People came to Zeiss because Zeiss made optics. Those optics were good. They have a reputation on the high end because they've earned it; a shitty Sony pocketcam may not take the best pictures but it's not because the optics suck. Granted, you'll get more effect out of a Zeiss prime the size of your arm than you will a single-element lens the size of an Advil but they still make good glass.

People like using old lenses 'cuz they're CHEEP. There's nothing about a lens that gets worse with age, assuming they're well-kept. Glass is glass. Newer lenses are generally better but older lenses work pretty damn well, so long as you don't need all the ultrasonic motors and computer control. This is why the backwards compatibility matters - in this day and age, Moore's Law is likely to make your camera body better every 18 months, but the glass is the glass. This is why once you shoot Nikon you're likely to keep shooting Nikon - you have hella more in glass than you do in the body. There's no useful effect out of old glass other than vignetting, and that just means the lens is poorly matched to the body.

So... Cold War. The problem is, you're looking for a set of anecdotes, and while I could give you several about everything, I don't want to write a book for you. It's not that historians pay no mind, it's that it's difficult to come up with a cultural perspective that really says anything. You also have to keep in mind that you're asking for an overview of 40 years of history and that's a tall order. Tony Judt has you covered but it's a slog. You finish that fucker on Audible and they give you a badge. No lie.

Lemme give you one you might find more interesting. It isn't particularly about the Cold War, but it might be right up your alley.