SHAEF and Eisenhower came up with a strategy for the next stage, pushing toward the line Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden (south of Berlin), with a swing farther south toward Regensburg-Linz that would cut off the area where Hitler might make a last stand. Troops would stop at the Elbe River, forty miles short of Berlin, as already agreed with the Soviets. Finally, in the north, another operation by the Western Allies would simultaneously isolate German troops in Norway and Denmark.19
Eisenhower was eager to accomplish these tasks as “quickly and completely” as possible and to avoid close combat in cities, where house-to-house fighting was so costly. He was criticized by Churchill and Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery (and by some historians) for not attempting to set out quickly for Berlin. He and General Omar Bradley estimated that had they done so, it would have meant the deaths of at least 100,000 of their men. There was little chance of beating the Red Army to Berlin, and Eisenhower thought it “stupid” to try. Either way, there was nothing he could have done on the battlefield that would have changed the configuration of postwar Europe.20
In keeping with established procedures, Eisenhower sent his plan to Stalin on March 28. It was necessary to systematize communications and to determine how each side could recognize the other. Churchill had his own agenda. He thought that Eisenhower was exceeding his authority by engaging Stalin in communications that went beyond military matters. Even though the agreement reached at Yalta placed Berlin two hundred miles inside the Soviet zone, the prime minister wanted to throw everything into an all-out effort to get to Berlin before the Red Army.21
Eisenhower’s message went to the U.S. military mission in Moscow, and Ambassador Harriman and British ambassador Archibald Clark Kerr decided to present it in person to the Kremlin. They took along General John R. Deane and his British counterpart, Admiral Ernest Archer, on March 31.22
The Soviets must have been alerted by someone, because even before receiving Eisenhower’s plans, Stalin again called Zhukov back to Moscow, where he arrived on March 29. They met that same night and discussed strategy. The Boss said that, according to intelligence reports, the Germans were no longer putting up much resistance in the west and were shifting reinforcements to the east. He calmly asked when the Red Army would be ready for the attack on Berlin. Zhukov replied that his First Byelorussian Army Group would need “not more than two weeks.” He was of the view that Marshal Konev’s First Ukrainian Army Group would require about the same amount of time but that Rokossovsky’s Second Byelorussian Army Group would be bogged down in the north until at least April 10. Stalin said bluntly, “Then we shall have to begin the operation without waiting for Rokossovsky.”23
He showed Zhukov an intelligence report indicating that the Nazis had tried but failed to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies. Stalin doubted that Roosevelt would do such a thing, but he believed that Churchill might. Generals Shtemenko and Antonov were also given the information and concluded, like Zhukov, that there were “backstage” deals in the works to let the West beat them to Berlin.24
On the evening of April 1, Stalin met with his marshals, and Shtemenko read the intelligence report aloud for Konev, who had flown in the day before. He recalled that it spoke of a “U.S.-British Command under Montgomery” that was preparing to take Berlin. There was no such plan, but Stalin led them to think the worst and then turned to his two marshals to ask: “Well, who is going to take Berlin, we or the Allies?” Konev answered first, saying, “It is we who will be taking Berlin, and we shall take it before the Allies.”25 Although Marshal Rokossovsky was not there, he soon returned to Moscow and was also given to believe that the Nazis were letting the Western Allies through to Berlin, while doubling efforts to stop the Red Army.26 Stalin spread the rumors to Soviet diplomats as well, who held the widespread conviction that the West was trying to wrest the fruits of victory from them.27
END OF THE ROOSEVELT ERA
Roosevelt and to a lesser extent Churchill were still under the spell cast by Stalin at Yalta, and they were surprisingly slow to believe that he would break his word by setting up thinly veiled Communist regimes in the countries liberated by the Red Army. The Foreign Office in London and the State Department in Washington clung to the idea that “other people” in the Kremlin were manipulating Stalin behind the scenes. Churchill was growing more skeptical, but he had already conceded much to Stalin that would be impossible to undo.28
Some high-level Nazis had indeed tried to open discussions with the West since early 1945. It was enough to confirm Stalin’s conspiratorial thinking about the “capitalists.” Moreover, he could take no solace from the fact that his allies had informed him about “Operation Sunrise.” Since February 21, SS General Karl Wolff had sent feelers to Allen Dulles of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). On March 8, Dulles had a short meeting with Wolff in Zurich and then informed Allied headquarters in Caserta, Italy. Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, stationed there, recommended that his American deputy chief of staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer, and his British chief intelligence officer, General Terence Airey, follow up with Wolff. The SS general’s braggadocio was simple. “Gentlemen,” he said, “if you can be patient, I will hand you Italy on a silver platter.”29
Word of these conversations was relayed to the British and American embassies in Moscow, where on March 12 they informed Molotov. The latter had no objections but wanted the Soviet military involved. The top U.S. brass, including General George Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had reservations about including any Red Army officers, who might make “embarrassing demands” and kill the talks. The Western Allied leaders were transfixed by the thought of a speedy end to the fighting in Italy and perhaps even obtaining a general German surrender. Although initially Churchill had sensed that any such negotiations with the enemy would offend the Soviets, he yielded to the Americans. The whole business was badly handled and was more than enough to raise the Kremlin’s suspicions. Molotov then fired off an angry note that accused the United States and Great Britain of negotiating “behind the backs” of their ally.30 The negotiations with the Germans were fruitless and most inopportune, for the West was then vainly objecting to what the Soviets were doing in places like Poland and Romania.
Although Roosevelt and Churchill worried that the cooperative spirit of Yalta was being ignored across Eastern Europe, they were hardly in a position to hold the Kremlin to account at a time when they found themselves on the defensive about Operation Sunrise. In a note to the Soviet leader, received on March 25, FDR explained that there was no thought of a separate peace or ending the war short of unconditional surrender. They had simply made contact with “competent German military officers for a conference to discuss details of a surrender” of Italy, with the view of stopping the bloodshed. Stalin insisted this was duplicity and double-dealing.31
In addition, on the evening of March 31, Ambassador Harriman and Britain’s Clark Kerr went to the Kremlin, this time with Eisenhower’s plans showing that he had no intention of heading toward Berlin. “Ike” was now quoted as saying that Berlin “was no longer a particularly important objective.” Did Stalin think that was more disinformation? Perhaps, but he replied by affirming their view that the German capital “had lost its former strategic importance.” The Soviet High Command, he told Harriman and Clark Kerr, was making arrangements to send only “secondary forces” there.