Armageddon (57 page)

“It’s going to be a funny feeling to see a city not wrecked by bombs ... and look at people who aren’t hungry.”

“I reckon so.”

“What about you, Bless?”

“My discharge should be coming up in three or four months.”

“I’ll be glad when you get out of here. This city is like standing over a trap door waiting for the Russians to pull the lever.”

“We all want to go home,” Bless said. “That’s our national anthem.”

“We can’t all be made like the major.”

“Reckon not. The Lord put his finger on certain people to do the dirty work for the rest of us.”

“Don’t be so sure it’s out of love. He hates the Germans enough to stay here for a century so long as they’re suffering.”

“I wouldn’t say that, Bo.”

“Anyhow, it’s time to go in and say good-by to him.”

Shenandoah Blessing watched Bo’s train disappear from sight and hearing. He wheeled his jeep from trackside and drove back toward Headquarters. Bo felt guilty, but no one could blame him for wanting home, Blessing thought. Hell, everyone who could was pulling out these days.

They had offered him captain’s bars to remain in Berlin two more years. Small compensation for the losing battle being fought. Lil and his kids hungered for him and he for them.

Bless knew he was pushing forty-five. The law of the land said that Hook County had to reinstate him as sheriff. His first deputy, Charlie Durkin, had held the office for five years now. Charlie knew his way around and was a good officer. No doubt he had built his own political connections and had become entrenched. Blessing would have to face him in an election.

Had he returned at the end of the war, he would have won any election, hands down. But the days of returning heroes were gone. The war was over for nearly two years and wanted only to be forgotten by Americans. There would be resentment against him now. Soldiers in uniform were big people when there was a fight to be won, but these were the days when soldiers in outposts were forgotten.

A month after Bolinski left for the States, Captain Shenandoah Blessing stood at dockside at the American enclave of Bremerhaven in the British Zone as the first shipload of American wives and children arrived through a North Sea’s mist.

There was much weeping and embracing on the dock. Lil and the two kids dragged down the gangplank as did most of them, weary from the voyage. They stood and looked at each other.

“Hi, Bless,” she said.

“Hi, Lil.”

He scooped up his sons and they hugged him and said hello daddy and he said, my God, they’ve grown and the four of them walked slowly and tightly together for the shed.

Later a heavily armed train chugged through the unfriendly German countryside toward Berlin. After a barrage of questions the boys fell off to sleep and Lil curled up in his arms, poked his belly, and said she was glad he hadn’t gotten skinny.

“Honey,” he said, “I was never able to put into words why I thought I should stay here and I swear, I don’t think I ever can.”

“Bless, you don’t have to. Well make out. We always have. I know you’re doing the right thing. “

Chapter Twenty-five

A
T THE END OF 1946 THE
lead story around the world for the day told that Andrew Jackson Hansen had been named a full general and assumed the position of military governor of Germany.

Shrewd observers like Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury felt it came just in time, for the situation was degenerating badly.

In a quiet and efficient way Hansen had built a dazzling record. As first deputy he had sat as a member of the Supreme German Council for several months. At the end of the war he moved in on cartels, froze German assets, and broke the backs of a number of those evil industrial combines. He spearheaded the de-Nazification of two million Germans in the American Zone through the questions of the Fragebogen. A hundred thousand criminal Nazis were in American stockades, and an additional 300,000 were allowed to work only at common labor.

Hansen was tough, yet guided by an overriding principle that the American Zone had to establish its own democracy rather than exist under a military tribunal.

As quickly as clean Germans could be found, the courts and de-Nazification procedures were put into their hands.

Free elections were held in three “lands” in the American Zone with new constitutions governing them and schools reopened with new texts. A free press and radio returned to Germany after a long absence.

Hansen was instrumental in the spurring of youth groups formed on new principles and he encouraged the church to purge any Nazi taint.

