Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  Alexeanu was succeeded as civil governor by General Potopianu, who had besieged

  Odessa back in 1941. He was a bit less easy-going than Alexeanu, but anyway he hadn't much say any longer. For from February the Germans were, unofficially, in control of everything and, from April 1, officially.

  Towards the end of the occupation, the Germans scrapped the very name of Transniestria, and took over the railways and every-thing else (much to Antonescu's indignation). They were greatly worried about two things—that some of the Rumanian generals in Odessa,

  or elsewhere, might "do a Badoglio" on them; and about the spread of communism and defeatism among the Rumanian soldiers.

  Before the Germans had taken over, Transniestria had thirteen districts, each under its own prefect; in Odessa itself there was a mayor, Herman Pintia, formerly mayor of

  Kishenev. The police was Rumanian, on the lines of the Soviet militia; but there was, moreover, the Siguranza.

  Pintia was deposed by the Germans who appointed in his place a Russian quisling called Petushkov. He was the last mayor of Odessa. He arrived on March 24 and left again on April 9. He had been Mayor of Stalino under the Germans; he was an engineer, a fat

  podgy little man of forty-six; a German major did all his work.

  Under the Rumanians, thirty churches were open in Odessa, among them a few Lutheran

  and Roman Catholic churches. The Orthodox clergy at Odessa were ordered by the

  Rumanians to sever all connection with the Moscow Patriarchy, and to accept the

  authority of the Metropolitan Nikodim of Odessa, a man who saw eye to eye with the

  new masters. The Rumanians sent a church mission of twelve priests to Odessa, headed by one Scriban, a theology professor from Bucharest. These priests took over some of the best houses in Odessa, including those of the Metropolitan and other Bishops; they also took over all the best parishes. Father Vasili, the Priest of the Uspensky Cathedral, told me that, as a result, the Russian priests were put "in a highly unfavourable position, and many were reduced to finding themselves new parishes in the countryside." Father Vasili declared that the Rumanian priests in Odessa went in for highly riotous living, and the worst offender of all was Scriban himself. Scriban had made a racket of his job: he would authorise Russian priests to take this or that parish, and the better the parish, the higher Ms rake-off.

  Finally, he was sent back to Bucharest, because his behaviour was becoming too

  scandalously notorious, and instead there came the Metropolitan Vissarion of Bessarabia and Czernowitz. He made a solemn and triumphal entry into Odessa, with Rumanian

  cavalry escorting his carriage, but soon afterwards great rows started between him,

  representing the Church, and Governor Alexeanu, representing the temporal power. The final result was that the Metropolitan Vissarion, who had entered Odessa like a Tsar, left for the railway station in a droshki, with one suitcase.

  There was little or no Herrenvolk stuff about the Rumanians, and for that matter, not much love lost between Rumanians and the Germans, except perhaps at the very top

  level. Conquerors and conquered found common ground in business and in the black

  market. But neither Ukrainians, Russians nor Rumanians could, after all, take

  Transniestria very seriously. For one year (up to Stalingrad) it seemed possible that the Rumanians had come to stay: but not after that. Many "free-enterprise" enthusiasts among the Odessites must then have gone much more cautiously about their co-operation with the new masters. These were, moreover, becoming visibly dejected since the rout of the Rumanian troops on the Don, and were increasingly frightened of the Germans throwing them out of Transniestria altogether. It was known that even Antonescu was now

  resenting Hitler's growing demands for more and more Rumanian cannon fodder.

  What had the Siguranza done in Odessa? The Russians said that they were as bad as the Gestapo: that they had not only shot 40,000 Jews in a place called Strelbishche Field, but had also, especially during the early part of the occupation, shot about 10,000 others, many of them communists or suspected communists, or hostages taken after the shooting of Rumanian officers in the streets, cases of bomb-throwing, etc.

  [There were over 150,000 Jews in Odessa in 1941, but about two-thirds had been

  evacuated by sea with most of the army and many of the other civilians. When, in June 1944 I went to Botošani, in the part of Rumania occupied by the Russians, I found there a large Jewish population which had not been exterminated by the Rumanians, despite German demands. There was some disagreement in the Rumanian Government on this

  issue (see Reitlinger. The Final Solution. London 1953, p. 404.)]

