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Moscow—Poznan—Berlin
drawn carriages carrying luggage of all kinds. Each amateur conveyance was traveling
under its national flag. Sullenly, slowly, and silently, gray-green columns of
prisoners of war plodded toward the east. Blankets, brushes, and briefcases on ropes
hung all around them, and sometimes a loaf of bread dangled in a string bag.We
were surprised that there were only four or five of our soldiers guarding several
hundred German prisoners who had just come from battle.
Adlershof, located in southeast Berlin, is part of Köpenick.We remembered
from magazine articles that this was an industrial workers’ area where German
communists and “Red Front” military detachments had been prominent. The
streets and houses had remained intact. Everything appeared to be quite homey.
But many buildings already housed Soviet military institutions: “General
Petrov’s unit”—arrows pointing to the military commandant. Troop units also
took up positions without any identifying marks.There were directional arrows
on posts that read “Berlin Center,” “Buchow,” “to Kostrzyn,” “to Frankfurt.”
These were used both for advancing and evacuating to the rear. Posted in the
intersections were our female traffic controllers, who were surprisingly attractive
during those spring days, wearing the shoulder boards of lieutenants junior
grade, white gloves, and beautifully fitting uniforms. They were waving traffic
on or stopping it, smiling, and giving directions. As we soon found out, they
even knew German.
There were so many vehicles—lots of Studebakers and Dodges, damaged tanks
and self-propelled guns. Here the Germans had already lived through the worst.
There wasn’t any firing in their area; bombs and shells weren’t exploding. The
smoke and thunder were elsewhere, closer to the city center. German women had
gathered in groups around soldiers, having grown bolder, and were bombarding
them with questions.
Our placards alternated with the German ones: “A beaten German is a
bootlicker and a scoundrel. Don’t trust him, soldier,” “Kapitulieren? Niemals!”
(Capitulate? Never!),“Red Army soldiers do not wage war with the civilian population—this
degrades the warrior’s honor,” “Berlin bleibt deutsch!” (Berlin will
remain German).
An excerpt from Stalin’s orders: “History shows that Hitlers come and go, but
states and peoples remain.”
Two days later, we were moved out of the Strausberg area, which was jampacked
with rear services and frontline aviation, to a location close to the surprisingly
comfortable Buchow.With five officers of our “spoils” team, we settled into
what was, by our Soviet standards, a quite magnificent villa.
In spite of its proximity to Berlin—Adlershof was twenty-five kilometers
away—Buchow was completely preserved. This was yet another inexplicable
phenomenon of the war.When the Germans went to Moscow in 1941, all of the
surrounding towns and villages in their path were destroyed. The well-tended
appearance of this idyllic resort did not match our programmed conceptions about
war and about the condition of the Nazi “lair” after four years of war. Here were
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