Triumph (1993)

by Ben Bova

  "That plan was personally approved by the President, sir," said Marshall.

  "I don't care if it was personally endorsed by Jesus Christ Almighty," Churchill snarled, "the plan is wrong. Wrong. Wrong!"

  Marshall flushed and turned toward the President.

  Roosevelt asked calmly, "Wrong in what way, Winston?"

  "At the very least, it is the result of believing blatant Nazi propaganda," Churchill replied, pronouncing the word Nahhzi. "I suspect, however, far worse."

  Roosevelt's cocky grin had slowly disappeared.

  "I suspect that someone in Eisenhower's plans division is actively working for the Russians."

  "Damn!" said Marshall, the word exploding like a pistol shot. The President looked startled: General Marshall hardly ever swore in his presence.

  Pursing his lips for a moment, Roosevelt said, "Let's go down to the map room. I think we need to see the situation, not just talk about it."

  "By all means," said Churchill, struggling up from the sofa.

  The President led the way, rolling his chair down the West Wing corridor to the situation room he maintained on the ground floor of the main house. Churchill walked silently beside him, noting that the carpeting looked rather shabby, the walls almost seedy. Franklin 's lived here so long

  he's letting the place run down. Preoccupied with the business

  of war, just as the rest of us. No time for decorating. At least

  this house has not been hit by bombs, as Parliament was.

  General Marshall pulled down the big wall map of Europe while the same two women brought their drinks to the smallish room and once again closed the door behind them without uttering a word. Churchill strode to the map, peering at it as if waiting for the lines on it to move for him.

  The map had been updated at noon.

  American and British forces were well across the Rhine and into Germany's western region. Russian army groups had overrun most of Poland and crossed the German eastern border at several points, penetrating to the River Oder.

  "All right, Winston," said the President, "tell us what's on your mind."

  "Berlin."

  Marshall made no sound, but a nervous tic pulled at the corner of his mouth.

  "The Russians are much closer to Berlin than we are," the President said, gesturing toward the map from his chair.

  "We could reach it before they do, if we act vigorously," said Churchill.

  The President turned to his Army chief.

  "Sir," Marshall began, his voice strained, "the plan that we have developed—and approved—calls for General Bradley's Twelfth Army Group to complete the encirclement of the Ruhr and then advance to the Elbe. Devers' Sixth Army Group is to thrust into southern Germany and Austria. Intelligence believes the die-hard Nazis are preparing a redoubt in the Bavarian Alps and we want to flush them out of there before they can fortify it strongly. Otherwise it will cost us a much higher number of casualties."

  "I understand," said Roosevelt.

  "What if this so-called Bavarian redoubt is a figment of Nazi propaganda?" the Prime Minister demanded.

  Unflinching, Marshall replied, "So much the better. It win be less costly for us to take the territory."

  "But that leaves Berlin to the Russians," Churchill muttered, still standing by the map.

  "Yessir, it does," Marshall answered. "Berlin is a political symbol. My main interest is defeating the German army at the minimal cost in American lives."

  "Are you implying that my interests lie elsewhere, General?"

  Marshall hesitated only a moment. "Mr. Prime Minister, you are a politician. I am a soldier."

  "Didn't von Clausewitz define war as an extension of politics?" Churchill asked. "Might not a soldier see that political considerations form the core of grand strategy?"

  Before Marshall could reply, Roosevelt said, "Winston, there seems to be something on your mind that you haven't yet told us."

  Churchill made a strange smile, almost cherubic in his fleshy face. "May I presume to offer a proposal?"

  "Certainly! Certainly," the President said, wheeling over to the tray where the drinks stood.

  The Prime Minister's smile turned almost puckish. Clasping his hands behind his back, he began pacing across the room on his stubby legs, speaking as he walked.

  "Let us grant that there actually is a Bavarian redoubt, and it is not a work of Nazi propaganda—or Soviet misinformation."

  "Granted," said Roosevelt grandly.

  "Let us assume further that Hitler and his henchmen intend to repair there once their position in Berlin becomes untenable."

