Stalin's General (37 page)

Zhukov was not a delegate to the conference. Stalin's main military advisor at Potsdam was Antonov, the new chief of the General Staff, and the military discussions concerned the coming Soviet attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria, an operation in which Zhukov was not involved. But Zhukov did attend several sessions of the conference. After one session Truman told Stalin that America had successfully tested the atomic bomb and intended to drop it on Japan. Stalin did not react to the news but he talked about it afterward with Zhukov and Molotov and gave orders to speed up the development of the
Soviet atomic bomb. Another incident recorded in Zhukov's memoirs happened during a reception at which he spent a long time talking to Churchill about various battles. When the toasts began Churchill unexpectedly toasted Zhukov. In his replying toast Zhukov mistakenly addressed Churchill as “comrade” but quickly recovered by proposing a toast to all his allied “comrades-in-arms.” The next day, however, Stalin ribbed Zhukov about his new “comrade.”
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The main political discussion at Potsdam concerned the future of Germany. It was agreed the country would be demilitarized, denazified, and democratized and forced to pay reparations for war damages (mostly to the Soviet Union). When the time was right the Allied occupation zones would be unified and a central German government established to preside over a peaceful and democratic state. That, at least, was the theory. In practice the Soviet and western zones of occupation became the basis for the political and economic division of Germany when the Grand Alliance fractured in 1947–1948 and the Cold War began.

As head of the Soviet military administration in Germany, Zhukov presided over what soon became a vast machinery of occupation. Although on paper he exercised complete civil and military control in the Soviet zone, his powers were more limited than those of his counterparts in the western zones. The Foreign Ministry and Communist Party ran political affairs in the Soviet zone, while teams of Soviet reparations officials roamed at will, stripping it of industrial resources and shipping them back to the USSR. Soviet security police controlled the massive operation to repatriate to the USSR the millions of Soviet POWs and slave laborers liberated from German concentration camps. Even in the military sphere Zhukov's control was indirect, exercised through five provincial military governors.
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As Soviet representative on the Allied Control Council Zhukov had a highly visible role in the occupation regime. Zhukov's first meeting with the western representatives on the ACC came on June 5, 1945, when they visited him in Berlin to co-sign a declaration on the
assumption by the occupying powers of supreme authority in Germany.
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The western representatives wanted the ACC to start functioning immediately but Zhukov insisted British and American troops first withdraw from the Soviet zone of occupation. This problem arose because during the course of military operations the agreed Allied demarcation lines in Germany had been contravened. The Soviets, intent on exercising power in their zone without fear of interference by western troops, wanted the British and Americans out. Zhukov's delaying tactic did not please General Eisenhower, the American representative on the ACC, who was keen to get on with business. When the American went to leave the banquet arranged by the Soviets for their guests, Zhukov exclaimed jovially, “I shall arrest you and make you stay!” But Eisenhower stayed only for the first toasts.
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Apart from this incident Zhukov and Eisenhower got on well and formed a good working relationship. Indeed, during their first meeting Eisenhower bestowed on Zhukov the award of Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit. When Zhukov visited Eisenhower's HQ in Frankfurt a few days later, he reciprocated by decorating his host with the Soviet Order of Victory.

In August 1945 Eisenhower (and his son John) visited Moscow accompanied by Zhukov, giving the two men an opportunity for prolonged conversation. There was much talk about the battle for Berlin, during which Eisenhower disavowed any previous intention to seize the German capital before the Soviets and blamed Churchill for any impressions to the contrary.
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During this trip to Moscow Eisenhower observed “Zhukov was patently a great favourite with Stalin.… The two spoke to each other in terms of intimacy and cordiality.”
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One of the events the two men attended was a physical culture parade in Red Square on August 12. Eisenhower reviewed the parade from the rostrum above Lenin's mausoleum, Stalin standing on his left and Zhukov on his right. Stalin was impressed by Eisenhower, calling him a “very great man” who was not “coarse” like most military men. Reporting this statement to Eisenhower, John Deane, the head of the American military mission in Moscow, told him “you evidently sold a bill of goods while you were here.”
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Stalin's invitation to Eisenhower to come to Moscow had been
prompted by a prior invitation from Truman that Zhukov visit the United States. Forwarding the invitation on August 2, U.S. ambassador Harriman emphasized the president's high regard for Zhukov and the warm feelings of the American people toward both him and the Red Army.
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When the Soviets replied to this invitation on September 17 they suggested that Zhukov visit the United States at the beginning of October.
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But this did not happen and in April 1946 the Americans had to renew their invitation. By this time Zhukov had been recalled from Berlin to Moscow to take up a new post as commander-in-chief of Soviet ground forces and had to decline the reissued invitation due to work.
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But the real reason for Zhukov's failure to visit the United States may have been the significant deterioration of Soviet-western relations that occurred in early 1946. In March, for example, Churchill delivered his (to the Russians) notorious “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, which complained of the Soviet and communist takeover of a number of Central and East European countries and the exclusion of western influence from the region. The Soviets were able to erect such an Iron Curtain because of the Red Army's occupation of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania—states that had fought on the side of Germany during World War II—while in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and, to a lesser extent, Poland, the communists were very strong. From the Soviet point of view their control of Eastern Europe was necessary protection against a revival of Germany and the possibility of another war. Stalin reacted to Churchill's speech angrily, denouncing the former British prime minister (he had lost power in July 1945) as a warmonger and an inveterate anticommunist, pointing out that he had been one of the main organizers of the western anti-Bolshevik crusade during the Russian Civil War.

