The early days of the Cold War US Space program and origins of GPS (76)

For decades, ordinary Swedes secretly prepared for the day Soviet forces might occupy their country. Farmers, factory workers, gamekeepers and travelling salesmen were recruited into a clandestine res...

11 Sep 47min

During the Cold War, British soldiers fought a Provisional IRA insurgency in Northern Ireland. Probably the toughest location was South Armagh, where they had to travel by helicopter, while watchtowe...

4 Sep 1h 7min

What happens when the man guarding the Iron Curtain decides to escape through it himself? In 1975, Jiří Barteček was a Czechoslovak border guard, trained to track fugitives with a German shepherd a...

29 Aug 1h 23min

For twenty-six years, war, exile and the Iron Curtain kept one Polish family apart. Torn from his homeland and sent into Stalin’s labour camp system, Aleksander Jablonski survived hunger, forced labou...

21 Aug 54min

I’m delighted to tell you about Cold War Conversations History Tours I'm exploring the idea of hosting a Cold War history tour via a specialist tour company, and I'd like your help working out what ...

19 Aug 51s

After German reunification, former East German Air Force officer Roland faced an extraordinary transformation: joining the military alliance he had once been trained to fight. Roland recounts his d...

14 Aug 50min

What did it mean to train as an officer in the East German Air Force, where technical skill, military discipline and socialist ideology were inseparable? Roland recalls his journey into the air arm...

7 Aug 44min

Romania in the 1980s was a country of empty shops, power cuts, rationing and fear—but for one little girl it was also home. In this episode, author Oana Aristide shares the remarkable childhood experi...

31 Juli 42min