediate-range ballistic missile deployed by the U.S. Army … Read more
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