From the start the rules of the four-power Berlin Kommandatura were stacked against the West by the presence of a veto. He was compelled to accept all the Russian entrenchments before American arrival.
Even though Hazzard operated in a deep hole, he took a personal liking to the Russian Sector commandant, Colonel Nikolai Trepovitch, who, like himself, was from the ranks and had held fighting commands. Trepovitch was the most outgoing of the Russians, having a sparkling pixyish sense of humor.
However, the meetings of the Kommandatura often as not turned into a nightmare, with translations and conversations going in senseless circles for hours. What would, on the surface, appear to be a routine matter could suddenly turn a session into hairsplitting, bickering, and endless dialogue. Trepovitch and his deputies could haggle for hours and neither Hazzard nor the other Western commandants knew from one time to the next what the Russians had in store.
Hazzard realized that Trepovitch was allowed little room for flexible thinking, having to carry out his directions to the letter. He never pressed the Russian when he knew he could not give; Trepovitch appreciated it.
Hazzard was unable to achieve this silent rapport with the British colleague, Colonel T. E. Blatty, who would argue for hours for no other purpose than to keep the game by the rules. The Englishman, a classical officer, would never anger, never raise his voice, never become vexed. His endurance was the antidote to Trepovitch’s ponderous attacks.
The fourth member of the Kommandatura was Colonel Jacques Belfort. Trepovitch made the Frenchman aware that his country’s presence in Berlin was more of a gesture than a reality. The friction between these two was the most obvious. Belfort made up in sheer pride what he lacked in actual power, and it was his intent to make himself conspicuous for the sake of French prestige.
On certain issues the Russian would not budge. Attempts to regulate the currency with closer four-power control, attempts to liberalize the courts, quit the use of rations for political control, all met with filibuster and evasion.
On other matters the four worked together rather well. Housing was the worst of any civilized city in modern history, and worsened by the occupation powers requisitioning the best of what remained.
There was universal cooperation in the field of public health where mass inoculations tried to stem a rampage of typhus, typhoid, and diphtheria. The mushrooming incidence of tuberculosis, the terrible dysentery, and venereal disease taxed the medical facilities of all four powers.
The number of hospital beds was a third of prewar level and much equipment had been carted off by the Russians as reparations. The four powers set up joint garbage removal, sewage treatment, and other crash programs to head off epidemic.
Transportation was crippled in the broken city. There were no private German automobiles, buses, or taxis. Many chunks of the elevated were down and sections of the underground flooded in the last days of the fighting. Hundreds of rail cars had been shipped off to the Soviet Union. Traffic was perilous because of collapsing walls and half the streets were blocked by debris. Ricksha bikes and a few trams drawn by horses were a poor supplement in the gigantic area of nearly four hundred square miles. Berlin had an extensive canal system and an inland harbor and more bridges than Venice. Half of them were twisted into the Spree and Havel rivers, blocking the barges. The West Harbor was a shambles.
The phone system and the telegraph system collapsed. The Russians had carted off what was left of the switchboards, telephone instruments, generators. They had to be built from the ground up.
Before the war the power plant near the West Harbor was used only to augment during peak hours. The plant had been stripped of generators by the Russians and only part of the shell of the building remained. Neal Hazzard was faced with another accomplished fact ... the power for the city was entirely supplied by the Soviet Union. Ironically, much of the power came through lines from Saxony and Thuringia, the provinces surrendered by the Americans.
A subcommittee of the Kommandatura began the arduous task of de-Nazifying 30,000 postal employees to restore some kind of mail service.
Most of the other utilities were gone. Some gas was being restored.
The city was patrolled by squad cars usually holding one soldier from each of the occupation countries. It was an outward show of unity for the Berliners.
Dozens upon dozens of orders were signed by the Kommandatura and passed along to the Berlin Magistrat for action.
While cooperation existed on many matters, Neal Hazzard slowly, with great determination, chipped away at the Russian entrenchment in other directions. Colonel Trepovitch, alone among the Russians, realized how enormously persistent the American was.
Hazzard put top priority on the selection of a deputy police president who would be more cooperative to the West; Adolph Schatz was owned by the Russians. Nothing could change this since all appointments before Western arrival had to be accepted.
Hazzard was not without recourse. New appointments had to be approved by all four powers. He was in a position to hold up Trepovitch’s appointments until they gave him his deputy police president.
The finding of the German to fill the job went to Sean O’Sullivan’s trouble-shooting unit, a little group of a dozen men without portfolio or official designation. They filtered intelligence reports, watched straws in the wind, prepared data for Hansen on the Supreme German Council and for Hazzard in the Kommandatura, made predictions, acted as liaison between Berlin and the rest of Germany, and performed innumerable special details. Sean and his unit were in and out of Berlin daily, apt to show up anywhere on unique missions.
Neal Hazzard read the report pulled by the unit recommending Hans Kronbach for the position as deputy police president. His record seemed immaculate. Kronbach had been chief of detectives for the city of Berlin. He resigned in protest after Hitler came into power and went into private business, buying out a small-parts factory. He had no known involvement with the Nazis. At the end of the war three former slave laborers in his plant came forward to volunteer testimony to the treatment they received. Further, Kronbach had saved a number of lives and hidden a number of Jews. The war bombed his factory out in the last days.
Currently he worked as a plainclothesman on a black-market squad in Prenzlauer Berg Borough.
Hazzard set the report down, looked at Sean and Blessing. “What kind of a cop did you make him out to be in your interview, Bless?”
“Nothing he doesn’t know about police work. Knows how to supervise men, do administrative work, the whole business. I’d take him on my force in Hook County in two minutes.”
“How did he impress you, Sean?”
“He’s pro-West, no doubt about that. A Democrat by affiliation. I don’t think we can own him. He’s got a mind of his own. German first.”
“A good one,” Blessing said.
“We’re not looking for a stooge like Schatz,” Hazzard said. “One thing bothers me about Kronbach. Until the last two months, he hasn’t done any police work for a decade. The Russkies will lean on him, hard.”
Blessing smiled. “Took a hell of a lot more guts to stay out of the Nazi police than it did to collaborate.”
“Good enough,” Hazzard said. “I’ll get ahold of Blatty to put his nomination on the agenda tomorrow. Bless, find him, tell him what we’re up to.”
“Yes, sir. You going to be able to push his nomination through?”
“May take ten hours. I’ll just have to wear Trepovitch down.”
“Damned if I see how you can stand them meetings, Colonel.”