Zhukov served in occupied Germany for only a few months in 1945–1946, at a time when relative harmony prevailed in Soviet-western postwar relations. In his memoirs Eisenhower was complimentary about Zhukov. He disagreed with Zhukov's communist ideology but was respectful of his political conviction: “there was no doubt in my mind that Marshal Zhukov was sincere.… His own adherence to the Communist doctrine seemed to come from inner conviction and not from any outward compulsion.” In relation to
Zhukov's abilities as a military commander, Eisenhower wrote that he “had longer experience as a responsible leader in great battles than any other man of our time … it was clear that he was an accomplished soldier.”
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Zhukov's memoirs published twenty years later, after two decades of Cold War, depicted Eisenhower as a decent person but also as a representative of capitalist and imperialist interests who had failed to do what he could to avert the postwar breakup of the Grand Alliance. In the post-Soviet edition of Zhukov's memoirs, however, there appeared a much more balanced appraisal of Eisenhower. “I liked his simplicity, informality and sense of humour,” wrote Zhukov of his first impression of Eisenhower. “It seemed to me that he understood the great sacrifices of the Soviet people.”
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Eisenhower was recalled to the United States at the end of 1945 and Zhukov's last meeting with him in Berlin took place on November 7. Zhukov readily agreed when Eisenhower asked if he could report to Washington that the work of the Allied Control Council had been carried on in a friendly spirit, without serious disagreements, and in terms of a common language.
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After the Potsdam Conference, Zhukov briefed key officials in the Soviet Military Administration in Germany in a speech setting out policy priorities: the extraction of Soviet reparations from Germany; the elimination of fascist ideology from every sphere of German life and support for the anti-Nazi parties in Germany; and winning the respect of the German people as the basis for future Soviet-German relations. To achieve this latter goal it was necessary to abandon the old enmities, something that certain elements among the Soviet occupation forces did not understand, said Zhukov, since they continued to engage in illegal acts and in robbery and violence directed against the local population. During the war such things had gone on unnoticed because people were hiding from the fighting but now “when the war was over, when the people were beginning to forget about the war, it was intolerable to go to the Germans and pick their pockets.” Unfortunately,
because of the existence of “criminal elements” among the Soviet occupation forces, this was still happening and was undermining efforts to build friendship with the German people:

The problem to which Zhukov alluded was not one he liked to discuss in public. When the Red Army invaded Germany a reign of terror descended on the civilian population. Though exaggerated by Nazi propaganda, there was widespread looting, shooting, and, above all, rape. Zhukov's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, these acts were not confined to a tiny criminal minority and the lawlessness continued during the Soviet occupation of Germany.

To what extent were Zhukov and the High Command responsible for this lack of control over Soviet troops? Certainly, Soviet soldiers were left in no doubt that no quarter was to be given when they invaded Germany. On the road to Berlin the Red Army was fed a steady diet of anti-German hate propaganda. On the eve of the Vistula-Oder operation, for example, Zhukov issued an order to the 1st Belorussian Front: “Woe to the land of the murderers. We will get our terrible revenge for everything.” On the other hand, Red Army soldiers needed little or no encouragement to wreak their own vengeance. They were witnesses to the murderous occupation policies of the Germans that had resulted in the death of millions of Soviet citizens. The troops' hostility to the Germans was reinforced by the string of Nazi extermination
camps they liberated as they swept through Poland: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka. Among the surviving inmates were not just Jews—the main victims of the Nazi Holocaust—but Soviet POWs. During the war the Germans captured six million Soviet soldiers, half of whom died in captivity from starvation, disease, neglect, and brutality. In such circumstances retaliatory atrocities were all but inevitable. But the scale of the violence and disorder was obscenely disproportionate, not least the mass rape of German women. Estimates of the number of German women raped by Soviet soldiers ranges from the tens of thousands to the low millions, with the true figure probably somewhere in between. A large number of these rapes took place in the Greater Berlin area after the city's capture by the Red Army.
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Another city that suffered greatly was Vienna, where there were perhaps 70,000–100,000 rapes. In the case of the Austrians there was no official incitement to hatred since their country was considered a victim of the Nazi takeover in 1938. However, many Austrians had fought with the Germans on the Russian front, especially in Ukraine, and it was Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front—which included many Ukrainians in its ranks—that “liberated” Vienna.

The Red Army was not the only Allied army to commit atrocities against German civilians either during the war or during the occupation. American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers were also guilty, although the scale of their rape and pillage was much less than that of the Soviets. When stories about Red Army atrocities began to appear in the western press Soviet propagandists responded by pointing to the “indiscipline” of the western Allied armies.
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There is no evidence that Zhukov sanctioned or condoned criminality by Red Army troops. Indeed, he took steps to combat it, not only in words but also in action. On June 30, 1945, he issued an order noting complaints about robbery and rape by “individuals wearing Red Army uniforms” and directed his soldiers to remain on army premises unless they were engaged in official business. To stop Soviet soldiers from liaising with German women he ordered that anyone seen entering or leaving a private house would be arrested. Zhukov also threatened to punish officers incapable of maintaining discipline over their men. On the other hand, the Soviets' public insistence that the Red Army was a model of discipline and that there was no problem
apart from the activities of a tiny criminal minority was part of the problem and helps to explain the persistence of rape during the occupation. There was also a hint of frivolity and indulgence in Zhukov's attitude toward the rape problem. “Soldiers, make sure that in looking at the hemlines of German girls,” Zhukov reportedly said, “you don't look past the reasons the homeland sent you here.”
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Stalin was even more explicit in the leeway he was prepared to allow his troops when it came to women. “Imagine,” he told a delegation of Yugoslav communists in April 1945, “a man who has fought from Stalingrad to Belgrade—over thousands of kilometres of his own devastated land, across the dead bodies of his comrades and dearest ones. How can such a man react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors.”
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Stalin's comments about “fun” could only contribute to a blinkered view of sexual violence against women.