The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02]

by David L. Robbins

  “This one here. Know what it says? It’s from Ambassador Harriman. He’s furious at the way the Reds are treating American POWs rescued from German camps. Says they’re being beaten and held against their will as spies. The Reds aren’t returning them to us. Harriman wants me to climb on Joe’s back about it, take some retaliatory steps. Know what I’m going to do, Grace?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Nothing.”

  Grace Tully’s face waits for its cue. Roosevelt watches her to gauge but she reveals no clue what she thinks until he asks, “Want to know why?”

  Another tap, this one with the middle finger, a crisp knock on the table.

  “Because of this one. Right here. Molotov’s not coming to the first meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco next month. Stalin’s sending Gromyko. Gromyko. When every participating nation is sending their top foreign minister, the Reds are giving us Gromyko, an ambassador. What the hell kind of signal does that send to the world about how much importance the Reds put on this first meeting? This is a slap, Grace. A slap in the face of the countries who supported Stalin during the whole war. A slap at me, personally. Call me a liar. All right, I’ve been called worse. Stalin wants to bully some American soldiers. Well, for now we can swallow that, I’m sure those boys have seen worse too. But the United Nations. Grace, it’s the only single answer. All these other issues are nothing compared to it. The UN is the place everything’ll get sorted out. Stalin wants to forget every agreement we made at Teheran and Yalta. Fine. But you just let me get him to the table at the UN, with the world at my back. Then we’ll see.”

  Roosevelt chews on his lower lip. He wags his head.

  “But this Stalin is something else. He’s . . . I’ll tell you, Grace. I’m not so sure Winston hasn’t been right all this time. About us not being able to do business with the Soviets. With Joe, in particular.”

  Grace Tully’s face falls.

  “No,” the President says, “I’m not sure anymore at all.”

  She sees something on his face. Her expression becomes vivid and broken-hearted.

  “Yes, Grace,” says Roosevelt. She is his mirror, his heartbreak. “That’s right. That’s all too damn right.”

  With both hands he sweeps the papers together into a ball of litter. He hands them like trash to Grace Tully.

  “Take ‘em.”

  The secretary is jolted, she stands to accept the pages. Several folders and sheets slip from her grasp. Roosevelt watches her struggle to make order from what he has handed her, he does nothing to help. The train shudders coming into the station. Grace Tully stumbles forward and has to put a hand to the tabletop to catch herself. A few more pages scatter.

  The train is at the station now. The secretary sits across from the President and takes a deep breath for composure. She begins to match each page with its mates and proper folder. Roosevelt looks away from her patient labor. More little American flags flutter, and hats are in the air outside the window. A bad brass band made up of Warm Springs locals plays “Hail to the Chief.”

  Yes, he thinks, after all he’s done for Stalin. After all he’s given. Money, materiel, armaments, planes, ships. Political concession after concession. He’s taken pieces out of Churchill and England and tossed them to the Russian bear. He’s ignored his own advisers. He’s backed down over Poland, gone deaf and dumb over the rest of eastern Europe. He’ll end up giving Stalin Berlin. Christ, what does it take to satisfy that man’s appetite?

  The President makes a fist and brings it down. The sound on the table he creates is poor, barely a dropping thud. He can’t even get Grace Tully to look up at him in surprise.

  One bit of temper is all Roosevelt can muster. Now he admires Grace’s calm assembly of his papers. Piece it all back together. Haven’t got the energy like Churchill to be shocked and dismayed so often, to fight every battle. Got to fight the big ones, win them. The United Nations. The Grand Alliance. Peace in the world. Replace war with prosperity. Replace old rivalries with trust. He’s got to save his powers for these. Who cares if Stalin says he’s a shit-heel?

  There’s still time to set it right.

  Then he can quit.

  Outside on the platform, the faulty strains of the presidential song stop.

  For now, take a firm tone, certainly. Tell Stalin this is unacceptable. Work with Winston, get the words perfect, put forth a united Anglo-American position.

  Careful, though. Don’t rock the boat. Too close to the finish line. This is natural, just like the train: draw close to the station, slow down, and the ride gets fidgety. Don’t overreact. Winston’s going to want a blunt and forceful response. Got to stay measured. Tolerant.

  But good God.

  What devil did we make a deal with?

  “Grace, leave it.” He waves an impatient hand. “Go get Mike. Tell him I’m ready.”

  The secretary smiles and stands, clutching to her what papers she has arranged. She pauses in front of Roosevelt, looks down on him. He wants to make some conciliation for his tone but he doesn’t, he shuts his eyes and hears her tread away.

  His legs are dead to him, from the waist down he is a cemetery. Nothing resides in them but memory and melancholy. This is where the sadness rises, like mist, from his silent legs.

  He expects to see her first. Eleanor lives here in the sadness—in the manner of some plant that prefers shade. She steps forward. This time she wears her wedding gown. She waves at him. Next, each of his children, born fresh and squalling, appears and wafts to him. The mist swirls; he knows it’s blood throbbing in his head but outside his closed eyes he lifts a real hand to stroke their cheeks. What is this, a podium? Yes, he stands solidly even on braces, for his inauguration as Governor of New York, then as President of the United States, his mother always beside him.

