PART NINE
44
Too bad we couldn’t take him alive,” Stalin told Zhukov. “Where’s Hitler’s body?”
“According to General Krebs, his body was burned.” Stalin banned negotiations, except for unconditional surrender. “And don’t ring me until the morning if there’s nothing urgent. I want some rest before tomorrow’s parade.”
At 10:15 a.m., Zhukov’s artillery bombarded the city centre. By dawn on the 2nd, Berlin was his. On 4 May, a Smersh colonel discovered the wizened, charred remains of Hitler and Eva. The bodies were spirited away. Zhukov was not told. Indeed, Stalin enjoyed humiliating the Marshal by asking if he had heard anything about Hitler’s body.234 Meanwhile Stalin was fascinated by the Nazi leadership: “I’m sending you . . . the correspondence of the top Germans . . . found in Berlin,” Beria wrote to him, listing Himmler’s letters to Ribbentrop.
After the war, during a late dinner on the Black Sea coast, Stalin was asked whether Hitler was a lunatic or an adventurer: “I agree that he was an adventurer but I can’t agree he was mad. Hitler was a gifted man. Only a gifted man could unite the German people. Like it or not . . . the Soviet Army fought their way into the German land . . . and reached Berlin without the German working class ever striking against . . . the Fascist regime. Could a madman so unite his nation?”1
On 9 May, Moscow celebrated Victory Day but the curmudgeonly conqueror was wearily impatient with the jubilation. Stalin was furious when a junior general signed the German surrender at Reims and, pacing the floor, ordered Zhukov to sign a proper surrender in Berlin, “whence German aggression sprang.” But the glory days of the generals were over: Vyshinsky arrived to “handle political matters” and spent the entire ceremony “bobbing up to whisper instructions in Zhukov’s ear.” Stalin closely watched Zhukov and his supposed delusions of grandeur. Later in the year, he summoned him to the Kremlin to warn him that Beria and Abakumov were gathering evidence against him: “I don’t believe all this nonsense but stay out of Moscow.”
That was not a problem since Zhukov was Stalin’s proconsul in Berlin. Stalin despatched his satraps to rule his new empire. Mikoyan flew in to feed the Germans. Malenkov and Voznesensky arrived to fight about whether to loot German industry or preserve it to build a Soviet satellite regime. Zhdanov held court in Finland, Voroshilov in Hungary, Bulganin in Poland, Vyshinsky in Romania. When Khrushchev called to congratulate him, Stalin cut him off for “wasting his time.”
A call from Svetlana cheered Stalin: “Congratulations on victory, Papa!”
“Yes we’ve won,” he laughed. “Congratulations to you too!”
At 8 p.m. on 24 May, Stalin hosted a banquet for the Politburo and marshals, singers, actors and even Polish miners, in the Georgevsky Hall. There was a traffic jam of limousines all the way to the Borovitsky Gate. The guests found their seats and waited eagerly. When Stalin appeared, “ovations and shouts of ‘Hurrah’ shook the vaulted halls . . . with a deafening roar.” Molotov toasted the marshals who clinked glasses with the Politburo. When Admiral Isakov, who had lost his leg in 1942, was toasted, Stalin, still a master of the personal touch, walked all the way over to his distant table to clink glasses. Then Stalin praised the Russian people and referred to his own mistakes: “Another people could have said to the government: you have not justified our expectations, go away and we will install another government which will conclude peace with Germany and guarantee us a quiet life.”
Later, Stalin asked Zhukov and the marshals: “Don’t you think we should celebrate the defeat of Fascist Germany with a victory parade?”
Stalin decided to take the review on horseback. He could not ride but his hunger for glory still burned and he started secretly training to ride a white Arabian stallion, chosen by Budyonny. Around 15 June, a week before the parade, a spurred and booted Stalin in jodhpurs, apparently accompanied by his son Vasily, mounted the steed. He jerked his spurs. The horse reared. Stalin grabbed the mane and tried to stay in the saddle but was thrown, bruising his shoulder. Pulling himself to his feet, he spat: “Let Zhukov take the parade. He’s a cavalryman.” At Kuntsevo, he asked Zhukov if he had forgotten how to ride.
“I haven’t,” replied Zhukov. “I still ride sometimes.”
“Good . . . You take the parade.”
“Thanks for the honour. But . . . you’re the Supremo and by right you should take it.”
“I’m too old . . . You do it. You’re younger.”
Zhukov would ride a white Arabian stallion which Budyonny would show him. The next day, Zhukov was reviewing the rehearsals at the central airfield when Vasily Stalin buttonholed him: “I’m telling you this as a big secret. Father had himself been preparing to take the parade but . . . three days ago, the horse bolted . . .”