Andrew Jackson Hansen was more responsible than any other man for bringing into military government leading American educators, jurists, clergymen, labor leaders, mayors and civic officials, doctors, engineers, and police who lent their skills in fashioning a new path for the German people. He arranged for Germans to travel in America to study American methods and establishments.

He spurred the revival of the opera, the symphony, the theater, and the arts.

On Hansen’s orders three battalions of Negro troops were converted from service units to infantry. A new pride changed them from outfits with severe discipline problems to first-rate troops. His own honor guard in Berlin was a Negro unit. Hansen alone predicted the next step had to be full integration. He felt that the example of a moving, living democracy would have the greatest possible effect on the German people.

A corner of America was established in Germany. The arrival of large numbers of wives and children in the early parts of 1947 did much to put a skid to the occupation orgy.

Schools were built and women’s clubs, PTA’s, and a social life put a large dent into the beer-hall and prostitution business. The reinstatement of family and communal life came as a saving grace in many cases.

The occupation forces published their own newspapers, had a radio network, built movies, servicemen’s clubs, bowling alleys, and libraries. Inexpensive vacations in Bavarian resorts were arranged and schooling through college made available to every soldier.

Law and order were maintained by a magnificent American constabulary of 30,000 mobile police. These white-helmeted, yellow-scarfed troops constituted a crack force that commanded the respect of the Germans.

The most spectacular victory was won by the friendliness of the Americans. The Germans realized that they had come not to bleed the economy or debase the vanquished, but to protect, cleanse, teach, and rebuild.

While General Hansen and his country established a record of progress, the other side of the coin was a dark picture. He took command on the heels of a cruel winter that had paralyzed all of Europe.

In Germany canals froze, putting more burden on the wrecked rail system, now short thousands of cars and running on obsolete engines and punctured lines. There were no spare parts either in the transportation or the manufacturing complex.

As the coal mines functioned at but a fraction of capacity, and the means to transport it collapsed, manufacturing all but stopped.

The land failed to respond because of a lack of fertilizer and there were few seeds.

Housing remained the worst of any civilized nation and the cold brought all normal functions to a standstill.

The terror was compounded when seven million Germans were expelled from Hungary, Poland, East Prussia, and Czechoslovakia and poured into the American and British zones.

Hansen had observed the dwindling of the American Army. He inherited a force so thin it would not be able to meet a direct military challenge.

There was confusion among the Americans on what to do with Germany.

A harsh line wanted to reduce Germany to an agrarian economy. Hansen knew this plan would never work. Germany had a land area of less than the state of California and ten times the population with almost no natural wealth. In her best days, Germany had never been self-sustaining in the raising of food. Germany had to manufacture and trade to survive. This was an absolute economic law. The plan to reduce her to a vast farm would have invited mass starvation and sown the seeds of another war.

A second plan was to chop Germany into small territories and have each neighbor annex a piece. However, none of these units by themselves were sustaining and would create a burden on the annexing country which would be also compelled to take a hostile German minority. This plan could only foster a German “unification” dream.

Hansen had to take the unpopular view that Germany had to manufacture and trade. Moreover, the occupation zones had to be reunified, for the country could respond only as a single economic unit. The American Zone had pretty Bavarian scenery, but no ports or great industry; neither could the British or Russian zones survive by themselves.

Yet, Hansen inherited a situation where each of the four occupation zones was cut off from the other with little exchange of product, ideas, or population.

On the Supreme German Council, the French position broke Western unity. General Ives de Lys argued out of fear of Germany; the French wanted economic domination of the Saar and Internationalization of the Ruhr.

The Ruhr represented Germany’s chief asset. Without it Germany could never establish a trade balance. Such a French plan would have continued the British and American zones as liabilities, costing billions to sustain.

The French wanted a permanent four-power army on the Rhine, but Hansen would have no part of Soviet troops beyond the Elbe.

General de Lys continued to operate on the contention that business could be done with the Soviet Union and the French did not want to offend them.

