Questions to Ask Someone About the Cold War
Questions to ask someone about the Cold War who was alive for it: a parent, grandparent or neighbor, interviewed by a student with an assignment or by a younger relative who is simply curious. They run in the order such a talk tends to go: where and when the person grew up, the drills and the fear of the bomb, what the news said and what they believed, the events they can still date, the years it ended, and how it all looks to them now. Most are worded to work whichever side of the Iron Curtain the person was on, because a childhood in Ohio, one in Leipzig and one in Havana were three different Cold Wars.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Where and when
What years were you growing up, and where were you living for most of them?
Why ask it
Everything after this depends on the answer: a child of the 1950s remembers drills and Sputnik, and a child of the 1980s remembers the Wall coming down. Put the town and the years at the top of your notes, then work out how old they were in 1962, 1969 and 1989 before you ask about those years.
When you hear the words 'Cold War', what is the first thing you picture?
Why ask it
An easy opener that shows which of your later questions will land: a school desk, a missile on parade, a wall, a newsreader's voice. Mark whatever they name first and come back for the full story when you reach that part of the list.
Was the Cold War something you thought about every week, or was it mostly in the background?
Why ask it
Ask this before the fear questions so that you do not assume the answer. Plenty of people say it barely touched their days, and a report that says so honestly is better than one that makes every childhood sound like a bomb shelter.
When did you first understand that your country had an enemy, and who explained it to you?
Why ask it
Few people can give a date, but most can name a person: a father at dinner, a teacher with a map, a man reading the news. Ask for the words that person used, since a child's version of the Cold War is usually one sentence long and worth quoting.
Did people actually say 'the Cold War' back then, or did they call it something else?
Why ask it
The label a family used shows how they saw it: 'the Russians', 'the communists', 'the Americans', 'the arms race', or no name at all. If they grew up outside the United States, ask what the phrase was in their own language and what it meant word for word.
How close did you live to a military base, a factory or a city that people said would be a target?
Why ask it
Children in those years often knew, or believed they knew, where their town stood on the enemy's list. Whether it was true matters less than who told them and in what tone, so ask for both.
Did anyone in the family serve in the military or work in defense during those years, and where were they sent?
Why ask it
A father posted to West Germany, an aunt at an aircraft plant or a brother on a submarine puts the family inside the story instead of watching it. If the answer turns to Korea or Vietnam, let them decide how far to go, and hold your own questions on those wars for later in the list.
Did your family have relatives, or roots, on the far side of the Iron Curtain?
Why ask it
For families from Eastern Europe, Germany, Cuba, Korea, China or Vietnam, the Cold War ran through the middle of the family tree. Letters that did or did not arrive, visits that were refused, and the year they finally saw those relatives again are the three things to get down.
Drills and fear
Did your school have duck-and-cover or air raid drills, and what exactly did you do when the signal came?
Why ask it
Get the steps: under the desk or out in the hallway, hands over the neck, how long it lasted, whether anyone giggled. Not every school or decade had them, so if the answer is no, ask what kind of drill they did have and what it was for.
What did the teacher tell you the drill was for, and did you believe it would work?
Why ask it
The gap between the official reason and what the children thought is usually the best line you will get on this subject. Some trusted it completely at seven and laughed about it at twelve, so ask when the change came.
Do you remember the sirens being tested, and what went through your head when one sounded at the wrong time?
Why ask it
Many towns tested a siren on a set schedule, which made the frightening ones those that came off schedule. Ask where they were standing and what the grown-ups nearby did, because an adult who kept walking taught a child as much as the drill did.
Did your family or anyone on your street have a fallout shelter or a shelf of stored food?
Why ask it
Most families never built one, so the answer is often about a neighbor, a shelter sign on a public building or a pamphlet kept in a drawer. The argument people had in earnest back then was over who would be let in, and it is worth finding out whether it ever came up at their table.
Did your parents ever tell you what the family would do if the warning came?
Why ask it
A plan to meet at a certain corner, drive to an uncle's farm or simply stay put shows how real the threat felt to the adults. 'We never discussed it' is a full answer too, and you can follow it by asking why they think that was.
