42. Jussi Pekkarinen and Juha Pohjonen, Poshchady ne budet. Peredacha voennoplennykh i bezhentsev iz Finlyandii v SSSR, 1944–1981 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), 39 (in Russian).
43. Ibid., 29.
CHAPTER 23
Berlin and Prague Are Taken
At the end of the war, only nine fronts with their UKRs remained in Europe (Table 22-1 lists seven of them, there were also the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts). The Red Army that was moving through Germany toward Berlin looked like anything but the disciplined troops that had crossed the Soviet border in 1944. Captain Mikhail Koryakov, who served in the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, recalled just after the war:
The waves of [Marshal Konev’s] troops moving west out of the east had a colorful, exotic appearance. The grimy, bespattered tanks were covered with bright, brilliantly colored rugs on which sat dirty tankmen in uniforms soaked in machine oil. A soldier pulled a bottle out of his pocket, threw back his head and took a long swallow. Then he passed it to his neighbor and, trying to drown out the roar of motors and the screech of caterpillar tractors, in a hoarse, cracking voice began to shout the words of a song…
The artillerymen… threatened the tankmen with their whips, and hit the horses covered with dressy horse blankets weighted down with tassels. The gun crews who jogged on the caissons had lined their seats with soft cushions embroidered with silk and made themselves comfortable. They played German mouth-organs and accordions richly inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver.
Amid the stream of tanks, guns, motor transports, and Army wagons there appeared every so often an old-fashioned, closed carriage with crystal lanterns or a large landau with a shiny folding top. These carriages were occupied by young officers and men in regulation Army coats with shoulder stripes and automatic rifles behind their shoulders, but who wore top hats and carried umbrellas. Some of them cracked long whips, played mouth-organs, and laughed; others sat very straight and with affected solemnity looked through lorgnettes at the troops moving down the highway…
The Marshal established Draconian rules in an effort to restore discipline among the troops that entered Germany. The order gave a long list of officers who had been degraded and sent to disciplinary battalions. But the gory, drunken wave of debauchery rose high and swept over the dam of official orders.1
Finally, three fronts—the 1st and 2nd Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian—surrounded Berlin. On April 30, units of the 1st Belorussian Front took the Reichstag, the symbol of the German government. The battle for Berlin continued until May 2, 1945, but sporadic fighting with the resisting groups, mostly SS units, continued until May 11.
Victory
The Red Army paid an enormously high price for the victory. During the Berlin Operation, Marshal Georgii Zhukov, commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, continually repeated the order ‘to break through to the city’s suburbs at any price and immediately inform me [so that I can] report to Comrade Stalin and release an announcement to the press.’2 ‘At any price’ translated to 361,367 servicemen killed and wounded in Berlin from April 16 to May 8, 1945—an average of 15,712 men a day.3 Compare this to casualties during the battle for Moscow (autumn 1941–winter 1942), when losses amounted to 10,910 men a day, or during the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–43): 6,392 men a day.
The war with Germany ended on May 8, 1945, after Major General Alfred Jodl signed the ‘Instrument of Surrender’ of the German forces in the presence of American General Walter Bedell Smith, French Major General François Sevez, and General Ivan Sousloparov, Soviet representative at the Allied Headquarters.4 Stalin was not happy that this extremely important document was signed in Rheims (France) instead of Berlin, and that the little-known Sousloparov represented the Soviet Union instead of Marshal Zhukov, the conqueror of Berlin. Stalin telephoned Zhukov to inform him that he had ordered Deputy Foreign Commissar Andrei Vyshinsky immediately to Berlin to sign the German surrender together with Zhukov.5
The next day Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, and General Horst Stumpff signed the Act of Military Surrender of Germany.6 British General Arthur W. Tedder and Marshal Zhukov affixed their signatures on behalf of the Allies and the Soviets, respectively. When Keitel, after signing the act, removed his monocle and tried to say something, Zhukov announced: ‘The German delegation may leave the hall.’ From that day on, the Western Allies have celebrated V-day on May 8, and the Soviets (now Russians), on May 9. Later, in Nuremberg, Jodl and Keitel were sentenced to death and hanged on October 16, 1946.
After the signing, the Soviets threw a lavish banquet. Zhukov’s personal cook recalled that to impress the Allied military leaders, delicacies such as smoked sturgeon meat, black caviar, and special Crimean wines were brought from the Soviet Union to the ruined Berlin, and trophy German wines were also served.7
While waiting for the coming victory, on May 2 the GKO ordered the creation of a new position: Deputy Front Commander in charge of the Management of Civil Affairs.8 These deputies also had a second title, NKVD Plenipotentiary in Charge of Combating Spies, Saboteurs, and Other Enemies on German Territory. Ivan Serov (1st Belorussian), Lavrentii Tsanava (2nd Belorussian), and Pavel Meshik (1st Ukrainian) became Civil Affairs deputy commanders at the fronts that conquered Berlin. Operational groups of SMERSH, NKVD/NKGB officers, and units of NKVD troops were assigned to these three plenipotentiaries. They also had the right to organize their own prisons and concentration camps. Besides policing and repression, they were in charge of organizing local administrations in the occupied territory.
SMERSH in Berlin
During the Battle of Berlin all SMERSH units of the Soviet fighting troops captured and interrogated prisoners. Ivan Klimenko, head of the OKR SMERSH of the 79th Rifle Corps (3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front), later recalled that in the first days of May, SMERSH operatives captured about 800 high-ranking prisoners around the Reichstag and Hitler’s Chancellery alone.9 The most important generals and witnesses of Hitler’s suicide on April 30 were caught on May 2, including SS-Gruppenführer Johann Rattenhuber, head of Hitler’s personal RSD guards, Rear Admiral Hans Erich Voss, a representative of the German Navy at Hitler’s Headquarters, General of Artillery Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin defense; and Wilhelm Möhnke, the 33-year-old Waffen-SS General whom Hitler had appointed commander of the central area of Berlin only ten days earlier.
Rattenhuber and Möhnke participated in one of Hitler’s last bizarre actions. On April 28, Hitler appointed a military tribunal, with Möhnke presiding and Rattenhuber as a member; two other members, generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf, committed suicide four days later. The tribunal court-martialed Eva Braun’s brother, and, therefore, Hitler’s brother-in-law, Waffen-SS General Hermann Fegelein (a man close to Heinrich Himmler), as a deserter.10 However, Hitler ordered Rattenhuber’s RSD guards to execute Fegelein on the next day, after it became known that Himmler was trying to negotiate surrender to the Allies through the diplomat and head of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte. According to Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s surviving secretaries, Hitler suspected Himmler of planning to poison him, and Fegelein was allegedly part of the conspiracy. As she recalled, Fegelein ‘had been shot like a dog in the park of the Foreign Office.’11