The Cold War television documentary archive consists of transcripts of 531 interviews concerning events of the Cold War - the political, ideological tension between the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), 1946-1989, following the end of World War Two, which while falling short of actual war between these two nations, was evident in their foreign and defence policies, and those of their allies.

Interviews were conducted with eyewitnesses from the US, USSR, Germany, Poland, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Spain, Vietnam, Korea, China, Israel Egypt, South Africa, Angola, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and including politicians, policy makers and advisors, diplomats, journalists, academics, members of armed forces, dissidents, peasants, factory workers and civilians.

Events described include the Berlin blockade, 1948-1949, the Berlin Crisis, 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962, the Vietnam War, 1965-1975, the Korean War, 1950-1953, the Hungarian uprising, 1956, the Prague Spring, 1968, the nuclear arms race, 1945-1991, and Chinese communism, 1949-1972.

The collections also contains transcripts of a series of seminars on the Cold War, Oct 1995, as well as an incomplete series of files relating to individual episodes of the documentary series including annotated extracts of interview transcripts and other production information. (Transcripts in this section of the collection are mainly duplicates, however there are a small number which are not found in the main transcript series).

The Diaries of Dwight D Eisenhower, 1953-1961, consists of a varied body of microfilmed manuscripts that contain several categories of material, arranged chronologically by month and year. Diary entries and dictated correspondence are filed in folders entitled 'DDE Diary'; 'DDE Personal Diary'; or 'DDE Dictation'. The bulk of actual diary entries falls into the years 1953-1956. Another prominent category is memoranda of telephone conversations with the more detailed conversations dating prior to 1959. The largest body of material is the official White House staff memoranda, reports, correspondence, and summaries of congressional correspondence. These types of documents are found in folders labelled 'Miscellaneous', 'Goodpaster', 'Staff Memos', and after 1957, 'Staff Notes'. Herein are the memoranda of conversations, or 'memcons', prepared by Gen Andrew Jackson Goodpaster, Defense Liaison Officer and Staff Secretary to the President of the United States. From 1956 to the end of the administration, 'Toner Notes' were produced, so named for White House staff member Albert Toner, who with fellow White House Research Group member Christopher Russell, prepared daily intelligence briefings for the President. Material in the collection includes entries relating to Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy and the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg; correspondence with Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon; Prisoners of War exchanges in Korea; rapprochement between Argentina and the US; military aid to Yugoslavia; Eisenhower's 'Atoms for Peace' speech 1953; the situation in Indochina, 1954; the use of psychological warfare in the Third World; relations between the US and the People's Republic of China; France and the European Defence Community; waning British and French colonial ties; the Baghdad Pact, 1955; the Suez Crisis, 1956; US Joint Chiefs of Staff strategic planning in Europe; the Soviet invasion of Hungary, 1956; plans for mutual security arrangements with favoured nations; the Military Assistance Program; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the African- American civil rights movement; military officer exchanges between Israel and the US; the American, British and Canadian Army Standardization Program; US Department of Defense budgetary matters; the 'Vanguard' satellite program, 1957; nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy and the US-Soviet 'missile gap'. Correspondents include HM King George V; Gen Juan Domingo Peron, president of Argentina; Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy; Rt Hon Sir Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill; Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India; Dr Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany; Gen Douglas MacArthur; Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr; Special Assistant to the President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller; Gen Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle, President of France; Rt Hon (Maurice) Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of Great Britain; Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers; (David) Dean Rusk, President of the Rockefeller Foundation; John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, 1953-1959; Herbert Hoover, Jr, Under Secretary of State, 1954-1957; Christian Archibald Herter, Under Secretary of State, 1957-1959.

