The Spying Game: Tales from the Cold War - Season 1

The era of rising tensions between East and West after the Second World War. Some just counted tanks, others stole blueprints for bombs. The Cold War was the battleground for thousands of spies and spotters. Whether military observers, spies or traitors, they all acted as suppliers of intelligence for their masters in Washington or Moscow. Many of them risked their lives, and quite a few paid the ultimate price. Yet, did the spying game really contribute to keeping the Cold War cold in the end?

The increase in tensions between East and West during the Cold War, resulting in western intelligence services shifting their focus to East Germany as the Warsaw Pact's major deployment zone. Nowhere else did western services get as close to Soviet military equipment. Their prime targets were missiles, nuclear depots and airbases. At the same time, the KGB, as well as Soviet military intelligence, were sending their spies to reconnoitre Nato forces in the West. The game of spies was in full swing.

At the end of the 1980s, the Soviet army was being completely modernised, observed closely by western military intelligence in East Germany. Weapons-scouts in the field were constantly on duty, as were agents in high command or in intelligence service stations, such as in the autumn of 1983, when Nato was practising new procedures of nuclear release. Moscow was concerned the exercise could be the beginning of a nuclear first strike. It took a double agent to clear up this dangerous misunderstanding.