The substance of the discussions between Generals Chuikov and Sokolovsky and General Krebs is now public knowledge. At the time we heard only rumours about the arrival of Krebs, and the discussions immediately became secret.
Krebs was one of the victims of the last appointments and meteoric career promotions in the doomed Third Reich. He was elevated to the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Army only in late March or even in April 1945, to replace Guderian, whom Hitler had dismissed. Very upright, cleanshaven, with a pistol on his greatcoat belt, he maintained a military bearing. That is how he looks in a photograph taken at the conclusion of the failed negotiations. Krebs had served for a long time in Moscow as the military attaché of the German embassy. He spoke Russian, and understood the hard-line remarks Chuikov and his officers were exchanging: ‘We’ll have to finish them off!’ and, into the telephone when talking to Marshal Zhukov: ‘I wouldn’t ponce around. Unconditional surrender and basta!’
The toughest, most implacable character present at the talks was, however, Vsevolod Vishnevsky, a former officer in the tsarist Life Guards, now wearing the epaulettes of a colonel, a famous Soviet writer who appeared in Berlin right at the end of the war.
Vishnevsky shrieked in fear and indignation, ‘Take the pistol off that bandit!’ They had some difficulty calming him down, owing to his inability to differentiate between an envoy and a prisoner. Another outburst came when he saw that, when Krebs handed the documents over to Chuikov, he kept some pages himself, and demanded that they be taken off him by force. This writer and socialist humanitarian was restrained with difficulty by soldiers who had been fighting throughout the war years and become toughened and embittered towards the enemy, but who nevertheless retained respect for military ethics and a sense of personal dignity.
For the German side, the negotiations were doomed to fail. Marshal Zhukov, to whom Chuikov was reporting by phone, emphasized that negotiations could be conducted only with the agreement of all the allies, who expected scrupulous observance of mutual obligations.
The documents presented by Krebs were delivered to Zhukov at the command point of front headquarters. It was obvious that the reply could only be a demand for unconditional surrender to all the Allies. Ultimately, however, it was for Stalin to decide, and he was asleep at his dacha, as Zhukov was informed over the telephone by the general on duty. This would delay the negotiations, and Zhukov was concerned that this might give the Allies grounds to blame the Soviet command for engaging in separate negotiations. He decided. ‘I must ask you to wake him. The matter is urgent and cannot be left until morning.’
In a conversation I had with him years later, Georgiy Zhukov praised his memory as ‘remarkable’, but even people who did not have that distinction had no difficulty in retaining firmly in their minds the words they heard Stalin utter. We can rest assured that Zhukov’s recollection of Stalin’s reply was accurate. I quoted them when I wrote about my meeting with Zhukov, and I will repeat them here, with some additional comments.
Awakened by Zhukov’s call, Stalin, perhaps still half asleep, reacted to the news of Hitler’s suicide in less than his usual phlegmatic manner, and even with a degree of spontaneity:
‘The game’s up for the scum!’ (as if he were talking about a partner in crime who had ratted on him. Hitler was, after all, the only person the mistrustful Stalin had ever trusted, only to be perfidiously fooled by him). ‘Pity we couldn’t have taken him alive. Where’s Hitler’s body?’
‘As reported by General Krebs, Hitler’s body was cremated on a bonfire.’
‘Tell Sokolovsky,’ the Supreme Commander said, ‘to conduct no negotiations except on unconditional surrender, neither with Krebs nor with other Hitlerites. If nothing out of the ordinary happens, do not call until morning. I want to rest a bit before the [May Day] parade.’ Stalin thus terminated his conversation with Zhukov on the most sensitive topic of the time.
Stalin was not given to trusting people, but gave no orders then or subsequently to confirm the veracity of the message about Hitler. ‘Cremated on a bonfire.’ One way or another, he had disappeared. This left room for speculation that Hitler was still alive and in hiding. Hitler was no longer an emblem of the war: he became an emblem of the kind of peace that was to follow.
Zhukov, with his forthrightness, which Stalin had probably valued in the war, was quite unsuitable for joining in the imminent political games and, if he personally verified Hitler’s death, could even be dangerous. So he was abruptly sidelined and, we can imagine, must have been aware of it. Stalin never once asked him whether the search for Hitler’s remains was continuing.
Our newspapers, from 2 May onwards, alarmed their readers with TASS reports that Hitler had managed to escape. Pravda declared on 2 May:
Yesterday evening, German radio was broadcasting an announcement by the so-called ‘Führer’s General Headquarters’ to the effect that Hitler died on the afternoon of 1 May [sic]. The announcement continues that on 30 April Hitler appointed Admiral Dönitz as his successor… These German radio announcements are evidently a new Nazi trick. By spreading the claim that Hitler is dead, the German Fascists are clearly hoping to enable him to leave the stage and go underground.
So Hitler was alive and hiding somewhere? The question of whether he was alive or had committed suicide, and even more, the question of whether he had been found, moved from being an army matter into the sphere of international politics, so Zhukov may have deliberately moved aside on the grounds that this was not his province. A new day had dawned, with complex new problems and concerns, and the toppled dictator was demoted to yesterday’s news.
In my talk with Marshal Zhukov I mentioned that at that time we had the feeling that the front command was taking little interest in the search. Zhukov did not deny it. For some reason he had not insisted on receiving reports with all the details. He had ignored the issue. Why? Was it solely because of Stalin’s disinterest? I can come up with no convincing answer.
As for Stalin, he was not interested in seeing a search conducted, Hitler’s dead body discovered and the matter closed. That much is clear from how events were to develop.
The negotiations, which were now being conducted by Colonel General Sokolovsky, ended. The request for a truce was categorically rejected. Krebs was told that, as agreed with the three other Allies, only unconditional surrender could be discussed. Krebs was not authorized to accept that, and the talks ended with his return to the Reich Chancellery with that uncomfortable news. Colonel von Dufving was sent to Goebbels with a demand that he should surrender in order to avoid senseless bloodshed on both sides. Our command decided at the same time to set up a direct telephone line to Goebbels.
The signaller ordered to follow in Colonel von Dufving’s footsteps reached his destination safely, unwinding cable all the way and, with the assistance of German signallers, connected himself to their wire, plugged in his telephone equipment and let our side know that he was at the bottom of a crater, sheltering from any gunfire that might come from our side, in the amicable company of Fritzes, and having a smoke.
For the first time a direct telephone line connected the command posts of the opposing sides, but this entirely operational line was never used. The German side, which was expected to respond to the Soviet conditions, did not negotiate. While waiting for their decision, combat operations on our side were halted. Only at 18.00 hrs did an SS lieutenant colonel sent by Goebbels deliver, across the front line, the Germans’ written refusal to accept our conditions.