Triumph (1993)

by Ben Bova

  Molotov blinked behind his pince-nez once, twice. "That could cause some confusion to our plans."

  "Which plans?"

  "The occupation zones were clearly delineated at the Yalta conference."

  "The occupation zones," Hopkins answered smoothly, "are for the occupation of Germany and Austria after the fighting stops. What we're talking about now is the actual fighting. We intend to give you all the help we can."

  "But General Eisenhower's communication of twenty-eighth March said that your forces would stop at the Elbe."

  Hopkins waved a hand in the air. "That will be changed immediately. We don't want your troops facing the Nazis without all the help we can provide. We're allies, after all."

  Molotov's suspicious scowl deepened into a thoughtful frown. "The purpose of stopping at the Elbe was to make certain that our armies do not accidentally fire upon one another."

  "I'm sure the generals in the field can work out recognition signals and such."

  The Russian foreign minister sank back in his chair. "It would be a pity if our troops killed one another by accident."

  Hopkins shrugged. "This is war. Even if a few minor accidents do happen, there will be far fewer of your men lost that way than if you had to slug it out with the Germans by yourselves. No, we must give you all the help we can. History would never forgive us if we didn't, and the American people wouldn't forgive us, either. They greatly admire the way you've fought off the Nazi invaders."

  It was Molotov's turn to start a new cigarette. He opened the lacquered box on the sherry table between their two chairs and saw that it was almost empty. It had been full when this conversation had started, several hours ago.

  Hopkins leaned forward with his Zippo lighter and flicked it into flame. Molotov drew deeply, then exhaled smoke through his nose.

  "We have heard rumors," he said, shifting the subject, "that Goering is seeking a truce on the western front."

  "Oh?" Hopkins replied innocently.

  "He wants to shift the troops facing your armies to the east, to face ours. The same for the German troops in Italy," said Molotov.

  Hopkins shook his head. "I've heard nothing about that, and if I had I would have advised the President against it. Our policy is firm: unconditional surrender and no separate deals."

  Both Hopkins and Molotov knew that the Soviet foreign minister had quietly opened negotiations with the German foreign minister, Ribbentrop, in 1943, seeking a separate truce.

  "You are firm on that?" Molotov asked.

  "Unconditional surrender," Hopkins repeated. "No truce, no separate peace."

  Molotov puffed on his cigarette for a few silent moments.

  Then, "I have arranged for Khrushchev and Malenkov to have supper with us tonight."

  "Fine," said Hopkins. "I'd be delighted to meet them. But isn't Bulganin going to join us?"

  Molotov almost smiled. "Comrade Bulganin is in the Caucasus region, supervising new oil-well installations."

  "I see," said Hopkins, thinking, Bulganin is already being used as an errand boy. The big three are Molotov, Khrushchev and Malenkov.

  He reported as much by coded radio message to Washington that night from his quarters in the American embassy, after a long and vodka-soaked supper in the Kremlin. Hopkins also added that he had told his hosts that the U.S. and British armies would not stop at the Elbe River.

  "I did not mention Berlin per se," he reported, "but I left the implication clear."

  Molotov did mention Berlin to Khrushchev that night, after Hopkins left. "They mean to seize Berlin," he said. "I am certain of it."

  Khrushchev, who had behaved quite drunkenly during the long supper, looked at the foreign minister with narrowed eyes. "Then we must order Zhukov and Koniev to take the city before the Americans can."

  "But which one? Zhukov or Koniev?"

  "Both of them!" snapped Khrushchev. "Let them both strive for the prize."

  Berne. 19 April

  General Wolff was wearing the same light brown three-piece suit as he paced slowly down the street alongside Allen Dulles. The American head of OSS operations in Europe puffed on his pipe, still looking like a visiting college professor.

  "If it were not so tragic it would be funny," Wolff was saying as they walked past a row of little shops in the warm afternoon sunlight.

  "So what's Goering going to do?" Dulles asked. They were speaking in English, and kept their voices low despite the fact that there was no one to eavesdrop on them except a few elderly women out shopping.

