Russia at war

by Alexander C Werth

  It may be possible to read a hint at such a loan into Stalin's toast to Roosevelt at one of the Yalta banquets when he said that the President had been "the chief forger of the instruments which had led to the mobilisation of the world against Hitler." Lend-lease, he said, was "one of the President's most remarkable and vital achievements" which pointed to an exceptionally broad conception of America's national interests.

  Although he also paid some glowing compliments to Churchill at the same banquet—"the bravest governmental figure in the world" —all observers are agreed that he was much more anxious to be friendly to Roosevelt than to Churchill. Even so, he said he was sure that Churchill would continue to be at the head of the British Government, and that there would be no Labour victory in the next election. And he seemed to prefer it that way.

  This, he suggested, was all the more desirable because—

  The difficult task will come after the war, when diverse interests will tend to divide the Allies. I am confident, however, that the present alliance will meet that test and that the peace-time relations of the three Great Powers will be as strong as they were in war-time.

  [ Stettinius, op. cit., p. 198.]

  American writers have made much of Stalin's "betrayal" of Yalta so soon after the conference. Some have attributed it—not at all plausibly—to the criticisms and

  opposition with which Stalin met from the "revolutionary doctrinaires" in the Politburo.

  Much more credible are some of the other explanations offered for the "change" in Soviet policy after Yalta. It is probable that Stalin took note of Roosevelt's remark that the United States were unlikely to keep any troops in Europe for more than two years.

  Secondly, he seems to have been impressed, soon after Yalta, by the great hostility that the Russians met in Poland, which led to his determination not to take any serious

  chances, either there or in any of the other east-European countries.

  The growing American opposition in March and April, to the idea of a big post-war loan to Russia was also of some importance, in increasing East-West tension. Roosevelt's

  death caused genuine alarm in Russia—

  [It made a very deep impression. All Soviet papers appeared with wide black borders on their front pages, and, by a curious instinct, people felt that this was a major tragedy for Russia which had lost "a real friend".]

  —an alarm which soon proved justified, especially when President Truman made his

  début in his Russian policy by stopping Lend-Lease for Russia immediately after VE-Day

  —while Russia was still committed to entering the war against Japan, on America's side.

  As we know from Harry Hopkin's account of his visit to Moscow soon afterwards, Stalin was deeply annoyed and offended by what Stettinius called this "untimely and incredible"

  step.

  Indeed, Yalta, this great manifestation of three-power unity of purpose with victory over Nazi Germany in sight, proved, perhaps inevitably, a watershed in inter-allied relations.

  Conflicting interests and contrasting ideas that in normal circumstances would have been almost incompatible, had been shelved, while the gigantic struggle was in progress. But now when it came to preparing for peace the working compromises that had been reached proved only too fragile. As we have seen, it was difficult enough to reach these

  compromises; now they were to be put to the test of being applied in practice and

  interpreted in detail. Thus it became increasingly difficult to conceal those vital

  differences of self-interest and outlook between the wartime coalition partners.

  Another psychological factor contributed to the tension between Soviet Russia and the Allies towards the very end of the war in Europe. The approach of victory produced in Russia not only waves of relief, hope and indeed, elation, but even extraordinary

  outbursts of national pride almost bordering on arrogance. There was, not least in the Red Army, a tendency to resent the presence of the Western Allies in Germany and especially in Berlin—in the capture of which so many thousands of Russians were to die in the last days of the war.

  On the one hand, Russia was a devastatedx, almost a ruined, country, with a formidable task of economic reconstruction ahead of her. But on the other hand, she was sitting on top of the world, having won the greatest war in her history. The future seemed bright as never before. Some soldiers were openly saying: "But for Britain and America, the whole of Europe would be ours." This "revolutionary romanticism" was not widespread, still less officially approved, but it had a tiny little corner in many people's hearts. The future seemed pregnant with all kinds of exciting possibilities. A revolutionary Europe to a few

  —a happy, prosperous Russia to most. Among many of those who now dreamed of such

  a happy Russia there also existed the idea that the survival of the Big-Three alliance after the war would, somehow, tend to liberalise the Soviet régime (as, in some respects, it had already done during the war). Many illusions (in either direction) were to be destroyed only a few months later, with the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima...

