The Diefenbunker maintains a collection of Cold War artefacts, an archives and a library as part of its mandate to preserve and promote understanding of Cold War history. These holdings are made accessible to researchers upon request, and to the general public through our exhibitions.
Audio-Viusual downloadable tourguide for The Diefenbunker:
The collections of the Diefenbunker, Canada’s Cold War Museum consist of three dimensional historic artefacts, archival materials and an on-site research library.
From Diefenbunker
Civil Defence
The ( U.S.) Cold War Museum http://www.coldwar.org/museum/index.html
This museum is a charitable organization dedicated to education, preservation and research on the global, ideological and political confrontations between East and West from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Among its goals are the development of a permanent Cold War Museum to preserve local and regional Cold War history with the headquarters and National Museum facility located in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and the establishment of a reference library and research center to help maintain the historical accuracy of the Cold War. Similar to the Diefenbunker, Canada’s Cold War Museum, it hopes that “by educating future generations about the fears, divisions, and dangers that the Cold War fostered, the Museum will enable visitors to reflect upon the global geopolitical climate in which many of us grew up”. The site has many interesting images and, at the bottom of its pages, links to documents and websites of particular relevance to U.S.aspects (and viewpoints) of the Cold War.
The Florida International Museum – http://www.floridamuseum.org/
In December 2000, the Florida museum opened The Cuban Missile Crisis: When the Cold War Got Hot, a 10,000 square foot exhibition which transports visitors back to the 1960s through film, design, and music. This display focuses on the tense events of October 1962 and includes over 300 articles from that period. Visitors walk through a retro living room, a kitchen, a 1962 schoolroom and a realistic fallout shelter complete with CONELRAD alert and sirens re-created for the exhibition. Also featured is a genuine Russian SA-2 missile. Throughout the exhibition, visitors follow a series of day-by-day panels and a timeline of events, realising the behind-the-scenes activities of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Visited by a Diefenbunker volunteer – a really worthwhile experience.
Unités d’Instruction et d’Opération de Protection Civile de Rhône-Alpes. http://www.uiopc.com/groupe.html
Le groupement secouriste fonctionne sur la base d’association loi (QB) 1901. Il est composé d’équipes locales de permanents et de bénévoles chargées en temps de paix ou en temps de crise de participer aux actions de protection des populations ou de participer aux secours organisés sous le contrôle des autorités publiques. There is a wealth of public and ‘private’ civil defence organizations listed on this groups links (liens) page
Paul’s Radiac Showcase at Southern Radiation.com doesn’t have much textual information but has a wealth of pictures and label-type data on Civil Defence booklets and manuals along with a great deal of data on a huge variety of RADIAC meters (US, Canada, Russian, British, etc.). Quite international in its coverage. International at http://southernradiation.com/ and Canada-specific at http://southernradiation.com/canada-cd-book-index.html
Cold War Bunkers
The U.K.’s Cold War Defences http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/index.shtml
Sponsored by The Research Study Group (RSG), a sub group of the of the Subterranea Britannica Website http://www.subbrit.org.uk/ . The RSG specializes in Cold War material (bunkers in general, the Royal Observer Corps and UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation, etc), and is specifically devoted to the study of structures related to the Cold War period. It contains a great deal of information and thousands of photos covering hundreds of UK sites and 1566 of the UK’s Monitoring Posts. This site is a gold mine of detail about every conceivable aspect of the U.K.’s vast system of CW bunkers (and other related locations) and is frequently updated.
The Regional Emergency Govt HQ Penhold (Alberta) http://www.pinetreeline.org/photos/p31-01.html
This site pictorially documents the destruction of the REGHQ at Penhold AB. It was one of six such fallout shelters located across Canada and part of a system of bunkers that included the blast and fallout protected Diefenbunker. The REGHQs were intended to be used by federal and provincial officials in the event of nuclear attack on North America. The Penhold bunker was completed in 1964. The bunker was 77,000 square feet and there was also a smaller bunker (17,000 square feet) south of the base which is also being demolished. As well as being the location from which Survival Operations/ Re-entry into target areas would have been coordinated the regional bunkers also served as Provincial Warning Centres and as military communications centres. This site has great photos (6 to 13; 15 to 50; 52 to 82) and a copy of a newspaper article on the demolition (83). This is the only such bunker that has been destroyed; most of the other REGHQs have been simply sealed.
The Regional Emergency Government HQ at Debert ( Nova Scotia)http://www.debertmilitarymuseum.org/diefenbunker3.htm
This bunker is now part of the Colchester (Industrial) Park -the former CFB DEBERT – which is located 4 kms north of Exit 13 on Nova Scotia’s Highway 104. This bunker is in excellent condition, virtually unchanged (with the exception of some missing furniture and equipment) from its operational days in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It is only open for tours a few weekends every year so monitor the DEBERT MILITARY MUSEUM http://www.debertmilitarymuseum.org/ website for tour details. This bunker is in the best shape of any such facility in Canada (and in the authors view is worthy on being declared a national historic site as a natural complement to the Diefenbunker and the role it played in Canada’s Cold War history.
