Cold War Museums, Memorials

Category: Cold War Museums, Memorials --- See latest Cold War news here.

CIA keeps its spy museum hush-hush
When the CIA's gadget gurus need a new piece of technology to satisfy the demands of agents in outpost in the war on terror, they often walk into the past. It's all down the hall in the CIA Museum, where technological fantasies of the Cold War are taking on new relevance in the fight against terrorists. A smaller option for remote surveillance? Maybe there's a way to adapt that old "Insectothopter", a robotic dragonfly developed in the 1970s to fly tiny listening devices through open windows in heavily guarded buildings. "We're revisiting technologies all the time..." says Toni Hiley, the museum's curator.
by usatoday.com :: 2008-07-31 :: Cold War Museums, Memorials

Gulag tourists line up for KGB beatings at the Soviet Union theme park
The 1984 Soviet Union theme park is located near the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in an old bunker. Visitors pay to be "beaten, interrogated and shouted at" by tour leaders dressed as agents of the KGB. Throughout the Cold War, the KGB became more and more obsessed with hunting down ideological revolutionists in the Soviet Bloc. Most were sent to gulags for undefined periods. Organisers say they wanted to show life under Soviet rule. For those old enough to remember, the 2-hour tour can aid in the healing process. "There are still many people in Lithuania who are sick with Soviet nostalgia so we've started this show to help them recover," a spokeswoman told.
by news.com-travel :: 2008-01-24 :: Cold War Museums, Memorials

Moscow: A once-secret bunker opens, a Cold War museum
A once-secret bunker, located 60 meters beneath central Moscow, opens to the public and may soon contain a Cold War museum. Sold off in an auction the bunker now belongs to a private company that plans to turn it into an entertainment complex with a museum about the Cold War and a restaurant. But it is already possible to book excursions around the 600-meter-long network of bare tunnels. The bunker's director, Olga Arkharova, gave a tour of the complex, leading the way confidently around the dusty tunnels.
by themoscowtimes :: 2007-04-21 :: Cold War Bunkers & Shelters

Cold war exhibition opens in spectacular new raf cosford building
The RAF Museum at Cosford has opened its National Cold War Exhibition in a new building at the Shropshire air base. Covering more than 8,000 square metres, the structure tells the story of the tensions between superpowers that affected the whole world for a large part of the 20th century. Its new exhibition hall tells the story of the period from political, social and cultural perspectives. It aims to inform about this era where the world was divided by the ideologies of the west and the communist bloc. Examples of Britain's three 'V bombers' - the Vulcan, Victor and Valiant - are displayed under one roof for the first time.
by 24hourmuseum :: 2007-02-10 :: Cold War Museums, Memorials

UK Museum to lift lid on Cold War
The National Cold War exhibition is set to open at RAF Cosford Museum near Wolverhampton - but its exact contents are a guarded secret. The £12.3 million project will feature aircraft, armoured fighting vehicles, a section of the Berlin Wall and life-size Russian dolls. The nation's first exhibition dedicated to the cold war era will house a dozen aircraft that played a role in military operations. They include the UK's former V-bombers - the Vulcan, which is set to be suspended from the ceiling, along with the Valiant and the Victor.
by bbc :: 2007-01-11 :: Cold War Museums, Memorials

Historic secret Cold War Bunker to Become a Museum
During the Cold War, a secret underground bunker for the West German government was built to protect a chosen few in case of an atomic attack. The site was to be sealed up, but is now planned as a museum. Ron Lerke calls out a greeting and his voice echoes into the darkness, 1.3 kilometers of it. He is underground, in what used to be ultra-secret atomic bunker, located deep in western Germany near the French border. And it's here, in a tunnel stretching into a black abyss, that a restored section of the bunker will be used for the first time. He walks slowly with a flashlight through the bunker, 200 meters underground, as danger warnings line the walls...
by dw-world :: 2007-01-05 :: Cold War Bunkers & Shelters

Bonn's nuke war bunker - Cold War museum
A system of tunnels where the West German government once planned to hunker down for up to 30 days during nuclear missile strikes is to re-open next year as a Cold War museum. The 19km of tunnels bored into a slate hill 1960-1972 have mostly been stripped bare, but 200 metres of the former government bunker will be open to visitors. Visitors to the Cold War museum can admire a 25-ton outer steel door designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. The structure began as a railway tunnel before the World War I and how the Nazis used forced labour in the tunnel to manufacture launchers for V-2 missiles.
by int :: 2006-11-27 :: Cold War Bunkers & Shelters

Berlin opened a museum to show objects from East Germany
Berlin has opened a museum to show everyday objects from the former East Germany and recall an era that has been all but effaced in less than two decades. Everything on display in the DDR Alltagsmuseum (GDR Daily Life Musuem) was donated by people who lived in the communist. Museum has tried to make its displays interactive so that visitors do not stare coldly at a static slice of life under communism.
by afp :: 2006-07-21 :: Cold War Homefront - Daily Life

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