  The only redeeming feature of the Siguranza, according to the Russians, was that they were extremely corrupt, and many Jews who could afford it could buy "Aryan" papers, or, at any rate, be allowed to escape to the countryside. There is evidence to show that the Rumanians, while themselves ready to kill Jews, resisted German "interference" in Odessa.

  There is some doubt, too, about the real importance of the Soviet "underground"

  operating from the inextricable labyrinth of the Odessa catacombs, with their dozens of miles of subterranean passages, some of them as much as 100 feet underground. Many

  romantic stories (notably by V. Katayev) were written towards the end of the war about the "only urban partisans in the world", and about some of their communist chiefs, such as S. F. Lazarev, I. G. Ilyukhin and L. F. Borgel, who functioned throughout the

  Rumanian occupation and spread perpetual terror among the invaders.

  [V. Katayev, Katakomby (The Catacombs), (Moscow, 1945).]

  It seems that, in reality, the Soviet underground in Odessa used the catacombs (which had many secret entrances inside houses) only in cases of great emergency and that, although some food and arms dumps were hidden there, very few people (if any) actually lived in the catacombs for any length of time. Some Jews were said to have lived there right

  through the occupation, but the extreme damp of the catacombs makes this highly

  doubtful.

  What is certain, however, is that after the end of 1943 (but not before), and particularly during the last (German) month of the occupation the catacombs became much more

  important. Thanks to the Soviet underground organisations, they became a refuge for

  young people in danger of deportation, and for a number of Alsatian, Polish, and

  especially Slovak deserters from the German Army. Some of the partisan chiefs I saw in Odessa soon after the liberation (and pretty thuggish bendyuzhnik types they were), claimed that there was a well-armed army of 10,000 men in the catacombs (who bought

  most of their arms in the black market from Rumanian or German soldiers) complete with a "catacomb hospital" with "twelve surgeons and 200 nurses", and not only a "catacomb bakery" but even a "catacomb sausage factory"; but this is not certain by any means, and must be taken with serious reservations. Except during the last weeks of the occupation, when Odessa was under the Germans, the usual incentives (such as the danger of

  deportation) for a big partisan movement were simply not there; and even later a great number of people who went into the catacombs were passive rather than active partisans.

  All I saw in the catacombs were several machine-gun nests covering the essential

  passages; emergency food stores, artesian wells and arms dumps. A few thousand people may well have stayed in the catacombs during the last few critical weeks; but the claims made to me by the partisan chiefs that the Odessa underground had killed "hundreds of Germans", that it had prevented them from destroying the whole of Odessa (it had not stopped them from destroying the harbour and practically all the factories) had a certain histoire marseillaise quality. It is perhaps significant that serious Soviet post-war studies of the war say very little of the "catacomb partisans", and certainly do not describe them as a major underground army which (as the partisan chiefs
claimed on April 14, 1944)

  "could have occupied Odessa and thrown out the Germans if the Red Army had not

  arrived in time". Such boasts were wholly unsubstantiated.

  I saw many war prisoners that week at Odessa, among them, the Slovaks and the

  Alsatians who had joined the partisans. They were in fine fighting spirit, especially the Slovaks, and also some Poles, and they were typical of the Occupied Europe during those days— typical of its rapidly rising hopes. The Rumanian war prisoners were all down-at-heel, both physically and morally, and one of them, when asked what he had done during the war, jovially declared that he had been a deserter for three years. Another was a cheery Bucharest taxi-driver, who said he hoped King Carol and Madame Lupescu— a very good woman, he said—would come back, because in their days life was gay and there was a lot of business for taxi-drivers. And the question they were all asking—

  hopefully—was "Has Bucharest been taken yet? "

  The Germans, however, sulked, and few would commit themselves to saying Hitler had

  lost the war. They seemed, in fact, rather proud to think that nearly all the Germans had managed to get out of Odessa before it was too late.

