Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [148]
Hirsch reported that hundreds of other Germans who had been Russian prisoners of war and converted into an “anti-Fascist league” were placed in the school system, the union, the police force.
Adolph Schatz, nominally a German like Rudi Wöhlman, had been with Azov as an officer in the NKVD; now he was president of police with headquarters in the Soviet Sector.
Rudi Wöhlman led the Communist Party, licensed under a thin guise as the People’s Proletariat Party. He moved into the city’s civic machinery, grabbed the abandoned judiciary, filled the courts with judges from the party. The Berlin Magistrat, the city’s executive branch, had some two-dozen departments covering education, welfare, transportation, public works, police. Wöhlman loaded them with Communists. The personnel director of the Magistrat was a member of the German People’s Liberation Committee and personnel directors of eighteen of Berlin’s twenty boroughs were either Communists or in tune with Wöhlman’s directives.
Hirsch reported that a single labor union had been licensed and was under absolute control of the Communists. The union formed “Action Squads” for use in demonstrations and to persuade other workers to stay in line.
Wöhlman’s most clever move, however, came in the digging up of the old Democrat, Berthold Hollweg. He was found in a shack on the Teltow Canal, adjudged harmless, and appointed as Oberburgermeister. Hollweg suited an excellent purpose. He still had a name from the old days and could be used as window dressing and “prove” how democratic the Communists were in appointing a non-Communist as lord mayor. Hollweg made a fine figurehead to be controlled by Deputy Mayor Heinz Eck of the German People’s Liberation Committee.
Young Hirsch took the post on the Magistrat as secretary of education and a second post as secretary of culture and information. From here he could control the texts and the teachers. At the university he formed and controlled a student organization on the lines of an Action Squad.
The single radio transmitter in the city was under Hirsch’s supervision.
While the Communists set their roots deeply, entwined their tentacles tightly, the other political parties were in no position to protest. Even after the arrival of the West, they were not permitted a rebuttal in their newspapers for the source of all newsprint was controlled by the Communists.
The German People’s Liberation Committee moved in from Moscow with an awesome speed and efficiency. Before the West could get bearings they were faced with the accomplished feat of the police, Magistrat, courts, union, banking, ration, education, information, mayor’s office, all under Russian control.
Heinrich Hirsch concluded his report. The West would not be able to get out of the hole. The rules governing the four-power occupation Kommandatura saw to that.
When the report was concluded, each of the four discussed the next moves.
They had begun the classic maneuver of infiltrating the other three political parties using both police pressure and the Action Squads.
V. V. Azov was rather pleased. All the planning during the war had paid off. The West had done no planning. The instruments to shove the West out of Berlin were established.
Heinrich Hirsch was told to remain after the others left.
“You sent a note that there was a matter you wished to discuss with me privately, Comrade Hirsch?” Azov asked.
“Comrade,” he began with caution, “I must express concern regarding the use of former Nazis, particularly in educational and police posts.”
“You are, perhaps, speaking for a group?”
“Only for myself. And only because I feel this is harmful to our aims. Even if we are able to hide the facts from the West, the German people will recognize it. They may tend to doubt our sincerity.”
Azov had to be careful not to be drawn into an argument with Hirsch, for he was certainly the most articulate of the Germans. “Tell me,” he said, resorting to standard trickery, which Hirsch recognized from years of schooling, “do you know why we are in Berlin?”
“Of course,” Hirsch said.