I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. ibid. Jack Ripper
Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said? He said, ‘War is too important to be left to the generals.’ When he said that, fifty years ago, he may have been right. But now war is too important to be left to the politicians. They have neither the time nor inclination for strategic thought. ibid.
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the war room. ibid. president
Good, then. Well then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine. Good. Well, it’s good that you’re fine, and – and I’m fine. I agree with you. It’s great to be fine. [laughs] Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The BOMB, Dmitri. The hydrogen bomb. Well now, what happened is, uh, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of – well, he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. ibid. president
It’s a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly, you probably wouldn’t have even got it. They will not reach their targets for at least another hour. I am, I am positive, Dmitri. Listen, I’ve been all over this with your Ambassador. It is not a trick. Well, I’ll tell you. We’d like to give your Air Staff a complete rundown on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes. ibid.
Perhaps it might be better, Mr President, if you were more concerned with the American people, than with your image in the history books. ibid. Turgidson
Muffley: How long would you have to stay down there?
Dr Strangelove: Well let’s see now ah ... cobalt thorium G ... Radioactive half-life of uh ... I would think that uh ... possibly uh ... one hundred years. ibid.
Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious ... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Russian Ambassador: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor. ibid.
Peace Is Our Profession. ibid. motto of 843th Bomb Wing Strategic Command
But they may be thinking they can either bargain Berlin and Cuba against each other, or that they can provoke us into the kind of action in Cuba which would give an umbrella for them to take action with respect to Berlin. If they can provoke us into taking the first overt action then the world would be confused and they would have what they would consider justification for making a move somewhere else. For the first time I am beginning really to wonder whether Mr Khrushchev is entirely rational about Berlin because if they shoot those missiles we are in general nuclear war. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State
In 1983 there were two superpowers. Both possessed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over. Neither knew what the other side was thinking. In the course of a year a series of disconnected events convinced the elderly Soviet leadership that America was about to attack. 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse, Channel 4 2008
Able Archer was a war game designed to test communications. Out in the forest of West Germany. ibid.
Soviet suspicions of the West were deep-rooted ... They had over eleven thousand nuclear warheads. ibid.
Reagan began spending over a trillion dollars a year on defense. ibid.
If Reagan’s arms build-up and belligerent speeches unnerved the aging Soviets, this was just the beginning. Only two weeks after the Evil Empire speech Reagan announced his most expensive, technically-demanding weapons project to date: the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars. ibid.
Five missiles appeared to be in the air. Incredibly Petrov’s instinct proved correct. The five nuclear missiles were nothing more than high altitude clouds. ibid.
In 1983 the tensions between the superpowers were at their highest for a generation. So it may seem strange, incredible even, that there was only one man who could tell the West what the Soviets were really thinking: Oleg Gordievsky. ibid.
CND has its biggest rally ever: two hundred thousand marched in London; another six hundred thousand in Germany. ibid.
Agent Topaz’ intelligence was unique. And the Soviets were hungry for more. He responded by gaining access to the most secret document in NATO: it was called MC161. ibid.
Without Perestroika, the Cold War simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present. Mikhail Gorbachev
The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting. Richard M Nixon
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. Carl Sagan
This is the story of a wall. It’s the story of a dictatorship. Of the construction and collapse of a system. Of the arms race between the builders of the Wall and their opponents the escapers. And it’s the story of a symbol. The Western gateway to the Cold War. Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall 1/2, BBC 2004
Berlin will be under joint military administration. It’s a recipe for tension. Defeated Germany is now split between four victorious allies: in the west France, Britain and the USA; in the east Soviet Russia. And in the middle of the Soviet zone Berlin is divided again. ibid.
From 1949 there were two German states: east and west. ibid.
Seventy-seven east-west crossings are sealed inside the city. ibid.
And then a propaganda war begins. ibid.
By 1964 more than seventy tunnels had been dug from East to West and from West to East freeing more than two hundred and fifty people. ibid.
The Cold War is heating up. In the 1970s the Soviet Union staged missiles in East Germany. The Americans plan to do the same in West Germany. Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall 2/2
The watchtower, the rear wall, the bed of nails, the electrified barbed- wire fence, dogs, alarm wires, and there’s a trap for the guards too. ibid.
West Germany buys peoples’ freedom: for up to fifty thousand dollars each. Selling thousands of dissidents actually helps East Germany avert bankruptcy. And there are huge loans from the West. ibid.
Green bushes make the Wall look benign and bucolic. ibid.
Border guards are totally unprepared. ibid.
On October 3rd Germany was reunified. It signified the end of the Cold War. During the twenty-eight years the Wall existed at least 40,000 people escaped across the border to the West. 75,000 more were prosecuted for trying. Over 1,300 died. Including at least 136 in Berlin itself. But the East covered up many deaths so effectively the exact total is not known. ibid.
The Soviet Union ... would drive the American programme for decades to come. Living Weapon, PBS 2013
In a period of escalating Cold War tensions Americans were encouraged by their government to prepare for a germ assault from a ruthless Russian enemy. ibid.
Did you think that the Cold War being over things should have got better? Who many of you are as stupid as I am believing that one? Bill Hicks, Revelations, Dominion Theatre London
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Winston Churchill, speech Westminster College 1946
The Iron Curtain did not reach the ground and under it flowed liquid manure from the West. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Ponderous and uncertain is that relation between pressure and resistance which constitutes the balance of power. The arch of peace is morticed by no iron tendons. Harold Nicholson, Public Faces, 1932
I think it’s extremely important that our talk and our discussion be founded on this premise: that any air strike will be planned to take place prior to the time they become operational. Because if they become operational before the air strike, I do not believe we can state we can knock them out before they can be launched. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense
I thought if there was a war, an invasion of Cuba, there would be nuclear war. And that would result in the disappearance of millions and millions of people. Jose Ramon Fernandez, vice president Cuban council of ministers