  "After Goering left Berlin, Himmler convinced Hitler that the Reichsmarschall was going to make his own surrender to the Allies. Hitler went into a tantrum and revoked the order of Nineteen Forty-one that made Goering his political heir. Himmler then gave orders to Bormann to arrest the Reichsmarschall. Bormann sent a squad of SS men to Burg Valdenstein with the threat of death if they did not follow their orders and arrest Goering."

  "My Lord!"

  Wolff chuckled uneasily. "But Der Dicke outfoxed them, as usual. His castle was already occupied by a battalion of Luftwaffe troops. Goering placed the SS men under his own 'protective custody!'"

  "Can he get away with that?"

  "If your troops move in quickly enough, he can. He is sitting in his castle, waiting to surrender to you. He has decided that continued fighting is hopeless."

  Dulles took the pipe from his teeth. "I'll get a message to SHAEF right away. Our boys ought to be able to take that area in a day or two."

  "I would have thought they would already have advanced that far, but apparently they stopped some days ago. Your front lines have not advanced in several days."

  Dulles said nothing, but thought. For the chance to capture Hermann Goering, Ike can push the men along a bit, I'm sure.

  "It seems to me," Wolff went on, "as if your armies have stopped their advance all along the western front."

  "Logistics," Dulles said. "It's hard to keep the front-line troops supplied when they're advancing so fast."

  "Yes," Wolff said slowly, drawing the word out. "Either that, or a repositioning of the armies for a fresh assault."

  Dulles swiftly decided that he would not be drawn into that area. "What are you going to do, personally? And Kesselring? Is he still willing to surrender his forces in Italy?"

  "We have never said we were willing to surrender!"

  Dulles smiled. "No, come to think of it, I guess you didn't. But don't you think it's about time that we discussed the possibility?"

  Chapter 22

  Dessau, 20 April

  Technical Sergeant Kirby Jones hunkered down and sat on the grass, his back against the left front wheel of his deuce-and-a-half. He wiped sweat off his brow. In the past forty-eight hours he and his squad had moved sixteen truckloads of fuel, ammo, food, and lubrication oil over a hundred miles of country roads, winding their way through long columns of clanking growling tanks, self-propelled artillery pieces, tank destroyers, other trucks loaded with troops.

  Private Deke Jefferson sank down to the ground beside him. "Okay. I cleaned the sparkplugs and checked th' timing. It's all fine now."

  "Better be," muttered Jones.

  "Whoo-ee, I'm bushed. I ain't slept since Christmas, feels like."

  Jones gave him a lazy smile. "Better get some shut-eye now, man. Once ol' Blood 'n Guts gets them tanks movin' across the river there ain't gonna be any sleep for any of us."

  "The voice of experience, huh?" But Jefferson had already pushed his helmet liner over his eyes.

  "You wasn't with us last summer. We drove them danged trucks till they fell apart, all the way across France, every day, every night, with ol' Blood 'n Guts hollerin' all the time for us to go faster."

  Jefferson's only answer was a gentle snore.

  Jones wished he could sleep too. But he had seen something that morning that kept him awake. A black infantry platoon. Whole damned platoon, all black men just like himself. Black noncoms, even black officers.

  The draft m
ust be scraping the bottom of the barrel if they're forming combat units out of niggers, he said to himself. Damned white officers don't trust us to fight. Not till now.

  He wondered what some of those southern crackers thought about black infantry. He had heard that there was a whole fighter squadron of blacks, but the air force was only a distant dream for the men on the ground and it might have been just a story one nigger told to another to make them both feel better.

  Try as he might, Jones could not sleep. Here he was, twenty-four years old, going on fifty. He had been in the army for three years now. He had been shelled by Kraut artillery and twice he had been strafed by the few German planes still in the sky. But he was only a truck driver, not a combat soldier. He wondered what it would be like. Could I kill another man? he asked himself. Guess so, if I had to.

  If he was one of those motherfucking Nazis who says they gonna get rid of all the black people, I'd kill the sonofabitch all right.

