The Road to Berlin (102 page)

General Antonov asserted with some vigour that the Germans would stiffen and strengthen the defences of Berlin with all the resources at their command, drawing on the strength of other fronts to accomplish this objective and transferring divisions from western Europe and Italy. Vienna also would be heavily defended, with possible reinforcement from Italy. The Red Army had already identified sixteen divisions (nine from Germany, six from western Europe and one from Italy) on the Eastern Front; a further five (four
Panzer
and one motorized) were already being transferred and no less than 30–35 divisions were available from the Western Front, Norway, Italy and the interior of Germany—making an impressive total of 35–40 divisions upon which the Soviet command must reckon as German reinforcement in the east. In view of these figures General Antonov urged action to inhibit the movement of German divisions, especially from Italy; in addition, Allied co-operation could take the form of mounting air attacks against both Berlin and Leipzig in order to stifle this military traffic. At the conclusion of Antonov’s report Stalin sought the reaction of the President and the Prime Minister: brushing aside some remark by the President about changing the gauge of German railways—a total irrelevance, in Stalin’s view—the talk turned on how to prevent the movement of up to eight German divisions from Italy, with the Prime Minister also bringing up the question of British forces attacking through the ‘Ljubljana gap’ and thus linking up with the Red Army’s left flank. Though he himself had mentioned it earlier in private, this time Stalin did not deign to comment. The Prime Minister and the President had to be satisfied with Stalin’s assertion that he was in favour of military co-ordination and closer liaison, and would support such moves.

General Marshall then reported on the Western front, pointing to the defeat of the German offensive in the Ardennes and emphasizing present preparations for an Allied attack in the north with a second envisaged for the southern reaches, scheduled for 8 February. The crossing of the Rhine would take place in March, an operational pace which was admittedly slow but one governed by the flow of supplies—and here German V-2 weapons posed a threat, not least to the port facilities at Antwerp. Stalin brushed all this aside with a remark about the notorious inaccuracy of bombs and rockets alike. General Marshall would not
allow this to pass without commenting on the destruction wrought by the Allied air forces, whether in hammering German rail communications or by reducing German oil production by as much as eighty per cent. Air superiority was also a major factor in Italy, where Allied and German ground forces were more or less equal (thirty-two divisions each). Nor could the submarine threat be discounted now that the German navy was bringing improved U-boats into service and the Allied navies must cope with the difficulties of detection in shallow waters swept by varying tides.

In the ensuing debate, sharp questions and tart comments steadily dissipated the prevailing cordiality. The Prime Minister obtained a promise of help from Stalin in dealing with Danzig—lying in the path of the Soviet advance—and other centres of submarine production, but a request for details of Soviet river-crossing assault operations elicited no immediate response. Stalin took up the cudgels on his own behalf, probing deeply into Western plans and performance. The burden of this exchange was to stress the Red Army’s contribution and Stalin’s own military foresight. Pressed by Stalin, General Marshall set the length of the Allied breakthrough front at some 50–60 miles—the Red Army front had stretched more than ten times this distance—and though the Allies expected to breach prepared fortifications, they possessed the necessary reserves to carry through the operation. Stalin was gratified to hear that, for one of his own cardinal principles was the importance of reserves. And what about tank strength? The Red Army had employed as many as 9,000 tanks on the main breakthrough operation in the centre. General Marshall could only estimate that about 10–12 armoured divisions would be committed for every thirty-five divisions, a figure which Stalin found wanting in detail and accurate measure. The Prime Minister intervened in the tussle about tank figures to assert that in western Europe the Allies disposed of 10,000 tanks. A large number, Stalin observed.

