Armageddon (53 page)

Marshal Alexei Popov waved his hand in appreciation. The Russian was in a jovial mood. Great medals adorned his tunic from armpit to armpit, chest to navel. Elements of the mighty Second American Armored Divisions followed with their tank treads setting up a rumbling din.

Standing next to Popov was Lieutenant General Andrew Jackson Hansen, First Deputy Military Governor. Hansen remembered a year back. The President was in Berlin for the Potsdam Conference and drove between two solid lines of tanks of an entire division. American might was then on display. Soon parts of the division would be pulling out of Berlin, once again reducing the garrison.

A year ago, at the end of the war, there were three million American troops in Europe; now less than a third of the number and shrinking fast. The stampede was on to bring the boys home and to hell with European involvements. Hansen had pleaded in council after council that twenty divisions had to be left in Europe. The Congress led the parade of deaf ears.

That was why Marshal Popov was in a genial mood. All along, Soviet experts had predicted the American withdrawal. Soon the Americans would be too weak to withstand concerted pressure.

The parade honoring the first anniversary of the occupation of Berlin made a public show of unity. In the beginning the Berliners looked upon the Americans as liberators and were shocked. During the first year in the Berlin Kommandatura and the Supreme German Council the Americans seemed to be doing everything possible to please the Russians.

Colonel Neal Hazzard stood in the row behind Hansen, beside his adversary, Brigadier Trepovitch. The latest tirade from the Russians was over the American formation of a sports program for German children with GI’s acting as instructors and coaches.

Trepovitch harangued that it was an attempt to encourage the rebirth of German militarism. When the Russian saw how the children flocked to the American soldiers, he attempted to institute a duplicate program in the Russian Sector.

Neal Hazzard said he knew why the Russians used the knight as their favorite chess piece. “It’s like a Russian. It can move in eight different ways ... all of them crooked.”

As Scotch pipers of a tradition-rich regiment set up a wail in the streets, Neal Hazzard wondered how far the Russians were going to push before we began to push back.

“Neal,” General Hansen said, “we are pleased with the way free elections have gone in Hesse, Bavaria, and Württemberg-Baden. I’d like to press for them in Berlin.”

“There’s a difference, sir. We don’t have Russians to contend with in the zone.”

“The Constitution is ready to be handed down. Take a crack at it in the Kommandatura.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hazzard brought the matter up, expecting a stalling act from Trepovitch.

The Russian returned at the next meeting with instructions, and, to everyone’s surprise, suggested elections at an early date in October.

Neal Hazzard was baffled. He went to O’Sullivan for advice.

“Sure the Russians want elections,” Sean said. “We both do for different reasons. We want them to dispose of our responsibility. They want them to entrench themselves.”

“How do they figure they can win?”

“They’re dealing to us with a stacked deck.”

“They can’t win after what they’ve done to this city,” Hazzard insisted.

“They’ve made a calculation, Colonel, that we won’t lift a finger to help the free parties. They’ll have them demoralized to a pulp.”

Sean’s estimation was based on the way the Communists had squeezed the life out of the political opposition in the Russian Zone of Germany. In city after city the Democratic Party leadership along with the other free parties were coerced into the anti-Fascist front. The pattern was the same. For window dressing a Democrat or member of the Christian Party sometimes held the post of mayor. But always he was flanked with deputies like Heinz Eck and the police, education, propaganda, and food control was in Communist hands.

After smarting from Ulrich Falkenstein’s rebellion, the Communists went to work on the Democrats in the Russian Sector of Berlin where the West could not operate. Systematic terror lopped off Democratic and Christian leadership.

Despite Falkenstein’s earlier pleas, his party was being splintered away.

Feeling no Western opposition, Trepovitch then presented the petition to license the anti-Fascist front as an operating group in Berlin “because it was in existence in the Soviet Zone.”

In England, the Labor Party, first cousins of the German Democrats, brought pressure on their occupation officials to stiffen British opposition. It was Colonel T. E. Blatty who answered in the negative to the anti-Fascist front.

