After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (52 page)

And yet, in May 1945 Britain, America and the Soviet Union had held their wartime coalition together. Harry Hopkins had pulled off a notable success in Moscow, but it was the fairness and straight dealing of General Dwight Eisenhower which, more than anything else, had kept the Grand Alliance in being. Hopkins and Eisenhower shared similar qualities – clarity of expression, straight talking and a readiness to honour their commitments. They were willing to trust the Russians and that trust was reciprocated. When Hopkins began his discussions with Joseph Stalin on 26 May 1945, the Soviet leader told him that Eisenhower’s actions in Czechoslovakia at the beginning of that month had restored the Soviet Union’s faith in its Western Allies.

Nikita Khrushchev enlarged upon this, recalling: ‘I remember how Stalin on a number of occasions talked of Eisenhower’s personality. He remarked on his chivalrous attitude towards an ally – saying what a decent man he was.’

Stalin held General Eisenhower in high regard but had a low opinion of Field Marshal Montgomery. This was a reflection of the events of early May 1945. The Soviet leader believed that ‘Eisenhower and Montgomery were both representatives of the capitalist system, but they differed in the way they observed the principles of partnership, treaty agreements and their word of honour’, and attributed Montgomery’s agreement with the Germans at Lüneburg Heath to the British field marshal’s vanity – and the resentment he felt towards his supreme commander. ‘It was Eisenhower who set up the conditions to defeat the Germans in the west,’ the Soviet leader said. ‘Montgomery wanted to reap the fruits of that victory for himself.’

When General Eisenhower visited Moscow in August 1945, Stalin invited the American to stand on the rostrum above Lenin’s Mausoleum with him and watch a parade in Red Square – an unprecedented mark of recognition for a Westerner – and conferred the highest military honour of the Soviet Union upon him, the Order of Victory.

In his telegram to President Truman on 9 May Winston Churchill also paid generous tribute to General Eisenhower: ‘In him we have had a man who set the unity of Allied Armies above all nationalistic thoughts,’ Churchill said. ‘In his headquarters unity and strategy were the only reigning spirits … At no time has the principle of alliances between different races been carried and maintained at so high a pitch.’

Churchill respected Eisenhower’s intrinsic sense of fairness and his personal integrity – qualities that allowed the Allied commander to mend the rift between East and West at the very end of the war, a period referred to by Eisenhower himself ‘as having taken more out of me and my staff than the previous eleven months of our campaign’.

Towards the end of May General Eisenhower paid a brief, impromptu visit to London. He went to see a review at the Prince of Wales Theatre, where, as Kay Summersby remembered, ‘the entire audience rose to its feet and almost shouted the roof off … they cheered, whistled, stamped and applauded’. In response to cries of ‘Speech!’ the Supreme Allied Commander made one of those spontaneous replies at which he excelled: ‘It’s nice,’ Eisenhower said, ‘to be back in a country where I can
almost
speak the language.’

Churchill’s British coalition government ended on 26 July when the general election results were announced as a Labour landslide victory. Looking to the future, the issues of jobs, homes, health and education were now uppermost in people’s minds. Most were well aware that peacetime life would not bring a speedy end to wartime austerity – and the international situation remained uncertain. ‘A whirl of Victory celebrations,’ Royal Navy captain Andrew Yates wrote, ‘but there was not the wild relief of 1918 – and we still had not forged a post-war understanding with Russia.’

At the end of the First World War on 11 November 1918 there had been a sense of euphoria – a short-lived belief that war itself was defeated and that living conditions ‘fit for heroes’ would soon be created for Britain’s returning soldiers. But after a brief boom the economy had slumped and the country then descended into mass unemployment. Now the mood was more realistic. There was still little meat in the shops – and many of the cinema and theatre lights, which had dazzled onlookers on the night of 8 May, had been switched off again to save fuel. The process of rebuilding and recovery would be long and hard.

And yet, surveying the broader sweep of events, it was remarkable that the Grand Alliance had achieved so much. The threat of fascism within Europe was destroyed. A devastating war was brought to a close. Talks were held to create a new structure for world peace – the United Nations.

If the ten days after the death of Adolf Hitler saw a major crisis within the Alliance, one largely hidden from public view, it was a crisis successfully mastered. In the days after Hitler’s death, goodwill triumphed over suspicion – an achievement that can be celebrated on the anniversaries of the two VE-Days on 8 and 9 May. After Hitler, a malignancy had been incised from our history.

