“Too many Communists in Italy before the war started-even worse than France,” the President said. George Marshall nodded somberly. Truman continued, “But West Germany is the big one. If Stalin takes all of it, he has the whole continent in a stranglehold.”
“If he takes all of it, or looks like he’s about to, whatever deals you cut with Konrad Adenauer don’t seem so important,” Marshall remarked.
“Yes, that’s also crossed my mind,” Truman said. The West German Chancellor had asked-begged-him not to use atom bombs on the fragile new almost-country Adenauer was in charge of. Truman understood the logic. He was supposed to be defending West Germany, not laying it waste. The Russians were, and needed to be seen as being, the ones responsible for that.
If, however, there was no free West Germany left to defend…If it turned into a matter of saving Western Europe rather than saving West Germany…In that case, didn’t you do what needed doing and pick up the pieces afterwards?
If there were any pieces left to pick up. If it wasn’t more like spilt milk. All you could do about spilt milk was cry. And even crying didn’t help.
“The genie is out of the bottle, Mr. President,” Marshall said quietly.
“Yeah, he is. And I let him out, and I can’t put him back.” Truman scowled. “If the Red Chinese weren’t massacring our men in North Korea…MacArthur never dreamt they’d come over the border like that. Neither did I.”
“Our best intelligence estimates insisted they wouldn’t.” Marshall paused, looking as unhappy as a man with a largely expressionless face was ever likely to. “Which only goes to show what are thought to be the best intelligence estimates are worth.”
“Not even the paper they’re printed on.” Truman wasn’t just unhappy. He was ticked off. “A lot of folks would say the smart boys who made those estimates and got us to believe them have blood-and plutonium-on their hands.”
“Are you one of those people, sir?” Marshall asked.
“You know damn well I’m not, George,” the President said. “They were responsible for making the estimates. I was-I am-responsible for acting on them. Whatever ends up happening, whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent, it’s my fault.”
Marshall nodded. “Anyone would know at once that you used to be an officer, sir.”
“FDR wasn’t, and he stayed in the hot seat a lot longer than I have.” Now it was Truman’s turn to hold up a forefinger. “But he was a ‘former naval person,’ hey? Just like Churchill.”
“Not quite like Churchill.” Marshall was relentlessly precise. “Franklin Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. That is an important job. But Churchill was First Sea Lord. Especially during wartime, that’s one of the two biggest jobs in the British government, right up there with Prime Minister.”
“Churchill handled both of them pretty well, you’d have to say. Well, so did Roosevelt.” Truman made a face. He was blathering on about this stuff so he wouldn’t have to make the military decisions he’d come to Marshall’s office to make. “If we are going to stop the Russians, we will have to apologize to Adenauer. That’s how it looks to me. Using A-bombs in Germany-maybe in Italy, too-looks to me to be the only hope we have of containing them. The only way we have of keeping our other European allies in line, too.”
“I was going to mention that if you didn’t, Mr. President,” Marshall said.
“I bet you were.” Truman rolled his eyes. “I am really sick and tired of listening to Charlie goddamn de Gaulle going on about how soft the Germans have it. Germany got pulverized in the fighting. I don’t call that soft, whether de Gaulle does or not.”
“If you expect a Frenchman to stay rational after Paris gets hit, sir, you’re expecting too much.”
“Obviously. But the Russians have dropped atom bombs on Germany, too, not that the French remember that.” Truman chuckled harshly. “De Gaulle doesn’t care whether everything east of the Rhine turns into radioactive glass by day after tomorrow-not as long as the wind blows the fallout toward Russia and not toward him, he doesn’t.”
“That’s about the size of it, Mr. President,” Marshall said. “Shall I draft, for your review and revision, orders to use atom bombs against the forward Russian positions? If we do that, of course, we can’t rule out the likelihood that they’ll do the same to ours. We also can’t rule out the chance that they’ll strike cities and other targets behind the lines.”
London. Amsterdam. Brussels. The names tolled like mournful bells inside Truman’s head. “We can make them sorrier than they make us,” he said. “I wish one of ours had caught Stalin. That would have solved a lot of our problems.” He sighed and scowled and sighed again. Stalin animated the USSR the way Hitler’d animated Nazi Germany. Truman didn’t believe there could be peace as long as the Soviet dictator lived.
7
“Come on, you stupid lice!” the Feldwebel shouted, for all the world as if it were still 1943, still the Fuhrer’s war, still the Wehrmacht. “Into the motherfucking trucks!”
That was a model Gustav Hozzel wasn’t familiar with. But lack of familiarity wasn’t what made him ask, “How come, Feld? We’re holding the Ivans pretty good where we’re at.”
“How come? How come?” The sergeant acted as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He probably couldn’t; the Wehrmacht hadn’t encouraged privates to question noncoms. “What are you, Hozzel, a goddamn American or something? We get into the trucks because we’ve got orders to get into the trucks. They give us the orders, and we follow ’em. That’s how things work, see?”
Max Bachman saw the flaw in that, the same as Gustav did. “And then the war-crimes tribunal shoots us because we followed them,” he said in a low voice.
Low, but not low enough. “You another troublemaking Scheissekopf, Bachman?” the Feldwebel growled.
“Not me.” Max denied everything, as Gustav would have. He mooched toward one of the waiting American-built trucks. Gustav had hated those beasts in the last war. They let the Russians move up to and around the battlefield faster than his own poorly motorized side could. He headed for that truck, too. The plundered AK-47 was slung on his back.
“See what kind of shit you end up in for mouthing off?” Rolf said as he scrambled in behind Gustav.
“Wunderbar, Herr Gruppenfuhrer,” Gustav answered with sour relish. “Come on, General Staff guy. You tell me why we’re retreating when the Reds can’t knock us back.”
The ex-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler man opened his mouth. Then he closed it again without saying anything. After a couple of seconds, he took another stab at it: “I don’t know, but I don’t need to know. The officers who gave the orders must’ve had some good reason for ’em.”
“You fought on the Ostfront, and you say that?” Gustav rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen Catholics with less faith in Pope fucking Pius than you. Stupid orders happen all the damn time, and you know it as well as I do.”
“This is a stupid order, too,” Max added. “We may pull out of Germany altogether if we retreat from here.”
“That’s another twenty-five, thirty kilometers,” Gustav said. “We’d better not retreat that far.”
“If we do,” Rolf said darkly, “it’s a sure sign the Americans aren’t serious about staying in Germany and fighting it out with the damned Reds.”
“They’ve had a hell of a lot of soldiers killed and maimed for people who’re just playing around,” Gustav pointed out.
Rolf gave him a dirty look. “You know what I mean.”
“Half the time, Rolf, I don’t think even you know what you mean,” Gustav said.
The Waffen-SS veteran gave back a gesture that meant different things depending on who used it. When an Ami formed his thumb and forefinger into a circle and held up the other three fingers, Gustav had learned, he meant everything was fine. But when a German did that, he was calling you an asshole.