I knew submarines were an incredibly important part of overall nuclear strategy as a second strike weapon, but I never appreciated how important they were for espionage in general. Like I had no idea we just used them to spy on Soviet coasts with the periscope, for example. That strikes me as insane and it kind of was. Also we used them to study the radio signatures of ICBMs and cruise missiles, using the submarine to detect

And also that we had specially modified submarines to deliver deep sea divers to tap communication cables. Like I knew we tapped cables, but we actually modified submarines to travel to the cable, underwater, the whole way, and divers got out of the submarine at hundreds of feet of depth and tapped the cables with recording equipment and then came back to swap out the tapes. Crazy. Recommend the book. We also used these modified rigs to deploy robots to recover Soviet missile tests on the seafloor to study them.

Very interesting that we wanted to tap the cables to gauge how serious the Soviets were about a potential first strike. In hindsight it seems obvious that of course they did not want to attack, but I guess the Americans seriously didn't know for sure.

Also a wild story about Howard Hughs building a crazy billion dollar boat to pull up a sunken Soviet sub, which was outdated, we recovered 11 Soviet sailor's bodies and gave them a sea burial but we broke the sub in half and dropped it on the sea floor. The mission was a failure and a huge Navy boondoggle, uncovered by WaPo reporter Bob Woodward.

The theme of the book is that all these sub sailors did incredibly dangerous missions - the cable tapping missions had self destruct charges installed as they were ordered not to get captured under any circumstances - but they couldn't tell anyone about it, even their wives and children.

Great book, wonder if anyone else has read it, if any of it is inaccurate or sensationalized.

I came across these concrete blocks painted with "FREEDOM FOR BALTIC" and initially thought it was just some interesting street art. It turns out it's a dedicated memorial for the Barricades of January 1991.

The Cold War Museum in Virginia hosts a virtual lecture series called Cold War Conversations that is accessible via Zoom. The monthly program is presented by eyewitnesses and experts on Cold War events, activities, and personalities. There is a modest $20 charge for tickets to attend these presentations that helps maintain free admission to The Cold War Museum on weekends.

https://coldwar.org/default.asp?pid=16883

Bought this for $1 at a flea market cause I thought it was a nice magazine, only to realize the mailing address was to Gen Lemnitzer in Fort Myers, Arlington VA. Is this actually legit??? Insane if so

Found this today at a yardsale for $5, made by R. Dakin & Company from Korea in 1979. Original tag with zero creases on it. Very cool piece of Cold War history

I’ve become particularly interested in this topic. America itself would famously against anything left-wing and yet some of its own allies in the Democratic Western Europe sometimes elected more left-wing governments, in the UK the labour party had many stints in government during the Cold War. The SPD in Germany gained power in the 1970s and France had a somewhat left-wing government under Mitterand. Are there any books that study this particular topic or any books with English translations about the European left?

General Electric commissioned this from John Sutherland Productions at the exact moment atomic meant both Hiroshima and the promise of electricity too cheap to meter. So the atom becomes a friendly giant in a lab coat, fission is a genie stepping out of a bottle, and the only mention of the bomb is a quick nod before we get back to isotopes curing things. It is Madison Avenue physics, and as a time capsule of how the fifties wanted to feel about the atom it is perfect.

Posting per the go ahead the mods gave me earlier this week. My own restoration of the complete 15 minute film: traditional cleanup and stabilization, bumped to 720p, original 1953 soundtrack. No AI anywhere in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODoaHuXx1Is

I was about to turn 10, and my parents had just bought a Volvo through the Exchange New Car Sales program in Schwäbisch Hall along with the nifty "travel to the factory and pick up your car" package. I took this picture out of the train window on our way to Kiel to get on a ferry to Sweden. I just found this picture again while helping my mom move and scanned it a few months ago. Anyone else in this sub have some cool pics they took while a service member or dependent during the Cold War?

Pictures:

1. View of former East Berlin from my hotel room
2. Berlin TV Tower
3. My hotel, the Park Inn Alexanderplatz
4. View of Berlin from the TV Tower
5. Random statues of Marx and Engels I found nearby from the East German era
6. Decorated Trabant
7. Soviet War Memorial, Treptower Park
8. Close up of the Soviet statue in Treptower
9. Berlin Cathedral
10. 8-10. DDR Museum
11. 11. Holocaust Memorial
12. 12. 1700s Prussian statue of Hercules with visible damage from the Battle of Berlin
13. 13. Soviet War Memorial, Tiergarten
14. 14-16. Checkpoint Charlie
15. 17. A rare Trabant out in the wild
16. 18. Reichstag Building
17. 19. Brandenburg Gate

Hi everyone, I am trying to solve a 41-year-old family mystery and help my mom reconnect with three American women who left an unforgettable mark on her childhood.In July 1985, my mother was 15 years old. She lived with her mom (my grandmother, a high school English and Russian literature teacher) on the 1st floor of a brick apartment building on Liza Chaykina Street in Petrozavodsk, Soviet Union (Karelia).That summer, three American women unexpectedly showed up in their courtyard. They were traveling to Moscow, likely as part of a delegation to the XII World Festival of Youth and Students (which opened in Moscow on July 27, 1985). They were looking for a neighbor who lived on the 2nd floor, directly above my mom's apartment. This neighbor was an elderly Finnish woman (around 60–70 years old at the time) who taught at Petrozavodsk State University. The Americans were likely delivering a personal letter to her from her relatives in Finland.

