A Cold War Polish childhood near Wroclaw (304)
Tom lived in western Poland in an area that had been part of Germany until the end of World War 2. He describes how his grandmother settled in this area and the strangeness of taking over formerly Ger...
11 Aug 20231h 29min
Soviet MIG shoots-down a US RB-47H reconnaissance plane (303)
On 1 July 1960, a United States RB-47H reconnaissance plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing signals intelligence in the Barents Sea, near the Kola Peninsula, off the Ar...
4 Aug 202349min
The rise and fall of East German leader Erich Honecker (302)
Honecker emerged as an ambitious political player and became the shadowy mastermind behind the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a crucial moment in twentieth-century history. Author Nathan Mor...
28 Jul 20231h 13min
US Army tank platoon commander in 1980s Cold War Korea (301)
Tom Sullivan was a tank platoon commander in Korea in the early 1980s responsible for six tanks and their crew We hear why he joined the US Army, his training, and his first impressions of Korea in th...
21 Jul 20231h 2min
Assembling and delivering nuclear artillery rounds to the Cold War West German Army (300)
In February 1983 US soldier Manuel Alzager was sent to a mysterious posting to the British Zone in the north of West Germany a long way from the main US forces in southern Germany. After a lengthy jou...
14 Jul 202344min
Dickey Chapelle - trailblazing female Cold War journalist (299)
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 ...
7 Jul 20231h 4min
The Cold war ice hockey team that fought the Soviets for the soul of its nation (298)
I speak with author Ethan Scheiner whose book “Freedom to Win” describes the gripping story of a group of small-town young men who would lead their underdog hockey team from Czechoslovakia against the...
30 Jun 20231h 24min
The last voice you'd hear in a nuclear war (297)
The BBC Wartime Broadcasting Service (WTBS) is a little-known piece of Cold War history that would have been for many the last human voice they heard after a nuclear attack on the UK. Iain started wor...
23 Jun 202349min
