He climbed the steps to the second floor offices and opened the door. He was immediately greeted with a cry of, “Hey, boss, long time no see!” Denning and Troy Winter were both in the office. Everyone else was out—but then it was a pretty small team.
“What’s going on?” Porter asked, his eyes immediately going to the Teletype.
“Nothing. It’s a dead news day. Hell, boss, what else could it be, with you actually here?”
Porter joined in the laughter. In the middle, the Teletype started ringing four bells: a Flash bulletin. Everyone stopped and turned toward the machine, as sensitized to the sound of that bell as a mother to a baby’s cry. Porter got there first and started reading.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
FLASH/BULLETIN
ATLANTA BUREAU, 12 JULY 1652 GMT (1152 EST)
COPY 01 FDR DIES
DISTRIBUTION: ALL STATIONS
WARM SPRINGS, GEORGIA, 12 JULY (AP) BY JAY EAKER
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, 32ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD TODAY AT 11:02 AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME AT HIS WARM SPRINGS, GEORGIA, RETREAT. THE CAUSE OF DEATH WAS LISTED AS A STROKE. THE PRESIDENT HAD BEEN IN ILL HEALTH FOR SEVERAL WEEKS, AND WAS IN WARM SPRINGS FOR REST AND RELAXATION.
VICE PRESIDENT HARRY S TRUMAN TOOK THE OATH OF OFFICE TO BECOME THE NATION’S 33RD PRESIDENT AT 11:30 AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME IN THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL BUILDING IN WASHINGTON, D.C. HE ORDERED FLAGS TO BE FLOWN AT HALF-MAST FOR A PERIOD OF THIRTY DAYS TO MOURN PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.
TELEGRAMS FROM WORLD LEADERS HAVE STARTED ARRIVING IN WASHINGTON AND WARM SPRINGS AROUND THE CLOCK. PLANS ARE BEING READIED FOR A STATE FUNERAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C. THE PRESIDENT’S WIDOW, ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, WILL ADDRESS THE NATION BY RADIO THIS EVENING AT 8:00 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME … .
MORE
AP ATL 473965 JE/12 JULY 1945
Denning was already reading over his shoulder. “I don’t even remember anybody else being president,” he said.
Four or five quips came into Porter’s mind, but he didn’t feel like saying any of them. He didn’t feel like saying anything at all.
THIRD ARMY OFFICERS’ CLUB, BERLIN, GERMANY, 2352 HOURS GMT
“Who th’ hell is Harry Truman, ’nyhow?” mumbled Captain Smiggs, unsteadily examining his nearly empty mug.
“Shut up and have another beer,” Sanger said, sliding the pitcher across the wet, sticky table. “We been over that. He’s our new C in C.”
“Well …” Smiggy took a long time to pour, carefully leaning the mug, building a nice head. He raised the glass with great ceremony. “Here’s t’ the pres’den’ who won the war. Franklin … Del-a-no … ROSE—a—velt.”
“Hear, hear.” Sanger, Ballard, Diaz, and the rest of the officers at the table—mostly majors and colonels of the Nineteenth Armored, with a smattering of the army HQ staff—joined in the toast. It was far from the first of the evening, and Sanger doubted it was the last.
He turned to Ballard, who had been sitting rather quietly in the boisterous club, nursing his beer and leaning back from the companionable group at the big table. “Cheer up, Frank. We won the war!” Sanger said.
“Yeah. I can’t believe it’s over,” said the CCA colonel. “Mostly over, anyway. Don’t you have a loose end stashed away in the basement somewhere?”
Sanger snorted. “Damn that smug bastard. Shitty thing is, y’know they won’t give him what he deserves!”
“I’d give it to him!” Smiggy snarled, his eyes and his voice suddenly clear. Then he slumped back over his beer, shaking his head dejectedly. “Wha’ could I do ’bout it? Nuthin’!”
Sanger thought about that a moment. It didn’t seem right, sending Himmler to some nice clean prison. He was distracted by Ballard asking him a question.
