No sooner had the fires of World War II been extinguished than the threat of war erupted again in Europe. The continent was divided between the democratic West and the communist East. It was a struggle that pitted freedom versus dictatorship. And no other place so dramatically captured the tense, explosive atmosphere of the Cold War as the city of Berlin, Germany.
Like Europe as a whole, Berlin was itself literally split in two by the free Allied military and Stalin's Red Army. For decades, American troops — stationed over 100 miles behind the Iron Curtain and surrounded by 250,000 Soviet soldiers — persevered and never-abandoned West Berlin, despite all attempts to force them to flee. Alongside the military, thousands of spies working in the shadows made the city the espionage capitol of the world.
In this riveting episode of "War Stories With Oliver North," we will take you to the places and events that made the divided capital the most explosive frontier of the Cold War. You'll travel with Oliver North to the city of Berlin to view the remains of the Berlin Wall, that ugly symbol of communist enslavement. You'll visit the site of violent anti-Soviet riots in 1953. And you will journey inside a secret CIA tunnel that was a stroke of technical ingenuity and daring, only to be betrayed by a traitor from within.
You'll meet Berliners and the heroic men of the U.S. military who helped keep freedom alive in the city under siege, including Gail Halvorsen, the famous "Candy Bomber." We also introduce you to an East German secret police agent, who saw the conflict from the other side.
This is the extraordinary story of America and her allies in Cold War Berlin and our standoff with the communists deep behind the Iron Curtain.
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