Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II

by Nicholas Best

  Molotov was the embodiment of Russian paranoia. He had spent a few days in Washington before San Francisco, staying at Lee House, next door to the Truman family. He had amused them all with his refusal to sit with his back to a door or window. A Russian valet had checked the pockets of his suits when they came back from the cleaner’s, and a Russian always stood watch when the Blair House staff made Molotov’s bed. He had amazed his American hosts still further by prowling the grounds of Blair House at three or four in the morning, long after everyone else had gone to sleep.

  In San Francisco he was no better, accompanied everywhere by a phalanx of unsmiling Soviet agents in terrible suits. Molotov seemed determined to put the worst possible interpretation on anything that came his way. He was already doing his best to make trouble at the conference, creating artificial objections to other countries’ proposals and threatening dramatic walkouts when his own proposals were not accepted. To the dismay of observers, he seemed hell-bent on destroying the United Nations before it had even drawn up its charter. The idea of cooperation between nations did not appear to have crossed his mind at all.

  He was particularly inflexible on the subject of Poland. The Russians were determined to impose a Communist government on Warsaw, one that would always look to Moscow for direction. But the Anglo-Americans wanted to see Poland free again, as it had been before the war. The issue was especially important to the British, because Poland’s freedom had been their reason for going to war.

  The British wanted to take Molotov aside and put it to him bluntly that Poland’s freedom was nonnegotiable. But the Americans wouldn’t back them. They feared that a tough line with Molotov might lead to a Russian boycott of the conference. The United Nations needed Russia much more than it needed Poland. Molotov was well aware of this, and saw no reason to make any concessions. Why should he, when the Soviet Union had so many millions of troops on the ground?

  * * *

  AMONG THE MANY AMERICANS unimpressed by Molotov’s antics was Lieutenant Jack Kennedy, recently of the U.S. Navy. After active service as a torpedo boat commander in the Pacific, Kennedy was preparing for surgery on his back before going to law school in the fall. In the meantime, his father had arranged for him to attend the conference as a reporter for the Chicago Herald American and other newspapers owned by his friend William Randolph Hearst.

  Joe Kennedy’s war had not been nearly as distinguished as his son’s. As the U.S. ambassador to Britain in 1939, he had been very close to prime minister Neville Chamberlain, fully supporting his policy of appeasement toward Germany, partly because the Germans had been badly treated at Versailles and partly because the Nazis seemed the lesser of two evils when compared to the Communists. Joe Kennedy had got straight on the telephone to Chamberlain on the day war broke out. He had been with his son Jack at the House of Commons when the air raid warning had sounded, trooping down to the shelter with all the Members of Parliament. But Joe Kennedy’s closeness to Chamberlain had not served him well in the months that followed, as the British buckled down to the war. His assertion that they would quickly surrender had proved horribly wide of the mark. Professional U.S. diplomats had lobbied successfully for his recall.

  Kennedy’s troubles hadn’t stopped there. His eldest son, also called Joe, had been killed in an air force accident over Suffolk, taking with him his father’s hopes for a Kennedy in the White House. Joe Jr. had been groomed for the presidency from an early age, raised to expect it almost as his due. A good war record was deemed essential for anyone seeking high office in future years, but death in active service had played no part in the Kennedys’ plan. Joe Sr.’s grief for his son had been the same as any father’s, but he mourned for his family’s ambitions as well.

  The mantle had fallen now on Jack, the second of his four boys. By arranging for Jack to attend the United Nations conference, Joe was hoping that the young man might develop an interest in politics or at least learn how history was made. He would also come to the attention of millions by writing for Hearst newspapers “from the point of view of the ordinary GI.” Bowing to his father’s wishes, Jack had installed himself at the Palace Hotel, from where he could report on the conference by day and chase girls by night.