After VE-Day Lieutenant Robert Frank and several other officers of the US 87th Division spent several days with the Russians, crossing over the demarcation line at Marienberg in Germany. They had a memorable time. Frank never forgot the attempts of a Russian band to strike up ‘The Star Spangled Banner’
,
the rounds of festivities and dancing and the efforts of American GIs to teach Red Army soldiers the hip-hop. And Frank was honest enough to admit that throughout it all ‘We didn’t trust them – and they didn’t trust us.’

The ten days after the death of Hitler heralded a flawed triumph for post-war Europe. For some, suffering and injustice continued. Others struggled to make sense of what they had experienced. The war had been a catastrophe for millions – and many survivors would be permanently scarred by it.

And yet flowers were blossoming over Europe in the May sunshine. Prague was covered in lilac bloom – and the city was now free after years of Nazi occupation. ‘We were proud of our uprising and the part that we played in driving the Germans out of our capital,’ Antonin Sticha said. ‘It was just recompense for all the humiliation and the suffering we had endured.’ Amid the political uncertainties, and the desolation left in the war’s wake, many would have agreed with him. Defeating the Nazi menace was a victory worth achieving.

Notes

Chapter 1: The Funeral Pyre

Mohnke’s morning meeting with Hitler, Holzwark’s diary entry and Mongrovius’s account of the Vlasov Army commander Mikhail Meandrov are from Kempowski,
Das Echolot.
For the general background, I have used Beevor,
Berlin: The Downfall
and Moorhouse,
Berlin at War.
On the end in the bunker, Trevor-Roper,
Last Days of Hitler
remains important, alongside the more recent Fest,
Inside Hitler’s Bunker.
On the chronology of events and the reliability of the various sources, Kershaw,
Hitler,
1936
–
45: Nemesis
and
The End
have been particularly valuable. As late as 21 April, Hitler’s staff were still expecting him to leave Berlin and fly out to the Berchtesgaden: Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (Christian, Herrgeswell). On the fitness of the Führer to lead a defence of Berlin, the Soviet interrogation of Wolf Heisendorf is particularly interesting. It is found in
Russian Archives: Great Patriotic War
(vol. XV), as is General Helmuth Weidling’s account of the defence of the city. The Goebbels diary extracts are from Trevor-Roper (ed.),
Final Entries
1945.
On Churchill and Hitler, see Roberts,
Masters and Commanders
, and Hastings,
Churchill as Warlord.
For the decision to allow the Red Army to take Berlin, particularly helpful have been Oleg Rzheshevsky, ‘The race for Berlin’,
Journal of Slavic Studies
, 8 (1995); Donald Shepardson, ‘The fall of Berlin and the rise of a myth’,
Journal of Military History
, 62 (1998). On SS general Steiner’s secret talks in Berlin in April 1945: Norman Goda, ‘Report on the Otto Ohlendorf file’:
www.archives.gov/research-papers/ohlendorf
. Armin Lehmann supplied additional information on the last days of the German capital; also see his and Tim Carroll’s
In Hitler’s Bunker.
The German LVI Panzer Corps’s role in infecting Russian civilians with typhus in 1944 is discussed in Michael Jones,
Total War.
For the deployment of Hitler Youth in Berlin, as couriers and fighters, see the interview with Artur Axmann in Musmanno Collection (Axmann). British sergeant Trevor Greenwood’s letters are from ‘The War Archive of Trevor Greenwood’ at
www.trevorgreenwood.co.uk
. I am gateful for permission to use this material in some detail. Franz Kuhlmann’s account is from ‘Der Endkampf um den Führerbunker in Berlin’,
Marineforum
, 70 (1995). Gellermann,
Die Armee Wenck
, shows that the German 12th Army never intended to plunge into Berlin – Wenck’s intention, influenced by General Gotthard Heinrici, was to rescue the remnants of Busse’s 9th Army and German refugees, and bring them safely to American lines on the Elbe. This is corroborated by Musmanno’s interview with Gerhard Engel, although Engel tries to take sole credit for the decision: Musmanno Collection (Engel). The Joint Intelligence Committee’s paper on ‘Hitler’s last days’, drawn up on 21 July 1945, is in The National Archives (TNA), KV 4/466. It stresses the effect the Führer’s breakdown had on his overall health and capability. Wilberforce’s diary extract is from the Imperial War Museum (IWM), 12931. Erich Mende’s account is from his
Das Verdammte Gewissen.
General Weidling’s comments on the defence of the German capital are from his ‘Der Endkampf in Berlin’,
Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau
, 1–3 (1962). Traudl Junge’s account of the last days in the bunker is found in her
Bis zur Letzten Stunde.
Felix Sparks’s recollections of Dachau are at
www.remember.org/witness/sparks2
. Donald Jackson’s ‘The 40th Combat Engineer Regiment at Dachau’ is from
www.scapbookpages.com/dachauliberation
. Kuhlmann’s concluding description is from his ‘Der Endkampf’.

