After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (37 page)

In Whitehall, where thousands of civil servants and others leaving their offices had added to the throng, the crowd waited on patiently until just before seven o’clock. Then a number of police inspectors walked along informing people that Mr Churchill would not speak that night. Disappointed but in good humour the crowd gradually drifted away.

A young Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS) clerk described the mood of excitement and impatience that had swept through her office: ‘The war is over – that’s obvious – but when is Churchill going to say so? Everyone gives their opinion – “at nine” – “not until tomorrow” – “at midnight”. Normally the office is clear by 5.55, but tonight every single member of staff stays to hear the 6.00 pm news – and
still
it is the same.’

BBC broadcaster Joseph Macleod blamed Churchill. The prime minister had, in his view, ‘a well-deserved reputation at Broadcasting House for complete disregard of people’s arrangements, and that Monday [7 May] he surpassed himself, refusing up to the very last fifteen minutes to say whether he would broadcast at 6 o’clock’. Macleod could not have been more wrong.

For relations between Britain, America and Russia now hinged on the timing of the victory announcement. They had all originally hoped to make a joint announcement and designate 9 May as VE-Day. After Eisenhower agreed to the second signing ceremony at Karlshorst, in Berlin, Stalin asked that this date be kept to. He stressed in his messages to Truman and Churchill that it was in his view essential that a clear commitment from the Germans to surrender on the Eastern Front be secured before VE-Day was officially proclaimed. He warned that in the east ‘German resistance is not slackening and, to judge from radio intercepts, an appreciable group is openly declaring its intention to continue the fight against us’. The Soviet High Command, Stalin concluded, would like to hold up the announcement until the time that the agreement signed at Rheims ‘entered into force’, namely one minute after midnight on 8 May (i.e. the first minute of 9 May).

Here the Soviet leader was hoping both to strengthen the surrender arrangements themselves and to present them most advantageously to the Russian people. Stalin knew that the ordinary Soviet citizen expected the war to end as the result of a signing in Berlin rather than one at Rheims, and for it to be supervised by Russia’s greatest war leader, Marshal Zhukov. The Soviet leader knew that if he was able to announce the surrender early on the morning of 9 May he need not mention the agreement at Rheims at all.

Stalin was used to a rigid system of state censorship and control of the press. This was a luxury not afforded to Western democracies. After the Associated Press announcement and the public clamour to know what was going on, it would be impossible for Britain and America to delay an official announcement until 9 May, as had originally been hoped.

The best scenario for the Western Allies – after the breach of the news embargo – was to delay a formal announcement for one day. They would then celebrate VE-Day on 8 May and the Soviet Union on 9 May. Two VE-Days rather than one would be far from ideal – but they could be linked by a declaration, in the West, of a two-day holiday to celebrate the end of the war. But this would require both Truman and Churchill to refrain from a victory announcement on 7 May, despite the surrender at Rheims and hundreds of thousands of German soldiers laying down their arms on this day in the West.

Eisenhower saw the importance of delaying matters – to restore a measure of harmony with the Soviet Union – and General George Marshall agreed with him. Following Marshall’s advice, President Truman said that he would also have to wait before making an announcement, ‘unless Stalin approves an earlier release’. But Churchill was rapidly losing patience with the situation. He telegraphed the president saying he felt that it was ‘hopeless’ to try to keep the German surrender secret until the following day. He asked the White House to phone him on the open line. He wanted a frank exchange of views. The British prime minister was frustrated that media reports were already carrying the news of the Rheims signing and he was out of sympathy with the Russian leader.

A rift was opening up in the Grand Alliance, particularly between Britain and the Soviet Union. For Churchill, the arrest of the sixteen Poles still rankled and seemed to him to embody Russian bad faith. In the subsequent days, he had grown more and more suspicious of Soviet ambitions within Europe, and even on 7 May continued to fret – or, as Montgomery put it in his diary, ‘bellyache’ – about the situation in Denmark, trying to get more troops sent there in case the Red Army pushed its way into the country. For Stalin and the Soviet leadership the fear that the West might conclude a separate peace with Germany had again reared its head.

