Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [182]
While Wöhlman exuded confidence, Heinrich Hirsch wondered. He had known Wöhlmans, Azovs, Schatzes, Ecks all his life. At a certain point their ability to have individual thought processes stopped, and their minds were completely dominated by party thinking. They functioned without a shred of anger, curiosity, or protest in their being. They were unable to have concepts of right or wrong.
Men who had no anger, curiosity, or protest in themselves could not understand how it could exist in other people.
Hirsch had never entirely lost these traits despite his training. He feared that their efforts had been a deception so transparent that the people of Berlin were going to rally behind Falkenstein in a display of defiance.
Azov was looking at Hirsch. The younger man had been under suspicion, but he possessed a mind far keener that Wöhlman’s.
“What is your opinion, Comrade Hirsch?”
“I cannot completely share Comrade Wöhlman’s confidence. We should win in a stampede. Yet, some final dramatic gesture is called for on the eve of the election.”
“But we have spent millions of rubles to bring in food and coal.”
That was what annoyed Hirsch. In the coal negotiations with the British they were forced to stick to the line that the Soviet Union could not force the Poles to give up Silesian coal. When Azov wanted coal as a campaign gesture, Polish sovereignty did not exist.
Wasn’t this last-minute flood of food rather obvious when it was known the Americans had maintained the ration for over a year? And now they had RIAS to give their story. Had they all underestimated RIAS?
“Comrades,” Hirsch said, “I believe I have the type of message the Berliners will understand.”
Two days before the election, Heinrich Hirsch’s plan unfolded. The Soviet Union controlled the flow of electricity to the Western Sectors.
At darkness, the people of the Steglitz Borough discovered they had no electricity.
Twenty minutes later the lights went out in the French boroughs of Wedding and Reinickendorf.
An hour later the central British boroughs of Tiergarten and Charlottenburg were plunged into darkness.
Alternating borough by borough, the lights went out in a wordless bit of last-minute electioneering. Without Russian electricity there would be no industry, transportation, sewage disposal, communication, schools, or hospitals.
The day of October 20 in the year of 1946 was a misery of cold and drizzle. For the first time in a decade Berliners went to the polls. The outpour of people brought mile-long lines of ragged humanity huddling for warmth against the first real bites of winter. Ballot boxes were crammed to elect the new Assembly of 130 members.
At dawn of the next day, Berlin was awakened by a now familiar voice:
“This is RIAS calling. The results of yesterday’s election is as follows. The Democratic Party, 1,015,000 ballots giving them sixty-three Assembly seats with 49 per cent of the vote.
“The Christian Party was second with over 460,000 ballots, winning twenty-nine Assembly seats and receiving 22 per cent of the vote.
“Third, the Communists under the name of People’s Proletariat received 400,000 ballots, twenty-six Assembly seats and 19 per cent of the vote.
“The Conservative Party won the balance of twelve seats with 195,000 ballots constituting 9 per cent of the vote.
“The free parties have swept the election with a staggering combination of 81 per cent.”
Chapter Twenty-one
THE STINGING DEFEAT AT the polls presented a new tactical problem to V. V. Azov. He realized the new Berlin Assembly would never elect a Communist Oberburgermeister and so he threw their strength to retaining the old Democrat Berthold Hollweg, whom they could control.
The Communist Heinz Eck was unable to attain to higher than second deputy mayor.
In the Kommandatura a new wrinkle was added as Nikolai Trepovitch ordered investigations into the backgrounds of a great number of free party assemblymen for “suspected Nazi pasts.” He was thus able to keep them from taking their office.
Although the West grew passive