“Who?” Schorn asked mechanically.
“The Vopos,” the neighbor replied. “They’re looking for you everywhere.”
“What about my wife and kids?” Schorn asked.
“They’re all right,” the neighbor said. “But, of course, your wife is awfully worried about what’s happened to you.”
Outside the main gate of the plant, Schorn stopped in bewilderment. He thought he’d never seen so much armed strength concentrated in one place. There were Soviet T-34 tanks, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, machine guns, armored reconnaissance cars, and hundreds of infantry soldiers sitting on trucks with their engines running. Schorn learned that troops had been arriving all night long. Two S.E.D. men stood at the gate distributing leaflets asking the workers to return to their jobs and “to help with the arrest of the culprits of yesterday’s provocations.”
Three workers Schorn knew came running up to him. “You’d better beat it,” one of them told him. “Do you know what happened?”
“The Russians and the Vopos have arrested every member of the strike committee except you and three others who didn’t sleep at home and so couldn’t be found. You’d better get away fast. If they find you here, you’ll be done for. Try to reach West Berlin. Maybe you can talk to us over RIAS. You can be more help to us alive in Berlin than dead here.”
Schorn nodded, and left. He walked to the railroad station. The walls were plastered with posters showing his picture and pictures of the three other missing strike leaders. Underneath was printed an announcement of a reward of five thousand Ostmark for the capture of each of the wanted men, dead or alive. The text that followed accused them of having taken part in “gangster activities against the State and against the population” and of being “handymen of American imperialism.” The announcement was signed by a local Russian commander, possibly the colonel Schorn had had dealings with. “It was the first time I had ever seen my own death warrant on a wall,” Schorn said to me. “Instead of frightening me, it made me angry, since I had committed no crime. As a matter of fact, if I hadn’t kept my head, many people might have been killed and wounded the day before. I was certainly not going to make it easy for them to get me. I turned around, went back a few blocks, and borrowed a bicycle from a man I know. Then I rode to a small town where the guards weren’t very alert. There was a train going west, toward Berlin, but I thought I would attract less attention going east, so I bought a ticket to a place near the Polish border where I have a friend.”
Schorn reached his friend’s place without being recognized, and stayed there two days. A mood of depression hung over the whole community. People walked through the streets with their heads lowered. “If it had only lasted another twenty-four hours,” they would say. “Another twenty-four hours and Ulbricht and his crowd would have been wiped out.”
After leaving his friend, Schorn made his way slowly to East Berlin; by riding at night on local trains he managed to avoid police patrols. He believes he was not picked up between trains because there is a notable lack of cooperation among the regional branches of the State Security Service, or possibly because the posters calling for his arrest were not properly circulated throughout the Zone. In East Berlin, he found the sector boundaries closed; no one without a Passierschein, or special permit, issued by the Volkspolizei, could cross over into West Berlin. He stayed for a while with people whom he naturally doesn’t want to name. They told him of various spots on the border where escapes had been made to the West. When he investigated a couple of these, he found that others had evidently learned of them before he had, for guards were patrolling them with the utmost vigilance.
Schorn, of course, had no Passierschein and was in no position to ask for one, but on the afternoon of June 24th he was strolling by one of the official boundary crossing points, studying the setup, when a sudden thunderstorm broke. The downpour was so great that the Vopos on duty retired inside their sentry huts and just glanced out at the Passierscheine of the few people who walked by. Schorn saw his opportunity. He waited until two men approached the Vopos, holding out their Passierscheine, and then moved up close behind them, clutching the simple identity card that every citizen in East Germany is obliged to carry. As he had hoped, the sentries gave his damp identity card only the most cursory glance, and a moment later he’d left them behind. Within half an hour, he was standing in front of a West Berlin official, giving his name and asking for asylum.
· · ·
Schorn and several other Barrikadenstürmer, or barricade fighters, as the heroes of the seventeenth of June are affectionately called by the West Berliners, now live in a large house overlooking Wannsee. In the beginning, they were known to each other merely by the names of the towns they came from—“Halle,” “Jena,” “Leipzig,” “Dresden,” and so on—but now their confidence in one another has grown and they use their own names. Like other political émigrés, they have strong opinions about what should have been done during the crisis, and they don’t always agree about what should be done in the future, but they are all remarkable for their complete lack of defeatism. They have refused to be flown out to West Germany, where they would be safer. They want to stay in West Berlin to be close to their friends in the East Zone. “We’re going to continue the fight from here,” Schorn told me. “Over there in East Germany, the government has started a large-scale campaign of what it calls enlightenment. But the people won’t be fooled. I’ve had news from Leuna. There have been sitdown strikes for weeks. The plant is heavily guarded, but the spirit of our men and women is unbroken. No matter what they are being told now, they won’t forget the truth. They were right there listening when that Russian colonel went back on his word. You think they’ll ever forget? Never!”
I asked Schorn if he had had any word of his wife and children. He looked away. “I haven’t heard from them,” he said. “I expect that my wife will ask for a divorce. What else can she do? She must try to protect herself and the children. I miss them terribly, but I’ve made my decision. I’m still the ironhearted hater. I’ll keep fighting. Ulbricht and his crowd are trying to tell the people that the seventeenth of June was the end of the uprising. Don’t you believe them. It was just the beginning.”