The end of the war was about practical arrangements, but these were cloaked in a powerful symbolism. Churchill wanted to get on with things – making the victory announcement as quickly as possible. No more British or American troops would have to die in Europe. Stalin wanted to delay the announcement until as many of his soldiers as possible had finished fighting the Germans.

If VE-Day was announced in the West on 7 May, as Churchill wished, Stalin might in turn refrain from announcing it in Russia until 11 or even 12 May, when all the major fighting in the East had been concluded. The Grand Alliance would then appear disunited and in disarray – in quite devastating fashion, unable to properly celebrate its common victory over Nazi Germany. The frustration of journalists and ordinary people over the delay was understandable – but it would be a tragedy if this were to happen.

In the late afternoon, Truman’s personal chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, spoke to Winston Churchill by phone. Truman now accepted the need to work with the Soviet Union over the timing of the victory announcement. Churchill still wanted to make the announcement on 7 May. Leahy asked him whether he had contacted Stalin. Churchill replied with some exasperation:

‘The German Foreign Minister has given out an hour ago, on the radio, an address showing that they have declared the unconditional surrender. What is the use of me and the President looking to be the only two people in the world who don’t know what is going on? The whole of this thing is leaking out in England and America … I feel it is absolutely necessary to go off at 6.00 pm.’

After ascertaining that Churchill had not contacted Stalin, Leahy stressed that Truman would not make an announcement until the Soviet leader had been brought into the discussion.

Churchill showed his frustration: ‘I am very sorry about it because we fixed it all for six o’clock, and the king will go off at nine.’

In the end, Churchilll backed down.

The king’s diary showed his own disappointment, as well as that of the government, at the delay:

‘The PM wanted to announce it but President Truman and Marshal Stalin want the news to be broadcast tomorrow at 3.00 pm as arranged. The time fixed for Unconditional Surrender is Midnight May 8th. This came to me as a terrible anti-climax, having made my speech for recording purposes with cinema, photography – and with no broadcast at 9.00 pm today!’

Eisenhower had canvassed General George Marshall, and Marshall had persuaded President Truman to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt. For a few hours, Winston Churchill lost patience with Stalin and the Soviet Union altogether, but Admiral Leahy’s firmness and tact and a reluctance to break ranks with America brought him round.

At 7.40 p.m. the Ministry of Information finally announced:

It is understood that, in accordance with arrangements between the three great powers, an official announcement will be broadcast by the Prime Minister at three o’clock tomorrow, Tuesday afternoon, 8 May.

In view of this fact, tomorrow, Tuesday, will be treated as Victory-in-Europe day, and will be regarded as a holiday. The day following, Wednesday, 9 May, will also be a holiday. His Majesty the King will broadcast to the people of the British Empire and Commonwealth tomorrow, Tuesday, at 9.00 pm.

Churchill’s prejudice against Bolshevism was understandable. It was a tribute to his statesmanship that he acceded to 8 May as Victory in Europe Day and to his generosity that he then announced that 9 May, the second day of holiday, would be one on which to remember the sacrifices the Soviet Union had made in bringing about their common victory.

On 7 May Field Marshal Montgomery flew into Wismar to meet with his Russian counterpart, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky. Montgomery said of him: ‘Rokossovsky was an imposing figure, tall, very good-looking and well-dressed. I understand he was a bachelor and much admired by the ladies.’ General Eric Bols, commander of the British 6th Airborne Division, told an amusing anecdote around the contrast between the austere teetotal Montgomery and the very different Soviet marshal:

I had been over to Rokossovsky’s headquarters and had invited him to mine on a reciprocal visit. I arranged it so that Monty would be present. Rokossovsky, who spoke beautiful French, arrived and met Monty and was offered a drink. Rokossovsky also smoked and he noticed that Monty was abstaining, so he asked ‘Are you not having anything to drink?’ Monty looked up at this tall great cavalryman and said ‘I neither drink nor smoke’. That seemed as if it would end the matter, but the Russian – not to be rebuffed – continued: ‘Well, what do you do about women?’ Monty failed to answer this inquiry – he decided to have a drink!

