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May Days in Berlin
From the author’s archives. Photo by V. I. Smirnov.
N. I. Chistyakov (right) and B. Ye. Chertok at the bank of the Spree River on the outskirts of Berlin,
May 1945.
“They’re lying. I have my eye on them. Let’s go down to the basement. I’ll let
them have it with my automatic and we’ll be done with it.”The captain spoke so
clearly that the Germans understood without interpretation.
“Wait, Captain, why do that? They don’t have any weapons or explosives. Come
on, let’s take them to the commandant’s office.”
“I don’t have time to mess with them now. And I don’t advise you to walk
around like that. I can take your weapons away from each of you! I’m a Smersh
representative!”
But we persuaded him. He finally threw up his hands and went back to his
captured vehicle, in which we saw what was probably a “captured” woman.
The Germans whom we had saved turned out to be workers at the factory, and
we made them guide us through the shops.We saw the most interesting thing on
the first floor, in the factory’s accounting and cashier’s office—the entire floor was
strewn with a thick layer of Reichsmarks scattered helter-skelter. How many thousands
or millions were there! We kicked them about with our boots like autumn
leaves, and without picking anything up, hurried off to look around the factory. I
was doggedly searching for traces of the production of V-2 gyro instruments which
had been manufactured by Siemens, the remains of which had been found in
Poland as recently as 1944.We found nothing, however, that was not purely related
to aircraft production.
On 6 May, we had to leave our cozy but remote Buchow and resettle into semiresidential,
barracks-type buildings in the immediate area of Adlershof. Here it was
not nearly as comfortable. But the main thing was that our officers’ mess was not
at all the same.The large mess hall, it seems, had been set up especially for “trade
union” officers. It was staffed not by dazzling Muscovite waitresses, but by young
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