  He was not a particularly good reporter. His reputation rested on his book Why England Slept, which had been written for him by someone else. But what he lacked in writing skills he made up in shrewdness and common sense. Unimpressed by Molotov, he nevertheless understood the Russian fear of another invasion, the refusal to countenance an anticommunist government in any of the countries along Russia’s western borders: “The Russians have a far greater fear of the German comeback than we do. They are therefore going to make their western defenses secure. No government hostile to Russia will be permitted in the countries along her borders … They feel they have earned this right to security. They need to have it, come what may.”6 Understanding the other side’s point of view was halfway to winning the battle, in Jack Kennedy’s estimation.

  But he couldn’t warm to the United Nations. He disliked “the timidity and selfishness of the nations gathered at San Francisco,” compared to the courage and sacrifice he had seen in the war. Above all, he disliked the way the new organization was being set up, with a power of veto vested in each of the five permanent members of the Security Council. What that meant in practice was that Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States would each be able to vote down anything they didn’t like, which was surely a recipe for disaster. The United Nations was supposed to be about solving problems in partnership, not stymieing the opposition. Kennedy wondered if it would ever be the right place for the world to settle its disputes, when the setup was so flawed from the outset.

  * * *

  ORSON WELLES, too, was covering the conference as a journalist, but not for Hearst newspapers. After his recent performance in Citizen Kane, a thinly disguised and none-too-flattering portrayal of the newspaper magnate, he was never going to find any employment with the Hearst Corporation.

  He was writing for a daily newsletter entitled Free World, published in English, French, and Spanish for the duration of the conference. He was also hosting the Free World Forum on radio, interviewing UN delegates about the proceedings and occasionally allowing them a word in edgeways. As a longtime political activist, hoping to make a living from politics rather than the cinema, Welles was taking a keen interest in the UN conference. He claimed that he was speaking for the whole world in demanding radical change from San Francisco. Whether the whole world shared the radicalism of the changes he demanded was another matter.

  But few could disagree with his anger at the concentration camps. Newsreel of Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley going round Ohrdruf-Nord, a small camp near Buchenwald, had just been shown to the delegates in San Francisco. Welles had added his own commentary in his column “Orson Welles Today”:

  The heaped-up dead in evidence. The burdened ovens. The ingenious machinery for the gift of pain. The eyeball blinking in the open grave … Patton and Bradley, their eyes choked full of this. Eisenhower, moving slowly, with immense dignity, through the long tableau. A huge black anger knocking with heavy blows on the commander’s heart.7

  The Americans had also filmed local Germans being shown what had been done in their name. As elsewhere, the civilian population had denied all knowledge of any atrocities, to unconcealed skepticism from Welles:

  The Military Police are gentle with the Herrenvolk. You realise that they need to be or they would strike them down, each with a single blow … One place of torture, you will learn, was camouflaged as a madhouse. Here the most grisly of all Grand Guignol conceits was realized: here the wardens were the lunatics … This is a putrefaction of the soul, a perfect spiritual garbage. For some years now we have been calling it Fascism. The stench is unendurable.8

  Welles apparently sought consolation for his anger in women. He was married to Rita Hayworth, but the marriage wasn’t going well. According to the FBI,
whose agents followed him everywhere in San Francisco, he had found other female company during the conference. He was sleeping with a stripper. The unnamed woman had a burlesque act in the city, but was planning to reinvent herself as a nightclub artiste, now that she had gone up in the world and was mixing with Hollywood royalty.

  * * *

  ON THE OTHER SIDE of the globe, in a royal hunting lodge just outside Madrid, Spain’s General Franco was following the proceedings in San Francisco with mounting dismay. He was wondering if there was going to be a place for Spain at the United Nations, or whether his country was to be denied admission as punishment for having backed the wrong side in the war.

