One morning in August 1980, the noise of 10,000 shipyard workers suddenly stopped. Something extraordinary was happening.

As a young shipbuilding student, Bogdan finds himself inside Gdańsk’s Lenin Shipyard as workers down tools and the movement that will become Solidarity begins to take shape. What follows is a remarkable journey through the final decade of communist Poland.

Bogdan recalls student occupation strikes, the shock of martial law, encounters with riot police, and his unconventional escape from military conscription by becoming a teacher. He describes his first intoxicating glimpse of the West in Vienna and West Berlin, where two worlds exist just metres apart across the Berlin Wall.

Then, in the summer of 1989, Bogdan and his wife board a flight for Canada with borrowed money, a few possessions and no certainty about what comes next.

This is a deeply personal story of resistance, freedom and starting again.

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Curated episode extras⁠ ⁠⁠https://coldwarconversations.com/episode475⁠⁠

⁠

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Bogdan was born just a month before the Berlin Wall went up—and left communist Poland a month before it came down. In between lay a childhood shaped by shortages, censorship, compulsory conformity and a growing determination to escape.

Raised in Słupsk, a formerly German city near the Baltic coast, Bogdan remembers crowded post-war housing, Saturday school, packed Catholic churches and a world where bananas, meat and even bicycles depended on contacts and barter. His family carried deeper scars: wartime forced labour, a father shot while fleeing captivity, and an uncle whose unexpected return from Britain reunited relatives separated for decades.

Yet everyday life also brought football, music lessons, Western films and quiet mockery of a system few truly believed. Convinced that shipbuilding offered a route abroad, Bogdan entered university—and found himself at the Gdańsk shipyard in August 1980, just as Lech Wałęsa and Solidarity changed Poland forever before his eyes.

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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 resistance network, trained to operate radios, use dead drops, scout escape routes and, if necessary, sabotage an invading army.

Historian Johan Wennström joins me to reveal the extraordinary story behind Sweden’s Stay Behind organisation. He explains why officially neutral Sweden quietly collaborated with MI6, the CIA and NATO, how the organisation preserved its secrecy, and why the royal family and government might have fled to Britain. We hear of mysterious Sunday walks, ammunition delivered to railway stations, aerial “elk surveys” concealing reconnaissance missions and the cyanide capsules for use if an operative was captured.

It is a gripping account of patriotism, secrecy and sacrifice—and of hundreds of volunteers who carried the burden of a war that, thankfully, never came to Sweden.

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Curated episode extras⁠ https://coldwarconversations.com/episode473/

⁠Swedish Fighter pilot episode https://coldwarconversations.com/episode386/

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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 watchtowers scanned the fields, and an IRA sniper could strike without warning.

In this episode, journalist and Royal Navy officer Toby Harnden takes us inside his book “Bandit Country”, which describes the borderland of South Armagh where the Provisional IRA fought one of its most formidable campaigns.

Harnden recalls arriving during the uneasy peace of 1996, meeting IRA members and security personnel, and learning how family ties, local knowledge and the Irish border made the South Armagh Brigade unusually effective.

We explore its sniper teams, homemade mortars, intelligence networks, the massive London & Manchester attacks, Libyan weapons and attempts to bring down British helicopters. Harnden also examines the Kingsmill massacre, the devastating 1979 Warrenpoint ambush, alleged Garda collusion, and the British Army’s deployment of the SAS.

Finally, he reveals the brigade’s scepticism towards the Good Friday Agreement—and asks whether the old republican flame still burns beneath South Armagh’s landscape today.

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Curated episode extras https://coldwarconversations.com/episode472/

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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 and ordered to stop anyone attempting to reach Austria. Yet Jiří had no intention of defending the communist system. Haunted by the Soviet-led invasion of 1968 and determined never to shoot an innocent person, he secretly studied the border’s weaknesses and planned an audacious escape.

One night, accompanied by two friends and carrying his AK-47, he disabled the alarm, slipped beneath the wire and plunged into a river crossing. His ordeal did not end in the West. After days hiding around Vienna, Jiří entered an Austrian refugee camp—where an unknown gunman twice tried to kill him.

This is a story of courage, chance and survival, told by the border guard who turned the Iron Curtain against itself.

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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 labour and a wartime journey through Russia, Iran and Italy before fighting at Monte Cassino.

When the war ended, returning to communist Poland was impossible. He built a new life in Britain, but the family he had left behind remained painfully out of reach. Then, after more than a quarter of a century, came the chance to cross back behind the Iron Curtain.

In this moving episode, his daughters tell a story of separation, survival and a reunion in communist Poland. It is also the story of a Polish community in Britain, the children who inherited its memories, and the enduring pull of a homeland that distance, politics and time could never entirely erase.

Additional thanks to Stefan Hales-Józefczyk and the Leek Polish Connection for welcoming me into their group and allowing me to record this story.

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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 difficult passage from the East German military into the Bundeswehr. His experience, qualifications and years of service suddenly counted for less.

Having been a member of the Communist Party, he endured intensive screening, as well as a reduction in rank, lower pay than western colleagues and long separations from his family. Some new comrades welcomed him; others regarded him with suspicion, prejudice and open hostility.

Yet Roland was determined to prove that professionalism could survive the collapse of the country he had served. From working with Mi-8 helicopters to supporting Germany’s inherited MiG-29 fleet, he rebuilt his career inside a radically different military culture.

This is a revealing story of reunification from inside the armed forces—and of one former “enemy” confronting divided loyalties, institutional mistrust and the challenge of beginning again.

Special thanks to Witali Gerber, military historian and curator at the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr, for his assistance in arranging this interview.

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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 of the Nationale Volksarmee, from dreams of flying MiG fighters to the demanding realities of officer training and service with Mi-8 helicopters. He describes the long days, intensive political instruction and constant expectation that war with NATO could erupt at any moment.

Behind the impressive aircraft and tightly controlled military routines lay a system shaped by loyalty, surveillance and pressure to conform. Yet everyday life also depended on friendship, professionalism and the determination to keep complex Soviet-built machines flying.

Roland offers a rare first-hand view inside one of the Warsaw Pact’s most secretive forces, revealing how young East Germans were prepared to defend the GDR—and what happened when Gorbachev’s reforms and growing unrest began to challenge everything they had been taught.

You’ll have to tune in next week for Roland’s experiences as East Germany implodes and his subsequent service in the Bundeswehr. Special thanks to Witali Gerber, military historian and curator at the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr, for his assistance in arranging this interview.

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Romania in the 1980s was a country of empty shops, power cuts,

From writing an anti-Ceaușescu protest demanding more cartoons to surviving freezing winters, queuing for food and learning not to trust the wrong people, her memories bring Cold War Romania vividly to life.

Oana explains how children experienced dictatorship differently from adults, revealing a world where imagination flourished despite repression. Rich with humour, warmth and poignant reflection, this conversation offers a unique perspective on life behind the Iron Curtain.

Enter the book giveaway here

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