  "Apparently Hitler has proclaimed that he will remain in Berlin, win or lose," said Marshall.

  "Yes." Churchill bobbed his head. "Our intelligence people tell me the same."

  "So then?" Roosevelt prodded.

  Whirling back toward the map and pounding a chubby fist on the symbol marking the German capital, Churchill fairly shouted, "So rather than stopping at the Elbe, we sweep across the north German plain and take Berlin with Hitler still in it! Alive or dead, once we have him in our hands the other Nazis elsewhere will collapse and surrender."

  "They wouldn't fight on?" Roosevelt asked. "They're fanatics, you know."

  Churchill scowled. "You've been influenced too much by the Japanese, Franklin. The Nazi leaders are a pack of hoodlums. Once Hitler is in our grasp they'll throw down their arms and beg for mercy. You won't have to dig them out of their Bavarian redoubt. General Marshall, if it actually exists. The swine will come marching out in good order under a white flag, crying Kamerad."

  Roosevelt wheeled himself closer to the map. "So you think we could sweep across the open country east of the Ruhr and take Berlin before the Russians could get there? They're much closer to the city than we . . ."

  "And the Germans are concentrating what forces they have left to stand between the Red Army and Berlin. There's hardly anything on the western side of the city to stop our forces, Franklin! And it's flat, open territory; good tank country. A bold, decisive thrust," Churchill said, smacking a fist into the palm of his hand, "and Berlin is ours!"

  "With all due respect," Marshall said, "we tried 'a bold, decisive thrust' with Operation Market Garden last September. It bogged down at Arnhem and Montgomery never got across the Rhine."

  Churchill glared at the general. "Quite frankly, I say that Berlin remains of high strategic importance. Nothing will exert a psychological effect of despair upon all German forces of resistance equal to that of the fall of Berlin. It will be the supreme signal of defeat to the German people."

  "But what's the difference," Marshall countered, "if we take it or the Russians do?"

  Churchill turned back to Roosevelt. "Franklin, consider: if the Russians take Berlin, will they not receive the impression that they have borne the brunt of the fighting and done the most to achieve victory? If Eisenhower's plan holds forth, Russian armies will no doubt overrun much of Austria and enter Vienna, as well. May this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future?"

  "Difficulties?" General Marshall asked.

  The Prime Minister remained facing Roosevelt. "With the Red Army in possession of Berlin, and all the ancient capitals of Eastern Europe as well, what is to prevent them from setting up their own puppet regimes? We have already seen how they stood back while the Poles in Warsaw were exterminated by the Nazis so that they could bring in their own group of Moscow Communists to form the new Polish government. They will turn Eastern Europe into virtual colonies for themselves. Stalin will clamp the same iron dictatorship over Eastern Europe that he has over his own country. Good God! The consequences will be catastrophic. There will be no peace in Europe—Stalin's hordes will be primed to sweep westward and conquer the entire continent."

  Roosevelt looked more intrigued than afraid. "Do you really think Uncle Joe would go back on the pledges he made at Yalta?"

  "I have no doubt of it," Churchill said. "He
already has, in Poland."

  For a long moment there was utter silence in the map room.

  Then Marshall said, "Our primary military objective is to defeat the German army. If we go dashing to Berlin, we could end up fighting the Russian army. The point of Eisenhower's plan is to set up clear zones and stopping points, so we don't start shooting at our allies."

  "But then you let Stalin have Berlin."

  "Yessir, we do. We end this war without starting another one."

  Roosevelt almost sputtered into his martini. Marshall had come perilously close to accusing the Prime Minister of wanting to fight the Communists once Hitler was finished.

  That may be Winston's dearest heart's desire, the President told himself, but the only way it could happen would be if we do the fighting. The American people would never stand for that, he knew.

  Churchill huffed and growled. The discussion went on for another hour. Seeing that General Marshall would not budge in his support of Eisenhower, and Roosevelt would not waver in his support of his chief of staff, Churchill at last excused himself and repaired to the Lincoln bedroom, where he would stay the night.