“So, Reid. Are you getting out?”
“Just as fast as I can,” Sanger pledged. “You?”
Ballard shrugged his shoulders, looked almost sheepish as he spoke. “I’ve been wondering if they might need me over in Japan. Reckon I’ll try to find out.”
“So, you’re leaving this man’s army, are you?” Sanger recognized Major Keegan’s voice, the nasal eastern accent grating on his nerves as usual. “Maybe go into a nice steady teaching job, perhaps? A little red schoolhouse out on the prairie, with you as the headmaster?”
Sanger looked up at the major, who had come up to the table unseen, and bit back the well of dislike rising within him. He turned to his mug, then felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Reid?”
It was General Cook, of Third Army intelligence—Sanger’s old, and Keegan’s current, boss. “Yes, hi, General. Wanna beer?”
“Hell, I’m going to take care of that for you, Colonel. But come with me, there’s some esteemed gentlemen that would like to have a word with you.”
Sanger rose, and found that the floor was a little unsteady beneath his feet. He was too surprised by the invitation to relish the look of resentment that flashed across Keegan’s features as Sanger followed the general through the crowded club.
The band was playing something jazzy, and the dance floor was alive with American officers and German women—fur-lines, the GIs had taken to calling them. Smoke hung like a stratus cloud under the dark beams of the huge room, a former rathskeller in the cabaret section of the city. General Cook led Sanger through double doors at the back of the room, into a smaller, more plush chamber. There were booths around the walls, and several large tables in the middle of the room. Most significant, the bartenders here wore ties.
Suddenly the night had become very starry, for Reid Sanger—there were generals everywhere. All the sections of the army HQ staff were represented, as were most of the divisions of Third Army by their CO, XO, or both. Sanger saw Bob Jackson and Henry Wakefield leaning back in a booth, sprawling out casually on either side of a table. Each of them was smoking a big cigar, and they waved cheerily as the colonel passed.
“Here we are.” Cook was leading him to the table in the center of the room. Patton and Rommel sat at opposite ends, with von Manteuffel and their top aides along the sides. General Cook pulled out his own chair, while Patton stood and extended his hand.
“Ah, Sanger, thanks for coming back. We’ve been talking about you!”
“Me, sir?” The general’s mood was cheerful, but the thought of all this brass attention still made Sanger a little squeamish.
A hearty hand clapped him on the shoulder and he turned to see that Rommel had come around to him. The field marshal gave him a zestful handshake. “Yes!” he said in German. “You know, you had a lot to do with making this whole thing work. Germans, Americans, learning to fight side by side. You deserve a lot of credit.”
“He’s right,” said Patton.
“Well, thank you sir. I’m honored, of course.” Sanger shook his head. “But it’s men like Ballard and Smiggs, guys who put their lives on the line every day, who won this war for us. Anything I contributed—”
“Don’t be modest,” countered Rommel, with an easy grin. “I remember the way you tore off after a column of SS panzers in the middle of the night.”
“Well, sir, I didn’t exactly catch them.”
The general and the field marshal both laughed. “It’s a good thing, too,” Patton said with a slap on the back. “It’s like a dog chasing after a car. What the hell would he do if he caught it? Come on, join us for some free booze.”
Sanger stayed for a drink—several, actually, since his glass magically stayed full. Finally he weaved back to the main room, only to encounter Keegan near the bar.
“Ah, a little brown-nosing never hurts,” suggested the major with an arched eyebrow. “Probably a good career move.”
“You shouldn’t have said that, Keegan,” Sanger said, enunciating carefully.
“And why not?” There was a thin, barely amused grin on the man’s lips.
Sanger’s right jab was a perfect strike, landing on that sculpted, pedigreed nose and crushin
g it flat. Keegan screamed and toppled over backward, both hands clutching his bleeding face. No one else paid much attention.
“That’s why,” said Sanger. He ambled back to his table. All in all, he felt pretty damned good.