“And which horse was your father riding?”
“A white Arab stallion, the one on which you’re taking the parade. But I beg you not to mention a word of this.” Zhukov mastered the Arabian.
At 9:57 a.m. on 24 June, Zhukov mounted the stallion at the Spassky Gate. It was pouring with rain. The clocks struck ten: “Parade-shun!”
“My heart beat faster,” wrote Zhukov. Simultaneously, Marshal Rokossovsky was waiting on Budyonny’s own black charger, appropriately named Polus—the Pole—at the Nikolsky Gate. Stalin, in his greatcoat, showing no expression, walked clumsily, slowly, out on his own then lightly bounded up the steps to the Mausoleum, with Beria and Malenkov sweating breathlessly in their efforts to keep up. When the crowds saw him, hurrahs resounded across the Square. The rain poured, the water running down his vizor. He never wiped his face. As the chimes rang out, Zhukov and Rokossovsky rode out, both soaked, the bands played Glinka’s “Slavsya!”—Glory to You—and tanks and Katyushas rumbled over the cobblestones. Silence fell on Red Square. “Then a menacing staccato beat of hundreds of drums could be heard,” wrote Yakovlev. “Marching in precise formation and beating out an iron cadence, a column of Soviet soldiers drew nigh.” Two hundred veterans each held a Nazi banner. At the Mausoleum they did a right turn and flung the banners, emblazoned with black and scarlet swastikas, at Stalin’s feet where the downpour soaked them. Here was the climax of Stalin’s life.
As soon as it was over, Stalin and the top brass poured into the room behind the Mausoleum for a buffet and drinks. It was here, according to Admiral Kuznetsov, that one of the marshals, probably Koniev, first proposed promoting Stalin to Generalissimo. He waved this away but then declared that he was now sixty-seven and weary: “I’ll work another two or three years, then I’ll have to retire.”
The Politburo and the marshals cried out on cue that he would live to rule the country for a long time yet. During the hard-drinking festivities, Stalin laughed as Poskrebyshev slipped the ceremonial dagger out of Vyshinsky’s diplomatic uniform and replaced it with a pickle. Much to Stalin’s amusement, the pompous ex-Procurator strutted around for the rest of the day oblivious of the vegetable in his scabbard, and the smirks of the magnates.
That night, at a banquet for 2,500 officers, Stalin, who was already thinking about how to tighten discipline and bind the Union together, toasted the “Russian people . . .” and the “screws,” the ordinary people, “without whom all of us, marshals and commanders of fronts and armies . . . would not be worth a damn.”
In these carefully phrased toasts, Stalin set down a marker for his courtiers. The marshals were “not worth a damn” compared to the Russian people whom only the Party (Stalin) could represent. His talk of retirement unleashed a brutal struggle among ruthless men to succeed a twentieth-century emperor who had no intention of ever retiring. Within five years, three of the contenders would be dead.2
Koniev’s proposal to Molotov and Malenkov that they promote Stalin to Generalissimo to differentiate him from the marshals was not completely Ruritanian—Suvorov had been Generalissimo—but there was now something of the South American junta about it. Stalin was against the idea. He was endowed with all the prestige of a world conqueror, a “deity . . . an ungainly dwarf of a man who passed through gilded and marble Imperial halls,” but the magnates were determined to honour him with the gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union, another Order of Victory, and the rank of Generalissimo.
“Comrade Stalin doesn’t need it,” he replied to Koniev. “Comrade Stalin has the authority without it. Some title you’ve thought up! Chiang Kai-shek’s a Generalissimo. Franco’s a Generalissimo—fine company I find myself in!” Kaganovich, proud inventor of “Stalinism,” also suggested renaming Moscow as Stalinodar, an idea that had first been suggested by Yezhov in 1938. Beria seconded him. This simply “outraged” Stalin: “What do I need this for?”
The wise courtier senses when his master secretly wants him to disobey. Malenkov and Beria had Kalinin sign the decree. Three days after the parade, Pravda announced Stalin’s new rank and medals. He was furious and summoned Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Zhdanov and old Kalinin, who was already extremely ill with stomach cancer. “I haven’t led regiments in the field . . . I’m refusing the star as undeserved.” They argued but he insisted. “Say what you like. I won’t accept the decorations.” But they noticed that he had taken care to accept the Generalissimo.