  "They wouldn't buy it?" asked Anthony Eden, waiting in the upstairs hallway for his Prime Minister. Nearly a dozen aides, servants and bodyguards had accompanied Churchill on the flight across the Atlantic. Only Eden had come to the White House with him.

  Tall, elegantly handsome with his graying mustache and clear blue eyes. Eden had hitched his career to Churchill's star back in those grim days when Chamberlain was trying to appease Hitler by letting him take Central Europe without firing a shot. His precisely tailored pinstripe suit made Churchill's coveralls seem rumpled and dowdy.

  Churchill shook his head, his face set in a scowl of anger and impatience. "They are determined to allow Eisenhower free rein. Berlin goes to the Russians, as far as they are concerned."

  "Then what are we to do?" Eden asked. Officially, he was Foreign Secretary in the British cabinet. Actually he was little more than Churchill's aide and confidant. The Prime Minister ran the foreign office personally, as he ran almost all the other departments of government.

  Churchill motioned Eden into the Lincoln bedroom.

  Closing the heavy door carefully behind him, Eden again asked his Prime Minister, "What are we to do?"

  "Let the plan be implemented," Churchill said in a tired, almost sad, whisper.

  "Broadsword?" Eden barely breathed the word.

  Churchill nodded once.

  "You don't actually mean to do it?"

  "There's nothing else for it," said Churchill.

  Eden's expression hardened into a tight, bitter mask. He left the room, closing the door so softly that it made no discernable sound.

  Churchill walked past the huge, ornately carved rosewood bed and went to the window. It was April out there, warm and sunny, filled with happily chirping birds and newly blossomed flowers.

  Only a dozen men in the entire world knew of Broadsword.

  Churchill realized that within a week or two, once the plan was implemented, there would be only eleven. Or fewer.

  Chapter 3

  Moscow, 1 April

  Grimy snow was still banked high on the streets and covered the rooftops. The sky was low and heavy with pewter-colored clouds. The setting sun barely shone through, a wan sphere without warmth.

  From this window, high in what had once been a royal palace, Field Marshal Georgi Zhukov noticed that there was not a tree to be seen outside the Kremlin walls. What the Nazi bombing had not destroyed in 1941 the people themselves had cut down for fuel.

  He heard the door opening behind him and caught a whiff of powerful tobacco. Swiftly he whirled to stand at attention. Josef Stalin stepped into the conference room, his teeth clamped on a darkened briar pipe, his eyes glittering with secret thoughts.

  Marshal Koniev, on the other side of the polished conference table, also stood at ramrod attention. Zhukov smiled inwardly. Koniev was nearly ten centimeters taller than either of them, and Stalin did not like to have men taller than himself in his presence.

  "Sit, comrades," said Stalin, from behind the reeking pipe. "Sit."

  Stalin wore his usual marshal's tunic, not much different from Koniev's and Zhukov's own. No medals, however, no decorations. They were not necessary for this private meeting.

  He sat at the head of the long table, of course. His private secretary, Gagarin, remained standing behind the generalissimo's high-backed chair. Zhukov thought of Gagarin as a ghost: silent, pale, expressionless, but always present wherever Stalin went.

  The two field marshals took the chairs on Stalin's right and left, opposite one another.

  "You have studied General Eisenhower's proposed plan of action?" Stalin's voice was rough as gravel, his guttural Georgian accent a pain to Russian ears.

  Both field marshals nodded.

  "And?"

  "It fits our plans perfectly, comrade chairman," said Koniev.

  "The Americans and British either stop at the Elbe or head south, into Bavaria. They leave Berlin to us. And Vienna, as well."

  Stalin gave him a grunt and turned to Zhukov. "And what do you have to say, comrade marshal?"

  Zhukov had never trusted Koniev. The two men had been rivals since the civil war that had followed the October Revolution. Koniev had joined the Communist Party and then entered the Red Army as a Commissar. He was a brutal man, totally uncaring of the casualties he piled up as long as his troops kept moving forward. Zhukov, who had defended Leningrad, then Moscow and then Stalingrad, knew that Koniev placed his loyalty to the Party before his loyalty to the Red Army. He was ruthless, and totally subservient to Stalin.

