Armageddon (63 page)

Berliners watched it all happen with growing apprehension.

By mid-April the American garrison began to feel the pinch. General Hansen phoned the USAFE commander, Barney Root, at Air Force Headquarters in Wiesbaden.

“We’re going to need supplies flown in to take care of the garrison.”

“How much do you figure, Chip?”

“Eighty tons a day.”

“Eighty tons! Hell, Chip, all we’ve got around here are a couple dozen old Gooney Birds. They can handle only about two tons a flight. Let me get together with my people and see what we can scratch up. Send us a list of requirements and we’ll get it to you somehow.”

Barney Root was able to locate a few Douglas Skymasters in Italy and the Middle East. These four-engine craft had a ten-ton capacity. Crews were called in from bases in England and two days after Hansen’s call the first of them touched down on the runway at Tempelhof to begin the “milk run” to Berlin.

Meanwhile, General Hartly Fitz-Roy worked out some sort of relief for the British garrison and both supplied the French.

At the Air Safety Center, still under four-power operation, and through spies around Tempelhof, Igor Karlovy was able to study the proceedings. In bad weather the planes stacked up overhead resulting in minor chaos. It all confirmed Igor’s findings. The West was having trouble getting in a few hundred tons of supplies a day for their garrisons. The greater task of supplying two million people needing thousands of tons daily was beyond comprehension.

To make matters more tense, Russian fighter planes ran through the corridors on the contention that the corridors were illegal, did not exist, and the skies were Russian-owned.

Into this city came Senator Adam Blanchard.

It had long been fashionable for members of the Congress to tour Berlin, get themselves photographed, make a statement or two for posterity, and generally lend themselves to the “glamorous” situation.

Hansen and Hazzard and other top staff officers were compelled to spend hundreds of hours at Tempelhof welcoming the junketing legislators. Some were hard-working and sincere men desiring to help the situation, others were utter bores and nuisances.... Hansen deliberately lived in a small house without guest facilities.

Adam Blanchard was not a common-garden-variety senator. From the minority party, he held seats on both the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Forces Committee. Although no one could figure what good he could do in Berlin, everyone knew he could do a great deal of harm. The silk-glove treatment was ordered.

Blanchard, as suspected, had come to Berlin with a purpose in mind. He was to run for re-election with a swell of discontent in the party hierarchy of his state. Key industrialists, traditional conservatives, and crusty old isolationists controlled the party machinery. They were sick as hell of being taxed to death to feed undeserving and ungrateful Europeans and keeping a costly American occupation army “over there.”

Blanchard had gone along with the Truman Doctrine earlier, bringing further growls that he was getting a little “pinko” around the edges. The senator was now on tenterhooks on how he would vote for the Marshall Plan. He evaded that issue.

His advisors conjured up the idea of a “fact finding” trip to Germany, and Berlin in particular, after which he would make a declaration to soothe the troubled waters back home.

At the end of four days of briefing and tours in Berlin, Adam Blanchard’s people called a press conference which was arranged for the entire corps, Communists as well as Western journalists in attendance.

“We want to get out of Germany as soon as possible,” Blanchard said. “The first step will be to hand over the authority to the State Department and pare down this costly occupation force.”

“That son of a bitch!” Neal Hazzard said.

“Calm down, Neal,” Sean warned.

“Calm down, my ass.”

On General Hansen’s desk lay a copy of
Tägliche Rundschau,
the official Russian newspaper in the German language. The headline blared:
KEY AMERICAN OFFICIAL CONFIRMS WITHDRAWAL OF AMERICAN FORCES FROM BERLIN.

A sampling of newspapers around the world played the same theme:

YANKS PULLING OUT OF GERMANY

U.S. WEARY OF OCCUPATION COSTS

AMERICAN ABANDONMENT OF EUROPE BEGINS

“This could not have come at a worse time,” Hansen said.

“That bastard just played the Russian trump card. It’s just something like this that will stampede the people.”

“Neal. Get Falkenstein and the other leaders together and get them calmed down.”

“They don’t believe us any more, sir. We’re sitting on our prats letting them shove our traffic all over Germany. General Hansen, we’ve got to face up to the fact that their next move is going to be a complete blockade.”