  Roosevelt opens his eyes to the coziness of his train car office. He squeezes the padded arms on his wheelchair.

  Stalin can’t have those things, he thinks. Not his children or his wife or mother. Stalin can’t take away the millions of votes, the conventions and cheers. These are Roosevelt’s life, damn it, his life. They’re past Stalin’s reach.

  But Roosevelt’s dream. His legacy for the world. Stalin has the power to hold it hostage, torture it and kill it.

  Murder a man’s dream, and what was his life for?

  A knock comes at the door. Roosevelt thinks his dream may be gone, there may not be time after all. He folds his hands in his lap. The throb remains in his head, though the greater pain is in his heart.

  Mike Reilly, a burly Secret Service agent, pushes open the door with caution.

  “Mr. President? Grace says you’re ready to go, sir.”

  Roosevelt looks at the strong man without envy, without even the sense of competition he always has, that he’ll show these young bucks he’s still got some moxie left.

  “Mike” is all he says.

  Reilly pulls the wheelchair back from the desk and pushes the President forward to the door. In the past, Roosevelt would wrap his arms around the agent’s shoulders and pull himself into the man’s arms to be carried down the steps and put into the waiting limousine. Now he is vague and limp. Reilly grunts lifting him .

  “Sorry, Mike,” Roosevelt says.

  The agent grins big, negotiating the train steps. He whispers, “It’s okay, boss.”

  On the platform behind a satin cord and more Secret Service men, a small crowd of well-wishers waits. They greet Roosevelt with a cheer and more undulating flags and signs. A few boys are in uniform, one of them is on crutches. The limo door is open.

  Sagging in Mike Reilly’s arms, Roosevelt lifts his face to the gathered.

  The crowd goes hushed.

  ~ * ~

  * * *

  March 30, 1945, 4:15 p.m.

  Prime Minister’s residence at Chequers

  Buckinghamshire, England

  churchill sits in a bank of smoke and vapor. he rages above the roiled water like a great storm cloud. He is nak
ed, white, and puffy.

  “Jock!” he shouts with the space left to his mouth around the cigar. “For the love of God, man! Jock!”

  The secretary’s voice approaches outside the door. “Here, here, here, Prime Minister. Here.”

  The bathroom door opens, some steam escapes into the cooler hall. Jock Colville enters balancing a silver tray and a tall glass of Caucasian champagne.

  Soothingly, he says, “Here, Prime Minister.”

  Churchill grabs for the glass. He yanks the stogie from his mouth, gripping it between two fingers, the champagne glass is tipped in its place. Then he pops the cigar back in.

  Jock Colville receives the empty glass. He turns to leave.

  Churchill stops him.

  “This!” The Prime Minister brandishes a sheet of paper from the special oak tabletop stretched across his tub. The papers littering it are held down by Churchill’s fat pocket watch, nicknamed by his daughter “the Turnip.”

  “This is what did it, Jock. One word too many from that damned Montgomery! He couldn’t let it alone, couldn’t just go about his business. No!”

  He wants Colville to stay and heed. The secretary sees this. Churchill waits while Colville sets the tray aside and folds to the wooden bench placed in the bathroom for secretaries. Colville is familiar with the telegram Churchill wields, as he is with all the documents curling in the damp above the bathwater. But certain things by their nature deserve to be shouted about. Churchill has served this function publicly in England for fifty years.

  “The man’s a braggart and a fool. How he never got himself shot as such is something I do not understand!”

  Churchill waves a dripping arm. “He’s got his orders from Eisenhower. Mop up the Ruhr pocket before any attempt to head east. Right! Clear enough. Then his army starts making progress. Good! Bully! The Hun is collapsing. Marvelous! But what does Monty do? Does the good Field Marshal just go about his job and keep his head down? Does he keep his eyes on the prize and his lips tight?”

  Colville shakes his head. “No.”

  Churchill pulls up short and scowls. His secretary should know better than to assist in the Prime Minister’s storytelling.

  “No.” Churchill draws the word out, like a lesson. He pauses, takes another deep drag on the cigar. As punishment, he might not continue the tale.

  Too much momentum and aggravation push him past the point of petty silence.

  “No! By God, he sends Ike this. This!” Churchill rattles the page once, then shoves it away from his eyes to read without glasses:

  i have ordered ninth and second armies armored and mobile forces forward at once to get through to the elbe with utmost speed and drive. the situation looks good and events should begin to move rapidly in a few days.

  my tactical headquarters move to northwest op bonninghardt on thursday, march 29. thereafter . . . my hq will move to wese-münster-widenbruck-herford-Hannover, thence by autobahn to berlin, I hope.

  Churchill swings his cheroot about as though fighting off a wasp.

