From
1947 to 1991 the West under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) and the East under the shield of the Warsaw Pact faced each other in what was known as The Cold War.
In reality is was a standoff between Russia and the Allies of the
USA, Canada, Great Britain, and Western Germany.
The
real start came when Russia tried to cut off Berlin from the West by
a blockade of the highway to West Germany in 1948 which resulted in
the famous airlift where allied aircraft carried hundreds of
thousands of tons of supplies to the citizens of West Berlin.
Things
stabilized a bit until 1961 when East Germany got tired of all its
best scientists and scholars fleeing to the West, erecting barbed
wire fences that soon became the biggest scar on the planet, the Iron
Curtain, stretched for thousands of miles, dividing families and
causing death to those who tried to cross the killing fields.
Many
unique events occurred during the time of the Cold War but Waltzing
in the Shadows deals with that brief period between 1978 and 1982.
Jimmy Carter had his failed foreign policy that brought about the
rise of the Mullahs in Iran and the start of destabilization in the
Middle East. Ronald Reagan becoming president in January 1981 saw the
release of diplomatic hostages in Tehran and the first steps towards
seeing the Cold War dismantled.
Some
truly important milestones were:
The
start of 24hour television news coverage.
The
onset of Music Television with the song, Video Killed the Radio Star
by the Buggles
Russia
getting itself stuck in the quagmire of Afghanistan having learned
nothing from the American involvement in South Vietnam.
The
Delorean comes off the production line.
All
of these and many many more events are told in Waltzing in the
Shadows. There's one chapter about Russian units in East Germany and
the problems they have with their vaunted Main Battle Tanks. An
undercover agent working in the offices of the fear East German Stasi
must suffer humiliation before her tormentor frees her by having a
heart attack. An American official hires someone to put a stop to
leaks of vital information from the other side of the Iron Curtain
that will embarrass his president.
The
is also mainly the story of an individual who thought he was facing a
simple desk job who gets caught up in a Honey Trap only to turn to an
Austrian friends who becomes the one to share the rest of his life.
The
totally revised version of Waltzing in the Shadows, Information Leaks
Through the Iron Curtain is not available in paperback and Kindle at
the following links”
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