“I haven’t come to that opinion yet. The Russians are going to be careful about turning world opinion against them.”

“The Russians don’t give a Chinese fart what the world thinks of them as long as they get away with what they’re trying. We’re the ones who are always afraid of how we look.”

“That will be all, Neal.”

“Yes, sir.”

He left. Hansen pushed away from his desk and looked at Sean.

“Colonel Hazzard is right, sir. They’re going to blockade.”

“I know it, Sean, but I can’t let either Neal or the Germans know that I believe it, yet.”

The general left to pick up Senator Blanchard for a luncheon at British Headquarters. The senator’s people were so proud of the headlines they urged him to remain in Germany another week or two. Hansen dreaded the consequences. He considered the matter in the back seat of the longest, blackest, shiniest Cadillac in the American garrison as it sped toward the VIP guest house surrounded by a covey of motorcycles.

The house was a magnificent affair once belonging to Himmler. It sat on the Wannsee Lake. The living room had a great plate-glass wall that could be raised and lowered, a velvetlike lawn that swept to the water’s edge, and a private dock.

Senator Blanchard got into the car beside Hansen, the sirens screamed and the flags on the fenders fluttered as they moved north, skirting the Grunewald and the chain of little lakes as they moved toward Charlottenburg Borough.

Adam Blanchard was a handsome, lean man in his early sixties. He spoke with the smooth assurance of one who had survived many political dogfights over three decades.

He was aware of the coldness of the Berlin garrison after his press conference. In a very nice way he let Hansen know he was annoyed.

“As a matter of fact, Senator, this gives you and me a chance to talk. We are having a very bad time straightening out some misunderstandings as a result of your statements.”

Blanchard knew he was sitting beside one of the few military men he could not bully. He decided upon the blunt route himself. “Your record of antagonism toward the Congress is well known.”

“The basis of my antagonism has always been that the military has been more farsighted than the Congress. The fact that our country was forced to enter World War II unprepared because of a lack of appropriations or appreciation of the danger vindicates my position. You know, Senator Blanchard, if the United States had been strong, there might never have been a Second World War. And only strength will stop a third World War.”

The slap was unmistakable. Before the war Blanchard was among those die-hard isolationists; his new position on the Foreign Relations Committee had not changed the spots on the leopard.

“General Hansen, I admire your candor. Let me speak with equal candor. I have found waste and inefficiency in this military government operation appalling. Incompetence in the military is a subject with which I am familiar.”

“Senator, have you ever been aboard an aircraft carrier?”

“Certainly.”

“That piece of machinery is worth over a hundred million dollars. It takes three thousand men to operate her. She is the most advanced product of the nation’s talents, carrying the most sophisticated electronic devices known to man. Yes, sir, an aircraft carrier is something.”

“What is your point, sir?”

“The officer who commands such a ship makes nine to eleven thousand dollars a year. What do you suppose such a man would get from private industry running a hundred-million-dollar corporation with three thousand employees?”

“Now just a minute ...”

“I haven’t finished yet. It has become fashionable again to portray the military as stupid, shiftless clods. I’ll tell you something about what we’ve got here in Berlin. We have a cross section of the most brilliant brains our nation can produce. Our sector of Berlin is administered by judges, police, labor leaders, engineers who could run any city in the United States with greater efficiency than it is now.”

Blanchard flustered. He had never received such a tongue-lashing by an Army man. “You, General, intend to foster world tension to justify huge military expenditures. I know all about this goddamned country club you’re running.”

“I’m a man in my sixties,” Hansen said softly. “I have $1800 in the bank. In thirty years in the service my wife has had twenty-one places she has called home ... but we know why we are in Berlin. And I also know why you are in Berlin.

“You don’t want to leave here knowing why America must stay because that might make you unpopular in your state. I’m dealing with the same deaf man I dealt with before the war. But don’t think we can leave Berlin, free. We will pay for it with ten thousand per cent interest.

“You’re in a fight, Blanchard, because I’ve got a press corps here who knows what we are trying to do and you start on us and you’ll get it right between the eyes.”

