Stalin's General (36 page)

The ruined Reichstag building was a massive, imposing structure in the center of Berlin. It was a mere shell, having been burned out in February 1933 shortly after Hitler came to power. The fire was supposedly started by a Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, and it was used by the Nazis as a pretext to impose a repressive regime on the country—the first step in establishing Hitler's dictatorship. Among
those tried for the alleged crime alongside Lubbe was a Bulgarian communist, Georgi Dimitrov, who later became the leader of the Communist International and a close confidant of Stalin's. Following an international protest campaign only Lubbe was convicted while Dimitrov was deported to the Soviet Union. From the Soviet point of view the Reichstag, as the British military historian Chris Bellamy put it, “had all the attributes needed for an iconic victory symbol.”
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On April 23 Stalin issued an order specifying the demarcation line between Konev's and Zhukov's two Fronts in the coming battle for inner Berlin. It bisected Berlin just south of the city center about 150 yards from the Reichstag building, which lay in Zhukov's designated zone. The race between Konev and Zhukov to claim the capture of Berlin was effectively over. Konev would share in the glory of capturing Hitler's capital but the palm of victory would go to Zhukov when his troops stormed the Reichstag.
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In the following week Konev's and Zhukov's troops fought their way toward the city center, street by street, building by building, much as the Germans had done in Stalingrad in 1942. One of the most common Soviet techniques was to fire their artillery directly at buildings, destroying them and their defenders. The demolition of Berlin begun by the RAF was completed by the Red Army. The battle culminated in the capture of the Reichstag building on April 30. That evening two soldiers from Zhukov's 3rd Shock Army raised the Soviet flag on top of the building. Later, the Soviet photographer Yevgeni Chaldei reenacted the scene with two other soldiers, aiming to create as iconic a picture of the Red Army's conquest of Berlin as the hoisting of the Stars and Stripes by U.S. troops over Iwo Jima two months earlier. But whereas the Americans suffered 25,000 casualties at Iwo Jima, Soviet losses during the Berlin operation numbered hundreds of thousands. It was a high price to pay but there is little doubt that the determination of Stalin, Zhukov, and Konev to take Berlin was shared by the rest of the Red Army.

The consolation for Konev was that it was his troops who met the American forces for the first time on April 25, the linkup taking place on the Elbe at Torgau, about seventy miles southwest of Berlin. The joyous event was reenacted for the newsreel cameras and celebrated by a massive artillery salute in Moscow.

On May 1 Stalin announced the capture of Berlin to the world: “The troops of the First Belorussian Front, supported by the troops of the First Ukrainian Front … have gained full control of Berlin, the capital of Germany—the centre of German imperialism and the hotbed of German aggression.” The next day the remaining German defenders of Berlin surrendered. By the end of the battle Soviet casualties during the Berlin operation exceeded 350,000 while the Germans lost half a million with another half a million taken prisoner by the Soviets. Among the casualties were the 125,000 German civilians who died, including 4,000 who committed suicide in April 1945 alone.

