The 10 year old girl who tried to stop a nuclear war (293)
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 ...
2 Jun 20231h 12min
Cold War Polish People Army Radio Operator (292)
Communist Poland had universal conscription and the armed forces were huge by contemporary standards. The Polish People’s Army, Navy, and Airforce had just over 400,000 troops for most of the 1980s in...
26 Mai 202356min
Volker the Berlin Wall Escape Helper (291)
It’s 1966 in Berlin and the city has now been divided for 5 years by an almost impenetrable wall erected by the communist German Democratic Republic. Together with his friends, West German student Vol...
19 Mai 20231h 19min
Cold War Canadian airborne anti-submarine missions (290)
Colonel Terry Chester’s flying career spanned some 42 years, and 10,000 flying hours. He joined the RCAF in Sept 1964 and in 1968 was awarded Navigator Wings. Terry flew for 3,000 hrs on the Argus Mar...
12 Mai 202339min
Discovering your husband is a KGB spy (289)
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 beamin...
5 Mai 20231h 6min
From Soviet Latvia to the BBC Russian Service (288)
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...
28 Apr 202353min
Transferring from the East German Army (NVA) to the unified German Army (Bundeswehr) (287)
We continue Steffen’s story where he tells of serving in three armies – firstly, the NVA, secondly the East German Army between the first free elections and unification, and finally the unified Bundes...
21 Apr 202359min
Drafted into the East German Army (286)
Steffen was born in Karl Marx Stadt and was conscripted into the NVA (East German Army) in 1988. When he left school he started an apprenticeship in electronics learning how to build radio receivers a...
14 Apr 202352min
