A food ration system was established in five categories. The highest ration was twenty-five hundred calories a day and the lowest twelve hundred. Control of the ration system was in Soviet hands. Use of the ration system was proving an effective way to gain converts. Top rations went to those who cooperated best with the Soviet Union.
Hirsch reviewed the positions of each of the two dozen members of the German People’s Liberation Committee, how they moved into pre-selected positions, each holding a key to life.
Hirsch reported that hundreds of other Germans who had been Russian prisoners of war and converted into an “anti-Fascist league” were placed in the school system, the union, the police force.
Adolph Schatz, nominally a German like Rudi Wöhlman, had been with Azov as an officer in the NKVD; now he was president of police with headquarters in the Soviet Sector.
Rudi Wöhlman led the Communist Party, licensed under a thin guise as the People’s Proletariat Party. He moved into the city’s civic machinery, grabbed the abandoned judiciary, filled the courts with judges from the party. The Berlin Magistrat, the city’s executive branch, had some two-dozen departments covering education, welfare, transportation, public works, police. Wöhlman loaded them with Communists. The personnel director of the Magistrat was a member of the German People’s Liberation Committee and personnel directors of eighteen of Berlin’s twenty boroughs were either Communists or in tune with Wöhlman’s directives.
Hirsch reported that a single labor union had been licensed and was under absolute control of the Communists. The union formed “Action Squads” for use in demonstrations and to persuade other workers to stay in line.
Wöhlman’s most clever move, however, came in the digging up of the old Democrat, Berthold Hollweg. He was found in a shack on the Teltow Canal, adjudged harmless, and appointed as Oberburgermeister. Hollweg suited an excellent purpose. He still had a name from the old days and could be used as window dressing and “prove” how democratic the Communists were in appointing a non-Communist as lord mayor. Hollweg made a fine figurehead to be controlled by Deputy Mayor Heinz Eck of the German People’s Liberation Committee.
Young Hirsch took the post on the Magistrat as secretary of education and a second post as secretary of culture and information. From here he could control the texts and the teachers. At the university he formed and controlled a student organization on the lines of an Action Squad.
The single radio transmitter in the city was under Hirsch’s supervision.
While the Communists set their roots deeply, entwined their tentacles tightly, the other political parties were in no position to protest. Even after the arrival of the West, they were not permitted a rebuttal in their newspapers for the source of all newsprint was controlled by the Communists.
The German People’s Liberation Committee moved in from Moscow with an awesome speed and efficiency. Before the West could get bearings they were faced with the accomplished feat of the police, Magistrat, courts, union, banking, ration, education, information, mayor’s office, all under Russian control.
Heinrich Hirsch concluded his report. The West would not be able to get out of the hole. The rules governing the four-power occupation Kommandatura saw to that.
When the report was concluded, each of the four discussed the next moves.
They had begun the classic maneuver of infiltrating the other three political parties using both police pressure and the Action Squads.
V. V. Azov was rather pleased. All the planning during the war had paid off. The West had done no planning. The instruments to shove the West out of Berlin were established.
Heinrich Hirsch was told to remain after the others left.
“You sent a note that there was a matter you wished to discuss with me privately, Comrade Hirsch?” Azov asked.
“Comrade,” he began with caution, “I must express concern regarding the use of former Nazis, particularly in educational and police posts.”
“You are, perhaps, speaking for a group?”
“Only for myself. And only because I feel this is harmful to our aims. Even if we are able to hide the facts from the West, the German people will recognize it. They may tend to doubt our sincerity.”
Azov had to be careful not to be drawn into an argument with Hirsch, for he was certainly the most articulate of the Germans. “Tell me,” he said, resorting to standard trickery, which Hirsch recognized from years of schooling, “do you know why we are in Berlin?”
“Of course,” Hirsch said. ‘To Sovietize the German people in accordance with Lenin’s words that he who controls the German working class controls Europe.”
“Now, Comrade Hirsch, why are the Americans and British here?”
“As a symbolic token.”
“Ask ten Americans what they are doing in Berlin and you will get ten different answers. Most don’t know. However, we do know.”
Hirsch became irritated as the dialogue of justification continued.
“If Berlin is not evacuated by the West it will turn into an outpost of spying against us,” Azov said. “And the longer they remain the greater the risk of building Germany for a war of revenge.”
“How do we serve our purpose by stocking our own bins with Nazis?”
Azov smiled, and kept walking around a trap. “This question has been pondered by the Politburo of the Communist Party, by Comrade Stalin, by our great dialecticians. We realize that the Nazis are so deep in every phase of German life that we cannot carry on normal functions without using them. At the moment, the West is our greatest enemy. You yourself worked at persuading German prisoners over to the anti-Fascist bloc.”
“Using common soldiers and officers is one thing. Using SS men and hiding wanted Nazi war criminals is another.”
Hirsch was neither to be convinced nor bullied. He was adamant.
“Many Nazis,” Azov said, “are truly repentant about their past. They have seen the light through Communism.”
They have saved their asses through Communism! Anger began to gnaw at Hirsch. He knew now he had to keep his tongue from wagging further. The whole sordid business was becoming a windfall for hundreds of Nazis all over the Soviet Zone. If the Nazi could be of use, there was a simple formality to purge him of his past. The Russians knew they would be willing workers for the Communists for their past records were held over their heads as blackmail.
Azov saw the young man was backing off, and applied the final wisdoms. “We who believe in world Communism must overlook a few injustices in the light of the over-all aspirations.”
Heinrich’s eyes flashed black. Those were Hitler’s words and the Nazis’ excuse to justify criminal behavior and genocide. But what was so different? Hadn’t the Soviet Union always found an excuse for purges, deportations, privations? Hadn’t the excuse always been that it was justified for the great goal? Hirsch packed his notes quickly and left.
The exchange continued to annoy the commissar. He knew that Heinrich Hirsch was disciplined to realize the consequences of challenging a Moscow decision. But Hirsch had done the same thing earlier in protesting the removal of war reparations and he knew Hirsch had gone to Marshal Popov regarding the behavior of the Red Army upon entering Berlin.
Azov wondered what this strange blind spot was in the man that gave him the effrontery to break party discipline.
For a long time he had sensed this flaw in Hirsch’s character, felt he gave too much loyalty to being a German. He smelled that Hirsch was groping for independent German thought and action. This touched upon the two cardinal sins of nationalism and deviationism.
Yet, Azov was reluctant to take measures against him. He was the most brilliant member of the German Liberation Committee—Adolph Schatz was a clod and a bully, Heinz Eck a pawn. Rudi Wöhlman was clever and a good organizer but never added new ideas for he was determined only to please and to stay out of controversy.