Then a strong French stand by Jacques Belfort said that France would recognize the anti-Fascist front, but only as a continuation of the Communist Party. This was the first feeble beginning of resistance.

At American Headquarters individual officers such as Sean O’Sullivan acted on their own initiative to help the free parties in dozens of “unofficial” ways.

For the most part, the West remained ineffective as Rudi Wöhlman and Heinrich Hirsch engineered an election campaign to put the most uncouth ward heeler to shame, by comparison.

Russia, controlling Berlin’s only radio, refused to give the free parties a single minute of air time.

Mitte Borough, the center of the city, began to look like Moscow on May Day. Banners in defiant red and white hung from nearly every wall.

THE SOVIET UNION IS THE FRIEND OF THE GERMAN WORKING PEOPLE!

FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY THROUGH THE PEOPLE’S PROLETARIAT PARTY!

TURN BACK THE WARMONGERS!

NEW GERMANY MARCHES TO PEACE WITH OUR SOVIET BROTHERS!

REBUILD GERMANY THROUGH THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE’S PROLETARIAT PARTY!

WE STAND WITH THE WORKERS!

Sound trucks flooded the Russian boroughs and their newspapers and broadsheets inundated the city.

Sixty days before the election People’s Radio announced that all fruit and vegetables for Berlin would be supplied by the benevolent Soviet Union.

Under the auspices of the People’s Proletariat Party there was a display of free food such as had not been seen in years.

Free People’s Proletariat cigarettes were distributed at the factories.

The school system under the management of Heinrich Hirsch passed out free pencils stamped with the initials of the party and free notebooks carrying pictures of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, with suitable quotations. The children were lectured on how to instruct their parents to vote.

“Spontaneous” parades and demonstrations were apt to erupt by the well-groomed Action Squads.

The specter grew ugly. Schatz’s SND brazenly kidnaped and beat free party candidates. The Action Squads grew bolder stampeding free party rallies right inside the Western Sectors.

Democratic, Christian, and Conservatives who wished to speak in the Russian Sector were forced to submit their speeches in advance and put their lives in jeopardy when they crossed over. As often as not free party rallies in the Russian Sector were canceled at the last moment for an imaginary infraction.

Hansen watched it grow to a point where the Americans were looking like damned fools. He did not trust either Falkenstein or the Democrats, but he could not justify American continuation in the city if they allowed a Communist takeover. His own staff quarreled over the intention of the mission. One group, largely from his State Department advisors, felt they had to get along with the Russians at any price. Neal Hazzard led the opposition, demanding American involvement in behalf of the free parties.

Hansen went to both the Pentagon and the State Department for policy instructions.
There was no clear policy on the Berlin election!

Five weeks before the election a candidate of the Democratic Party from the Soviet Sector in Köpenick Borough disappeared. His body washed up on the Müggel Lake, days later.

On the fifth day of September, a month before the elections, a new sound was heard by three million Berliners.

“This is RIAS calling. This is Radio in the American Sector. This is the voice of freedom.”

The microphone was turned over to Ulrich Falkenstein, who began with his rally cry, “Berliners!”

Operation Back Talk had begun.

Chapter Nineteen

B
ERLIN WAS FULL OF
homecoming soldiers and others in transit from the Soviet Union. They were emaciated and scraggly, mostly shoeless, with large rags wrapped around their feet. Once proud uniforms were tattered and stinking. Hollow eyes and bony faces told stories of horror.

Most of the Berliners ignored them. Once they had marched away as a symbol of German superiority. They crawled back now. The Prussian military tradition gave no glory to the bearers of defeat.

Other prisoners of war came from the West. These were more fortunate. Among their number was Gerd Falkenstein.

“Gerd! Gerd is home!”

Ernestine fell into his arms; Herta wrung her hands and wept, and Bruno pulled a hand free and pumped it.

“Oh God, oh God!”

“Son! How did you find us?”

“The Ami Red Cross. They are very efficient. Look at you Hilde! You are a woman!”

“Come in! Come in. Don’t stand in the hall.”

Gerd put down his worldly possessions, a single knapsack. They pulled him into the room and stood around him. He looked rather well: he was lean and a bit tan; his uniform was shabby but neat and he wore new shoes.

