“It’s about all we can do to prevent them from giving the Yugoslavs a sector of Berlin. The Russians say they’re entitled to it more than the French. How do you answer that?”
“Colonel Hazzard has his work cut out for him.”
“We all have.”
“All four licensed political parties, headquarters, Russian Sector. Police Headquarters, Russian Sector. Radio Station, Russian Sector. City Hall Assembly and Magistrate, Russian Sector. University, Russian Sector.”
“Sit down, Sean. I hate to make that headache of yours worse this morning, but you’d better read this.”
TOP SECRET. RECOMMENDATIONS, POTSDAM CONFERENCE
Sean had worked on some parts of this himself.
RECOMMENDATION:
We must make the Russians spell out their reparations demands or they can stretch them for infinity. The Russians must be made to account for what they have already taken out of their zone of Germany and apply it against the total bill.
We must establish four-power control to govern the flow of reparations to the Soviet Union. Inasmuch as Russians demand great deliveries from the Western Zones of Germany we should not agree to make such deliveries until they agree to an accounting and controls.
REJECTED:
The spirit of mutual trust which we hope to establish will be damaged if we offend the Soviet Union in this manner. Sean flipped the page.
RECOMMENDATION:
We must force the Soviet Union to adhere to the principle of running Germany as a single economic unit. This is being made impossible because the Soviet Union has already physically cut off their zone of occupation from the rest of Germany. We must insist on open borders, open commerce, and free interzone travel.
REJECTED:
This would make the Soviet Union feel that we are against their moving the Polish borders west to the Oder/Neisse line. Although we have not agreed to these border changes, the Soviet argument of setting up a buffer has merit.
“They didn’t ask us about any goddamned border changes,” Sean said. “They just did it”
“Read on, Major.”
RECOMMENDATION:
There is grave concern over allowing the Soviet Union to use our currency engravings and plates to print occupation currency with no method of accounting. The Soviet Union could flood our zones with paper money, buy out Western Zone resources and create inflation.
REJECTED:
Fiscal and monetary experts agree these arguments are possible. However, the Soviet Union would greet the demand to return engravings as a direct question of their honesty.
RECOMMENDATION:
The declaration of the Potsdam Conference guaranteeing freedoms to the German (and Slavic) people and further guaranteeing free elections is a farce.
The Soviet Union cannot guarantee something for other people they dare not give their own people. The Russian people have lived under a police state in one form or another for the entire 1200 years of their recorded history.
We must insist on a definition of freedom, free elections, and democratic institutions.
REJECTED:
A proclamation at the end of the conference is necessary. It would take two decades to negotiate the exact meanings.
There was more, much more. Sean handed the file back to General Hansen quietly. “It was all I could do to push through things like the air corridors. So, we’ve got to sit still and wait for them to push us too far.”
“Will we know it when they do?”
“Not today,” Hansen said. “The war against Japan ended a week ago. Today we see American boys in the uniform of their country parading through the streets of enemy capitals demanding to be sent home. It is going to take time for our countrymen to realize that Americans can never go home again.”
Chapter Five
ERNESTINE AWAKENED SHARPLY FROM her nightly funk, sweaty, terrified. For hours she fought off sleep, for the darkness brought horror. Then a complete exhaustion drugged her into a semiconscious state far into the night, and she wandered into that torment of blood and ghosts and hollow voices.
She dressed in a half daze, walked pasty-faced into the kitchen, where the family was taking breakfast of a sort of gruel.
None of them had gotten over the shock of the Amis requisitioning their house, forcing them into a bomb-battered set of rooms in Friedenaüof the Steglitz Borough. Bruno and his wife slept in the kitchen, the girls in an oversized alcove with half a wall shorn away.
Bruno bemoaned the latest cruelty of fate, the loss of his house; he, a government official of status; he, who had a chauffeur-driven automobile until late in the war. Now he was reduced to waiting on tables in a French soldiers’ beer hall.
Thanks to Ulrich they were not all in labor gangs and had a few extra grams of ration. However, hatred between the brothers did not waver. Bruno felt his brother could do more. The family was barely staying alive. Hilde could not hold a job. She had always been pampered and her head was filled with illusions of becoming an actress.
Bruno’s pride was damaged at the idea that his wife had to work as a chambermaid in an American officers’ billet. She had never held a job in her life and one could hardly consider her a common hausfrau. Ulrich got her the job. The Americans were generous with the bones they tossed out for her doing their laundry.
In the beer hall Bruno decided the indignities of rowdy Frenchmen had to be borne in order to survive. Soldiers left half-smoked cigarettes, wanted girls, and had access to food; neighbors needed to barter, so he served as an intermediary in small dealings. In spite of the degradation Bruno and his family subsisted better than the starving neighbors around them.
Ernestine sat at the table. Her mother looked from her to Hilde. By contrast, Hilde seemed to show no effects of the times. “You look bad this morning,” Herta said.
“Who looks well in Berlin these days,” Bruno mumbled. “Everyone is a walking ghost.”
“I am just a little tired,” Ernestine answered.
“Your Uncle Ulrich offered you a job at Democratic Party Headquarters. I want an explanation of why you refused,” her father said.
“I would rather not talk about it,” she answered.
“It will be talked about. I cannot bear more drunken Frenchmen—and I don’t like the idea of your mother cleaning floors for Amis.”
“I won’t work for Uncle Ulrich,” Ernestine protested.
“I demand to know why. You are trained as a legal secretary. You worked for one of the finest law firms in Berlin.”
“There is no German law, any more.”
“But you know that your training makes it possible to do a number of things. So long as Ulrich is throwing us a few bones you could think of your family.”
“I have decided against it, Father,” she said shakily.
“Ernestine,” her mother said, “what is disturbing you about Ulrich?”
She tried to eat. It was impossible.
“Can’t you talk at all?” her father demanded.
“It’s those places,” she blurted impulsively.
“Places? What places?”
“The things they are saying about us at Nuremberg.”
A terrible silence followed. At last, Herta took her daughter’s hand. “It is all over. We must forget.”
“But, if what they say is true ...”
“Truth?” Bruno said. “What is truth? Do you believe you can get truth from a Russian radio? You are a German, girl. Do you think your people could have done these things?”
“The pictures ...”
“Ernestine,” her father said testily, “you should be able to recognize propaganda. Our faces are being rubbed in the mud. We have no way to answer back. Even if there was a shred of truth, how can you feel that you and I are to blame?”
“Your father is right, Ernestine. Close your ears, forget the lies. They are trying to turn the world against us.”