  Chapter III - JUNE, 1945: BERLIN UNDER THE RUSSIANS

  ONLY

  This was very unlike Berlin. There were jasmin bushes round the villa, the garden was full of strong sweet scents, birds were twittering in the trees, and, at the end of the green, sunny alley, the water of the Wannsee was bright blue. "They lived well, the parasites,"

  said the Russian lad, a sentry outside the villa. He was nineteen or twenty, with a little down on his chin, rosy cheeks and laughing blue eyes. On his khaki shirt he wore the Stalingrad Medal and the Bravery Medal. "They lived well, the parasites," he repeated.

  "Great big farms in East Prussia, and pretty posh houses in the towns that hadn't been burned out or bombed to hell. And look at these datchas here! Why did these people who were living so well have to invade us?"

  This was one of the most common thoughts of Red Army soldiers during that first

  summer in Germany. They were not impressed by the vestiges of "Western" prosperity, but simply angered at the thought that these "rich" Germans should have wanted to conquer Russia.

  "And to think of all our fellows they killed," he went on. "It was tough just outside Berlin. Some of the German youngsters were quite crazy—attacked our tanks with their faustpatronen; knocked out quite a few that way. Some of the German girls threw hand grenades out of windows. However, they are all very meek and quiet now. Some of the

  Germans are really not too bad. They're scared, of course; that's why they are so polite.

  But I lost a lot of comrades on the way here, and one could never be sure that one would get to Berlin alive. But now I am having a good time. Four of us have a motor-boat and we go out on it at night on the lake. There are a lot of lakes here, all strung together—one can go in the boat for miles. Pretty country round here, don't you think? Now the

  Germans aren't allowed to come to this place. Wendenschloss it's called."

  The "parasite" to whom the villa belonged must have been quite a big local shot in the Nazi Party. In my bedroom there were still some German books—mostly Party literature

  — Mein Kampf, and a volume of Goering speeches, and a biography of Goering, full of idyllic pictures of the brute. Each volume was a presentation copy from the local Party committee.

  Wendenschloss was, indeed, roped off from the rest of Berlin. Marshal Zhukov was

  living in a large villa beside the lake; and in the Yacht Club a "great inter-Allied ceremony" (as the newspapers called it) took place on June 5. Zhukov, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Delattre de Tassigny, sat round a large green table and signed the Four-Power Declaration on the defeat of Germany, the assumption by the Four Powers of the supreme rule over Germany and the establishment of a Control Council.

  It was a somewhat disorderly affair. Montgomery arrived at the airport three hours later than the Russians had expected him. There was much unpleasant whispering and
hissing:

  "The Russians want to grab as much as they can."

  [The Western Allies were not at all pleased to have to evacuate very shortly a large territory, including Leipzig, and to hand it to the Russians in accordance with the zonal boundaries previously agreed to. Churchill was much opposed to this evacuation without getting anything in return. He was very angry about the fait accompli of the Oder-Neisse Line.]

  Although Zhukov was expecting all the signatories to stay for his elaborately-prepared dinner, both Eisenhower and Montgomery excused themselves, and only the French

  stayed on—the British and Americans leaving almost immediately after the signing

  ceremony. Why Montgomery had brought ninety-seven people with him nobody could

  make out. " Il y a un froid très net," the French at Wendenschloss remarked. Anyway, the French stayed on for the banquet, and Vyshinsky, Zhukov's political adviser, made a

  speech in which (choosing to forget all that Stalin had said about the French at Yalta) he referred to them as "our real friends," and General Delattre de Tassigny—who was then in the midst of his flirtation with the French Communists—declared that he wished

  France to be "a true democratic people's republic"— whatever that meant. Anyway, the Russians were very pleased with the French General, and a few among them perhaps

  began to think vaguely of Europe in terms of some old-time revolutionary romanticism...