How afraid were you of the bomb, honestly, and at what age was it worst?
Why ask it
Let them rate it for themselves and do not look disappointed by 'not very'. People who were frightened can usually name the year it peaked and what set it off: a film at school, a headline, the look on a parent's face.
Did you ever have a bad dream about it, or a moment when you thought it was really happening?
Why ask it
A sonic boom, a flash of summer lightning, a bulletin breaking into a television show: false alarms are remembered in detail and make a strong paragraph. Leave this one out if the last answer was 'I was never scared'.
Did you expect a nuclear war to happen in your lifetime?
Why ask it
The answer shifts by decade, so ask what they would have said at fifteen and again at thirty. If they tell you it changed how they planned for college, children or savings, stay there for a minute, because that is the Cold War reaching into an ordinary life.
What did the adults around you do with their own fear: joke, pray, argue, build something, or say nothing?
Why ask it
Children read the grown-ups before they read the newspaper. Whichever word they pick, ask for one scene of it, such as a grandmother's remark at the sink or a father stacking cans in the cellar.
Was there a book, a film or a TV program about nuclear war that stayed with you?
Why ask it
Titles differ by generation, from classroom civil defense films to the television movies of the 1980s, so write down the exact name and look it up afterward. Asking where they saw it and who sat beside them tends to bring back the whole evening.
News and beliefs
Where did your family get its news about the Cold War: a newspaper, a radio station, an anchor they trusted?
Why ask it
A named anchor or paper lets you find the real broadcasts and front pages later and set them beside the memory. There was often a source the family was told not to trust, or was not allowed to hear, and that one belongs in your notes as well.
What were you taught in school about communism, or about the capitalist West if you grew up in the East?
Why ask it
Go after one specific lesson: a map on the wall, a filmstrip, a phrase from the textbook, a slogan recited in the morning. Then ask whether any teacher went off the script, because the one who did is usually remembered by name.
What did you picture when you thought about ordinary people on the other side?
Why ask it
A child's image was built from very little: bread lines, parades, gangsters, cowboys. Keep the answer handy, because you will come back to it near the end when you ask what they understand now.
Was anyone you knew called a communist, a spy or disloyal, and what happened to them?
Why ask it
In the United States this points to the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s, and in other countries the accusation ran the opposite way, toward being too friendly with the West. What it cost a person ranged from gossip to a lost job to prison depending on the place and the year, so ask what happened in their town and how the neighbors behaved.
Were there things your family did not say out loud, on the phone or in front of certain people?
Why ask it
For someone who lived under a one-party state this can be the center of the whole interview, so give it room. Elsewhere it may bring up a union card, a foreign surname or a relative's politics that the family kept quiet.
Did your family argue about any of it, and who took which side?
Why ask it
The arms race, the draft, a president, a protest march: take whichever they mention first and stay with that one argument. Whether the two people ever came around to each other is worth a line, since quarrels like these could outlast the events that started them.
Did you ever march, sign a petition or cast a vote with the bomb or the arms race in mind?
Why ask it
It counts in both directions: a rally against nuclear weapons and a vote for a stronger defense were both ways of taking part. If they did neither, find out who in their circle did and what the family made of that person.
Did you believe what your government told you then, and was there a moment that changed it?
Why ask it
Listen for one event that works as the hinge, and write down the reason in their words. Keep your own opinion of that event out of the room.
Was there anywhere you could not go, or anything you could not buy or read, because of the Cold War?
Why ask it
For someone raised in the Eastern bloc this can open onto travel permits, shop queues and books passed from hand to hand, and it deserves as long as they want to give it. An American may think only of a country that was off limits on the map. The rules differed by country and by year, so have them describe how it worked where they lived.
Did anything from the enemy's side get through to you anyway: music, clothes, a radio station, a film?
Why ask it
Blue jeans, rock records and foreign radio crossed borders that people could not, and in the other direction so did ballet tours, chess champions and hockey teams. Someone raised in the Eastern bloc may describe exactly how a record was copied and passed along, which is a story to take down step by step.