After inspecting an honour guard and then watching a nineteen-gun salute on an adjoining soccer field, the British and Russian parties had adjourned for lunch at the 6th Airborne Division headquarters, a requisitioned mansion on the town’s Unruh-Strasse. There was some tension in the air: the British had suspected Russian intentions over Denmark; the Russians had noticed that British forces had moved across their own line of advance without giving them advance warning. But it was an invocation of the Battle of Stalingrad that thawed relations between the two sides.

General Pavel Batov, the commander of the Soviet 65th Army, who had accompanied Rokossovsky to Wismar, remembered Montgomery looking at his medals. ‘He saw that I had the Order of the British Empire,’ Batov related, ‘and overcome by curiosity, asked through an interpreter how I had received it. I explained that it had been granted to me after Stalingrad.’

At the Teheran Conference in November 1943 Winston Churchill had presented Joseph Stalin with the Sword of Stalingrad as a token of the British people’s appreciation of that remarkable triumph. The Russians were also given a number of the Order of the British Empire awards to present to generals who had distinguished themselves in that campaign. Batov – who had fought with Rokossovsky on the Don front – had received one.

‘Montgomery looked at me for a moment,’ Batov continued, ‘and then said softly: “Ah, the beginning of our victory!” He turned to Rokossovsky and spoke of British admiration for the heroism of the Red Army soldier and the Russian people, saying “We are proud to have you as our allies”.’

El Alamein and Stalingrad were, in a way, kindred battles – although Stalingrad was fought on a much larger scale. They were both turning-points – one in North Africa, the other on the Eastern Front. In both, the tables were turned on the Wehrmacht in November 1942 (although Stalingrad finished, with a total German surrender, only on 2 February 1943). Rokossovsky reported afterwards: ‘The meeting went particularly well. Field Marshal Montgomery would like to come to the Soviet Union – and visit Stalingrad.’ Heartfelt admiration for Russian courage had transcended the political difficulties.

On the ground, British and Russian forces manned roadblocks in Wismar some two hundred yards apart. On occasions there were problems with Soviet drunkenness. But soldiers from both sides managed to strike up a rapport despite the language barrier. ‘I was very proud to have met the Red Army,’ said Lance Corporal Ray Porter of the 6th Airborne. ‘We used each other’s field kitchen facilities, swapped weapons and shared cigarettes. It became a happy occasion. We had an immense respect for Russia’s performance in the war.’

By the end of 7 May arrangements for the second signing at Karlshorst in Berlin’s suburbs had been agreed between the two sides, after a flurry of communications between Rheims and Moscow. It was confirmed that it would take place the following day and that a high-powered Western delegation would attend.

The British public knew little of this frantic diplomacy. Yet as VE-Day approached, the wartime role of Britain’s Russian ally provoked different reactions. Lady Catherine Ashburnham, last in line of the Ashburnham family near Battle in Sussex, wrote to a friend on 7 May: ‘I shall be frightfully busy as I find my servants mean to celebrate VE Day and have hunted out the flags and stuff we made for the Coronation! I confess I don’t feel much like it. There is so much horror left in the world still that I can’t rejoice in the same way as after the last war. It is Russia that deters me. Two wrongs can’t make a right.’

Lady Catherine presided over a fine neo-Palladian house and extensive parkland. The family – ardent royalists – had built their present home and gained their aristocratic title as a reward from a grateful Charles II for the support they had given his father in the seventeenth-century Civil War. Then, they had been prepared to risk all against the forces of Parliament. Now, the twentieth-century Bolshevik onslaught was regarded with similar suspicion. What exactly was meant by ‘Two wrongs can’t make a right’ was revealed in an earlier letter, of 22 January 1945, as the Red Army was pushing its way into eastern Europe and was on the verge of capturing Budapest from Hitler’s forces:

‘I am as depressed by the advance of the Bolsheviks in to Hungary as most people are elated,’ Lady Catherine declared. ‘Austria and Hungary, two centres of Christian civilization, are overwhelmed by hordes of cruel barbarians as they were in the Middle Ages.’ After likening the invading Russians to the Ottoman Turks, who brought much of eastern Europe under their sway in the fifteenth century, Lady Catherine continued: