Year Zero: Berlin 1945 Page 15

  The protocols developed during the Potsdam Conference had requested the suspension of population transfers until the Allied Control Council could guarantee that they were carried out in an 'orderly and humane manner'. However, Stalin's intransigence and impatience meant that the removal of the German population from what was now Polish-Soviet administered territory east of the Oder was anything but orderly and humane.

  The displacement of Germans from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia was much on the mind of Washington's new ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane when he took up his post in Warsaw. In August 1945, Soviet representatives on the Allied Control Council estimated that some five and a half million Germans had already been expelled. Part of Lane's brief was to attempt to bring some order to the chaos reigning in Poland. The Polish Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Zygmunt Modzelewski claimed that his government had no wish to add to the apparent chaos, but indicated that the expulsions in Stettin, Oppeln, and Silesia would continue. In a letter to the State Department in Washington, Lane outlined his impressions of the Poles feelings towards the Germans, stating that, 'The hatred against the Germans is great – as can be readily understood after seeing Warsaw as it is now'.

  On 18 September, Lane met with the political advisor Robert Murphy in Berlin. The 'unnecessary harshness' of the Poles was to be regretted. However, it was agreed that any open criticism would be counterproductive as it would be adversely reported on in the Polish state-controlled press. On 12 October, Murphy put into writing his concerns regarding the movement of people in a letter to the Office of European Affairs. In it he wrote :

  I am uncomfortable in the thought that somehow in the future we may be severely blamed for consenting to be party to an operation which we cannot ourselves control and which has caused and is causing such large scale human suffering

  Murphy's concern was not so much about the plight of the German people, but the failure of his administration in standing up for the very principles which had brought America into the war.

  Notwithstanding Murphy's concerns, the trains continued to roll westwards, carrying with them their human cargo of misery consisting of 'blind mutilated soldiers, homeless boys, starving verminous mothers, infants'. Hardly a day went by without Red Cross workers having to remove dozens of corpses from the overcrowded and freezing trains. For Murphy, the scenes at Berlin's train stations represented, 'retribution on a grand scale, but practised not on the Nazi activists, but on women and children, the poor, the infirm'. Just like the trains before them which had rolled eastwards towards the ghettos and death camps, these trains too took as long as a week to cover distances which in peacetime would have taken less than a day. For those that survived the harsh deportation process and the journey, there were further dangers in store as they were easy pray for thieves in a city which had become lawless. The authorities in the American sector where most of the trains arrived wrung their hands, but did nothing, Berlin was becoming a city of refugees.

  The numbers were staggering, during the summer of 1945, some 550,000 Germans from the eastern territories were dumped in Berlin, many of them without any other possessions than the clothes on their backs. That summer, a trainload of deportees from Pomerania arrived in the capital. Of the 300 children forced onto the train, half were dead when the train finally pulled into Berlin. There were also several hundred hospital patients on board, all whom had been brutally ejected from their beds without any consideration for their individual medical conditions. Another transport, this time carrying Sudeten Germans from Troppau arrived in Berlin after a hellish eighteen day journey. Of the 4,250 women, children and old men on board, only 1,350 survived.

  The tragic scenes being played out were witnessed by Lieutenant-Colonel Byford Jones who served on Montgomery's Berlin staff. His reports elicited some sympathy in Britain, particularly with some sections of the press. In a published personal account entitled Berlin Twilight he wrote :

  In the course of two or three months, I made periodic visits to various railway stations... Everywhere I found men and women who had lost, together with their homes, families and property, all human dignity, and had become animals, sleeping like animals on the floor... They looked like tramps who had spent a lifetime on the road. When I saw their passport photos, taken a few months before, I was staggered. The change these people had undergone was incredible. They had all lost weight, aged ten years, had lined faces. They were sick and mentally unbalanced... I went around some of the refugee camps – former barracks, schools, quarantine stations, Red Cross centres – which were like a crown of thorns around the festering head of Berlin – and I saw such human degradation, depravity and tragedy that I was physically sick after a few hours of it.

  Not everyone displayed the same degree of empathy as Byford-Jones. Indeed, some of Berlin's permanent residents were hostile to the newcomers, referring to them as 'Polacken' and 'Schmarotzer'. The refugee reception centres, including the one set up at Templehof Airport became known by the disparaging terms as 'New Poland' and 'Garlic Settlements'.