  The centre of Odessa had in the main survived, though most of the factories in the

  suburbs had been destroyed. But life—a new Soviet life—was already beginning to take shape here and there. At the Vorontzov Palace—now again the Pioneers' Palace—whose

  glass dome had been shattered by a Russian shell that was aimed at the port—children were invited to register again.

  The matron of the Pioneers' Palace was indignant. "Such barbarism," she said. Alexeanu had lived here in grand style with his mistress, and, not unnaturally, he had "restored" the Palace, according to his own taste, and had given the Empire drawing room with the

  chandeliers new cream-coloured walls. "And the cream-coloured paint," she said, "is smeared over the mural of the pre-revolutionary squalor in which the children of Russia had then lived; and, similarly, on the opposite wall Alexeanu has destroyed forever the beautiful mural painting of Comrade Stalin clapping his hands as the happy Soviet

  children dance round him."

  I was to see Odessa again, nearly a year later, in March 1945. By then it had become the port of embarkation for thousands of British, American, French and other prisoners of war, who had been liberated by the Red Army in Poland, Silesia, Pomerania and East

  Prussia. They were living in barracks, school buildings, and in villas near the Arcadia Beach. Sailors, British and American mostly, were dancing and drinking hard among the dusty palm trees of the lounge of the Hotel de Londres, now de-mined (it was roped off during my first visit). Food was scarce—even at the Hotel de Londres—and Odessa had a hungry look, much leaner than in 1944. There were still no buses or trams, and the

  market looked poverty stricken. Banditry was rife. Shady characters were slinking about the streets at dark, and robberies and murders were a nightly occurrence. Were they using the catacombs now—to dodge the Russian police? The port, it is true, was working, and pale, yellow-skinned German prisoners were clearing away the rubble. Much of the

  wreckage had indeed been cleared, though only a small part of the port was usable, with one American and one British transport moored to the quay, and the breakwater was still smashed in two places. Hundreds of British or French or American P.O.Ws. would march joyfully through the wrecked dockland of Odessa to the ship that was awaiting them; they would jeer at the Germans, and the Germans would make philosophical remarks to each

  other about the changing fortunes of war, or merely glare disconsolately.

  I wondered then why Odessa was scarcely being restored at all, and why food and living conditions generally were harder than they were in so many other liberated cities. Was not Odessa, I wondered, being indirectly punished for that relatively easy time it had had in the Transniestria days, and for the eagerness with which so many of its citizens had entered into the spirit of night-clubs, bodegas and black-marketing? Not out of real disloyalty, but rather out of an innate and frivolous liking for petty business.

  For several years after the war there was a feeling that Odessa was in poor odour in Moscow and was low on the list of priorities for reconstruction.

  Chapter IV CLOSE-UP III: HITLER'S CRIMEAN

  CATASTROPHE

  Post-war German historians hold Hitler exclusively responsible for the "senseless disaster" that the German Army suffered in the Crimea in April-May 1944, complete with their abortive "Dunkirk" at Sebastopol, perhaps the most spectacular defeat of all inflicted on the Germans since Stalingrad.

  Hitler's determination to cling on to the Crimea, even though the whole Ukrainian

  mainland to the north of it was now in Russian hands, had been dictated by his usual political and economic considerations, besides the sentimental rubbish about the Crimea having been "the last stronghold of the Goths" and still being potentially a wonderful playground for Kraft durch Freude. It was even said that Hitler intended to retire to the Tsar's palace of Livadia in his old age.

  With Turkey beginning to lean heavily the other way since Teheran, it was essential to impress upon her that Germany was still powerful on the Black Sea; secondly, obsessed by economic considerations, Hitler was determined not to allow the Russians to use the Crimea as a springboard for massive air attacks on the Rumanian oil fields—Germany's most important source of oil. Ironically, it was exactly two days before the Russians undertook their attack on the Crimea that the Americans, operating from southern Italy, dropped their first big bombs on Ploesti—which Hitler thought he could make

  invulnerable against air attacks by hanging on to the Crimea!

