Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II

by Nicholas Best

  But the partisans were just village boys, no match for the SS. The Wehrmacht were a better bet. One of the German Prominente, himself a Wehrmacht officer, had telephoned Wehrmacht headquarters at Bolzano during the night, outlining the situation and asking to be rescued. Alarmed at the thought of important prisoners being murdered on his watch at this juncture of the war, General von Vietinghoff had just sent a company of men to Villabassa to take over from the SS and make sure nobody got hurt.

  Unfortunately, there were only fifteen of them when they arrived, not nearly enough for the task. They were led by a very junior officer reluctant to confront the SS. Nevertheless, Best and Bogislaw von Bonin, the prisoner who had telephoned the Wehrmacht, told the young man to set up his machine guns in the square and point them toward the SS truck. The officer complied with great reluctance. Then Best and von Bonin walked over to the SS and ordered them to throw down their weapons. To their amazement, the SS agreed at once. The Prominente were still far from free, but they were no longer in immediate danger of being shot down in cold blood.

  PART THREE

  MONDAY, APRIL 30, 1945

  10

  THE UNITED NATIONS

  WINSTON CHURCHILL HAD SPENT THE WEEKEND at Chequers, the British prime minister’s official country house just outside London. He had yet to hear the full story about Dachau, but he had already heard the worst about Belsen and Buchenwald. He had ordered that all such atrocities were to be fully investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice without delay. Like the Americans at Dachau, Churchill saw no reason why the guilty shouldn’t be put up against a wall and shot in due course, punished to the full extent of the law for what they had done.

  He had been watching a film the previous night when news had come through of the German surrender in Italy. Churchill had also learned of Mussolini’s death, which he had announced to his house guests with the words “Ah, the bloody beast is dead.”1 He had immediately dictated a telegram about the surrender to Stalin, and another to Field Marshal Alexander, congratulating him and U.S. general Mark Clark on their great achievement. He had stayed up for hours afterward, chatting happily with his staff and enjoying the news from Italy. He hadn’t finally been persuaded to go to bed until three o’clock that morning.

  It was getting on for midday when he surfaced again. The weekend papers had been full of good news about the war: “Himmler Offers Unconditional Surrender,” “Himmler Gives Hitler Twenty Four Hours To Live,” “Himmler Given Till Tuesday to Surrender.” The Monday papers were equally cheerful, relishing the death of Mussolini and talking of victory in Europe at any moment. Churchill read them all in bed, puffing on the first of many cigars as he pushed his breakfast tray away and summoned Marian Holmes, his secretary, to begin the day’s work. It was his habit to dictate to her in bed, wearing only a bedjacket that all too often revealed more of his rear end than she cared to see.

  They were returning to London that afternoon, but Churchill had much to do first: a mountain of briefings to read and cables to pore over before he even got up. He had had his first conversation with the new American president a few days earlier, talking to Harry Truman over the crackly transatlantic line. They had got on well, but Churchill remained unsure of Truman’s position over the situation in central Europe. He wondered if the new man in the White House fully understood the danger from the Russians, who were threatening to impose an iron curtain across Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other countries recently liberated from the Nazis. If they weren’t stopped in their tracks, the Russians would simply be substituting one totalitarian regime for another. The American army was in the right place to stop them, but Churchill had his suspicions that the new people in Washington didn’t really understand the problem and weren’t alive to the threat. If an iron curtain were to descend across Europe when the music stopped, then the further east, the better. The Russians were perfectly capable of annexing Denmark, if the British army didn’t get there first.

  Sitting up in bed, puffing on his cigar and spilling ash all over his bedjacket, Churchill began to dictate to Marian. Among the many telegrams he sent out that morning was one to Truman about the Communist threat in Europe:

  Prime Minister to President Truman.

  There can be little doubt that the liberation of Prague and as much as possible of the territory of Western Czechoslovakia by your forces might make the whole difference to the post-war situation in Czechoslovakia, and might well influence that in nearby countries. On the other hand, if the Western Allies play no significant part in Czechoslovakian liberation that country will go the way of Yugoslavia.

  Of course, such a move by Eisenhower must not interfere with his main operations against the Germans, but I think the highly important political consideration mentioned above should be brought to his attention …2

  And so on, for the rest of the morning. Churchill worked for hours, still spilling ash everywhere. He was so absorbed at one stage that he failed to smell any burning or notice the smoke arising from the collar of his jacket. Marian was wondering whether to point it out to him when John Peck, another of his secretaries, came in.

  “You’re on fire, sir,” Peck said at once. “May I put you out?”

  “Yes, do,” said Churchill.3

  The smoke was extinguished. The work went on. When they got back to Downing Street that night, it was reported that the red dispatch box containing Churchill’s official papers had been left by Peck in a “shocking mess.”

  * * *

  ACROSS THE Atlantic, the new president of the United States was still feeling his way into the job. After just eighteen days in office, following the unexpected death of Franklin Roosevelt, former vice president Harry Truman was working every bit as hard as Churchill, but with far more to learn. He was putting in a full day at the Oval Office every day, then reading a stack of papers several feet high every evening, thirty thousand words or more of official text to be studied and absorbed before he could go to bed. Under constant pressure to make immediate decisions, often of crucial importance, Truman felt as if he had already lived through several lifetimes since taking his country’s highest office.