Emily Hahn
NOVEMBER 7, 1953 (ON CHIANG KAI-SHEK)
HE COHESIVE SPIRIT that characterizes Chiang Kai-shek’s court on the crowded island of Formosa—or Taiwan, as it is called in the East—is probably unique among modern governments in exile. This is not to say that the Chinese Nationalists are happy away from the mainland, but simply that, having been driven from one capital to another during the past two decades, they know how to adapt themselves. The main point is that the followers of Chiang who are loyal know from experience that they can expect loyalty in return. Indeed, this reciprocal fidelity actually stands in the way of Free China’s war effort, for Taipei, the current capital, is wastefully cluttered with old people who can no longer contribute much of value. American advisers, especially those who are newly arrived and all zealous in the cause, deplore this situation, and so do a few of the old people themselves. “Were you proud of being a general?” I asked a seventy-year-old veteran of the mainland wars who followed the government here. He was showing me his photograph album, and there was a portrait of him in his younger days, splendid in uniform against a background of the Paoting Military Academy. He nodded glumly. “I was,” he said. “And now I am proud of not being a general. There are too many generals around here.”
Little by little, though, the government is beginning to look more youthful, for the old men are slowly being replaced by capable younger officers. The operation is skillfully handled. No bones are broken, no feelings are hurt, and the old-timers are still treated with courtesy and patience. Chiang Kai-shek himself shows no outward sign of weariness with them; he has never been disrespectful to his elders, and undoubtedly today, at sixty-seven, he feels more at ease with his old friends than with the brisk representatives of the new school. The retired generals do
n’t seem redundant to him; they make Taiwan homelike. Even some of the war lords who used to be his enemies are reassuring company on this strange island.
The old-timers didn’t all arrive with the Generalissimo when he fled the mainland, in December, 1949. Some of them were here ahead of him, and some came later, with harrowing tales of their escapes. For most of them, retirement did not begin immediately. They were still largely in command when the war started in Korea. Almost all the Nationalists had given up hope by that time, but then America took a new interest in them, advisers were sent in from the States, and the government was streamlined, with younger men taking over important positions. The displaced elders live within easy hailing distance of their leader. In bungalows on the fringes of the city, or up in the series of impressive hills known as Grass Mountain, twelve or thirteen miles from the center of activities, they spend their days talking, reading the newspapers, and planning strategy for the great day of glorious battle they hope will come. At first, life must have seemed strangely full of leisure and tiresomely long to these men, but now they have all developed engrossing side interests. Some of them tend gardens, some of them write memoirs and pamphlets, and some of them have taken new wives. Gambling is frowned on, because the Generalissimo thinks it sets a bad example for the people, so although mah-jongg is still played, it is played furtively. Mostly, the generals indulge in that beguiling pastime of saying, in various ways, “I told you so.” Every so often, Chiang holds a conference in his official residence for the benefit of the generals and the war lords and his other old friends, and when they come out of their fastnesses and converge on the place, the roadsides are crowded for a mile around with parked jeeps, Cadillacs, and taxis.
· · ·
Chinese, like Americans, seldom refer to their important personages by their formal names, and when speaking English, officials of the Nationalist government have sometimes called the Generalissimo the Gimo, after the fashion of the late W. H. Donald, the Australian who became foreign adviser to the Chiangs back in 1934. More often nowadays, they speak of him affectionately as “the Old Man.” Most of the mainland Chinese on Taiwan are warm supporters of Chiang; otherwise they wouldn’t be here. The Old Man is among friends, and they are a picked company. Even so, he has his disagreements with them. Throughout his turbulent life, whenever he has wanted to get away from public affairs for a time or register a protest, he has gone to some mountain hideout. He was born among the hills, in Chekiang Province, and under pressure he reverts to the hills. Fortunately for his spirit, Taiwan is full of hills. There is a secluded spot down toward the middle of the island, at Ta Chi, where a Japanese prince used to seek rest and seclusion in the days when Taiwan belonged to Japan, and Chiang Kai-shek occasionally visits it. It is the only place where he can really find solitude. During the winter months, the Old Man lives in Shihlin, a village on the outskirts of the capital, in a large, Western-style house that was built only seven years ago, for the new governor the Chinese installed in Formosa when the Japanese surrendered. It is hidden from the main road behind a park, guards are stationed at the entrance to the driveway, and there is a little private garden where the Gimo can walk in the evening. During the hottest part of the summer, the Chiang household moves up to Grass Mountain, where the Old Man has a house as secluded as that of any of the generals and war lords sequestered there in mountain crannies. It clings to the side of a precipitous hill, and used to be the guesthouse of a Japanese-owned sugar-refining company, where its executives could relax in Japanese style, sitting on mat floors or in hot baths drawn from the mountain’s sulphur springs, and surveying the distant plain. The Generalissimo is in his element there.