  For all that, everything was calculated to show the Germans that the four Allies were monolithically united and that they would continue to be so once Berlin—now under sole Russian occupation— was split into four zones, in terms of the new arrangements made.

  All the streets of Berlin—even the most devastated ones—were decorated that day with flags of all the four Allies...

  At the Wendenschloss ceremony I had a talk with Marshal Soko-lovsky, whom I had not

  seen since the grim days of 1941.1 reminded him of how, a fortnight before the all-out German offensive against Moscow, he had explained that the Red Army would gradually

  grind down the might of the German Army. He gave a happy smile, and said he remembered that meeting with the press at Viazma. He told me that he was "quite satisfied" that Hitler was dead, although his remains had not been definitely identified.

  "But there seems no doubt that he is dead all right," he said. So, he added, was Goebbels, together with his whole family—but that was more common knowledge. Sokolovsky's

  statement was all the more interesting as the official Russian line at that time—and for a long time afterwards— was that Hitler might have escaped. Sokolovsky's "off-the-record"— or should one say "off-his-guard"?—remark was unique in its own way.

  Zhukov's statement on the same subject a few days later was "on the record"—and much more cautious.

  [There was a strong suspicion among Western diplomats that there was a shabby political purpose in the innuendo that Hitler had escaped to Spain or South America with certain Western complicities. Stalin persisted in telling Hopkins, about the same time, that Hitler was not dead.]

  When I mentioned the talk about Russian troops having run wild in Germany,

  Sokolovsky shrugged his shoulders. "Of course," he said, "a lot of nasty things happened.

  But what do you expect? You know what the Germans did to their Russian war prisoners, how they devastated our country, how they murdered and raped and looted. Have you

  seen Maidanek or Auschwitz? Every one of our soldiers lost dozens of his comrades.

  Every one of them had some personal scores to settle with the Germans, and in the first flush of victory our fellows no doubt derived a certain satisfaction from making it hot for those Herrenvolk women. However, that stage is over. We have now pretty well clamped down on that sort of thing— not that most German women are vestal virgins. Our main

  worry," he grinned, "is the awful spread of the clap among our troops."

  No one who had known Nazi Germany, and had lived through the war—in France in

  1940, in Britain during the Battle of Britain and the London blitz, and the rest of it in Russia—could avoid feeling a pang of Schadenfreude at the sight of Berlin. The capital of Hitler's 1,000-year Reich had been turned into a hundred square miles of mostly ruin and rubble. All down the endless Frankfurter Allee not a house—except one, where the commandant of Berlin now had his headquarters—had escaped destruction;

  Alexanderplatz, Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, Wilhelmstrasse, and then the

  Potsdamerplatz, and the Kleiststrasse and Tauentzienstrasse and, beyond them, the

  Kurfürstendamm (here alone a few houses had escaped)—all the old familiar places had been smashed. In the wastes of the Wilhelmstrasse, with Hitler's now shattered

  Chancellery, there were only ghosts—ghosts of the million people who had bellowed

  Heil Hitler on the day Hitler became Chancellor, ghosts of the S.A. marching, marching, marching past their Führer in their interminable raucous torchlight procession.

  For once, Germany was no longer marching; she had come to the end of the road.

  Between the ruins, the Wilhelmstrasse was silent now, without a living soul anywhere, and with only a stink of corpses rising from the ruins. The Tägliche Rundschau,

  published under Russian auspices, was printing photographs of Berlin's ruins, and

  recalling what Hitler had said in 1935: "In ten years' time Berlin will be unrecognisable."

  This was Russian Berlin. The Russians were still in sole command. A month had passed since the German capitulation. Early in May Berlin was in a state of complete chaos, with millions milling round the ruins, not knowing what to do, and where to go, or where to find even a scrap of food. On May 4, two days after the capitulation of Berlin, the

  Russian commandant, General Berzarin, issued his first Order:

  1) The Nazi Party and all its organisations are dissolved.