Did you ever meet someone from the other side during those years: an exchange student, a refugee, a sailor, a pen pal?
Why ask it
First-contact stories are short and vivid, and they often end in surprise at how ordinary the other person turned out to be. If they never met one, ask whether that seemed strange then or only seems strange now.
Big events
Do you remember Sputnik or the first satellites, and did anyone take you outside to look?
Why ask it
Sputnik went up in October 1957, so this fits people who were of school age by then. The follow-up is what changed in the classroom afterward, since many Americans remember science and math suddenly being talked about as a matter of national survival.
Which launch or landing in the space race do you remember watching, and did it feel like a contest?
Why ask it
Someone raised in the Soviet bloc may well start with Gagarin, who orbited the Earth in 1961, and most Americans with the moon landing of July 1969. Get where the television was and who was in the room before you get to the second half, because plenty of children took it as an adventure and only later as a race.
What do you remember about the Berlin Wall going up, or about hearing that a city had been cut in two?
Why ask it
The wall was built in August 1961, and for most people far from Germany it arrived as a newspaper photograph. If the person is German or had family there, slow down and ask which side each relative ended up on.
Where were you during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, and how did you hear about it?
Why ask it
Only someone born by the mid-1950s will have a memory of their own, so with a younger person ask what their parents said about that week instead. Americans who do remember often describe the president on television and the adults in the house going quiet.
What did your family actually do that week: go to school, go to church, buy groceries, pack the car?
Why ask it
The crisis ran about thirteen days, and what people did with them is the detail no textbook has. If they say life just went on, ask whether that was calm or not knowing what else to do.
When the news came that President Kennedy had been shot, what did the adults around you fear would come next?
Why ask it
In the first hours of that day in November 1963 some people wondered aloud whether the Soviet Union or Cuba had a hand in it, and that fear is the Cold War part of a memory nearly everyone old enough still carries. Record what was said that afternoon and steer away from later theories about who did it.
How did the Vietnam War reach your home: the draft, the evening news, a neighbor's son, a protest?
Why ask it
Worded this way it stays on the household, which suits someone who did not serve. If they or someone close to them did go, ask whether they would like to talk about it now or on another day, and let that answer stand.
Did you think of Korea or Vietnam as part of the Cold War at the time, or as a separate thing?
Why ask it
History books file those wars under the Cold War, but people living through them often did not. Their answer tells you whether 'stopping communism' was a reason they believed, doubted or never gave a thought to.
Was there a game or an Olympics that felt like more than sport: the boycotts of 1980 and 1984, a hockey final, a chess match?
Why ask it
The United States led a boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980, and the Soviet Union stayed away from Los Angeles four years later. Americans often go straight to the hockey game at Lake Placid in 1980, and Canadians to the 1972 series against the Soviets. A sports memory is cheerful ground in the middle of a serious interview, and it shows how the rivalry felt to someone who never read the foreign pages.
Was there a time in the 1980s when it felt as if things were getting dangerous again?
Why ask it
People who were teenagers or adults then may bring up new missiles in Europe, large antinuclear marches or a television film about a bombed town. For a parent born in the late 1960s or the 1970s this is their version of the duck-and-cover question, so give it the same time.
Do you remember hearing about Chernobyl, and what were you told to do or not do?
Why ask it
The reactor accident was in April 1986, and how soon and how fully people heard of it depended on the country they were in. Someone who was in Europe that spring may recall advice about milk, rain or playing outdoors, so ask what the rules were where they lived.
The ending
When did you first notice that something was changing in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe?
Why ask it
One person will name Gorbachev, another a strike in Poland or a summit on television, and another will say they noticed nothing until it was over. Record whichever sign they give, because it shows how much an ordinary person could see from where they stood.
Where were you on the night the Berlin Wall opened in November 1989, and what did you think you were watching?
Why ask it
Most people saw the crowds on top of the wall on the news and can still describe the pictures. The second half is what matters: find out whether they took it for the end or expected tanks the next morning.
