Richard was 6 years old when he was uprooted from a school in the United States to a Soviet school 700 miles East of Moscow.  In 1988 the Soviet Union was opening up following Michael Gorbachev’s policy of Perestroika and American firms began looking at the possibility of trading with the Soviet Union.   It was politically and economically sensitive and his family was chosen to be sent to the USSR to open a factory in the industrial town of Nizhnekamsk in Tartarstan.  They lived in a special apartment building designated for foreigners and Richard attended the local school. &nb ..read more

Brian Regal entered the US Army in 1977 and served on the M60A1 tank initially as a driver. The M60A1 was America's primary main battle tank during the Cold War, with initial deployment in 1960 and combat service through to  1991. After tank school, Brian was sent to West Germany where he was assigned to the 3/35 Armor in the Bamberg Garrison as part of the 1st Armored Division US Army,  where the 3/35 was tasked to fight a Warsaw Pact attack across the Czechoslovak and East German borders. Brian was also his  company’s nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist. He d ..read more

In 1987 Martin received a letter informing him of his conscription into the Dutch Army. A number of European NATO countries had conscription during the Cold War. Holland’s applied to men over the age of 18 and included service for about a year, after which you were placed on the reserve.   Martin objected to military service as a conscientious objector on religious grounds. Conscientious objectors could perform alternative civilian service instead of military service. However to get to be an official “conscientious objector” you had to pass multiple military courts and military procedures ..read more

Mark Baker was featured in episode 9 where he told us about working in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s as a journalist for a small publishing company called Business International (BI). He was the company’s Czechoslovakia expert and with his Czech minder Arnold he travelled to Prague and other cities to report on significant economic and political developments. In 2021, he published “Čas Proměn” (“Time of Changes”), written in Czech, it is a collection of stories about Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and early ‘90s. Over the Christmas 2021 holidays, as he was visiting family in Ohio, he ..read more

We return to Dirk’s story from episode 278 with a move to East Berlin following his mother’s divorce from his father. Dirk finds school life more relaxed where pupils are allowed to wear Western clothing and to speak more openly, even questioning their teachers about the existence of the Berlin Wall. After leaving school, Dirk starts work in a factory from which he can see into West Berlin and he longs for a life away from the restrictions of East Germany. His mother’s new partner is a conscripted border guard who advises him not to attempt an escape over the Wall. However, as East Germany ..read more

Dirk lived in the town of Bernau about 15 miles from East Berlin. Just outside Bernau was Wandlitz the residential estate of the East German leadership. As a result, Bernau had one of the highest densities of Stasi facilities in East Germany. Dirk shares details of his childhood growing up in a Plattenbau block of flats where his school friends were children of NVA officers, Stasi officers, and Soviet Army officers. He shares some fascinating details of school life and visits the homes of his school friends in Bernau.  However, his parents clashed with his school teachers as they bullie ..read more

Dirk lived in the town of Bernau about 15 miles from East Berlin. Just outside Bernau was Wandlitz the residential estate of the East German leadership. As a result, Bernau had one of the highest densities of Stasi facilities in East Germany. Dirk shares details of his childhood growing up in a Plattenbau block of flats where his school friends were children of NVA officers, Stasi officers, and Soviet Army officers. He shares some fascinating details of school life and visits the homes of his school friends in Bernau.  However, his parents clashed with his school teachers as they bullie ..read more

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 over shortwave radio, passing US secrets to handlers in local restaurants, and slipping into Havana wearing a wig. Her only sister, Lucy, worked for the FBI helping the FBI flush Cuban spies out of the United States. Little did Lucy or her family know that the greatest Cuban spy of all was sitting right next to them at Thanksgivings, baptisms ..read more

Every weekday on the History Daily podcast, Lindsay Graham takes you back in time to explore a momentous moment that happened ‘on this day’ in history.  1989 was a pivotal year for the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall, free elections in Poland, and the almost bloodless revolutions in the other Warsaw Pact countries apart from Romania. However, two other important events occurred in 1989  and this bonus episode will cover those events. So here is the 1989 US Invasion of Panama and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre courtesy of our friends at History Daily. Just search Histo ..read more

Tim Lyon was an officer assigned to the 400th Strategic Missile Squadron located in Cheyenne Wyoming. The Squadron was maintained 50 Peacekeeper ICBM missiles based in underground silos in farmers’ fields in remote areas of  Wyoming. Tim was one of two launch officers who were responsible for 10 of these missiles. He and his colleague would descend forty to sixty feet below ground to a concrete capsule that housed the Launch Control Centre.  There he would spend 24-hour alerts ready to launch 100 nuclear warheads — each with twenty times the explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb at ..read more