  “Thence to Berlin. For God’s sake, why not just wave a red flag in front of a bull?”

  Colville says, “Eisenhower doesn’t want an Englishman in Berlin.”

  “No!” Churchill jerks with the word, water spills over the lip of the tub. Colville stands to avoid getting his pants wet.

  “He and Roosevelt want a damn Russian in Berlin, and if this keeps up that’s what we’re all going to get!”

  “Quite.” Colville picks up the tray and drained glass. “Excuse me, Prime Minister.” The secretary retreats and closes the door behind him. Churchill champs on the cigar. He leans back against the warm porcelain of the tub. Colville, he thinks; the man keeps his nerve when someone gets blown up next to him but won’t stay in the bathroom with a little temper. Hell with it.

  Churchill sets Montgomery’s telegram on the table with the other papers. He sighs and glances down at his bare chest. His skin is blushed from the hot water and his anger. The pocket watch ticks, the water stills and steams.

  Monty and Eisenhower.

  Things have gotten so rotten between the two, they don’t even talk anymore, just exchange curt cables. Monty completely misjudged the situation with this last little note. Eisenhower paid him back in spades.

  Churchill fingers the sheets before him. His head is too low, sunk against the back of the tub, to see which one is which. He shoves his legs under him to push higher. There it is. Not much as turning points go, just a thin sheet. But history’s not always written in the blood of rolling heads. Paper is the equal to steel as the stuff of momentous events.

  There. Supreme Commander Allied Forces telegram number 252.

  SCAF 252. Sent directly from General Eisenhower to Marshal Stalin.

  “How dare he,” mutters Churchill, sliding back into the water with a reptilian malice. “How bloody dare he.”

  A direct communication between a military leader and a foreign head of state. Outside the bounds. Beyond the General’s authority. Damned awkward. Even worse, Eisenhower deliberately circumvented all proper channels, neglecting to first contact anyone on the Combined Chiefs of Staff or even a single soul in the U.S. or British governments. London only found out about it secondhand, through copies distributed “for information.” Eisenhower didn’t even consult his own British chief deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Tedder. He just charged ahead and reached out to Joe Stalin.

  Churchill chews the nub of his cigar, mulling over the words on Ike’s cable:

  my immediate operations are designed to encircle and destroy the enemy defending the ruhr. i estimate this phase will end late in april or even earlier, and my next task will be to divide the enemy forces by joining hands with your forces. the best axis on which to effect this junction would be erfurt-leipzig-dresden. i believe this is the area to which main german government departments are being moved. it is along this axis that i propose to make my main effort.

  Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden?

  For what?

  To head off the mythical Southern Redoubt? Nazis in the Alps? Foolishness, backed by scraps of evidence. These are German government workers on the move, not armed combatants. It’s a wild-goose chase if ever there was one.

  Without advising anyone, without a by-your-leave, Eisenhower has changed longstanding, mutually agreed-upon plans. Instead of making for Berlin across Germany’s northern plains with Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army, which has been specially reinforced for the task, Eisenhower has shifted the thrust of the offensive to Bradley through the middle, one hundred miles south of Berlin!

  This is a dangerous incursion into global and political policy, domains that are strictly cordoned off for Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. Off-limits to Eisenhower, a military leader.

  By gad, there’s going to be dancing in Moscow.

  How can the Americans be so muddleheaded? If Berlin is left to the Russians, there’ll be absolutely no dealing with them after the war. The Soviets are poised to enter Vienna next and overrun Austria. Stalin is already beginning to feel the Red Army has done everything to win the war, that the Western Allies have accomplished little but divert some German divisions away from the Eastern Front. With Eisenhower’s telegram, a difficult postwar situation in Europe has become almost untenable. At this late juncture the choice of military targets may well determine the political future of European democracy Why can’t Roosevelt see this? Is he so taken by his desire to be gentle with the Reds that he’s forgone any possibility of ever being firm with them?

  There’s no document to prove it, but Churchill does not question that Eisenhower’s cable to Stalin is just one more expression of Roosevelt’s appeasement of Stalin. More of Uncle Sam’s unsightly and dangerous courtship of Uncle Joe. Of course Eisenhower knows Roosevelt’s political agenda as well as anyone. George Marshall, Roosevelt, Ike. They’re all on the same bloody page. And that page says, Go ahead, Stalin. Take Berlin. Take whatever you like.

  Churchill sinks lower into the water until
his chin is just above it. He blows smoke across the surface, watching it shove the steam out of the way.

  This couldn’t come at a worse time. In the nastiest sort of language Stalin is accusing the West of negotiating behind his back with the Germans in Switzerland. Molotov is being withheld from the UN’s first assembly in San Francisco. Poland is being dismembered right before our eyes, the rest of eastern Europe is being suffocated. Never before in the history of mankind have two strong nations needed more to present a concerted and solid front to a third.

  And Eisenhower picks this critical time—when the war is in its final stages, when historic opportunity and chaos are at their peak—to cause the deepest rupture between England and the U.S. since the American Revolution.