After the Reich (92 page)

The Americans had already decided they wanted to undermine communism in Germany. To that end they desired to see the creation of some centralised agencies that might squeeze out Soviet influence. It was one of the first rumbles that presaged the Cold War. Neither Truman nor Byrnes thought Germany was a danger any more: it had been destroyed, and the atom bomb was there should it ever seek to menace world security again. Byrnes was also firmly in agreement with the British in wanting to keep the Ruhr free from the Russians. Besides, the cession of the Ruhr would upset the struggling German economy and make the occupation even more expensive for the Anglo-Americans.

Truman was lodged in a three-storey villa at 2 Kaiserstrasse on the Gribnitzsee, which had been the home of ‘the head of the movie colony’ who had been sent ‘back’ to Russia - ‘for what purpose I do not know’, Truman wrote to his mother and sister. It was evidence of a certain naivety as far as Russia was concerned, and did not augur well. The house had been newly painted, and received the ironic title of the ‘Little White House’, ‘although it was painted yellow’.
⁴⁷
Churchill had a house of the same size, two blocks away at 23 Ringstrasse. Truman went to bed early to prepare himself for what was likely to be a tough day on the 17th. He met Churchill in person for the first time the next morning, but felt he was no stranger.
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Churchill was accompanied by his daughter Mary, Sir Anthony Eden, the head of the Foreign Office Sir Alexander Cadogan and his naval adjutant, Commodore C. R. Thompson. Truman told Churchill he wanted to suggest an agenda, and asked him if he had brought one himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t need one.’
⁴⁹
In fact both the British and the Americans had decided to toughen their stance over the Oder-Neisse, to the degree that they were prepared to go back on what they had indicated they would accept at Yalta. Stalin had made it clear at Yalta that he meant the Western, not the Eastern Neisse.
^el
Now the diplomats arriving in Potsdam were to play innocent and carried instructions
not
to permit an extension of Poland to the Western Neisse. The Americans also wanted to prevent the subtraction of most of Pomerania. Poland was to receive the southern half of East Prussia, Danzig, Upper Silesia and
part
of Pomerania, but that part would be
far
east of Stettin.
⁵⁰

The Americans were ready to dig their heels in, though the British were more concessionary, as they had been at Yalta. The sticking point was the Eastern Neisse. The British wanted the border drawn there, which would leave a substantial part of Lower Silesia in German hands, together with three million Germans. The negotiations would hinge on reparations: the Russians would not receive a brass farthing from the Western zones of Germany if they insisted on advancing the Polish border to the Western Neisse. What the Western Allies had not reckoned with was the obduracy of Stalin. He was not prepared to budge on this issue, and their opposition simply caved in.
⁵¹

Truman allowed himself a little excursion to the capital. He saw the remains of the Reich Chancellery, ‘where Hitler had conducted his rule of terror’. He looked at the mess and was thankful that his own country had been spared such ‘unimaginable destruction’. ‘That’s what happens . . . when one overreaches oneself,’ he added sententiously.
⁵²
The news of the statesman’s Berlin walkabout reached the ears of Ruth Friedrich: ‘They are having a very discreet meeting in Potsdam, no noise penetrates the kilometre-thick cordon. As a result it is exciting to learn that the foreign heads of government have visited the inner city and the Tiergarten district and seen over the ruined buildings of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery and the air-raid cellar.’
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She would not have been so impressed had she known how profoundly Truman had understood the plight of the German people. On the second day of the conference the American leader characterised the Soviets as the sort of people who stole rare old grandfather clocks and damaged them in the process.
⁵⁴

Stalin visited Truman in the Little White House shortly after his arrival in Potsdam. He came with Molotov and Pavlov the interpreter and insisted on being called ‘generalissimo’ and not ‘marshal’, in tribute to his great victories in the field.
⁵⁵
Truman wanted him to stay for lunch. Stalin tried to fight him off, but he stayed in the end. Truman congratulated himself, and felt that he could do some good for the world as a result of this small domestic triumph.

