Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [221]
Falkenstein’s maid nearly passed out when she opened the door.
“You want to kick it off, Sean?” the general asked.
“Herr Falkenstein. We have flown in five hundred million marks of the new currency. It is exactly the same as that in the zone except it is stamped with a B. We are prepared to disburse it to the banks in our sectors within an hour.”
Well, well, well, Falkenstein thought to himself. They were answering the challenge with the strongest indication yet of a determination to remain in Berlin. “I am certain you have examined the consequences.”
“Any consequence is better than handing them the city.”
“After we make our announcement, we want the Berlin Assembly to pass a resolution favoring our B marks,” General Hansen said.
“That is a tall order.”
“We think you are a tall man,” Hazzard said.
Falkenstein’s mind ran in practical channels. Would he be able to hold his people together and push a vote through in the Russian Sector? Yet, the Americans and British were committing themselves to risk, too, for the first time.
The alternative? Give the city to Rudi Wöhlman. How long would it last? As long as Prague ... as long as Warsaw.
Falkenstein did not like the alliance with the Americans. They were hedgy. They came to him only out of self-interest Yet, there was no one else, there was no place to go.
“When do you plan to announce the B marks?”
“Over RIAS in the morning so that it will be covered in the afternoon papers.”
Falkenstein nodded. “I have a busy day’s work then.”
“There is a question I am forced to ask,” General Hansen said. “Knowing what might happen, are the people of this city going to hold?”
“And you, gentlemen. Will you hold?”
“I don’t know,” Hansen answered. “If we do leave we will pay for it with the blood of unborn generations. But the question is here and now. At this moment we have a way out and you don’t. How are the people of Berlin going to choose to go this time?”
With his hot and cold love of the city, Ulrich Falkenstein had made himself believe that Berliners were different ... but they had endured the Nazis, the bombs, the rape of their city. Was there enough left in them to resist? Would fear of the Russians band them together to accept this half-hearted alliance with the Americans; or would the history of the past tell them that resistance is useless and would they then stampede to the Russians as the best way to survive?
He looked directly at the American military governor. “You have my word, sir, that so long as the American garrison remains in Berlin, the people will stand with you.”
They shook hands. Hansen and Falkenstein looked at each other with a mutual lack of warmth.
Chapter Forty-two
THE DAY AFTER THE announcement of the B marks, the Soviet Union suspended canal and rail traffic for “technical” reasons and the movement on the autobahn slowed to a trickle.
Hovering on the brink of a complete blockade, Ulrich Falkenstein presented a bill to the Berlin Assembly to accept the Western currency.
Rudi Wöhlman used the full bag of parliamentary tricks to stall and the SND of Adolph Schatz worked overtime to apply terror on the assemblymen.
On the day of June 23, 1948, the. vote could no longer be delayed. As he had done many times before, General Hansen sent Sean O’Sullivan into the eye of the hurricane. He was dispatched to the office which the Americans kept at the Berlin City Hall.
Berlin’s Rathaus sat well inside the Soviet Sector a short distance from the rubble-strewn Unter Den Linden and two full miles away from the junction where the British, American, and Russian sectors came together.
The former Lust Garten at the end of the Unter Den Linden had been cleared and made into a huge plaza, renamed Marx-Engels Platz, and served as a massing place for shows of Soviet solidarity.
On this day Action Squads from the factories, the university, the political clubs, and the youth groups assembled in the plaza and placards were passed among them.
DOWN WITH THE IMPERIALIST WARMONGERS!
AMERICANS,