  The omens were not good. So soon after their own civil war, Franco had been careful to keep the Spanish out of the larger conflict—at least until he could be sure that the British were going to lose—but there had never been much doubt as to which side he was on. Hitler had urged him repeatedly to declare war on Britain and allow German paratroopers to seize Gibraltar without delay. Franco had replied that the Royal Navy would seize the Canary Islands if he did. He had resisted all attempts to get Spain in on the Axis side, while making little secret of his admiration for Hitler and Mussolini and offering them plenty of covert help. In the Allies’ view, he had given their enemies all the help he could, short of actually entering the war.

  But there had been a heavy price to pay in economic isolation and pariah status as the rest of the world proved reluctant to do business with the Spanish. It hadn’t been a problem at first, with Germany in the ascendant and everyone else in retreat, but it was rapidly becoming one now that Germany was beaten and Spain had no other friends. Franco had been backpedaling for months, frantically distancing himself from the Axis and struggling to reengage with the rest of the world.

  The autographed photos of Hitler and Mussolini had been removed from his study, to be replaced by a picture of the Pope. Spanish troops had been withdrawn from the Russian front and German agents evicted from Tangiers. Spain had just broken off diplomatic relations with Japan and was about to do so with Germany as well. To anybody who asked, Franco was letting it be known that his previous flirtation with the Nazis had simply been a ploy, a delicate balancing act to keep his country from being occupied. What else could he have done, with the German army breathing down his neck and Italy just across the water?

  He had written to Churchill and Roosevelt, suggesting that their countries should be friends. Churchill’s response had been chilly. Roosevelt’s, mindful of the congratulations Franco had lavished on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor, even chillier. Between them, Churchill and Roosevelt had made it clear that there was no place for Spain at the forthcoming peace conference, nor much chance of Spain belonging to the United Nations under its present regime. The United Nations had no room in its charter for fascism.

  Franco had other enemies in San Francisco, domestic enemies from Spain itself. After his victory in the civil war, many defeated Republicans had fled to Mexico, where they had been welcomed with open arms. The Mexican delegation to the United Nations was heavily influenced by anti-Franco Republicans, openly lobbying to deny Spain a seat at the table. Franco could protest all he liked, but his regime was too closely associated with Hitler and Mussolini for the rest of the world to want him at their conference.

  Worst of all was the news just in from Milan. Franco read the accounts of Mussolini’s death that morning with horror. Dangled upside down in front of a baying mob, his face bashed in, his body poked with sticks. Hitler would doubtless be the next Fascist leader to suffer a similar fate. And after that? In a country still bitterly divided by his leadership, Francisco Franco didn’t even want to think about it.

  * * *

  HE WAS NOT ALONE in his unease. In the royal palace at Oslo, Vidkun Quisling, too, was afraid that there might be a price to pay for backing the wrong side in the war. As Norway’s so-called minister-president, installed by the Nazis after they deposed King Haakon and abolished the monarchy, Quisling knew that he could expect short shrift when Haakon returned from exile in England and the Norwegians regained control of their country. The Norwegian government in exile had already announced its intention of calling him to account for the years of collaboration. So had the Norwegian Resistance and many of the ordinary population. Quisling’s was a name that had long since passed into the language as a byword for treason of the worst kind.

  Quisling had been the leader of Norway’s Fascist Party before the war, but he had never won more than 2 percent of the popular vote. He had stormed into a radio studio during the German invasion in 1940, proclaiming himself prime minister and ordering all resistance to halt at once. The Germans had installed him as a puppet leader, but no Norwegians of any standing had agreed to serve in his Cabinet. Quisling had spent the war years in office yet not in power, merely doing the Germans’ bidding. He had encouraged Norwegians to join the SS and assisted the Germans in deporting Norway’s Jews. He had also been responsible for the execution of Norwegians in the Resistance, something that was unlikely to be forgotten when peace returned to the country.