EXCERPT FROM WAR’S FINAL FURY, BY PROFESSOR JARED GRUENWALD
The Berlin Armistice marked not so much the beginning of peace as the start of a new, colder kind of war. Stalin’s deliberate provocations in failing to withdraw to the agreed-upon positions were essentially ignored by the Western Allies, and when the new borders of Europe were drawn, that territory, once the heart of Prussia, was granted to Poland by the unilateral actions of the Soviet chairman.
But there is little doubt that Eisenhower’s gamble in ordering Berlin seized was responsible for Germany remaining essentially intact after the war. If the Soviets had advanced to the Elbe, as had been the original plan, it seems certain that Germany would have been divided into two halves, democratic in the west, communist in the east. This, of course, would have been similar to what happened to Czechoslovakia. It was partitioned into two halves and, within a few years, had broken into its two component parts: the Czech Republic, a democracy, and the People’s Republic of Slovakia, which was to become one of the staunchest communist regimes in the world.
As it was, the Soviets made significant territorial gains as a result of the war. In addition to the countries of Eastern Europe, already susceptible to Russian dominance, the territories that they had gained from Germany in the armistice of August 1944 fell inexorably under the Soviet shadow. In Greece, democratic movements were ruthlessly crushed, and Athens was transformed into a mighty Soviet naval base. The Russians tried to do the same thing in Norway, but there the factors of geography and perhaps the proximity of Britain served to dampen Stalin’s push. Though Norway was forced to accept a communist government, the country retained a level of independence unknown throughout the Soviet bloc—with the exception of the comparable arrangement established in Tito’s Yugoslavia.
All of this history, of course, pivoted on the remarkable events of July 1945. If the atomic bomb had not arrived on the scene at the exact moment that it did—or if the first attempted use of the weapon had failed—there is little doubt but that the Soviets would have rolled over the Third Army, and that the map of Europe we know today would have been considerably altered … .
EPILOGUE
16 JULY 1945 — 17 APRIL 1946
One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me. Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking away the children and bringing them up among us … . We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary; that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude to animals, will also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals.
I shall speak to you here with all frankness of a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people … . Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have stuck it out and at the same time—apart from exceptions caused by human weakness—to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and shall never be written.
—Heinrich Himmler
Speech to SS group leaders
Poznan, 4 October 1943
16 JULY 1945
REICHSTAG BUILDING, BERLIN, GERMANY, 1400 HOURS GMT
Rommel stuck his head into Müller’s office. “Colonel Müller? May I interrupt you for a minute?”
“Of course, sir,” the pudgy supply officer replied, standing up and accidentally knocking over a cup of pencils on his desk. Rommel sat down and waited for Müller to pick the pencils up and compose himself.
“I want to thank you again for all your exceptional work during these months. I’ve had to throw you from one impossible challenge into the next, and you’ve worked miracles.”
“You’re too kind, Field Marshal, I-I don’t know what to say.”
Rommel held up his hand. “You don’t have to say anything. That’s my job, and I’ll say it in proper military form shortly. In the meantime, though, I wanted to ask you for still another favor.”
“Of course, sir. Whatever I can do.”
“This one’s more personal than professional.”
“Either way, sir. What can I do?”
“It’s about our mutual friend, Günter von Reinhardt.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t know what he was going to do, you know. It was in the middle of Buchenwald, and I was having some difficulty in making sense out of the situation.” Rommel paused for a moment. “I’ve ordered men to their deaths before, not once but many times. I’m not afraid to do that. But von Reinhardt—”
“It had something to do with Goethe, sir—at least I think it did,” said Müller. “We had a long talk earlier the same day he talked with you, all about responsibility and guilt and actions.”
“I don’t think I quite understood him,” said Rommel.
“I’m not sure anyone did—including Günter himself,” Müller replied.
“Ah, if he were here, he could add just the quote to make it all clear. But as he is not here, then I will ask you a favor.” Rommel put a small box and an envelope on the table. “The box first.”