Since the marshals now resembled Christmas trees of braid and clanking medals, the Generalissimo’s uniform had to be completely over-the-top: the tailor of the élite, Lerner, created a gilded Ruritanian extravaganza with a golden cape. Khrulev dressed three strapping officers in these Göringesque outfits. When Stalin wandered out of his office to see Poskrebyshev, he snarled: “Who are they? What’s this peacock doing here?”
“Three samples of the Generalissimo’s uniform.”
“They’re not right for me. I need something more modest . . . Do you want me to look like a doorman?” Stalin finally accepted a white gilded high-collared tunic with black and red–striped trousers which made him look like a bandmaster, if not a Park Avenue doorman. When he put it on, he regretted it, muttering to Molotov: “Why did I agree?”
Malenkov and Beria were left with the gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union: how to get him to accept it? Here Stalin’s court dissolves into an opéra bou fe farce in which the cantankerous Generalissimo was virtually pursued around Moscow by courtiers trying to pin the medal on him. First Malenkov agreed to try but Stalin would not listen. Next he recruited Poskrebyshev who accepted the mission but gave up when Stalin resisted energetically. Beria and Malenkov tried Vlasik but he too failed. They decided it was best to ambush Stalin when he was gardening because he loved his roses and lemon trees so they persuaded Orlov, the Kuntsevo commandant, to present it. When Stalin asked for the secateurs to prune his beloved roses, Orlov brought the secateurs but kept the star behind his back, wondering what to do with it.
“What are you hiding?” asked Stalin. “Let me see.” Orlov gingerly brought out the star. Stalin cursed him: “Give it back to those who thought up this nonsense!”
Finally, he accepted the medal: “You’re indulging an old man. Won’t do anything for my health!” Stalin did not just accept the rank of Generalissimo in order to join Franco. Vanity merged with politics: it helped diminish the dangerously prestigious marshalate. On 9 July, he further watered down their honours by promoting Beria, their scourge, to Marshal, equal to Zhukov or Vasilevsky.
The victor’s good humour, though, could be chilling. Whenever he saw the Shipbuilding Commissar Nosenko, he joked “Haven’t they arrested you yet?” The next time he saw him, he chuckled: “Nosenko, have you still not been shot?” Nosenko each time smiled anxiously. Finally at a celebratory Sovnarkom meeting, Stalin declared, “We believed in victory and . . . never lost our sense of humour. Isn’t that true, Comrade Nosenko?”3
A week later, Stalin, who, according to Gromyko, now “always looked tired,” mounted his eleven-coach armoured train for the journey to Potsdam: he travelled in four green carriages that had been taken from the Tsar’s train in some museum, along a route of exactly 1,923 kilometres, according to Beria, who organized perhaps the tightest security ever for a travelling potentate. “To provide proper security,” he wrote to Stalin on 2 July, “1,515 NKVD/GB men of operative staff and 17,409 NKVD forces are placed in the following order: on USSR territories, 6 men per kilometre; on territory of Poland, 10 men per kilometre; on German territory, 15 men per kilometre. Besides this on the route of the special train, 8 armoured trains will patrol—2 in USSR, 2 in Poland and 4 in Germany.” “To provide security for the chief of the Soviet delegation,” there were seven NKVD regiments and 900 bodyguards. The inner security “will be carried out by the operative staff of the 6th Department of the NKGB” arranged “in three concentric circles of security, totalling 2,041 NKVD men.” Sixteen companies of NKVD forces alone were responsible for guarding his phone lines while eleven aeroplanes provided quick links to Moscow. In case of urgent need, Stalin’s own three planes, including a Dakota, stood ready. The secret police were “to guarantee proper order and purges of anti-Soviet elements” at all stations and airports.235
The night before he arrived in Potsdam, Stalin called Zhukov: “Don’t get it into your head to meet us with an honour guard and band. Come to the station yourself and bring anyone you consider necessary.”
At 5:30 a.m. on 16 July, the day of Stalin’s arrival, the United States tested a nuclear bomb in New Mexico that would change everything and, in many ways, spoil Stalin’s triumph. The news was telegraphed to Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded Roosevelt as President, with the understatement of the century: “Babies satisfactorily born.”
Stalin and Molotov, attended by Poskrebyshev, Vlasik and Valechka, found the platform virtually empty except for Zhukov, Vyshinsky and a table bearing three telephones connected to the Kremlin and the armies. “In good spirits,” Stalin raised his hat and climbed into the waiting ZiS 101 armoured limousine but then he opened the door and invited Zhukov to ride with him to his Babelsberg residence, “a stone villa of two floors” with “fifteen rooms and an open veranda,” Beria informed him, “supplied with all necessary electricity, heating and organized telephone stations with VCh for 100 numbers.” It had been Ludendorff’s home. Stalin hated the extravagant furniture and ordered much of it to be removed—as he once had done in his Kremlin flat.