  He had yet to move in to the White House. His first thoughts had been for Eleanor, Roosevelt’s widow, whose home it had been for the past twelve years. Truman had told her to take all the time she needed before moving out. He had been happy to remain in his own apartment at first, only to be forced out when his new security arrangements caused problems for the other tenants. He was living now in Blair House, the president’s official guest house, across the road from the White House. He was taking a briefcase of papers there every night until Eleanor Roosevelt completed her packing and was ready to vacate the premises for him.

  As Churchill had surmised, Truman knew little of foreign affairs and had admitted as much to his advisers. Yet he was a shrewd man, far more erudite than his detractors imagined, ready and willing to learn. He understood the threat from the Russians well enough and passed Churchill’s telegram about Prague on to his generals as soon as he received it. He also shared Churchill’s horror at Belsen and Buchenwald and had just given orders for full cooperation with Britain and the Soviet Union in the hunting down of Nazi war criminals. But he disagreed with the other Allies on how to deal with them. The British were half-inclined to support the Russians in executing Hitler and his gang out of hand, without the bother of a trial first. Truman remained adamant that there had to be due process, a public examination of the Nazis’ guilt, albeit “as short and expeditious as possible.”

  He had been in office only a few hours when he had had his first lesson in the awesome responsibilities of a president. Summoned to the White House on the afternoon of April 12, he had learned of Roosevelt’s death from Eleanor Roosevelt in her study. Before he knew it, a Bible had been thrust into his hand and the chief justice was swearing him in as the United States’ new chief executive. That evening, while Truman was still reeling, Secretary of War Harry Stimson had taken him aside and
told him something so secret about the U.S. military capabilities that it was for the president’s ears only. Even as vice president, Truman had not been allowed to know. But all that had changed, now that Truman was in the driver’s seat himself.

  The United States had a new weapon, a weapon such as no country had ever had before. It was a bomb of unimaginable power, so immense that a single explosion would be enough to destroy a whole city, if not more. Research was still continuing, but the project was very close to fruition. The scientists working on it were convinced that they would be able to detonate such a bomb within a few months at the latest. After that, if the test was successful, whoever had the bomb would also have the world in the palm of their hands.

  Not everyone shared their confidence. Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, was one of many who hated the idea of such a weapon and was certain it would never work. “That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done,” he had warned Truman. “The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” But the scientists were equally adamant that it would. And that the effects could be controlled when it did.

  As to what to do with this new wonder weapon, Truman had as yet no idea. A bomb of such power had only limited uses. It would have come in handy over Germany, but that war had been won now, and most of Germany’s cities had already been knocked flat. No doubt the military would find a use for the bomb in due course, after all the money that had been spent developing it. They would surely tell Truman when they had.

  Until then, he had people to see that Monday morning, the governors of Maryland, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island; and new officials to swear in that afternoon, the federal loan administrator, the chief administrative assistant, the U.S. representative on the Allied Reparations Commission—a constant stream of visitors to the Oval Office. They were calling on him at the rate of one every fifteen minutes for much of the day, all wanting to have their photographs taken with the new president before they left. The pressure was so permanent, so unrelenting, that Truman wondered if it was ever going to end. But at least the news from Europe was good, with Mussolini down and Hitler certain to follow within a day or two.

  * * *

  IN SAN Francisco, about as far removed from the war in Europe as it was from that in the Pacific, delegates from forty-six countries were meeting to draw up a charter for the United Nations, the new world council that was to replace the old League of Nations once the war was over. The new council was the brainchild of Roosevelt and Churchill, who had dreamed it up soon after Pearl Harbor. One of Harry Truman’s first actions as president had been to confirm that the conference would go ahead as planned, even though the chief architect was no longer there to cheer it on.

  The conference had begun on April 25 and was scheduled to last for two months. It had been opened by Truman in a radio address from the White House and was being held at a variety of venues across San Francisco: the War Memorial Opera House for large gatherings, and a mixture of hotel suites and conference rooms for smaller meetings, as twelve hundred delegates from every corner of the free world formed subcommittees and unofficial cabals to discuss their own particular areas of concern. With hundreds of newspaper reporters and lobbyists in attendance, press photographers popping their flashbulbs, party girls prowling the corridors, and sightseers crowding the streets, the city of San Francisco had never seen anything quite like it.