Chapter 2: May Day in Berlin

This chapter follows the version of events supplied by Chuikov,
End of the Third Reich
, and, in more detail, Vishnevsky,
Diaries of the War Years.
Vishnevsky transcribed the negotiations for Chuikov on 1/2 May; a full summary of them – without subsequent editing – is found in
Russian Archives: Great Patriotic War
(vol. XV), as is Yachenin’s report and the post-surrender interrogation of Berlin garrison commander General Weidling. Further information – from the combat records of Red Army units involved – is drawn from Igor Venkov, ‘How the Berlin garrison surrendered’,
Army History
, 17 (1990). I owe the body of the narrative to Red Army veterans present at the surrender, particularly Andrei Eshpai, the interpreter who escorted Krebs to Chuikov’s HQ, Anatoly Mereshko, present throughout on Chuikov’s staff, Mark Slavin, covering the event for the 8th Guards Army newspaper, Anatoly Smriga, and Stepan Doernberg, who typed up the final surrender documents. For the private comments and letters of Chuikov, my thanks are to his son, Alexander. On the broader diplomatic background, I am grateful to Hugh Lunghi and Zoya Zarubina – present as interpreters, on the British and Soviet sides, at the Big Three summits at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam – and to Dr Martin Folly, whose
Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union
has been particularly valuable. Also helpful were Rees,
Behind Closed Doors
and Birse,
Memoirs of an Interpreter.
Schwanenflügel’s diary extract is from her
Laughter Wasn’t Rationed.
On the general course of the fighting in Berlin, and the storming of the Reichstag, I have particularly benefited from information supplied by Vasily Ustygov; see also Abyzov,
The Final Assault.
On Stalin, the Polish Army and Berlin, Antonin Jablonski’s recollections are on the Axis History Forum, under ‘Polish victory flag in Berlin’:
www.forum.axishistory.com
. Combat orders and records of the Polish forces are reproduced with acknowledgement to ‘The Polish Army in Berlin’:
www.Berlin-1945.com
. Accounts of Filin, Kalinin, Koshova, Krichevsky, Martschenko, Romanova and Sebeljov are from Kempowski,
Das Echolot
; Drabkin, Makarov, Sampson and Vasilenko from Schultz-Naumann,
Mecklenburg
1945.
Comments of Genkin and Uspensky are from Jones,
Total War
; Inozemtsev’s from his
Frontline Diary.
Additional material has been drawn from the combat records of the 129th Rifle Division (70th Army) and 385th Rifle Division (49th Army) Russian Defence Archive, Podolsk. For the contrasting fate of Demmin and Greifswald, see Buske,
Kriegsende in Demmin
, and Meyer and Seils,
1945: Kampflose Ubergabe der Hansestadt Greifswald
– the diary of university rector Karl Engel. On incidents of rape committed by American and British soldiers: Omar White,
Conqueror’s Road
and Cullingford’s comments, in Jordan (ed.),
Conditions of Surrender.
Stalin’s remark is found in Djilas,
Wartime.
The insinuation that Red Army commanders licensed two days of plunder in Demmin is strongly contradicted by Elke Scherstjanoi in ‘Die Einnahme der Stadt Demmin durch die Rote Armee am 30 April 1945’, in Petra Clemens (ed.),
Das Kriegsende in Demmin
1945: Umgang mit Einem Schwierigen Thema
, which draws on the combat records and war diary of the Soviet 65th Army. For the arrival of Red Army troops in the bunker, see Musmanno Collection (Messerer). Comments on the death of Hitler are from Kempowski (ed.),
Das Echolot
, Hargreaves,
Breslau
1945
, Jordan (ed.),
Conditions of Surrender
, and Colville,
Fringes of Power.
Additional reaction – from the British public – can be found in the Mass Observation Archive, now held at the East Sussex Record Office, SxMOA1/2/49/1/D/3 [henceforth Mass Observation Archive]. The unconditional surrender of Berlin was to come into effect at noon. At 1.00 p.m. it was countermanded by Dönitz, who – in a broadcast direct to the Berlin garrison – ordered them to carry on fighting. As a result, the struggle flared up anew, and the Red Army engaged in piecemeal negotiations throughout the afternoon and evening to try to persuade the last strongholds to surrender. This important sequence of events – reported in
Russian Archives: Great Patriotic War
(vol. XV)
–
is not widely known, and had a major impact on the Soviet view of the Dönitz government.