  His immediate concern was to ensure an orderly transfer of power after the departure of the Germans. He had held a Cabinet meeting at the palace on April 29 to discuss the radio reports of Himmler’s secret approach to the Allies. The reports had been rapturously received in Norway. People had come out onto the streets to celebrate, until advised by the Resistance to keep their heads down and avoid gathering in crowds. With the Nazis obviously disintegrating, Quisling’s Cabinet had decided to reconstitute itself as a transitional government, one that no longer had any business with the Germans but was merely there “to prevent chaos, civil war and military activity on Norwegian soil” until the war was over. After that, it was anybody’s guess what would happen.

  Quisling suspected that he was doomed in the long run, but was still hoping for a miracle. Like many Fascist leaders, he had little idea of how much he was loathed by ordinary people. The Germans had offered to put a U-boat at his disposal, and he had friends who could hide him if need be, but he wasn’t prepared to cut and run as his time came to an end. Explaining it to his secretary, he insisted that he had done his best for Norway and that his conscience was clear:

  I shall remain sitting where I am sitting. A political vacuum would be the worst thing that could happen. In any case, I have the satisfaction of having governed Norway equally as long as Olav Tryggvason, and certainly no worse, all things considered. As far as I am concerned, I shall hand over the country in an equally good condition to its future rulers, assuming that they won’t be the Russians. Against the Russians, I would mobilise everyone capable of carrying arms, whatever the consequences.9

  Olav Tryggvason had been a Viking king, much admired by his people. Quisling hadn’t been admired at all. Yet he was no coward. He had decided to turn himself over to the incoming Norwegian government, if the worse came to the worst, and accept whatever fate they decided for him. At best it would be a long spell in prison; at worst, execution by firing squad. But Quisling wasn’t afraid. He would rather that than run away or kill himself, as so many others in his Cabinet were thinking of doing, now that the Nazis were no longer there to protect them.

  11

  ASSAULT ON THE REICHSTAG

  IN BERLIN, the Russians were preparing to attack the Reichstag. Fighting had continued throughout the night as they struggled to secure the Ministry of the Interior, flushing the Germans out of the vast office complex one room at a time. There was still sporadic shooting on the top floors as dawn broke, but the rest of the building was safely in Russian hands. Cooks in the basement were busily preparing breakfast for the assault troops while their commanders studied the Reichstag through their binoculars and braced themselves for the ordeal ahead.

  Germany’s Parliament building was only four hundred yards away, but it might just as well have been on the moon from where they were standing. The intervening ground was a rabbit warren of shell holes, trenches
, railway sleepers, overturned trams, barbed wire, and flooded waterways—every kind of obstacle to an advance. The approaches to the Reichstag were heavily defended, and the building itself may have had a thousand troops inside. The Germans weren’t going to give up their Parliament building without a struggle.

  But the Russians were determined to fly their flag over its giant dome before nightfall, in good time for next morning’s May Day celebrations in Moscow. The leading units had been equipped with flags specially made for the purpose, Red Banners of Victory with extra large hammer-and-sickle emblems to be planted over “the lair of the Fascist beast.” The units were in competition to see who planted their banner first.

  The assault began at 5:00 a.m. with a preliminary bombardment, every available gun pouring fire into the Reichstag at point-blank range. An hour later, the first wave of troops attacked, emerging from cover and charging forward across the rubble. They got fifty yards before being cut down. Others followed and were killed, too. Much of the defending fire came from the Kroll Opera House, across the square from the Reichstag. The Russian commanders decided that they would have to capture the opera house first, before turning their full attention on the Reichstag.

  It took them most of the morning, because the nearby buildings had to be secured as well. Reinforcements poured in over the Moltke Bridge, guns and tanks rumbling forward to join the assault. They came under fire from German antiaircraft guns on the giant concrete flak tower near the Zoological Gardens and from other positions in the Tiergarten. The Russians responded in kind, hitting the Tiergarten with a devastating combination of rockets and heavy artillery that blasted everything in its path. The sun was shining and the birds were singing in the trees, but artillery officer Siegfried Knappe remembered only the destruction as the Russian shells rained down around him: