The award-winning podcast preserving the stories of the Cold War before they are lost…subscribe for free. Produced by Ian Sanders FRHistS
Now have you ever heard of Dickey Chapelle? No, I hadn’t either, but I’m delighted to bring you the unknown story of this trailblazing female war correspondent. Dickey’s career started in World War 2 where she reported from some of the Pacific wars’ toughest battlefields of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. During the Cold War, … Read more
Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! South Africa in the 1980s is a brutal, racist Apartheid regime. Those who oppose it risk their lives. Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s Sue Dobson is moving easily through … Read more
Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! South Africa in the 1980s is a brutal, racist regime. Those who oppose it risk their lives. Sue Dobson, was a young white South African woman who was also a spy for the banned African National Congress. The ANC was a liberation movement … Read more
In November of 1982, at the height of the Cold War, Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old girl from Manchester, Maine, wrote to the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and asked him if he was going to wage a nuclear war against the U.S. When an unprecedented response from Andropov arrived, and Samantha received an invitation to visit … Read more
Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! The second part of Svetlana’s story starts shortly after her arrival in West Germany with her husband Oleg who is the Chief Editor of the Russian Service of Radio Liberty a CIA-financed station beaming Western propaganda into the Soviet Union. To Svetlana’s horror, Oleg … Read more
Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! Svetlana came from a dissident Jewish family opposed to Soviet rule in Latvia. Her parents survived World War 2, but during the Stalin era two members of her family were held in the Gulags. The family never resigned themselves to Latvia’s occupation by … Read more
During the Cold War, the awesome power of nuclear weapons and its deadly fallout meant that every town, village and home in Britain fell under the nuclear shadow, and the threat of annihilation coloured every aspect of ordinary life. Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! I chat with author and … Read more
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! 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 … Read more
Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google PodcastsBecome a Patron! 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 … Read more
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 … Read more