Armageddon - Max Hastings [340]
EISENHOWER’S FRANKNESS with Stalin about his lack of ambitions towards Berlin was neither credited nor reciprocated. Stalin did not believe that the Supreme Commander would forgo this great prize when it was plain that the German front was collapsing before the Americans and British. Indeed, Stalin was irked that the enemy had opened to the Western allies so easy a passage. This fed all his paranoia about the collusion natural between bourgeois capitalist societies. Russia’s warlord was determined that the Soviet Union should seize Hitler’s capital. He shared with his German counterpart an absolute indifference to the human cost of his decisions. The two foremost monsters of twentieth-century history embarked upon their last encounter with matching appetites for a titanic showdown.
At a critical meeting in his study at the Kremlin on 1 April, Stalin told Zhukov and Konev of his belief that the Anglo-Americans were driving for Berlin. Famously, he asked: “Who is going to take Berlin: are we or are the Allies?” Konev instantly gave Stalin the reply he wanted: “It is we who shall take Berlin, and we will take it before the Allies.” Stalin smiled thinly: “So that’s the sort of man you are.” Doubt persists about whether the Russians sincerely feared a Western drive for Berlin, or whether Stalin merely used the threat to goad his marshals. It seems likely that he indeed feared pre-emption.
In Moscow, he observed to Zhukov and Konev that virtually all remaining German military strength was now concentrated on the Oder. Zhukov said that according to his own intelligence reports the Germans had deployed against him some ninety divisions in four armies, together with 1,500 tanks, 3,500 aircraft and 10,000 guns. This was a wildly extravagant estimate. The German divisions were ruins, largely bereft of equipment. It was years since the Luftwaffe had possessed 3,500 operational aircraft. Overall German strength of some 300,000 men facing Zhukov was vastly outweighed by that of the Russian armies. But it was true that Hitler had thrown into his line east of Berlin almost every man capable of holding a weapon, and every fighting vehicle the Wehrmacht and SS could move to the Oder. “I think it’s going to be quite a fight,” said Stalin. Over the years, Zhukov had become skilled in reading the Soviet warlord’s mood by every detail of his behaviour: the tunic he wore, whether he stroked his moustache, whether he lit his Dunhill pipe. Now, he did the latter, usually a good sign. Zhukov and Konev were mighty men at the head of their armies, yet they became no more than useful creatures, utterly at the mercy of his whims, in the presence of their terrible master.
Stalin signalled Eisenhower that he agreed with the Americans that Berlin was no longer important, and that Russia would commit only limited forces. In reality, 2.5 million men and 6,250 tanks were deployed for the assault on Hitler’s capital. Zhukov and his 1st Belorussian Front would be granted the dubious honour of launching the assault. Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front would attack from the south. Konev’s men would initially drive westwards, south of Berlin, and turn north towards the city only if Zhukov’s tank armies failed to smash their way through. “Whoever breaks in first, let him take Berlin,” said Stalin, drawing the start line on the Oder bank