Stalin was late for the conference but it mattered little: the great decisions had been made at Yalta. The other leaders had arrived on the 15th and gone sightseeing to Hitler’s Chancellery. Beria, who was already in Berlin to oversee the arrangements, accompanied by his son Sergo, longed to visit the ruins but obediently waited to ask Stalin’s permission. Stalin refused to go himself, no tourist he. So Beria, in a baggy suit and open-necked shirt, went with the immaculate Molotov.
At midday on Tuesday the 17th, Stalin, resplendent in a fawn Generalissimo’s uniform, arrived at Truman’s “Little White House” for their first meeting. The new President said nothing about the topic that dominated the conference. Sergo Beria wrote that his father, informed by spies in the American nuclear project, gave Stalin the news during this week: “I didn’t know then, at least not from the Americans,” was how Stalin put it. Beria had first informed him of the Manhattan Project in March 1942: “We need to get started,” said Stalin, placing Molotov in charge. But, under Iron Arse, it advanced with excruciating, ponderous slowness. Finally in September 1944, the leading Russian nuclear scientist, Professor Igor Kurchatov, wrote to Stalin to denounce plodding Molotov and begged Beria to take it over. Stalin had little conception of nuclear fission’s world-shattering importance nor of the vast resources it would require. He and Beria distrusted their own scientists and spies. Nonetheless, they were aware of the urgency in procuring uranium, and twice during the conference, Stalin and Beria debated how to react to the Americans.236 They had agreed that Stalin should “pretend not to understand,” when the subject was mentioned. But so far, Truman said nothing. They discussed Russia’s entry into the war against Japan. Truman asked Stalin to stay for lunch but he refused: “You could if you wanted,” said Truman.
Stalin stayed, unimpressed by the Missouri haberdasher who was no substitute for FDR: “They couldn’t be compared,” he said later. “Truman’s neither educated nor clever.” (Truman was nonetheless charmed: “I like Stalin!” but, revealingly, he reminded the President of his patron, T. J. Pendergast, the machine politician boss of Kansas City.)
Stalin, ever more sartorially aware, changed into his white, gilded Generalissimo’s magnificence with the single Hero of the Soviet Union gold star, and arrived last for the first session at the Cecilienhof Palace, built in 1917 for the last Crown Prince, mocking its Kaiserine grandeur: “Hmm. Nothing much,” he told Gromyko. “Modest. The Russian Tsars built themselves something much more solid.” At the conference, Stalin sat between Molotov and his interpreter Pavlov, flanked by Vyshinsky and Gromyko. Champagne glasses were brought to toast the conference. Churchill, puffing at a cigar, approached Stalin who was himself smoking a Churchillian cigar. If anyone were to photograph the Generalissimo with a cigar, it would “create an immense sensation,” Churchill beamed, “everyone will say it is my influence.” Actually British influence was greatly diminished in the new world order of the superpowers in which they could agree on the de-Nazification of Germany but not on reparations or Poland. Now Hitler was gone, the differences were mountainous.
When Stalin decided he wanted a stroll in the gardens after a session, a British delegate was amazed to see “a platoon of Russian tommy-gunners in skirmishing order, then a number of guards and units of the NKVD army. Finally appeared Uncle Joe on foot with his usual thugs surrounding him, followed by another screen of skirmishers. The enormous officer who always sits behind Uncle at meetings was apparently in charge of operations and was running around directing tommy-gunners to cover all the alleys.” After a few hundred yards, Stalin was picked up by his car.
At 8:30 p.m. on the 18th, Churchill dined at Ludendorff’s villa, noticing that Stalin was ill, “physically oppressed.” Smoking cigars together, they discussed power and death. Stalin admitted that the monarchy held together the British Empire, perhaps considering how to hold together his own.237 No psephologist, he predicted that Churchill would win the election by eighty seats. Then he reflected that people in the West wondered what would happen when he died but it had “all been arranged.” He had promoted “good people, ready to step” into his shoes.
Finally, on 24 July, two monumental moments symbolized the imminent end of the Grand Alliance. First Churchill attacked Stalin for closing off Eastern Europe, citing the problems of the British mission in Bucharest: “An iron fence has come down around them,” he said, trying out the phrase that would become “the iron curtain.”