One of Zhukov's immediate concerns in taking control of Berlin was to verify Hitler's suicide. Like Stalin, Zhukov was skeptical that the Nazi dictator had killed himself and feared he might have escaped with his deputy, Martin Bormann. Zhukov went to the Imperial Chancellery to search for the burned bodies of Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, who had also committed suicide. He found nothing but was told that in Hitler's bunker were the bodies of Goebbels's six children, poisoned by their parents. “I must admit,” recalled Zhukov, “I had not the heart to go down and look at the children.”
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Only after an extensive investigation by a Soviet forensics team did Zhukov and Stalin reluctantly accept that Hitler had indeed killed himself.
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At the Reichstag Zhukov added his signature to the thousands of graffiti inscriptions made by Red Army soldiers on the columns at the entrance to the building. Zhukov's visit to the Reichstag and the Chancellery was filmed and the newsreel footage added to his renown as the top Soviet general. A few days later an even more famous moment was captured on film. On May 7 the German armed forces signed a capitulation agreement at Reims in France. But since only a relatively junior Soviet officer was present, Stalin insisted that this agreement was provisional and that Zhukov should sign a proper act of capitulation in Berlin. The ceremony took place in a villa in Karlshorst in eastern Berlin on May 8. The Americans were represented by General Carl Spaatz, commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces, the British by Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, and the French by the commander-in-chief of their army, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. Signing on behalf of Germany was Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
The actual signing of the document took place just after midnight on May 9—hence the annual celebration of Victory Day in Russia on this date. After the signing ceremony Zhukov congratulated everyone present. Then, he recalled, “incredible commotion broke out in the hall. Everyone was congratulating with one another and shaking hands. Many had tears of joy in their eyes. I was surrounded by my comrades in arms.” Afterward there was a reception that went on all night and ended in singing and dancing: “The Soviet generals were unrivalled as far as dancing went. Even I could not restrain myself and, remembering my youth, did the Russkaya dance.”
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On May 19 Zhukov returned to Moscow where he learned that Stalin had decided to appoint him commander of the Soviet occupation forces in Germany and to make him the Soviet representative to the Allied Control Council (ACC). During the war it had been decided to divide postwar Germany into American, British, French, and Soviet occupation zones. Berlin was also divided into occupation zones, even though it lay deep in eastern Germany, which was controlled by the Soviets. (See
Map 26
: Allied Occupation Zones in Germany
.) The ACC would be based in Berlin and coordinate the Allied occupation, oversee the implementation of common policies, and prepare the way for the eventual reunification of Germany after the country had been thoroughly demilitarized, denazified and democratized.

While in Moscow Zhukov attended a series of meetings in Stalin's Kremlin office along with Antonov, Shtemenko, and other senior officers. Further meetings were held at the end of June. The topic of discussion was the forthcoming Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

When Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 the Soviet Union remained neutral but Stalin promised to enter the war in the Far East as soon as possible. At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Stalin told President Roosevelt the Red Army would attack Japanese forces in Manchuria three months after Germany's surrender. In the event, that meant August 1945.

The designated commander of the Soviet invasion was Vasilevsky. The operation began on August 8. And within a few days Japan's Kwantung Army was defeated, suffering massive casualties, including 80,000 dead. The Red Army's attack coincided with the American atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was the dual shock
of these two sets of events that precipitated the Japanese surrender on August 14.

Zhukov was not involved in the Manchurian operation but he must have taken some satisfaction from the Red Army's stunning success and from the fact that one of the starting positions of the Soviet invasion was Khalkhin-Gol—the scene of his triumph in August 1939.
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Zhukov was appointed to his new post in Germany on May 30. On June 9 he held a press conference in the German capital at which he replied to verbal as well as written questions from Soviet and foreign correspondents. He was particularly expansive about the battle for Berlin, emphasizing the careful preparation of the Soviet assault and the audacity of the opening night bombardment designed to catch the Germans unawares. Asked about the comparison between the battles of Berlin and Moscow, Zhukov pointed out that at Moscow the Soviets had launched a major counteroffensive as well as successfully defended the city. Asked about Khalkhin-Gol and the comparison between German and Japanese soldiers, Zhukov tactfully replied that the Germans were no longer enemies but that he thought they were technically superior to the Japanese he had fought in 1939. It was an impressive performance by Zhukov, notable for the absence of the usual panegyric to Stalin.
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Among those in attendance was Alexander Werth, the
Sunday Times
correspondent in Moscow during the war. “With Zhukov, one felt in the presence of a very great man,” remembered Werth. “But his manner was simple, and full of bonhomie.” Werth also noted that while Zhukov paid tribute to Stalin's military leadership he also “had a very high opinion of himself and, with a curious mixture of modesty and almost boyish boastfulness, he tended to take credit for practically
all
the decisive victories the Red Army had won.”
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Zhukov's conceit was understandable given the immense role he had played in winning the Soviet-German war—the greatest clash of arms in history. Zhukov's sense of self-importance must have been further boosted by Stalin's decision to allow him to take the salute at the great Victory Parade in Red Square.