Continuing his steady probing of the Allied position, Stalin turned to air strength and was given these figures as a comparison with 8,000–9,000 deployed with the Soviet air force. The wrangle over superiority in manpower grew out of misunderstanding and mistranslation, with the Prime Minister denying any Anglo-American superiority save that in the air, while General Marshall pointed out the balance of seventy-nine German divisions facing seventy-eight from among the Allies. At this point, conscious of rising tension, Stalin contented himself with remarking on Soviet artillery superiority and by way of mollification treated his listeners to a short discourse on the Soviet artillery offensive and the use of ‘artillery breakthrough divisions’ with their very large density of guns per kilometre. This overture to exchanging operational experience led Stalin to stress the manner in which the Soviet Union had fulfilled its obligations to its allies and now stood ready to discharge yet more—let the Allies but indicate their requirements. The Prime Minister at once proffered thanks for Soviet aid and congratulation on Soviet achievement, only to have Stalin turn on him in a spasm of annoyance at this obtuseness—the Red Army did not take the field either to earn mere
thanks or to carry out a formal commitment underwritten at Teheran but to discharge its
moral
duty as from one ally to others.

President Roosevelt took the sting out of this exchange by expressing his agreement with Stalin that Teheran had not meant formal commitment, embodying rather common agreement to strike at the common enemy. Quickly turning the point, the President went on to raise the question of co-operation and co-ordination among the Allies, receiving support at this juncture from Churchill, who speedily repaired the breach with Stalin by repudiating any notion of a bargain with the Soviet Union. With the three staffs presently in attendance, the Prime Minister thought it timely to embark on a review of ‘the whole question of military co-ordination between the Allies’. Such collaboration, already underlined by the President, could mean the pursuit of operations on one front even if the other were hindered or halted. Stalin protested: this was neither collaboration nor co-ordination; it was in fact the opposite, with no better illustration than the Soviet offensive in the autumn of 1944 coming to a close just at a time when the Allies unleashed their own in the west.

Towards the close of this meeting, with harmony and good humour restored, Stalin took note of some specific requests made by his allies, particularly the capture of Danzig and the reduction of the U-boat threat. President Roosevelt enquired of Stalin whether Danzig could be within Soviet reach, to which Stalin replied that ‘hopefully’ it might well be. The company found that remark a huge and enjoyable joke. Stalin could congratulate himself on that deft touch, as he could derive considerable satisfaction from what he had learned of Anglo-American plans and their possible implementation, particularly in terms of ‘co-ordination’ which would synchronize Anglo-American operations in the west with Soviet operations directed at Berlin in the east. Co-ordination was to be taken up in greater detail at the meeting of the chiefs of staff scheduled for the morning of the 5th; for the moment, however, Stalin had learned sufficient for his immediate purposes.

The dinner which followed at the Livadia palace, with the President as host, carried this bonhomie through into the evening, though the proceedings were not without their awkward moments. One such was the exchange between Bohlen and Vyshinskii, who refused to countenance any argument which would accord to small nations the right to judge the actions of the great powers, a point of view not unnaturally contested by Bohlen who stressed the American popular support for the rights of small nations. Vyshinskii replied that the American people should ‘learn to obey their leaders’, a remark as acidulous as it was inept. Otherwise, the humour was heavy indeed, and at one juncture even unfortunate: encouraged by the apparently relaxed atmosphere, the President told Stalin to his face that he was commonly known as ‘Uncle Joe’, at which Stalin, stung by the very commonness of the sobriquet, at once made to leave the dinner. The Prime Minister drew Stalin back to the circle of the dinner with a toast which emphasized the importance of the present conference and the commanding role
of the three major allies in waging the war and sustaining the peace to come. Stalin responded in prim but powerful style, making absolute assertion of the rights of the ‘Big Three’ against all the bleating of the small powers that their rights were at risk; he, Stalin, served the interests of the Soviet Union and its people, this he could neither disguise nor conceal, though this did not preclude participation in a concert of the ‘Big Three’ to protect the rights of the smaller—but without that right to sit in judgement on the great.

Having slithered to the point of acute embarrassment, if not actual disaster, the dinner party steered its way through a series of stern and unambiguous statements by Stalin: the small must be ruled by the great, the delinquents brought to book—one such delinquent being Argentina, but since this miscreant was within the American orbit, Stalin would forbear. The President reminded Stalin that Poland was just such a small power in the Soviet area yet he was a President who had to take account of the opinion of Poles living in the United States; Stalin dismissed this argument with a quick statistical flick, pointing out that of seven million American Poles only 7,000 actually voted. The President could demonstrably rest easy.