“Fairy tales!” snapped Stalin.4 The meeting ended at 7:30 p.m. Stalin headed out of the room but Truman seemed to hurry after him. Interpreter Pavlov deftly appeared beside Stalin. Churchill, who had discussed this moment with the President, watched in fascination as Truman approached the Generalissimo “as if by chance,” in Stalin’s words.
“The U.S.A.,” said Truman, “tested a new bomb of extraordinary destructive power.”
Pavlov watched Stalin closely: “no muscle moved in his face.” He simply said he was glad to hear it: “A new bomb! Of extraordinary power! Probably decisive on the Japanese! What a bit of luck!” Stalin followed the plan he had agreed with Beria to give the Americans no satisfaction but he still thought the Americans were playing games: “An A-bomb is a completely new weapon and Truman didn’t exactly say that.” He noticed Churchill’s glee too: Truman spoke “not without Churchill’s knowledge.”
Back at Ludendorff’s villa, Stalin, accompanied by Zhukov and Gromyko, immediately told Molotov about the conversation. But Stalin knew that, as yet, the Americans only possessed one or two Bombs—there was just time to catch up.
“They’re raising their price,” said Molotov, who was in charge of the nuclear project.
“Let them,” said Stalin. “We’ll have to talk it over with Kurchatov and get him to speed things up.” Professor Kurchatov told Stalin that he lacked electrical power and had not enough tractors. Stalin immediately ordered power to be switched off in several populated areas and gave him two tank divisions to act as tractors. The Bomb’s revolutionary importance was still percolating when the first device was dropped on Hiroshima. The scale of resources needed was just dawning on Stalin.
He then convened a meeting with Molotov and Gromyko at which he announced: “Our Allies have told us that the U.S.A. has a new weapon. I spoke with our physicist Kurchatov as soon as Truman told me. The real question is should countries which have the Bomb simply compete with one another or . . . should they seek a solution that would mean prohibition of its production and use?” He realized that America and Britain “are hoping we won’t be able to develop the Bomb ourselves for some time . . .” and “want to force us to accept their plans. Well that’s not going to happen.” He cursed them in what Gromyko called “ripe language,” then asked the diplomat if the Allies were satisfied with all the agreements.
“Churchill’s so riveted by our women traffic police in their marvellous uniforms that he dropped his cigar ash all over his suit,” replied Gromyko. Stalin smiled.
Next morning, Churchill and the Labour leader Clement Attlee flew back to London where they discovered that the warlord had been roundly defeated in the general election, thereby ending the triumvirate of Teheran and Yalta. Stalin preferred Roosevelt but he most admired Churchill: “A powerful and cunning politician,” he remembered him in 1950. “In the war years, he behaved as a gentleman and achieved a lot. He was the strongest personality in the capitalist world.”
During this interval, Stalin met up with his son Vasily, now stationed in Germany, who reported that Soviet aeroplanes were still inferior to the American’s, and dangerous to boot. Vasily’s denunciations may have been well-meaning but Stalin always found a deadly use for them. At lunchtime on the 25th, Stalin met Queen Victoria’s great-grandson, a cousin of Nicholas II, and Allied Supreme Commander, Southeast Asia, the ebullient Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten who flattered him that he had diverted his trip from India to Britain “specially to meet the Generalissimo,” having long been “an admirer of the Generalissimo’s achievements not only in war but in peace as well.”
Stalin replied that he had done his best. “Not everything” had been “done well” but it was the Russian people “who achieved these things.” Mountbatten’s real motive was to wangle an invitation to visit Russia where he was convinced his Romanov connections would be appreciated, explaining that he had frequently visited the Tsar as a child for “three or four weeks at a time.”
Stalin inquired drily, with a patronising smile, whether “it was some time ago that he had been there.” Mountbatten “would find things had changed very considerably.” Mountbatten repeatedly asked for an invitation and returned to his imperial connections which he expected to impress Stalin. “On the contrary,” says Lunghi, Mountbatten’s interpreter, “the meeting was embarrassing because Stalin was so unimpressed. He offered no invitation. Mountbatten left with his tail between his legs.”238
Potsdam ended with an affable but increasingly chilly impasse: Stalin possessed Eastern Europe but Truman had the Bomb. Before he left on 2 August, he realized the Bomb would require a colossal effort and his most dynamic manager. He removed Molotov and commissioned Beria to create the Soviet Bomb. Sergo Beria noticed his father “making notes on a sheet of paper . . . organizing the future commission and selecting its members.” Beria included Malenkov and others in the list.
“What need have you to include these people?” Sergo asked Beria.
“I prefer that they should belong. If they stay outside they’ll put spokes in the wheels.” It was the climax of Beria’s career.