The conference began at 5.10 p.m. on the 17th. Stalin proposed that Truman should preside, and Churchill seconded him. Truman’s first move was to propose a quarterly conference of foreign ministers as a means of avoiding the pitfalls that had followed the First World War. This had been foreseen at Yalta in February. The Allied Control Council was to start work at once. Truman made his demands: he wanted complete disarmament for Germany, and Allied control of all industry that might be used to produce arms. ‘The German people should be made to feel that they had suffered a total military defeat and that they could not escape responsibility for what they had brought upon themselves.’ The Nazi Party was to be destroyed, its officials removed from office. The country was to be reconstructed on democratic lines prior to its eventual peaceful participation in international life. Nazi laws were to be rescinded and there were to be trials for war crimes. On the other hand the seeds were to be sown for reconstruction: Germany was to be seen as
one
economic unit.
⁵⁶

Now it was Stalin’s turn. As far as Germany was concerned he wanted his share of the German merchant fleet and navy, and reparations and trusteeships due to him under the UN Charter. He made demands relating to other countries before finishing with Poland’s western borders and the liquidation of the London-based government in exile. Churchill was not happy about giving Stalin the German fleet. He told the dictator that ‘weapons of war are terrible things and that the captured vessels should be sunk’. The wily Georgian had an answer to that: ‘Let us divide it . . . If Mr Churchill wishes he can sink his share.’
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That concluded the first day.

There was music playing all over Potsdam that July, or so it seemed. Hanna Grisebach was a violinist and played Mozart with a local doctor and a Frau von Kameke. The Russians came to the house of the latter and loudly applauded. This led to one of her strangest engagements: to play before the NKVD. She was very pleased to oblige, as it meant a hot meal. Her elderly husband, however, remained at home in profound anxiety. It was only when he heard the valedictory word ‘Dosvidania’ on the doorstep that he calmed down.
⁵⁸
On 18 July Ursula von Kardorff noted that the Big Three were sitting in Potsdam ‘like the Norns’ in Wagner’s
Götterdämmerung
who spin the golden rope of world knowledge that binds past, present and future. In the opera the rope snaps.
⁵⁹

The second day continued the discussions about the Conference of Foreign Ministers before the Big Three came to the subject of defining Germany. Churchill was vague. He said Germany was what it had been before the war. Stalin countered by asking whether Austria and the Sudetenland were part of Germany. For him Germany was ‘what she has become after the war. Austria is not part of Germany.’ Truman proposed the 1937 frontiers, before Germany began to expand. Stalin would accept that, ‘minus what she lost in 1945’. Truman was evidently perplexed: ‘Germany lost all in 1945.’
⁶⁰

Stalin was impatient to broach the Polish issue. He had obviously made promises to the Lublin Poles. The Western Allies were content to leave this issue for the proposed peace conference. Truman did not think they had adequately defined Germany. Stalin’s answer was evasive. Germany had no government, no definable borders, no frontier guards and no troops. The country was divided up into four zones of occupation. Truman insisted on the 1937 borders and Churchill agreed.
⁶¹

Stalin returned to the ownership of the German fleet on the 19th. He made it crystal clear that he saw war material as plain, old-fashioned booty. Indeed, his view throughout - and indeed that of the Red Army - was the traditional one - the victor has the right to live off the conquered, take his chattels, eat his food and help himself to his women; and it is for the conqueror to decide whether he should preserve the life of the vanquished. Stalin had his grievances. On this day it was Franco and the Blue Division which had fought in the USSR; on another it was the Italians who had done the same. When there was mention of the Yugoslavs, who were embarrassing the West by demanding large-scale repatriations of their citizens from Austria, Stalin said he would not discuss the matter, as the Yugoslavs were not present. Eden reminded him that they had discussed the matter at Yalta, and the Yugoslavs had not been there either.
⁶²