  For many years, the suffering of the German expellees remained all but forgotten. In Berlin, it took until 2006 for a temporary exhibition to be mounted in their memory. The exhibition, 'Forced Paths : Flight and Expulsion in 20th Century Europe' was not without controversy. On the very day it opened, the Polish Prime Minister made a public visit to Auschwitz. During an interview, he stated that, 'It is important to remember who the perpetrators of WWII were, and who were the victims'. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder entered the fray by arguing that, 'A permanent exhibit would risk a disproportionate focus on German suffering'. Irene Runge, Director of Berlin's Jewish Cultural Association said, 'I don't think it would be fair not to give them a chance to remember their own path. On the other hand, I'm not much interested in hearing about it'. Nazi Germany sowed the wind, they eventually reaped the whirlwind in the form of almost unimaginable human suffering. A tragic postscript to a terrible war, in which Berlin was at the very epicentre.

  Epilogue

  Relations between the occupying powers in Berlin continued to deteriorate as 1945 neared its close. The Soviets on one side, and the Americans, British and French on the other were by now totally convinced that the obligations laid out at Potsdam were not being met. Stalin was not in the least bit interested in fulfilling the commitments he had made regarding free and fair elections in Eastern Europe. For their part, the Americans were stalling on the thorny issue of German reparations. The cracks which had been papered over in the name of wartime cooperation were becoming ever more apparent with each disagreement which arose. Stalin's long-serving Foreign Minister still believed that it was possible to do a deal with the Allies. His master quickly disabused him of any such notions. Stalin's stinging rebuke cut Molotov to the quick :

  At some point you gave in to pressure and intimidation on the part of the US, began to stumble, adopted the liberal course with regard to foreign correspondents and let your own government be pilloried by those correspondents in expectation that this would placate the US and Britain. Of course, your calculation was naïve. I feared that with this liberalism you would undercut our policy of of tenacity and thereby let our state down. At that time the entire foreign press yelled that Russians were caving in and would make concessions... It is obvious in dealing with such partners as the US and Britain we cannot achieve anything serious if we begin to give in to intimidation or betray uncertainty.

  Stalin instructed a chastened Molotov to remove the 'veil of amity' which had thus far characterised relations with the Allies. From now on the Soviet Union would 'stand firm'. In short, Molotov's brief was to 'display complete obduracy'.

  Exhausted by the strains of war, Stalin decamped to his dacha located in the mountains of northern Georgia for a 'rest-vacation'. However, it was not all rest and relaxation for the weary titan. Stalin devoted several days of his holiday towards the political machinations that would result in considerable reductions in Molotov's power and influence. He also
agreed to see President Truman's emissary Averell Harriman. Their meeting went well enough, although it was clear to Harriman that Stalin's policy of 'increased militancy and self-reliance' would signal trouble ahead. Notwithstanding, the administration in Washington prepared to meet the challenge of Stalin's belligerence head on, as their attitude towards their erstwhile ally was hardening by the day.

  In Berlin, Stalin's hard-line approach had heralded the division of the city into distinct political camps. Attempts by the Catholic and Protestant churches to offer religious education were stymied by Soviet authorities, whose agenda was the complete political indoctrination of the German people. Indeed, political indoctrination became the main focus of the Soviet administration as the year of victory came to a close. In concert with indoctrination came a crack down on deserters, malingerers, black marketeers and anyone who was deemed to hold 'questionable' political views. The prisons in and around Berlin began to fill with those who had committed genuine crimes and those who were just unlucky. Berlin resident Gerda Drews later recalled that, 'People were afraid to talk. If you said something wrong, you would disappear'.

  Stalin was determined not only to impose his own political system on lands conquered by the Red Army, he also wanted to ensure that the Soviet Union got what it needed for post-war reconstruction. During the course of the war against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union suffered approximately twenty-seven-million civilian and military casualties. Indeed, it would take decades for the population to return to pre-war levels. In addition to the incredible human toll exacted by the most terrible conflict in history, some 32,000 factories had been destroyed, along with 3000 towns and cities. The rebuilding of Stalin's shattered state would be partially dependent upon war reparations. However, as this issue was never properly settled, Stalin simply stepped outside of the legal process by authorising the looting of homes and factories in Berlin and other towns and cities.

  The result of Stalin's reparations policy was the inevitable near crippling of the German economy in the eastern territories. Berlin was particularly badly effected, with food and fuel shortages becoming the norm. Yet, Berlin somehow survived the winter of what came to be known as 'Year Zero'. The following year would bring more uncertainty, more tension, as the vortex of mistrust developed into outright enmity.

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  Papers

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