In the middle of June Zhukov returned to Moscow to receive his third award of Hero of the Soviet Union. Around June 18 or 19 Stalin summoned him to his dacha and asked him if he remembered how to ride a horse.
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When Zhukov answered in the affirmative Stalin informed him that he would take the salute while Rokossovsky would command the parade. Zhukov demurred, suggesting that the supreme commander should take the salute himself but Stalin said he was too old to review parades.
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The next day Zhukov went to the Central Airfield in Moscow where training for the parade was taking place. There he met Stalin's son Vasily, an air force officer, who told him his father had wanted to take the salute himself but had fallen off the horse during a practice—the same horse that Zhukov was to ride. This story appeared in the post-Soviet edition of Zhukov's memoirs and it has to be said that Vasily—who had drink and discipline problems and did not get on well with his father—was not the most reliable witness. Moreover, there is no evidence that Stalin had ever learned to ride.
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The horse Zhukov rode at the parade was a magnificent white Arabian called Tspeki recommended by Marshal Budenny, Zhukov's old cavalry boss from the 1930s. The parade took place on June 24. As the Kremlin clock struck 10:00
A.M
. Zhukov and his escort rode into Red Square. Awaiting them were columns of combined regiments representing all the Fronts and branches of the Soviet armed forces. At the head of each column were many of the generals and marshals with whom Zhukov had served during the war, including Vasilevsky, Konev, Meretskov, Tolbukhin, Bagramyan, and Yeremenko. The Victory Parade was a supreme moment of triumph for Zhukov but the glory was shared by the rest of the members of the Soviet High Command, not least Stalin their commander-in-chief. The Soviet dictator watched the proceedings from the rostrum above Lenin's mausoleum and received the laurels of the 200 captured Nazi banners piled against the Kremlin wall by the parading troops.

After the parade a reception was held in the Kremlin for 2,500 generals and officers. Stalin's toast at the reception may have surprised the assembled elite of the Soviet armed forces. When he raised his glass it was not to his generals but to the millions of “little people,” the cogs in the great state machine, upon whom he and his marshals had
depended to win the war. Four days later Stalin was proclaimed Generalissimo—the superlative general. The message to Zhukov and the High Command could not be clearer: they could bask in the glory of victory, but Stalin was still the boss.

Because the Moscow Victory Parade was such a success the Soviets decided to hold a similar event in Berlin. The parade took place on September 7 and once again Zhukov took the salute. Zhukov did not impress the senior American general present, George Patton, not unknown to be irascible himself. “He was in full-dress uniform much like comic opera and covered with medals,” he wrote to his wife. “He is short, rather fat, and has a prehensile chin like an ape but good, blue eyes.” It was a pity Patton, a former cavalryman, did not see Zhukov ride at the Victory Parade in Moscow. He might have been more impressed.
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Another assignment for Zhukov was hosting the Potsdam summit of Stalin, Churchill, and Harry Truman, the new president of the United States, succeeding Roosevelt, who had died in office in April 1945. In summer 1945 hopes were still high that the wartime Grand Alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States would continue to collaborate and construct a peaceful and prosperous postwar order. The conference venue was the Cecilienhof Palace, one of the few large buildings left intact in the Greater Berlin area. Stalin arrived in Berlin by train on July 16, 1945. Unlike Churchill and Truman he evinced no interest in touring the ruins of the city and ordered Zhukov to receive him without ceremony. But Stalin was in a good mood, Zhukov recalled, as well he might be on the eve of a summit in the former capital of Hitler's Germany with the leaders of the two other great victor states of the Second World War.