  Eliahu Elath, a lobbyist for Zionism, was reminded of New York’s Times Square as he watched men and women of every race and creed thronging the opera house. Jan Smuts’s son thought it:

  the most cosmopolitan medley of mixed humanity the world had ever seen; there were the Whites of Western Europe; there were the Latins and mixed extractions of the twenty South American states; there were the Negroes of Liberia, the Mongolians of the East, the Arab types of Egypt and the Fuzzy-Wuzzies of Abyssinia; there was Bedouin-like Prince Feisal of Saudi Arabia with his quaint head-dress. A member of Feisal’s delegation asked the manager of the Fairmont Hotel if he could buy one of the quaint Japanese lift girls to take home with him. He seemed surprised when told that the customs of this country forbade it.4

  Smuts was accompanying his father, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, who was representing South Africa at the conference. The old man was one of the most senior figures at the gathering, a veteran of the Versailles peace conference of 1919. Smuts had been a reluctant signatory to the 1919 treaty, arguing that the terms imposed on Germany after the Great War were too harsh and certain to cause trouble in the future. He had been overruled by Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Woodrow Wilson, each with his own gallery to play to back home. But the terms had indeed been too onerous. The rapid collapse of Germany’s economy under the weight of the reparation terms had been followed by the rise of Nazism, while Smuts looked on in despair. It had given him no pleasure at all to be proven right.

  But the San Francisco conference was not about punishing the Germans again. The delegates were looking to the future this time, planning ahead for a new and better world in a time of peace. Smuts had been given the task of drawing up the preamble to the UN charter. With the help of a committee, he was working on a draft that called on the nations of the free world “to prevent a recurrence of the fratricidal strife which twice in our generation has brought untold sorrow and loss upon mankind, and to re-establish faith in fundamental human rights, in the sanctity and ultimate value of human personality, in the equal rights of men and women of nations large and small, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”5 The draft spoke of tolerance, peace, and international machinery for the promotion of economic and social advancement. Its tone was lofty, but Smuts was pleased with it so far, although he still had more work to do on the wording before the final version could be presented to the delegates for their approval.

  He was less optimistic about the rest of the conference. The meeting was still only in its first week, but already the proceedings were becoming bogged down in a morass of committees, procedural wrangles, walkouts, resolutions, and counterresolutions, all the bureaucracy and jockeying for position of an international jamboree with one eye on its audience at home and another on opinion abroad. Part of the trouble was the lack of dominating personalities in San Francisco. Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George had all been powerful figures at Versailles. They had never allowed the proceedings to slip out of their control, but their successors in San Francisco were pygmies by comparison. There was no one of any great stature to lead the way. Smuts himself was as big a figure as any. He had been appointed president of the General Assembly, but he had just turned seventy-five and was too old to carry the conference on his own. It needed younger men to grab hold of the proceedings and steer them successfully in the right direction.

  * * *

  SMUTS WAS NOT ALONE in his distaste for the proceedings. Ed Stettinius for the United States and Anthony Eden for Great Britain were equally dismayed, watching through gritted teeth as the delegates wrangled interminably over minor concerns such as seating arrangements, instead of turning their attention to more important matters. The issue that Monday morning was whether the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Argentina should have a seat at a conference of free nations: whether it should be formally invited to attend, or merely given permission to participate as an observer. The other nineteen countries of Latin America were agreed that if Argentina couldn’t have a seat, then neither should the Soviet Union’s two satellite republics, Byelorussia and the Ukraine. But the Soviet Union was adamant that its seats weren’t up for discussion. And if Argentina had a seat at the table, then why shouldn’t Poland have one, too, even though the Russians had installed a puppet regime in Warsaw and had no intention of allowing free and fair elections?

  The arguments would run and run. Much of the lobbying went on in private as the diplomats pursued agreements behind closed doors. Ed Stettinius was based in the penthouse suite at the Fairmont. The U.S. delegation met there every day to confer with their opposite n
umbers from Britain, China, France, and the Soviet Union. When he wasn’t in conference, Stettinius was constantly on the phone to Truman, Eden, Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko, and others, consulting some, advising the rest, always trying to move the process forward. Eden, too, was always either on the phone or deciphering telegrams from Churchill, back at home, or talking to diplomats in quiet corners. It was a tedious, mind-numbing, soul-destroying business, something that nobody enjoyed, not even the career diplomats and professional lobbyists whose lifeblood it was. Yet, for all that it was a talking shop of the worst kind, the United Nations conference had one great, incontrovertible, and undeniable factor in its favor. It was better than war.

  * * *

  THE RUSSIAN DELEGATION was led by foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. He was based at the Saint Francis Hotel, where he had been besieged by autograph-hunting bobby-soxers on his arrival from the airport. The Russians had done more than anyone to stop the German army in its tracks, and the free world was grateful. But the goodwill of the war years was rapidly dissolving as Communists and capitalists came together in San Francisco and failed lamentably to iron out their differences. Wartime cooperation had given way to paranoia and distrust as the Russians squared up to the Western Allies and made it clear that the Anglo-American view of Europe in a postwar world was radically different from what the Soviets had in mind.

  The Russians wanted control of all the countries along their European borders: Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and any other nations they could lay their hands on, a vast cordon sanitaire between their own borders and any further invasion from the west. After all they had suffered since 1941, they would settle for nothing less. They remained deaf to the objections of the Western Allies, whom they suspected of seeking to bring those countries into their own domain in order to make trouble for the Communists in due course. To the victor, the spoils, in the Russians’ view. They wouldn’t budge an inch.