None could complain that Stalin had not made himself plain, even brutally plain. His was no mere table talk, but intended for real effect. He was clearly not inclined to compromise on Poland and had presented a clear picture of the role of the great powers in any future world security organization; the prestige, power and authority of the Soviet Union were at stake and Stalin forcefully impressed upon his listeners his iron determination to sustain and nurture these above all else. The company dispersed in a mood of general well-being bordering almost on euphoria, with Stalin himself making a late departure in spite of his earlier fit of huffiness. Eden, however, did not share the prevailing mood; for him the dinner party had been little short of a disaster—‘a terrible party, I thought’—marred by the President’s vagueness and the Prime Minister’s long-windedness, though neither was as devastating as the brutally stark opinions expressed by Stalin who did not mince words about the subordination of the small nations to the will and the requirements of the great.

On the morning of 5 February the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff met with the Soviet General Staff to discuss military planning and military co-ordination, a session held at General Antonov’s
HQ
on the road to Yalta. Field-Marshal Sir Alan Brooke in the chair opened the discussions by raising the issue of co-ordination and made a general appeal for Soviet help while Anglo-American forces forced the Rhine, operations which would continue throughout March and April—would the Russians be able to maintain their own operations in spite of the thaw and their extended lines of communication? General Marshall took up this theme, stressing the peculiar conditions under which the Allied armies operated, in particular their lack of overall superiority and the problems presented by their lines of communications; air power was the winning Allied card, but Soviet help
was critical in keeping the Germans off balance at those times when poor weather grounded Allied planes, thus nullifying the sole Allied superiority.

General Antonov made a reasoned response. Obviously the Soviet command wished to know how the Germans would be prevented from transferring divisions from the west to the eastern front: German divisions had moved westwards at the time of the Allied landings in 1944 and the Soviet command wanted them held there. For its part the Red Army would continue its own operations in the east as long as ‘circumstances permitted’, operational pauses would be kept to a minimum and the Soviet advance would continue to the very limit of Soviet resources. The immediate Soviet concern centred on the Italian front and Antonov again put the case for Allied forces operating through the ‘Ljubljana gap’ in the direction of Vienna: Brooke had already tagged this subject ‘a bore’ and referred General Antonov to the difficulties—brought on by the weather—of Allied operations in Italy and the present plan to withdraw divisions from Italy to reinforce the Anglo-American offensive on the Western Front. Inevitably, what the Allies could do in the way of moving troops was also open to the German command under Kesselring and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

Probing deeper, Antonov enquired just what all this would mean in actual numbers of divisions; he received the rather disconcerting answer that up to ten German divisions could be involved in such transfers. The senior British and American officers joined a chorus of praise to Allied air power, pointing to the havoc it had wreaked on German oil supply and the possibilities it presented for hampering German troop transfers, from Italy in particular. Aviation Marshal Khudyakov, not to be outdone, heaped fulsome praise on the Soviet air force for its role in Soviet operations, but pressed Field-Marshal Alexander for an assurance that this much-vaunted Allied air superiority would be directed against German troop movement. Alexander duly gave this undertaking, evoking a certain satisfaction on the Soviet side though not enough to offset Antonov’s obvious despondency over the futility of trying to interest the Anglo-American command in a drive through the ‘Ljubljana gap’ and thus supporting the Soviet offensive aimed at Vienna. Brooke hammered the final nail into that military coffin: in view of the absence of Allied superiority in ground troops, every effort must be made to concentrate maximum forces on the Western Front to deliver the
coup de grâce
against Germany, and such was the paucity of Allied strength that it would not even be possible to exploit any German withdrawal from Italy, assuming that this took place. Headed off in this fashion, Antonov turned to the possibility of Allied action to prevent German troop movements from Norway, only to be told once again that lack of force precluded any Allied action on the ground, in Norway itself, while Allied operations against German movement by sea would at once encounter those difficulties presented by extensive mining. Inevitably, Antonov let the whole matter drop.