  [Philippi and Heim, op. cit., p. 243.]

  Anyway, by May 1944, the Russians were already at Odessa, not much farther away from Ploesti than Sebastopol.

  The Russians recaptured the Crimea within a month. The attack began in the north on

  April 11. In the course of the previous winter the troops of Tolbukhin's 4th Ukrainian Front had established a bridgehead on the south side of the Sivash, the narrow inlet between the Crimea and the mainland. It had been one of the boldest operations of its kind. After a heavy barrage against the relatively slender Rumanian positions on the south side of the Sivash, a considerable number of Russian troops got across by various means and established a bridgehead on the south side. After that hundreds of soldiers spent hours waist-deep or shoulder-deep in the icy and very salt water of the Sivash—the salt eating into every pore and causing almost unbearable pain—laying a pontoon across the inlet. Although the Russians suffered heavy losses in this double operation, the bridgehead was firmly established and fortified.

  [Curiously, at the time there was no announcement in the Russian press of this

  bridgehead, and later in newspaper articles and films (like The Third Blow) the establishment of the bridgehead was represented as the first part of Tolbukhin's April offensive. Perhaps it was feared that the bridgehead might yet be lost, so it was better to say nothing meantime.]

  And so, on April 11, after a heavy artillery barrage, thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of tanks poured from the bridgehead into the interior of the Crimea.

  Simultaneously other Russian forces attacked the German defences on the Perekop

  Isthmus, but this was more in the nature of a diversion and, with the troops from the Sivash bridgehead threatening to cut off Perekop from the south, the Germans and

  Rumanians hastily abandoned the elaborate twenty-mile-deep defences they had been

  built on the Isthmus.

  [It had been the well-guarded "gate" of the Crimean Tartars up to the 18th century, and the main fortified position of Wrangel's "Whites" in 1920. In 1941 the Isthmus was poorly fortified and manned and the Germans broke through with relative ease.]

  Within two days Tolbukhin's troops overran the whole northern part of the Crimea, and captured Simferopol, its capital. Meantime Y
eremenko's special Black Sea Army,

  advancing from east-Crimean bridgeheads (also established during the winter) struck out west along the southern coast of the Crimea, capturing Kerch, Feodosia, Gurzuf, Yalta and Alupka, and continuing to pursue the Germans retreating to Sebastopol.

  Hitler's decision to hold the Crimea was one of his most insane inspirations. According to present-day Russian sources, the Russians succeeded in achieving overwhelming

  superiority there. Whereas there were 195,000 German and Rumanian troops in the

  Crimea, the Russians had 470,000 and a similar superiority in tanks, guns and aircraft.

  [ IVOVSS, vol. 4, p. 89.]

  The Russians also had great naval superiority on the Black Sea.

  About half of the German 17th Army holding the Crimea consisted of Rumanians; and

  Antonescu had argued months before with Hitler in favour of evacuating these Rumanian troops; the attempt to hold the peninsula struck him as totally unrealistic. But Hitler would not hear of it. Many of the Rumanian troops, realising no doubt that Sebastopol—

  to which all the German troops were now rapidly converging—would be a death-trap,

  and that they would, in any case, be the last to be evacuated, hastened to surrender to the Russians in the northern Crimea, at Simferopol, and along the coast.

  By April 18, the bulk of the German forces had rapidly retreated to Sebastopol which Hitler now declared to be "Festung Sewastopol". This would have to be held indefinitely by some 50,000 men; the others could be evacuated; the Russians had held Sebastopol for 250 days in 1941-2, and had created a "Sebastopol Legend"; the Germans must now do at least as well.

  [According to German sources Hitler thought it essential to hold Sebastopol at least until he had repelled the expected Normandy landing six or eight weeks later.]

  On April 18 the front ran in a semi-circle east of Sebastopol, and was twenty-five miles in length.

  In their hurried retreat to Sebastopol, the German troops nevertheless caused considerable destruction. They destroyed the whole sea-front at Yalta, but had no time to destroy the rest of the town (including the Chekhov Museum, where the writer had lived) or the