The car passed on the southern circumference of the park holding the Olympic stadium and sports complex, where Hitler once attempted to prove Aryan superiority on the playing fields.

The two men had no more to say.

At the north end of the Olympic Park, the sports administration building now was the location of British Headquarters. A glum Adam Blanchard lit up as the British honor guard came to attention and the band played a “fanfare for a dignified occasion.”

He emerged from the car, walked toward ramrod stiff, swagger stick-bearing Hardy Fitz-Roy and pumped his hand, slapped his back, and waved at the guard as though he were soliciting their votes.

Chapter Thirty-seven

N
EAL
H
AZZARD PACED THE
living room of Sean’s apartment angrily. “What the hell is the matter with General Hansen? Is he blind or something?”

“He is being hampered by a little system known as democracy,” Sean answered.

“What about the threat of blockade? Why doesn’t he know?”

“He knows. But he can’t do anything until it is imposed. You know how it is, pal. The military cry ‘wolf’ and no one believes them. The only way it will be believed is when Berlin gets its Pearl Harbor.”

Hazzard shook his head. “We have to stand here flat-footed waiting for the Russians to belt us.”

“That’s because we represent a society dictated by public opinion.”

Hazzard had chewed his cigar beyond mercy, flung it into the fireplace. “Sean. I think I know the people of Berlin as well as anyone.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“They’ve got strong nerves. If we could only give them our guarantee that we are going to stay.”

“We can’t do that, Neal.”

“I know the Russians too. I know them from two hundred and fifty-eight meetings of the Kommandatura with Nikolai Trepovitch. They’ll quit short of a fight.”

“That’s no secret.”

“Goddammit, I’m going on RIAS and tell the people of Berlin this garrison is staying.”

“Neal, for Christ’s sake. If you do guess wrong you can commit us to a bad situation.”

“I’m an old infantryman, Sean. I know that when the battle gets so screwed up the generals behind the lines can’t control it, a few men in the thick of it have to improvise.”

Sean had once stood in Neal Hazzard’s shoes in Rombaden ready to face the wrath of the world for something he believed. He was a soul mate. If there was one single thing that being an American meant to Sean it was the ability to think for one’s self. Not in times of comfort, but under nerve-wracking stress. Hazzard knew he was right. Sean believed it too.

“You’ve got a partner,” Sean said. “How do we do this?”

“I’m going to go over to RIAS and make the announcement right away.”

“With the right moves,” Sean thought aloud, “we can dump Hollweg as Oberburgermeister and stop the Russians for long enough to clean the Adam Blanchard stink.”

“Like my old pal T. E. Blatty says ... let’s get cracking.”

At the invisible boundary between the American and British sectors on Kufsteiner Strasse 69 on Innsbrucker Platz stood a five-story, semi-circular, gray-stone building which had become one of the most powerful locales in the world.

RIAS was the only radio planted deep inside the Russian Empire. A brilliant staff, which refused to be cowed, succeeded in obliterating the Russian propaganda assaults. RIAS was one of the few positions anywhere where the West took the offensive. Each day the reportage of Soviet atrocity was heard by millions of the enslaved. RIAS was a voice in the dark forest of Eastern Europe. To the Russians, the American Radio had become the most hated symbol of the West, and behind every move to get the West from Berlin was the plan to still its voice.

This station was so feared that six hundred Russian jamming stations tried to blot out its signal. To counter this, RIAS staggered its programs to the Russian colonies. Then once a day the entire power output was combined and over a million watts thrown into a single program, which nothing could jam. It is said that when RIAS went on full output it could be received in the silver fillings of your teeth two hundred miles away.

Colonel Hazzard was an old friend at RIAS. He went to the director’s office. All transmissions were ordered to halt to put the full power at the American Commandant’s disposal.

“This is Colonel Hazzard, commandant of the American Sector of Berlin. My friends. I have a most important message from my government. For the past several weeks the Soviet Union and their flunkies, led by Rudi Wöhlman, have deliberately spread a rumor that the American garrison is going to withdraw from Berlin. I am here to nail this new lie dead. An opinion expressed recently by an American senator was entirely his own and has been completely discredited in Washington.”