  Three years in the army had taught him to be grateful that he was not on the front line, not a combat soldier. But he couldn't help feeling disappointed that nobody in the whole entire U.S. Army considered him fit to be trusted with actual fighting. And he felt even more disappointed with himself that he was inwardly kind of glad that he didn't have to go into the line where he might get himself killed.

  He finally drowsed off in the early morning sun, only to be awakened by the thundering roar of artillery. He jumped to his feet, Jefferson beside him, wide-eyed.

  "Look at that." Jones drew out each word, awed by the noise and power of the bombardment. He pointed across the river, where white puffs of smoke marked where the shells were striking.

  "There they go! Lookit!" Jefferson yelled, so excited that his helmet liner slipped off his head and bounced unnoticed on the ground.

  Tanks were rumbling across a shallow place in the river.

  Or maybe the engineers had put a pontoon bridge across.

  They were too far away for Jones to tell which. All he could see was the humped dark brown shapes of the Shermans crossing the river.

  "Come on, come on! Move it, move it! Let's get rolling!" someone shouted at them.

  Without an instant's delay Jones clambered up into the cab of his truck, Jefferson right behind him. As he revved up the engine he looked out the window to see who was making the noise. Wasn't their regular captain, not that high-pitched, squeaky little girl's voice.

  There was a jeep beside his truck, with an officer standing straight as a ramrod in the right-hand seat, one hand gripping the top of the windshield to steady himself. An officer with a shining steel helmet emblazoned with three stars, a pair of binoculars around his neck, and a pair of ivory-handled pistols on his hips.

  "Jesus Christ, General!" blurted Jones. "Where you think you're goin'? Sir."

  "Berlin! I'm going to personally shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch!" Patton was beaming the biggest grin Jones had ever seen on a white man.

  The jeep took off with a roar and a cloud of dust, Patton still standing in it. Jones put the truck in gear and lurched off after him.

  "That's ol' Blood 'n Guts hisself!" Jefferson yelled, his voice almost as high as Patton's.

  "Yeah."

  "Who's he gonna shoot? What he say about a paper-hangin' sonofabitch?"

  "He means Hitler. Hitler worked as a paperhanger before the war, they say."

  "No shit?"

  "Yeah." The truck bounced along the dirt road, heading down toward the river. Patton still stood straight and tall in front of them.

  "Man, I wouldn't want to be no Adolph Hitler when he gets to Berlin," Jefferson said fervently.

  Chequers, 20 April

  Churchill took his watch from its pocket in his vest and clicked open its delicate gold cover. Montgomery had been ranting for almost half an hour.

  The bantam-sized field marshal had flown from his command post in Germany to the Prime Minister's country residence to make one last plea for Berlin. He looked the very picture of a dashing general, from his rakish beret to his chest full of ribbons down to his perfectly laced combat boots. He had charged headlong into a battle of words the instant he had been ushered into the book-lined study of the country home. He was going to capture Berlin, but before he could do that he needed to capture the support of his Prime Minister.

  Churchill knew it was hopeless, but out of his respect for Sir Bernard's past service he allowed the victor of El Alamein to blow off as much steam as he wanted to. After all, Churchill mused to himself, when you are going to kill a man it costs you nothing to be polite about it. I created this situation when I decided to go ahead with Broadsword. Of course the Americans would want the honor of taking Berlin.

  I should have foreseen that they would. Unfortunately, the decision came as a complete shock to Monty.

  "It isn't fair, Winston!" Montgomery was shouting. "It's a stab in the back. Berlin should be mine! You know that. I know that. Even Ike knows it. But Bradley and Patton have always schemed against me."

  Churchill puffed quietly on his cigar and looked out the window to the soft green countryside. He wished he could be out there with his oil paints; even laying bricks to build another garden wall would be so soothing. Instead, he sat in a wing chair stiff with age and smelling of horsehair and listened to his finest general screeching like a stuck pig.

  Montgomery had not been privy to Broadsword; the fewer people who knew that Stalin was assassinated, the better. But Monty was no fool. As soon as the news of Stalin's death became known he was on Eisenhower's back, demanding Berlin as a prize that he had earned by right.