Did you believe it was really over, and how long did that take to sink in?
Why ask it
Someone who practiced hiding under a desk at seven had decades of habit to undo. There is often a later moment that made it real, such as a trip, a news story or a map with new countries on it, and that moment is the one to get.
What do you remember about the Soviet Union itself coming to an end in 1991?
Why ask it
For many Americans it is a fainter memory than the Wall, a flag coming down in the last week of December. For anyone from a former Soviet republic or one of its neighbors the question is far bigger, so ask what changed in the shops, at work and on their passport.
How did the people around you react: celebration, relief, suspicion, or a shrug?
Why ask it
Asking about the room keeps them off the spot and brings out disagreement inside one household. Find out who was least convinced and what that person said.
Did the end change anything practical for you or the family: a job, a base closing, a border you could finally cross?
Why ask it
Defense plants cut back, soldiers came home from postings abroad, and relatives met for the first time in decades. If nothing changed for them, that deserves a sentence in your report as well.
Looking back
Looking back, how close do you think it really came?
Why ask it
It asks for a judgment, so hold it until the memories have been told. Some will mention learning years afterward about close calls they knew nothing of at the time, and you can ask how it felt to find out so late.
Who or what do you think ended the Cold War?
Why ask it
Expect a firm opinion: a president, Gorbachev, the cost of the arms race, ordinary people in the streets. Historians still argue over this one, so take down the reasoning and do not grade it.
What do you understand about the other side now that you did not then?
Why ask it
Read back what they said earlier about how they pictured ordinary people over there, then ask this. The change, or the lack of one, is a ready-made conclusion for a school paper.
Have you since been to a country that was once enemy territory, or to a Cold War site such as a missile silo, a bunker or a piece of the Wall?
Why ask it
A trip to Berlin, Moscow, Prague or Havana years afterward usually comes with a comparison between what they expected and what they found. Ask what the child they once were would have made of them standing there.
Is there anything about those years that you miss?
Why ask it
It sounds like an odd thing to ask about a time of bomb drills, yet people mention knowing clearly who was who, a shared purpose, or simply having been young. Take the answer seriously and ask what, if anything, took its place.
What do people my age get wrong about the Cold War?
Why ask it
Ask it word for word and let them lecture. The correction can run either way, that it was not all terror or that nobody born later can imagine how real the terror was, and either one gives your project its closing quotation.
Does anything in today's news remind you of those years?
Why ask it
Leave it open and do not supply the comparison yourself. If they draw a parallel, ask what is different this time, which keeps the answer from turning into a speech.
Do you have anything from those years I could look at: a yearbook, a newspaper, a civil defense booklet, a photograph?
Why ask it
An object gives your project something to show and gives the person something to hold while they talk. Ask before you photograph it, and write down the year and the town it comes from while they are there to tell you.
If I could pass on only one thing you told me today, which should it be?
Why ask it
Their pick is often not the one you would have chosen, and that tells you what the era meant to them. Read it back in their words before you leave so the quotation is right.
Who else do you know who remembers those years differently than you do?
Why ask it
A spouse who grew up in another country, a brother who was drafted or a friend who marched will give you a second view of the same decades. Two accounts that disagree make a stronger project than one, as long as you say whose is whose.
Interviewing someone who remembers the Cold War
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Homework before the visit
Do the arithmetic on their age
The Cold War ran from the late 1940s to 1991, so two people who both lived through it may not share a single memory. Write down their birth year and work out how old they were for Sputnik in 1957, the missile crisis in 1962, the moon landing in 1969 and the opening of the Wall in 1989. Cross out any event that fell before they were about six, or turn it into a question about what their parents told them.
Find out which Cold War they had
Ask ahead of time where they grew up. A childhood in a Midwestern suburb, on an army base in West Germany, in Warsaw, or in Miami after leaving Cuba each calls for different questions. The drills may mean nothing to one person, and the question about things not said aloud may be the whole story for another.