Müller opened it. It was a medal box, lined with white satin. His eyes widened when he saw what was inside—the blue and white ribbons of the Pour le Merite, Germany’s highest military decoration.
“I thought about this for a long time,” Rommel said. “This one in particular I don’t like to give out lightly. This and the letter are for von Reinhardt’s parents. I want you to locate them, give them these, and then arrange for a military funeral. I, of course, will attend, and I will expect attendance at state funeral levels. As you can see, I need a talented logistics officer to handle it.”
“Then I must put my very best man on the job,” said Müller. He smiled, then turned away so that Rommel could not see the liquid welling in his eyes.
20 JULY 1945
LUBYANKA SQUARE, MOSCOW, USSR, 1223 HOURS GMT
The Lubyanka Prison consists of the lower levels of the NKVD headquarters building in downtown Moscow. Krigoff knew where he was, although he was brought into the building in a sealed truck through an underground loading dock and was placed in a windowless cell. There was only one place, really, where he could be. What he did not know was when—it could be any time, day or night, for the cycle of day or night meant nothing here. And although he heard occasional screams, the tramping of marching boots, a scuffle or clash from time to time, nothing happened to him. No torture, no interrogation, no bullet in the head, nothing. He was in a bare cell with a bare bulb behind a wire cage, a steel bucket for use as a toilet, and a mat on which he could sit and sleep. At intervals—who could say how long?—a tray of food slid under the door. It was gray and unappetizing but hardly worse than military fare.
He could only think of people he’d met. Paulina. General Yeremko. General Petrovsky. Lieutenant Kraichin. General Benko. The chairman himself. His thoughts chased themselves around and around and around.
After some timeless period, marked only by a procession of meal trays and exchange of waste buckets, there came a rattling of keys at his cell door. He scrambled to his feet, excited at the thought of human company, terrified at the thought of human company. It was a guard. He carried in two folding chairs and set them up. Then he walked back into the hall and brought in a small folding table and placed it beside the two chairs. He left again without saying
a word.
Krigoff looked at the two chairs for a long time, wondering if he was supposed to sit in one. He walked around them, looked at them from all angles, then touched one, then the other, then the table. Experimentally, he sat in one, then the other. They were comfortable. After a while, though, he returned to sit on his mat.
There was a rattle of keys in the lock again. His heart pounding, Krigoff stood up once more. The door opened. It was another guard, who held open the door for a man who walked in.
It was Stalin. Stalin himself had come to see him.
“Comrade Chairman!” Krigoff breathed. He saluted. He had not forgotten his military discipline.
Stalin looked at Krigoff with an expression of friendly sympathy. “Ah, Alyosha. It’s very good to see you. I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult time. Come, sit down. Let me offer you a cigarette. Let’s talk.”
Krigoff took the proffered cigarette with trembling fingers and allowed Stalin to light it for him. The smoke felt good in his lungs; it calmed him almost at once. “Thank you, Comrade Chairman. It’s very good of you to come and visit me like this.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. For an old friend like you it’s the very least I can do.” Stalin patted Krigoff on the shoulder as he sat down. Krigoff looked at Stalin and felt himself on the verge of tears at the great man’s kindness toward him. “Now, now,” Stalin said in a soothing voice. “I want you to tell me everything, Alyosha. Tell me what happened.”
Slowly and haltingly at first, Krigoff began to tell Stalin the story of his role with Second Guards Tank Army—his battles with both Yeremko and Petrovsky, including the spitting incident, which made Stalin chuckle, and then the events surrounding the final battle for Berlin. He gave his honest impressions of the chaotic aerial battle, and his real notion that American tanks were attacking. He described Marshal Zhukov’s plan, even admitted that it would all be Krigoff’s fault if it failed. And then … he faltered again … he remembered that flash of light, Paulina blinded, leading her through what seemed like Hell until they reached a Soviet aid station. Stalin asked him questions from time to time, which Krigoff answered as completely as he could.
Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine) Page 69