Cold War Conversations

We talk about the relatively little known Uprising of 1953 in East Germany. 

A lot of focus justifiably is on the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it can be argued that the Uprising of 1953 sowed the seeds for the eventual demise of the GDR.We chat with Dr Richard Millington who has studied the Uprising and shares with us some fascinating research including eyewitness accounts and details from the Stasi files of the period. 

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Welcome to episode 5 which is part 2 of our Cold War Conversation with Shane Whaley of Spybrary . 

Show notes at coldwarconversations.com/episode5/ 

We talked for some time ,so I have split this interview into two parts. 

I hope you find this second half as interesting as I did – settle in for a wide ranging and hopefully interesting conversation with my good friend Shane Whaley. 

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Welcome to episode 4 (part 1) of Cold War Conversations. Today we’re talking about Cold War espionage, East Germany and Berlin with Spybrary host, Shane Whaley.

 Shane runs the Spybrary podcast at spybrary.com. Their goal is to encourage people to read new spy novels, revisit an old espionage classic and discuss them with our community of like minded spy fans. It’s great fun if you like spy books I highly recommend his podcast.

 Settle in for a wide ranging and hopefully interesting conversation with my good friend Shane Whaley.

 We could have gone on for hours and indeed we did, so I have split this interview into two parts 

Support the project! https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/

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Welcome to Episode 3 of Cold War Conversations where we hear about the strange world of football in East Germany and even if you are not interested in football it’s a fascinating chat. 

Craig McCracken runs the website, Beyondthelastman.com, described as 20th century football writing and nostalgia in a skilled and cultured groove. 

One of his areas of interest is football in the GDR and from our conversation you’ll realise he is a fount of knowledge from BSG Rotation Babelsberg to FC Hansa Rostock and all stops between. 

We talk about the nefarious activities of Stasi Chief Erich Mielke and his favourite team, and we cover the only competitive game where the GDR played West Germany in the 1974 World Cup. Craig also describes a Stasi chase through the bazaars of Istanbul to stop player defections and a suspicious death of a former GDR player in West Germany. 

Show notes are on this link

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Welcome to the first full episode of Cold War Conversations where we start with a fascinating eyewitness account of Berlin during the Cold War. 

Michael lived in Berlin as a child of US Airforce personnel in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently joined the US Airforce himself and worked in Signals Intelligence during the 1980s. 

In a wide-ranging chat, we talked about life for American families and their kids in Berlin during the 1960s and 70s as well as his time in signals intelligence in Berlin in the 1980s. We also talked about the Stasi spy in Michael’s unit, Kennedy’s visit to Berlin, Baader Meinhof attacks on US Forces, and much more.

Our guest’s unit was described by the Commander in Chief US Airforce Europe as “his eyes and ears to the East.” 

See the show notes with lots of extra information at coldwarconversations.com

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Experience the Cold War through the voices of the people who were there. 

From soldiers to spies and civilians there are hundreds of unique stories told with humour, sadness, and all the emotions in between. 

Listen at coldwarconversations.com or search Cold War Conversations in your podcast app.

Cold War Conversations is a unique award-winning project dedicated to creating an archive of first-hand accounts of the Cold War. Many of our stories have never been heard before.

Visit our website here for further information. https://coldwarconversations.com/

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Welcome to Cold War Conversations, chatting to those who lived through and experienced the Cold War first hand and those that are fascinated by the period.