Read one timeline, then put it away
Twenty minutes with a plain timeline is enough to recognize the names when they come up: Sputnik, Gagarin, the Bay of Pigs, detente, Solidarity, glasnost. You are reading so that you can follow the person, not so that you can test them.
Choose a dozen and mark three
The full list is far more than one visit can hold. Take two from each group, mark the three your assignment cannot do without, and get to those before the hour runs out. The Big events group is the one to cut hardest, down to the events they were old enough to remember.
Recording and your teacher's rules
Ask the person whether you may record, and take a no without arguing, since notes on paper work fine. If the assignment comes with a permission form or rules about length and format, read them before the visit so you know what you have to bring home.
Keeping a memory honest
Then and later
People who lived through those years have also spent decades reading about them and watching programs on them. When an answer sounds like a documentary, ask 'Did you know that at the time?' in a curious voice. Both kinds of knowledge belong in your notes, each labeled as what it is.
Ask for the room
'Everyone was terrified' is a summary. 'Where were you sitting when you heard?' gets the kitchen, the radio on the counter and a mother who kept on peeling potatoes. One scene like that does more for a report than a page of general statements about the era.
When a date is off
A grandparent may put the missile crisis in the wrong year or blend two presidents into one. Do not correct them in the middle of a story. Write what they said, check it at home, and in your write-up give the memory and the record side by side.
Politics you did not ask for
Questions about communism, presidents and protest marches can bring out opinions that are still warm. Your job for this hour is to learn what they thought and why, so ask 'What made you see it that way?' and save your own view for the essay, if the assignment wants one.
Service, loss and leaving a country
If the talk reaches a relative lost in Korea or Vietnam, time spent in prison, or a family that fled across a border, slow down and let them choose how much to tell. Offer to go on to another subject, and mean it when you offer.
Mistakes that flatten the interview
Running it as a quiz
Asking 'What was the Truman Doctrine?' gets a shrug or a recited paragraph, and either one could have come from a textbook. The person across the table is your source for what a Tuesday felt like in 1962, so keep every question on what they saw, heard and did.
Deciding in advance that they were scared
A list like this can make the era sound like forty years under a desk. Many people will tell you they were busy with school, work and babies and thought about missiles a few times a year. Write that down as faithfully as you would a nightmare.
Assuming everyone watched from America
If the person grew up in Europe, Asia, Latin America or the Soviet Union itself, half the usual landmarks change. Swap 'duck and cover' for whatever their school did, and ask which events were the large ones where they lived, since their list may have Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968 near the top.
Only asking about the famous weeks
The missile crisis and the fall of the Wall take up a few weeks of a period that lasted more than four decades. The texture is in the years between: the test of the siren, the map in the classroom, the neighbor people whispered about. Make sure at least half of what you ask is about ordinary time.
Letting the list drive
When an answer opens onto a story you did not plan for, such as a pen pal in Leningrad or a summer job at a missile plant, follow it and drop three questions to make room. You can always return to the page, and a story they wanted to tell rarely comes around twice.
From conversation to assignment
Write it up that evening
Go through your notes the same night, while you can still hear how they said things. Fill in half-finished sentences, mark which lines are their exact words, and list anything you need to look up.
Quote a few lines exactly
Three or four sentences in the person's own voice carry more than a page of your paraphrase. Pick lines that only this person could have said, such as the name of the teacher who ran the drill or what their mother bought the week of the crisis.
Check names and dates against a second source
Look up each event they mentioned and note the date beside their account. Where the memory and the record differ, say so plainly and without embarrassment for them: 'She remembers it as winter; the crisis was in October.' The difference is part of what an interview shows about memory.
Put the person inside the history
Open a paragraph with where they stood and then widen it: 'My grandfather was eleven and living forty miles from an air base when the president spoke on television.' One sentence of background from your reading, then back to them, is the rhythm that keeps a report from becoming either a diary or an encyclopedia entry.
Take a copy back
Give them the finished piece, or read it to them. They will often correct a spelling, add the detail they remembered after you left, and tell you who else in the family ought to be asked next.