“You look wonderful,” his mother wept.

Gerd smiled. “If you must be a prisoner, by all means be a prisoner of the Amis. What has happened to our home? Was it bombed?”

“The Amis took it, but let’s not talk of that now.”

The meal was edible, enough to fill Gerd’s stomach. They listened to his adventures.

He admitted he was lucky. His antiaircraft bunker on the coast of Normandy received a near hit by the British naval bombardment.

“I was unconscious for three days. When I woke up I was on an American hospital ship in the prisoners’ ward.”

The rest of the story was internment in a camp in Maryland, the most decent food he had eaten since he left home, work on a road gang, schooling, and good entertainment.

“It is a small miracle, but here we are all together again.”

Well, not quite all. Gerd inquired after old friends. They were dead, badly butchered, or missing in Russia. “I am sorry to hear about Dietrich Rascher. He was a fine fellow.”

Ernestine paled. Gerd was pleased that she still mourned Dietrich. That was good after all the things he heard about German girls these days.

“You might as well know,” his father said, “your Uncle Wolfgang was involved in the plot against Hitler and hanged.”

Gerd took the news with no show of emotion. “Sooner or later he had to go that way.”

And then they settled and Gerd recounted it all from the beginning. He told of the battles in North Africa when they were winning and the collapse of the Low Countries and France before that. His hands drew images of the brilliant strategy, the hordes of panzers, the fury of the Luftwaffe. Ernestine watched her father’s eyes light as he talked of the parade through the Arch of Triumph in Paris. It was a way he had not looked since before Stalingrad.

She felt herself sinking. After the first warmth of greeting, Gerd seemed distant, and his voice was filled with cynicism and arrogance.

“Your Uncle Ulrich is here in Berlin.”

“So, he is still alive. I hardly remember him.”

“He has been very good to us,” Ernestine said quickly.

“And why not? He made us live with his shame for years.”

“Things are different now. Uncle Ulrich is an important man.”

“Strange,” Gerd said, “we decent Germans end up living like this, or worse, like those poor devils down on the street. And the traitors are given our country.”

Bruno listened to his son with a warm glow. It was music he had not heard for so long.

The next day was Sunday, but father and mother had to work. Hilde excused herself on the pretense that she had an unbreakable date with a girl friend.

Ernestine and Gerd walked. The air was nippy. There was a terrifying feeling that the winter might be severe. Autumn’s eternal gray brought the sky down to the tops of the dilapidated buildings. They walked until they found their old street in Dahlem and stood before their former home.

“Who lives there?”

“Four American officers.”

“Well, it is better than Russians. We will get it back sooner than you think.”

“Don’t torture yourself, Gerd. Let’s get out of here.”

They were swallowed by the Grunewald, where the paths were filled with bright, shedding leaves. For a moment the misery of Berlin was hidden.

They turned toward the Kummer See, one of the smaller lakes. Gerd whistled, “Raise the Banner,” the SA marching song, known as
“Horst Wessel.”

“You must not whistle that song,” Ernestine said shakily. “It is forbidden.”

“Forbidden? Your own music, forbidden?”

“Please, Gerd, they are very strict.”

They came to the edge of the lake and sat on a boulder. “Remember the encampments, Erna? Hitler Youth. The air was filled with such music then.”

“All during the bombings I came here and sat by the lake,” she said. “Dietrich and I sailed here. Gerd ... those days are gone.”

“Hail the conquering hero,” he said with acid in his voice. “What a damned mess this place is. But don’t fret, Erna. We will have those days again and the next time we won’t make the same errors.”

“There won’t be any next time, Gerd.”

“Of course there will.”

“Do you know what happened to us at Stalingrad?”

“A strategic blunder.”

“Do you know what happened to Berlin in the last hundred days?”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Gerd! Hilde and mother and I were violated by Russian soldiers. We have all had enough.”

Gerd’s lips narrowed. “That is why there will be a next time. Only we will choose better allies than those sniveling Italian bastards. The Amis will be on our side. They are strong but they are also naive. We will control the alliance.”