Whether in Shihlin or up on Grass Mountain, Chiang follows the same routine he has followed for years, rising at five-thirty to say his prayers, do his exercises, and eat an austere breakfast. At seven-thirty precisely, he leaves for his office, which is in Chieh Shou Hall, in Taipei, with the other government offices. He interviews his American advisers there, holds conversations with his prime minister, Chen Cheng, and officials of the various Yuans, or governmental departments, and studies the news from the outside world, on which his life and his work now depend. He makes a long morning of it, not returning to his house until after one o’clock, but then he stays at home the rest of the day, and, if it becomes necessary, calls in his ministers and other advisers. His intimates say that these calls have become more frequent lately. “He doesn’t take advice any more readily than he used to, but he asks for it oftener,” one of them told me. The Old Man is still stubborn. When he gets an idea in his head, nothing moves him. But the ideas seem to develop with more deliberation than they used to.
All Chiang’s thoughts are, of course, directed to one simple end— a return of his government to the mainland. In May, 1949, when Shanghai fell to the Reds, Chiang is said to have told his friends that if the city wasn’t retaken in four months, “I promise you I will commit suicide.” This sort of vow is pure convention in China, and no one would have thought of expecting him to keep it, but he probably meant it literally at the time. Now he is suffering deeply from humiliation at the blows of the past four years, but he has been stoic about it, and this is the main reason so many of his followers have stayed with him. “He is really great,” one of the young men in the government said to me. “A lesser man probably would have committed suicide, years ago. He never gives up hope. That is the great thing.” The Generalissimo is too practical to indulge in romantic dreams of a quick reconquest of China. He tells the Americans that if he can land on the mainland, a hundred miles away, establish a beachhead, and hold it against the Reds for three months, or four, or perhaps six, he is confident that the tide will turn; enough people will take the risk of coming over to his side for him to win out.
Everything Chiang does is filled with drama. Although he lives simply and his activities have none of the self-conscious theatricality of some European leaders, the drama seems inevitable. His retinue of household guards and policemen has been growing through the years, not so much because the danger of assassination has increased as because most of the guards who served him on the mainland now have sons and nephews who need jobs. Whenever Chiang moves about, a fleet of black Cadillac limousines moves with him, and the roads he travels on are lined at intervals of a few hundred yards with guards who stand on the alert when he is expected and are practically invisible after he has passed by. Last summer, the sides of the road between Grass Mountain and the city were cleared of underbrush for several paces back into the trees, and its regrowth was discouraged by frequent burning of the grass.
Guards, police, black Cadillacs, and chauffeurs are fairly common sights in the busy streets of Shihlin, but up on the lonely heights of Grass Mountain there is a considerable stir when the Chiangs arrive. The main road to Taipei runs along the top of the hill above Chiang’s house, which is off on a side road. The Cadillacs are kept in a long shed near the intersection, where they are constantly attended by uniformed loungers. There are a few other houses in the vicinity, one of them occupied by the American Ambassador.
In the cool early mornings, when the Chiangs are in residence, servants from the nearest houses drift over to the garage to chat with the Gimo’s people. Except for a pillbox commanding the crossroads, it is all very rustic and green, with flowering hedges along the garden walls. Mme. Chiang Kai-shek’s cocker spaniel, Blackie, lies napping in the middle of the road. Half-naked babies wander about. A bell rings sharply in the pillbox, once, twice, or three times: the signals are changed periodically. Everyone is galvanized. Domestics disappear behind hedges. Chauffeurs rush to their cars, guards stand at attention, and the Cadillacs whiz down the side road. Again the bell rings. It is seven-thirty sharp. The black cavalcade roars back uphill, swings in to the main road to Taipei, and speeds away. The Old Man is going to his office. Soon the dust has settled, the guards relax, and the servants reappear with their babies. There is another spasm of activity in the early afternoon, when
the Gimo returns, and then all is quiet until evening. At six-thirty, the signal bell sounds again. This time, the cars do not go down the hill. Guards pop up all along the way, and a little group of walkers appears, trudging uphill. Blackie, panting proudly, leads the procession. After him, walking quickly, comes Chiang, in a long gown and a pith helmet. Sometimes, and always on Sunday, Madame is with him, slender in her sheath gown, and carrying a parasol, although the sun has already set. Several guards follow them. The Gimo swings up to the highway and on toward a small public park. One of the Cadillacs falls in behind them and follows at a respectful distance. When he has walked long enough, he and his party climb into the car and it drives back down the hill, heralded, as usual, by the bell. Ring! Swish! The Old Man has taken his exercise.
Chiang is beginning to show his age; sixty-seven is quite old for a Chinese. He is not bent or slow or uncertain, but his hair, however close it is cropped, is unmistakably pure white. He is thinner than ever, but his doctor is proud of his condition. A man who never smokes or drinks or overeats might well live forever, the doctor says. There is, however, one significant change. The Generalissimo has taken to smiling quite often. Recently, a visiting journalist commented on it; Chiang Kai-shek’s smile, he said, is cruel—cold and cruel. “Nonsense,” said an American officer who knows Chiang fairly well. “His dentures don’t fit, that’s all. You’d have a cruel smile, too, if you had to keep those teeth in your mouth.”
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