  2) Within forty-eight hours all members of the Nazi Party, the Gestapo, the police and members of the public services must register. Within three days, all members of the Wehrmacht and the SS must register, too.

  3) All public services in Berlin must be resumed immediately, and food shops and bakeries must open.

  4) Within twenty-four hours all food reserves exceeding five days' consumption

  must be declared.

  5) Banks must be closed and all accounts frozen.

  6) All arms, ammunition, wireless sets, cameras, cars and petrol must be handed

  over to the Russian authorities.

  7) All printing machinery and typewriters must be registered.

  8) No one must leave their dwellings between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. But theatres,

  cinemas, restaurants and churches may remain open till 9 p.m.

  The entire population, except old people and women with small children was mobilised for work. Men had to return to their regular jobs, or do "heavy work" like repairing bridges and dismantling factories; women had to clear away the rubble, pile up billions of bricks, and bury the thousands of corpses rotting among the ruins. Only those registering for work (apart from the above exceptions) were entitled to a ration card. The distribution of ration cards began on May 8, but the lower-category ration cards were less than

  adequate. The black market began to flourish right away, and many Russian soldiers

  swapped food for all kinds of more or less valuable objects. There was real famine among those who had nothing to exchange for food. This was particularly true of Berlin and Dresden.

  The dismantling of factories— Trophäenaktion ("Operation Booty")—began at once. The Siemens plant near Berlin was completely emptied of machinery during the very first

  days of the Russian occupation, and the same happened to many other places. It was done under the direction of engineers who had come from Russia, and the military authorities were not too pleased about it.

  Within a month of the German capitulation of Berlin, some kind of order had
been

  introduced into the complete chaos. On June 5 the Allied Control Council was formed, and, on June 9 Marshal Zhukov announced the setting up, under his authority, of the

  SMA, the Soviet Military Administration for Eastern Germany. Even before that, General Berzarin, the commandant of Berlin had set up an administration of sorts in the capital.

  This was followed, on June 10, by Marshal Zhukov's Order No. 2 permitting the creation of "democratic and anti-Fascist parties" acting, of course, under Russian control. On the very following day the German Communist Party, headed by Pieck and Ulbricht,

  declared itself in favour of the Sonderweg—a "particular German way": We believe that it would be wrong to impose the Soviet system on Germany, since

  this would not correspond to the present development of the country... Instead, we are in favour of a democratic anti-Fascist régime and a parliamentary republic

  guaranteeing the people democratic rights and freedoms.

  A similar line was taken by the SPD, the Socialists, several of whose leaders—notably Fechner, Grotewohl and Gniffke—were shortly to declare themselves in favour of a

  united Socialist-Communist Party, which, within a year, was to become the SED

  {Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands). The SMA also permitted the constitution of bourgeois parties—the Catholic CDU and the liberal LDP—provided these entered a

  united anti-Fascist Front. This anti-Fascist bloc was to be formed on July 14, 1945.

  In 1945, not only the bourgeois parties and the Socialists, but also the German

  Communists were still openly against the Ostgrenze, the Oder-Neisse Frontier, and hoped that the Russians would "reconsider" it. It was not till 1948 that the German Communists recognised it as "the Frontier of Peace and Friendship." Nor was it till 1948 that, under the impact of the Stalin-Tito quarrels, the German Communists openly abandoned their Sonderweg positions and decided to model their régime, in the main, on the Soviet Union.

  There were thousands of Russian soldiers in Berlin during those days. On the ruins of the Reichstag, where deadly lighting had gone on for days, on the pillars of the shattered, battered Brandenburger Tor, on the pedestals of the Siegessäule (Victory Column), of the Bismarck monument, of the smashed equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, thousands of Russian names had been scratched, or written or painted: "Sidorov from Tambov", or