Best Spy Stories from the Cold War
When kids are little and adults ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they often say things like ‘fireman,’ ‘astronaut,’ and ‘dancer.’ But do you think any kid ever says ‘spy?’ I ask this because it seems like so many of the most famous spies start off in other professions. Or they are spies out of necessity because of a war. Or in the case of Cold War history, the lack of a war.
The Cold War was not a war in the traditional sense. It didn’t involve thousands of armed men fighting it out on battlefields, but instead was the name for the period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, after World War II. Because a war involving direct battle with nuclear weapons is called a hot war, this period of indirect conflict that had no actual large-scale battles was instead named the Cold War. It is generally considered to span from the 1947 Truman Doctrine to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
That’s a long time to not actually be fighting. And in those forty-something years, that is a heck of a lot of spying. Cold War spies account for some of the most audacious, long-lasting spy missions in history. You’ve probably seen The Americans, and maybe you thought it was fake, but it’s not that far from the truth. The real-life spies involved in the long history of the Cold War were in it to win it. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been a ton of incredible Cold War history books written about all aspects of that period in history. But I always find the ones about spies to be the coolest. Not that I could ever be a spy. For starters, I’m a terrible liar and I hate to travel. And spies need to have nerves of steel. I have nerves of Jell-O. So I’ll have to stick to reading spy books. And you can enjoy them too: here are 10 of the best spy stories from Cold War history.
Favreau explores how billions of dollars were spent and thousands of men and women devoted their lives to spying, all in the name of staying on top of the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over the world for the five decades of the Cold War. The author also expounds on the role that spying played in America's participation and its necessity.
This real-life spy thriller was the inspiration for the movie Argo, and is told by the people who lived it. Antonio Mendez and his future wife Jonna were CIA operatives attempting to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, but due to the extensive work by the Soviets, it was nearly impossible. But then the couple became part of the technological breakthroughs that allowed the CIA to gain the upper hand over the KGB and stage some of the most incredible operations.
CIA agent Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko had careers in the Washington, DC intelligence scene, where they were part of some of the most landmark intelligence operations. This is the story of how two men, who by all accounts should have been mortal enemies, wound up the best of friends.
Bogdan Stashinsky was a KGB assassin who carried out assassinations abroad with various methods. When he defected to West Germany in 1961 and spilled all his secrets to the CIA, the resulting trial shook the intelligence world and really hurt the KBG and implicated many powerful figures in the Kremlin. Stashinsky's story was the real-life inspiration for Ian Fleming's Bond novel The Man with the Golden Gun.
This is one of the wildest spy stories and unsolved mysteries of the 20th century! Dag Hammarskjöld had been the head of the United Nations for nine years, known for his unwavering commitment to world peace, yet a man with great enemies. Then during a trip to the Congo in 1951, his plane crashed in the jungle. What first appeared to be an accident became a mystery when his body was recovered with an ace of spades placed on it. What country was responsible for his death?