  "With the Americans and British stopping short of Berlin,"

  Zhukov said slowly, calmly, "we can consolidate the gains we have made in the operations from the Vistula to the Oder, rest our troops, reequip . . ."

  "No."

  Stalin's one word halted the marshal. He glanced at Koniev, who was trying to suppress a smirk. Stalin puffed a great cloud of blue-gray smoke toward the ceiling. His eyes bored into Zhukov.

  "The troops have been fighting steadily since . . ."

  "No rest," Stalin said. "We will take Berlin before the Americans reach it."

  "But they're not going to Berlin."

  "Comrade marshal," said Stalin, "do you think I am foolish enough to believe that the Americans will allow us to take Berlin like a ripe apple hanging from a tree?"

  Koniev immediately saw where his leader was heading.

  "Eisenhower's plan is a ruse, comrade chairman?"

  Nodding vigorously, Stalin replied, "Of course it is! The Americans and British want us to believe they are not interested in Berlin. They want us to stop our advance so that they can rush across the few kilometers between them and Berlin and snatch it away from us."

  Zhukov felt himself frowning. He had never been able to mask his thoughts the way Koniev could. Bradley's Twelfth Army Group was more than two hundred kilometers from the German capital, at their closest.

  "Eisenhower has never lied to us, comrade chairman," he said. "The man seems touchingly open and aboveboard."

  "I say he is lying," Stalin replied, in the voice that had condemned virtually all of Zhukov's old comrades in the general staff during the great purges.

  Zhukov fell silent.

  "Then we must move on Berlin immediately," Koniev said.

  "Immediately," Stalin agreed. "But which of you will make the move?"

  Zhukov quickly said, "My First Byelorussian Army Group is only eighty kilometers from the outskirts of Berlin. We have established a beachhead on the west side of the River Oder, at Kustrin. There are no further geographical obstacles between the river and the city."

  Koniev countered, "My First Ukranian Army Group is poised to move at once against Berlin from the southeast. Most of the German defense units are to the east of the city, facing the Byelorussian divisions."

  "But you are more than a hundred and t
wenty kilometers from the city," Zhukov pointed out.

  "My troops are not as worn out as yours," Koniev replied sarcastically. "They do not need to rest and reequip themselves."

  Zhukov felt his face flame. "My men are perfectly capable of taking Berlin! Right now!"

  "The attack on the Nazi capital must be led by a man who is enthusiastic, not reluctant," Koniev shot back.

  "Reluctant?" Zhukov roared. "Reluctant?"

  Stalin stretched out his arms and gestured them both to silence. "I want to see your plans for taking Berlin. You have forty-eight hours to prepare them. Then I will decide which of you gets the honor."

  He got up from his chair and headed for the door, Gagarin following behind him silently as a wraith. Zhukov and Koniev remained standing on opposite sides of the table, glaring at each other.

  Of the many titles Josef Stalin wore, three were most important.

  He was Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was Chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars. He was Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Thus he had consolidated in his own grasping hands the power of the Party, the government, and the army.

  For all his power, his private office in the Kremlin was a small room, modestly furnished. A dark mahogany desk with a high-backed swivel chair, two straight-backed chairs in front of the desk, a sideboard with a gleaming silver samovar, and low bookcases jammed with mimeographed reports. On the walls were photographs of himself, a portrait in oils of himself, a large map of the Soviet Union pricked with tacks showing the positions of army units in three colors: black for the retreating fascists, red for loyal Soviet units, blue for Soviet groups of doubtful loyalty.

  Zhukov's First Byelorussian Army Group was marked in blue. The general cared more for the army than he did for the Party, Stalin knew. Which meant that he was loyal to something other than Stalin himself. A good soldier, perhaps, but one to keep a wary eye on.

  Hanging on the wall behind his desk was the Sword of Stalingrad, a gift from the English. Churchill had presented it to Stalin at the Tehran Conference, a year and a half earlier.