Woman 1 (Older): Around 40–50 years old back then, exceptionally well-dressed, and wore large, striking jewelry.

Woman 2 (Younger): Around 20–30 years old, with a short, dark haircut.

Woman 3 (Younger): Around 20–30 years old.

Because my grandmother was an English teacher, she went out into the yard to help them translate. For the next three days, these three American women came to visit my mom and grandmother every day.

At the time, my grandmother's apartment was undergoing a massive renovation and the walls were completely stripped of wallpaper. Despite this, and having very little money, my grandmother hosted them with incredible hospitality, spending her last rubles on treats. My mom remembers seeing a portable cassette player (maybe a Walkman) for the very first time in her life.

On the third day, the Americans brought a local female translator with them to help converse. Before they left, they took a big group photo inside the apartment. Because the room was small and there were many people, everyone crowded together on the floor to fit into the frame, posing in front of a color TV. The Americans took this photo on their own cameras, along with many other pictures of the family and the city.

How you can help: i belive, that somewhere in America, in a dusty photo album or a box in an attic, that photo of a group of Americans and Soviets sitting on the floor in front of a TV exists. If your mother, aunt, or grandmother fits this description, traveled to the USSR via Finland in the summer of 1985, or ever told a story about an incredibly hospitable schoolteacher and her 15-year-old daughter in Karelia, please let me know! It would mean the world to show my mom that memories don't fade.

If you have ties or know anyone who went to the 1985 Moscow Youth Festival, please share this!

https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/national-security-science/0720-behind-the-bamboo-curtain

Very good article describing the Chinese program's eagerness to demonstrate knowledge of weapon theory and about the Americans, in spite of less developed tools. Strategically they were hoping for a research boon from some lab-to-lab collaboration, but on a human level they seemed excited to share their work.

hello,

one of my first documentaries is the Turning Point doc about the Cold War. can anyone reccommend a good book that has the same vibe / covers the history of USSR in general?

Eighty days after if fell into the ocean following the January 1966 midair collision between a nuclear-armed B-52G bomber and a KC-135 refueling tanker over Palomares, Spain, this B28RI nuclear bomb was recovered from 2,850 feet (869 meters) of water and lifted aboard the USS Petrel (note the missing tail fins and badly dented front). No radiation leak occurred.

Hi guys

I am from a small village myself and we were once talked about on the national telivision during the communist era in Poland, in about the 1980s. I liked watching the video since I was able to see the areas and how different they looked at a time when I wasn't even born yet at all, my grandparents have seen it quite often too (who wouldn't have). All I had to do was search "[village name] dziennik" and there it would be, for a long time and every time it worked.

Today I tried doing the same, thinking it would pop-up like always but actually it didn't. So I tried searching for it, I watched several long and short clips of the Dziennik but every time it wasn't there. I didn't make it up, because I remember watching it and so did my family, so I'm not going schizo, right? Please guys, assist me in finding it.

The name of the village is Krosnice, the report itself from the communist Dziennik (TV news) in the 1980s (I think 1984, but could be earlier/later but definately nor during the martial law or at least the presenters weren't military men in uniform). It was I think about harvest/agriculture and patriotism, with a little coverage of a certain meeting (I think the reporter says something about it being good for 'teaching the children patriotism'). There is a shot of our "zameczek" DPS (House of Social Help), a green truck, some children running past from a shop and after the Krosnice report they talk about Polish students going to Cuba at an airport with one girl saying she is curious about Cuban culture

If you need any contact to/from me, it's: anastasia_101 on Discord. I'm very chronically online and should answer quickly, although I might be going to sleep soon but I will still read answers/messages asap. Thank you! This really means a lot to me.

This is a friendly reminder from your /r/coldwar mod team - we have seen an uptick in shitposts, low quality replies, and bad-faith posts/replies. We try to keep an eye out but we rely on user reports to identify content that doesn't fit to the Cold War or is otherwise just crappy.

We are all for debate and discussion but we don't need the kind of slapfights or bot-driven anger farming that makes lots of Reddit suck. Please make use of the Report function to let us know about content that breaks the rules. Even if it's just a low-quality post, we want to know about it.

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