Truman assured the Soviet leader that he would carry out the Yalta Agreement to the letter. He was getting bored, and perhaps just a little worried about what he had let himself in for.
^em
He threatened to leave. Stalin laughed and rejoined that he would like to go home too. Truman gave a state banquet in the Little White House. The young American pianist Eugene List, a sergeant in the US army, played Chopin’s Opus 42. Appropriately for a man who had belatedly set himself up as the patron of the Poles, Stalin was a Chopin fan. He was impressed and drank a toast to the pianist. Stalin liked the wine and asked where it came from. It was Californian. Truman also played the ‘Missouri Waltz’ for his guests. Only Churchill failed to see the charm of it all: ‘he did not care much for that kind of music.’
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The following day Truman inspected American troops in Berlin. The session that afternoon raised the question of Vienna. Churchill complained that his soldiers had not been allowed to take possession of their sector. Stalin said the zones were now settled, and he could bring his army in now. The Polish issue had been handed over to the foreign ministers to solve. They reported back on the next day, the 21st. The Lublin Polish leader Bolesław Bierut had told Byrnes that the Poles would still be at a disadvantage despite the huge amounts of German territory they were to swallow. Poland would still be smaller than it was before the war, because it had lost 180,000 square kilometres to the Russians. On the other hand he conceded darkly that it would be a more homogeneous state.
^en
Yalta had decided that it was for the peace conference to give Poland its shape, but that the Allies would consider the Poles favourably. Truman continued to insist on the 1937 German borders, but he was beginning to realise that Stalin had presented him with a
fait accompli
. ‘It now appeared . . . as if another occupying government was being assigned a zone in Germany. This was being done without consultation . . .’
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Stalin reiterated the position as seen at Yalta - the eastern borders would follow the Curzon Line. That meant he would hang on to what he had gained from his deal with Ribbentrop in 1939. ‘It had been decided at Yalta that Poland should receive cession of territory in the north and west.’ Truman agreed, ‘but insisted that it was not correct to assign a zone of occupation to the Poles’. Stalin then uttered two monstrous lies: ‘What had happened . . . was that the German population in these areas had followed the German Army to the west, and the Poles had remained.’ The Germans were not only still there, but, with the exception of some parts of Upper Silesia, there were
no
native Poles.
^eo
Stalin went on to say that ‘he was unable to see what harm had been done by the establishment of a Polish administration where only Poles remained’.
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He then added, ‘The western frontier question was open, and the Soviet Union was not bound [by Yalta].’ ‘You are not?’ Truman asked. ‘No,’ said Stalin. According to Truman Churchill had a good deal to say but gathered that it was not the time to say it. Truman reiterated that it was a matter for the peace conference.
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In the meantime the brutal torture and expulsion of the civilian populations of the region continued unabated. Even if the peace conference had been held in Paris in the summer of 1946, by then there would have been only a small minority of them left.

Stalin mentioned East Prussia, adding that ‘it would be very difficult to restore a German administration’ there. In his view, ‘an army fights in war and cares only for its efforts to win the war. To enable an army to win and advance, it must have a quiet rear. It fights well if the rear is quiet and better if the rear is friendly . . .’ This was the prologue to the revelation that the East Prussian Germans had all packed their bags and left as well - an act of great consideration towards the advancing Russians, as they had realised that the Red Army would want to know they had a quiet rear. ‘Even if the Germans had not fled . . . it would have been very difficult to set up a German administration in this area because the majority of the population was Polish . . .’ Truman and Churchill were fobbed off with more lies. Stalin ‘insisted there was no other way out’.
⁶⁷

The matter was then placed in hock for the peace conference. Churchill continued to worry about British interests. He didn’t want to have to foot the bill for feeding the Germans. The regions the Russians had
de facto
ceded to Poland represented a quarter of Germany’s arable land. Truman expressed either terrible weakness or the hopelessness of the Western Allies when he said he ‘did not think there was great disagreement on Polish frontiers’. This was probably yet another attempt to delay the decision, but until a time when Stalin’s contention that there were no Germans had become reality. When he repeated that ‘there was no German population’ because they had ‘all fled westward’ and so ‘there the [area] falls to Poland’, Truman countered that ‘nine million Germans seemed like a lot to me’. Churchill enquired, ‘who is to feed them?’ He was reluctant to take on this role without having the means at his disposal. It was a repeat of his concerns over provisions for the British Sector in Vienna.
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The needle had stuck in Stalin’s gramophone: the population had disappeared before the Red Army arrived - ‘he emphasized that no single German remained in the territory to be given to Poland’.
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