The Nuclear Age archive consists of typescript transmission scripts, interview transcripts and videotapes concerning the development of nuclear technology and strategy from 1938 to 1989. It includes twelve typescript transmission scripts and VHS (Vertical Helix Scan) videotapes for episodes 1-12, Jan-Mar 1989, and 267 typescript transcripts of interviews with 195 individuals, prominent in the political, diplomatic, scientific and military aspects of the development and deployment of nuclear technology, from the USA, USSR, UK, Federal Republic of Germany, Israel, Japan, India, Pakistan and the People's Republic of China, 1938-1989, notably including Professor Georgiy Arkadevich Arbatov, Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1974-[1989]; Professor Hans Albrecht Bethe, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, 1937-1975; Dr Norris Edwin Bradbury, Director, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, New Mexico, USA, 1945-1970; Dr Harold Brown, Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Livermore, California, USA, 1960-1961; Zbigniew (Kasimierz) Brzezinski, US National Security Advisor, 1977-1981; James Earl 'Jimmy' Carter, US President, 1977-1981; Rt Hon Denis Winston Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, 1964-1970; Rt Hon Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Secretary of State for Defence, 1983-1986; Dr Henry (Alfred) Kissinger, US Secretary of State, 1973-1977; Andrei Afanasevich Kokoshin, First Deputy Minister of Defence, Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR), 1992-1997; Robert Strange McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, 1961-1968; Professor Philip Morrison, Physicist, Metallurgy Laboratory, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1943-1944; Paul Henry Nitze, Head of the US INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) negotiations, 1981-1984; Rt Hon Sir John (William Frederic) Nott, Secretary of State for Defence, 1981-1983; Professor Sir Rudolf (Ernst) Peierls, Professor of Mathematics and Physics, University of Bern, Switzerland, 1937-1963; Professor Isidor Isaac Rabi, Professor of Physics, Columbia University, New York, USA, 1937-1967; Lt Gen Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister, 1974-1977; Professor Joseph Rotblat, Director of Research in Nuclear Physics, University of Liverpool, 1945-1949; (David) Dean Rusk, US Secretary of State, 1961-1969; James Rodney Schlesinger, US Secretary of Defense, 1973-1975; Helmut (Heinrich Waldemar) Schmidt, Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany, 1974-1982; Professor Edward Teller, Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, USA, 1960-1975; Cyrus Roberts Vance, US Secretary of State, 1977-1980; Professor Evgeny Pavlovich Velikhov, Soviet Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, 1961-1984, and Professor of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, 1973-1986; Caspar Willard Weinberger, US Secretary of Defense, 1981-1987; Professor Victor Frederick Weisskopf, Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1946-1960; Professor Freiherr Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Head of Department, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Göttingen, Federal Republic of Germany, 1946-1957; Rt Hon George Kenneth Hotson Younger, Secretary of State for Defence, 1986-1989; Solly Zuckerman, Baron Zuckerman of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, Chief Science Adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence, 1960-1966, and Chief Science Adviser to HM Government, 1964-1971.

Microfilm copies of official US government reports and US military, scientific, academic and policy journals relating to nuclear weapons, arms control, weapons technology, deterrence, nuclear strategy, and US foreign policy, 1919-1995. The reports have been arranged chronologically and include material relating to non-proliferation treaty safeguards; civil defence in the United States; deterrence theory; analyses of the Soviet Military Industrial Complex; interview transcripts of US government officials associated with weapons systems development and deployment; qualitative and quantitative analyses of the US-Soviet arms race; analyses of the theory of flexible response; nuclear capabilities of the People's Republic of China; North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) missile warning systems, 1968-1981; the Joint Cruise Missiles Project, 1982; the Tonopah Test Range technical manual, 1982; the planning of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) nuclear deterrent for the 1980s and 1990s; French and British nuclear forces in the 1980s and 1990s; the evolution of US and NATO tactical nuclear doctrine and limited nuclear war options, the Strategic Defense Initiative Program (SDI); trends in anti-nuclear protests in the US; US National Security Policy, 1980s; the threat of nuclear terrorism; the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; anti-satellite weaponry; the threat of biological and chemical weapons. Official US government reports include report to the US Congress relating to stockpile reliability, weapons re-manufacture, and the role of nuclear testing, 1987; report to the US Congress on the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1989; Nevada Test Site Annual Site Environmental Report, 1989; report on the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), including the text of the treaty and a number of related documents and protocols, 1991; the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, 1993; the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency report to the US Congress, 1994; US Department of Energy reports relating to the disposal and storage of fissile materials, 1995.