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
BERLIN 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 welclass="underline" 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.”