The U.S.’s Greenbrier Congressional Bunker
http://www.greenbrier.com/site/bunker.aspx
http://www.conelrad.com/groundzero/greenbrier.html
A former secret Eisenhower-era underground relocation bunker(code name “Project Greek Island,”) designed to house members of Congress and their staffs during [and after] nuclear attack, is open to tours in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. The 112,544-square-foot bunker is 700 to 800 feet below the West Virginia Wing of the Greenbrier resort. The resort is a national historic landmark. The three links provided are among many that you can obtain by searching the net for “Greenbrier Bunker”. The first is the most informative.
Nuclear War
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Magazine http://www.thebulletin.org/
The ( U.S.) Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science (EFNS), a not-for-profit organization, publishes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and manages other related programs from its office in Chicago. The mission of the EFNS is to educate citizens about global security issues, especially the continuing dangers posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and about the appropriate roles of nuclear technology. One of its more well known symbols is the “Doomsday Clock”. For nearly 55 years, the Bulletin’s clock has been the world’s most recognizable symbol of nuclear danger. Since 1947, when its famous clock appeared on the cover the clock has moved forward and back, reflecting the state of international security http://www.thebulletin.org/clock.html .
The Bureau of Atomic Tourism http://www.atomictourist.com/
A site dedicated to the promotion of tourist locations around the world that have either been the site of atomic explosions, display exhibits on the development of atomic devices, or contain vehicles that were designed to deliver atomic weapons. For instance one can obtain details about visiting the location of the first atomic bomb test at Trinity NM http://www.atomictourist.com/trinity.htm or taking a tour of a Titan missile silohttp://www.atomictourist.com/titan.htm or any other such aspects of this growing tourism ‘industry’.
Visit a Titan-II Missile Museum near Tucson, AZ
http://www.titanmissilemuseum.org/
Don Boelling, a former Senior Wing Instructor at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ has set up his own TITAN-II page. Don’s page has tons of textual info, links, and animations. You can also take a tour deep into the “hardened” command center. Here, essential equipment–indeed the center itself–is mounted on springs to withstand anything but a direct hit. Then you pass through a couple of 6,000 pound blast doors and walk along a space-age corridor to the silo itself. The 110 foot tall missile weighed 170 tons when it was fueled and ready to fly.
The High Energy Weapons Archive – A Guide to Nuclear Weapons –http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/
This is a “sister site” relationship to Gregory Walker’s Trinity Site. The two appear to be actively collaborating to provide the broadest variety of nuclear weapon information, in the most convenient form that they can. The two sites each have a different focus. The High Energy Weapon Archive provides current information, technical data, and informative write-ups. The Trinity Site focuses on historical information, especially reproductions of public domain documents. A huge amount of info on the topic, well catalogued. The Trinity Site seems to have a photo of virtually every nuclear weapon that has been tested above ground since day one in its Gallery of Test Photos. Also visit the site to see what happens in the first few fractions of a second when a fusion bomb detonates. “If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them.” – Hans A. Bethe
CANADIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS A book by Dr. John M. Clearwater Dundurn Press Toronto) 1998 http://www.user.dccnet.com/welcomewoods/Nuclear_Free_Georgia_Strait/clearwater.html
“From 1963 to 1984 US nuclear warheads armed Canadian weapons systems in both Canada and Germany. This important book is an operational-technical (W5) expose of the period. Its purpose is to bring together until-recently secret information about the nature of the nuclear arsenal in Canada, and combine it with known information about the systems in the US nuclear arsenal.” – John Clearwater has been a volunteer at the Diefenbunker and was a significant contributor to our Strategic Threat Exhibit.
The Cold War
Cold War International History Project http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1409
The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) website! CWIHP was established at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., in 1991. The Project disseminates new information and perspectives on the history of the Cold War, in particular new findings from previously inaccessible sources on “the other side” — the former Communist world. The Woodrow Wilson Center established the Canada Institute to explore one of America’s most important bilateral relationships, but one that gets far less attention in Washington than it deserves. For most Americans, Canada is—in the words of former U.S. Ambassador James Blanchard—”the invisible world next door.” See http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1420&fuseaction=topics.intro for more on this aspect.
Canada and the early Cold War 1943-57 – http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/department/history/coldwar-en.asp
The book activated by this link contains a collection of essays on Canada and the early Cold War produced by Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). It resulted from a colloquium held in November 1997 to mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first volume in the series Documents on Canadian External Relations ( DCER). It examines Canadian diplomacy during one of its most fruitful periods. (Click on the image to get the book’s hyperlinked Table of Contents).
Canada, the U.S. and the Cold War – http://www.duke.edu/~vqn/canada.htm
“The end of the Second World War marks the beginning of the Cold War. Having defused the Nazi regime menace, the center of menacing powers shifted eastward to the Soviet Union and China. Immediately thereafter, democratic Western countries became embroiled in an effort to protect the world from communism and totalitarianism. This shift in foe and focus produced lasting implications on the relations of Canada and the United States.” This site contains various items (mostly images and lists) that may be of general interest.
© Copyright 2010 by Diefenbunker