  Perhaps so, Churchill thought wearily. But the relationship has changed. The Americans are in the driver's seat now, young and strong and just beginning to realize how powerful they really are. Franklin already treats me with a noticeable condescension. Noblesse oblige. He doesn't even realize he's doing it. What would Franklin say if I told him that I caused Stalin's death; that I have handed the United States mastery of the whole world. To save Britain. To save all that we have striven for over so many centuries. To keep alight the flame of democracy.

  There was no other way, Churchill told himself. None whatsoever. Fighting Hitler has exhausted Britain. And I did not bring the British people through this hell merely to hand half the world to Stalin and his odious ilk. Better to give it all to the Americans. Much better for everyone, even the Russians.

  The Prime Minister almost smiled. But Monty doesn't think so. He can't see any further than his own desire to be crowned the hero of the war. We've snatched his laurel wreath away from him, and he is justly furious.

  Churchill opened his pocket watch again. Just over thirty minutes since Monty had begun his tirade.

  "I won't have it!" Montgomery was yelling, his voice thin and nerve-rattling. "I simply won't have it!"

  "That's enough," Churchill said.

  He said it softly, almost sadly. But the words stopped Montgomery in full flight, with both fists clenched over his head.

  "Sit down, Monty," said Churchill.

  The field marshal sat.

  "There's nothing for it. Patton will take Berlin. Eisenhower has made it clear that if I try to insist that you take the city, he will send his resignation to Washington."

  "He'd resign?" Montgomery's face was a mixture of surprise and anxiety.

  Churchill nodded heavily. "I'm afraid that if it comes to a choice between you and Ike, the Americans will naturally favor their own man."

  "Yes, of course."

  "I cannot allow that to happen. I will not force the issue. Patton will take Berlin. You—and I—will have to swallow that hard fact."

  Monty's face turned red. "I'll go to the press, dammit. I'll tell them how the bloody Yanks are bullying us!"

  "You will do nothing of the sort," Churchill said firmly.

  "No one will threaten this alliance. Neither you nor I nor anyone else. We are tied to the Americans with bonds of blood. No one of us will try to weaken those bonds. Not
while I live and serve His Majesty."

  The blood drained from Montgomery's face. "But Berlin. For God's sake, Winston. . . ."

  Churchill realized his cigar had gone out. He looked down at its stub, chewed and wet on one end, burned out on the other. There's symbolism for you, he thought.

  Looking up into Montgomery's drawn, sad eyes, he said, "I have no idea of what God wants, but I know that the political necessities of the day make it imperative that we acquiesce to Eisenhower's decision. No amount of argument is going to change that. Do I make myself clear, Monty?"

  "Yes, sir. Quite clear." It looked as if the field marshal might burst into tears.

  Churchill watched him get up from his chair and walk across the ancient carpeting to the door. Let the Yanks have Berlin, Churchill said to himself. It doesn't matter which of us takes the city, as long as it's not the Reds. Let the Yanks do it. Let them take the casualties. We will accomplish our political goal without sacrificing a single British life.

  Yet he felt defeated. No, Churchill thought, I feel more like a soldier who has been carrying the colors through the thick of the battle and now that the battle is almost won I've been shot down, mortally wounded, and must pass the flag to another.

  Mortally wounded? You're becoming melodramatic in your old age, Winston, Churchill growled to himself. No, worse. You're becoming self-pitying. Brace up! You've won your goal, even if no one will ever know it except yourself.

  Chapter 23

  Erfurt, 20 April

  "Berlin! You must be crazy!"

  Sergeant Kinder shook his head woefully.

  "That's the scoop. We're going to drop on Berlin. Give Hitler a little birthday present."

  Hollis had known it was going to be bad when the truck convoy from France had left them at an airfield. They had a real barracks—a bit shot up by the flyboys before the Army took it away from the Germans—but it had a roof that hardly leaked at all and pretty solid walls and even a stove that kept the night chill out, if you were close enough to it.