Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week, what was it like to live through the Prague Spring of 1968.

Life acquired new dimensions.

There were new flavours, new tastes, new colours and so on, the world became a much more pleasant place to live in.

Also we get to the bottom of the alcohol problem in the former Soviet Union.

1130 in the morning, in the centre of Moscow, and the serious drinking has begun.

As many as one in four men are... and the serious drinking has begun.

As many as one in four men are reported to be alcoholics.

Plus a hostage drama that gripped West Germany in 1988 and the remarkable story of

Baba of Cairo, the woman whose story of pre-Karo. and the order the drummer to climb up on a high place and beat the deep drum so that the villagers

and people in the surrounding hamlets should come inside the town walls.

The drum rhythm said, Come in, come in, come in.

More of that fascinating insight later in the podcast.

But we begin with a glimpse into the mind of one of the key figures in Nazi Germany. At the end of the Second World War, it

wasn't possible for the victorious Allied powers to conduct a complete examination of the

personalities and motivations behind the individuals who drove forward the Nazi project

simply because so many of them committed suicide. Not just the big names like Adolf Hitler,

gerbils and Himmler, but many other civilians and government officials chose to take

their own lives rather than face the consequences of defeat.

Even some of the Nazi leaders who were brought before the Nuremberg war crimes trials, killed themselves before their sentences

could be carried out.

One though who lived to serve a 20-year sentence was Albert Spear, Hitler's favoured architect

...