Marshal Alexei Popov bogged down the Supreme German Council on the basic issue of operating Germany as a single economic unit with free trade between zones governed by a common policy. He deceitfully paid lip service to unity, but in fact sealed the Russian Zone from any contact with the West.

Every attempt to establish four-power administrations over trade and industry was blocked by Popov as the Russians continued to strip their zone and reshape it in the image of a Soviet puppet.

Reports filtered back to Hansen that thousands of German prisoners with technical skills had been detained in the Soviet Union. Russia’s grand plan for her zone was much the same as what Hitler intended to do with Poland, reduce it to serfdom and set it up as a buffer.

Popov aided the elaborate Communist scheme by holding Germany down, draining off reparations from current production, and keeping her from re-establishing a trade balance.

All this brought joblessness, hunger, and all the other breeding grounds of Communism.

The key issue at the Supreme German Council was a four-power agreement on German steel production. Popov wanted a figure large enough to deliver reparations, but small enough to prevent a German recovery. Even though all of Europe was coal-starved, the Ruhr mines were permitted to operate at a fraction of capacity, for the collapsed economies of France and Italy also played into the path of Soviet aims.

One of Hansen’s first moves was to travel to Washington and urge the Secretary of State to come to Germany and deliver a statement of policy to the people.

They were shaken from the winter, frightened of what lay ahead, and a lethargy had engulfed them.

The Secretary of State spoke at Heidelberg reaffirming America’s aim to unify the zones and return its institutions to the people. It had a galvanizing effect on the demolished nation.

Immediately thereafter, Hansen began negotiations with the British for the purpose of making the American and British zones a single economic and political unit. This forced the Soviet Union to step up their own timetable, for they knew that the French would have to follow suit. The unity of the Western Zones could build up a powerful German threat and end their own plans of domination.

All four powers jockeyed for position for a Conference of Foreign Ministers. In preparation, Hansen flew to Washington to brief the American delegation. His opening remark threw off the last pretenses:

“Gentlemen, the Soviet Union will cooperate with the West only as long as they receive reparations from our zones. The instant this stops they will proceed with plans to stop unification of the Western Zones. They will endeavor to remove us first from Berlin, then from Germany, then from Europe.”

Chapter Twenty-six

T
HE TRAGIC STRAINS FROM
Beethoven’s “Pathétique Sonata” reached Sean’s ears as he approached the door to Ulrich Falkenstein’s flat in Kreuzberg. He stopped for a moment, listened, then rang the bell. The music inside stopped.

“Lieutenant Colonel O’Sullivan?” Ernestine asked

“Yes.”

“Please come in. I am Ernestine, Herr Falkenstein’s niece. My uncle telephoned to say he would be a few minutes late, that he was distressed by the delay and hoped you would not mind.”

“Certainly not”

She led him into the only patched-up room that had been made cozy, which served as both living room and his study.

“Could I prepare you some tea?”

“No thank you.”

The bookshelves sagged under hundreds of volumes. Sean walked along and browsed at the titles in German, French, English, consisting of both profound comments and the popular fiction of the mid-thirties. He found himself at a row containing Jefferson, Paine, and Thoreau. “Quite an assortment.”

“He reads incessantly and usually far into the night. He is trying to make up for those years he lost in Schwabenwald.”

Her words struck Sean as rather strange. He thought about it for a moment, and then discovered that in all the time he had been in Germany he had never heard a German before mention the name of a concentration camp in casual conversation.

He stopped at the piano. There was a photograph of Ulrich’s brother Wolfgang, who had been hanged by Hitler. And another photograph, perhaps Falkenstein’s wife, whom he never mentioned, but likewise never forgot. Sean hit a few notes in a vain effort to read the music.

“You must play very well,” he said.

“Gallant but not true, Colonel. I play poorly. Nonetheless it is the first time in years I have had either an opportunity or the atmosphere. As you see, the rooms are not damaged and it is quite peaceful. One of the first things lost in the bombing was my piano. My sister joked that the American flyers must have heard me and aimed at our house.”