The Road to Berlin (34 page)

Major Ilya Svetlov (alias Major Walter Schultz) evidently managed to inform Soviet intelligence in Moscow of what was brewing: Maj.-Gen. Vasili Ivanovich Pankov and Colonel Avdeyev picked up his message and at once made for Teheran, breaking their air journey at Baku. Here the local intelligence command handed over more information about
Long Jump
, emanating this time from
‘Oberleutnant
Ziebert’ who was operating behind the German lines in the Ukraine: Ziebert (Nikolai Kuznetsov) also garnered his information from the German command, in this case
Obersturmbannführer
von Ortel, though Soviet accounts of how this was managed vary. One version (compiled by Alexander Lukin, himself a Soviet officer operating in the German rear) intimates that a Ukrainian girl, Maya Mikota, engaged on ‘softening up’ von Ortel, was promised ‘Persian carpets’ after a particular mission was finished, a tip that she passed on to ‘Ziebert’, who then got more details by loading von Ortel with drink: in the account of Schultz–Svetlov’s activity, it was the local partisan commander who reported that ‘Ziebert’ had been recruited to take part in the operation in Teheran by von Ortel, but that the
Oberleutnant
never finished reporting in full on the German plans because he had vanished into thin air. This was the report Pankov and Avdeyev read in Baku, and they concluded that the ‘disappearance’ was connected with the isolation Schelienberg ordered for all participants and which Schultz–Svetlov had reported. (The inference, nevertheless, is that Soviet intelligence received some kind of corroboration relating to Schultz–Svetlov’s signal and that Kuznetsov was either involved or had learned something at a high level.)

In Teheran Pankov and Avdeyev set another Soviet officer, Oleg Smirnov, to watch Gluszek; Schultz–Svetlov, with his radio operator ‘wife’, also reached Teheran and then set out for the frontier area to set up the dropping zones (Svetlov having already contacted Pankov and Avdeyev). With the dropping zones organized, local reception arrangements made and an illegal crossing point into Turkey established, as well as suitable houses overlooking the allied diplomatic buildings in Teheran rented, Schultz signalled Berlin that preparations were complete and gave the co-ordinates for the airdrop, which would be carried out by aircraft coming in from the Turkish side. He himself would wait at the dropping zone and then take the German commandos into Teheran to their hiding-places.

But at this point the coincidences that had so often served Schultz–Svetlov in fantastic fashion, turned against him. His ‘wife’ grew suspicious of his trips inside Teheran, and now a German
SS
officer, Ressler, who had earlier stumbled on the trail of the false ‘Friedrich’ (only to be removed by the influential uncle), suddenly arrived to take part in
Long Jump
. Together, Schultz’s ‘wife’ and Ressler proposed to radio Berlin that Schultz–Svetlov was a major suspect. But Svetlov
struck first; he put the radio out of action and alerted Pankov about the incoming German transport aircraft.

Racing back to Teheran from the smashed transmitter, Schultz’s ‘wife’ tried to throw off the pursuing Russian cars, only to crash to her death into a bridge. Maj.-Gen. Pankov meanwhile kept in contact with a Soviet fighter squadron, which reported a Ju-52—without national markings—crossing into Iranian territory from the direction of Turkey: intercepted, the transport plane seemed to accept directions to land and then it suddenly swung off towards the Turkish frontier. ‘Fire warning shots’: the fighter pilots reported that the aircraft still held its course, at which Pankov ordered the fighters to shoot down the Ju-52. ‘The aircraft is burning and has exploded’, came the report from the Soviet flight commander. Pankov ordered an immediate move to the scene of the crash, where the wreckage was scattered over a thousand yards or more; no papers were picked up but the ground was littered with bits of small arms, automatic weapons and mortars, among which ammunition continued to explode. Pankov returned to Teheran; Smirnov went to the frontier area to arrest German sympathizers and hand them over to the Soviet garrison at Kazvin. Only then did Pankov inform his officers that President Roosevelt would now move into the Soviet compound in Teheran. One assassination attempt had been foiled on the eve of the conference (the actual date has never been specified), and Pankov, in giving orders to reinforce all guards, emphasized the danger of ‘the second variant’ which could follow once the first one had been frustrated. But this ‘first variant’, the mission initially entrusted to Otto Skorzeny (who abandoned it after a brief study), was all there was to the German plan; there was no ‘second variant’, and Molotov was possibly only relaying Pankov’s fears and relying on the circumstantial evidence of that crashed Ju-52—inconclusive, perhaps, but it helped to give Stalin what he wanted.

It was Stalin who came both to dominate and to domineer at the Teheran conference, his opportunity magnified by the lack of prior agreement between the British and Americans on strategic policy and his occasion provided by President Roosevelt’s attempt at a Soviet–American bilateralism. The October conference of Foreign Ministers had already taken most of the sting out of the thoroughly unpleasant situation that had built up in the summer of 1943 when Stalin’s ire reached its climax; Stalin had signified his willingness to soldier on with the coalition but not his readiness to take any place he considered subordinate. On the contrary, his position was hardening, and his success strengthened his hand—Soviet troops were less than a hundred miles from the former frontiers. Early in June Maiskii confidently pointed out the implications of a Soviet advance in a talk with R.A. Butler: Soviet troops would soon be on the 1941 frontiers, they would perforce stay on them, and now was the time to talk terms. Then there was the whisper of Soviet–German negotiation: in September Japanese
proposals for ‘mediation’ between Germany and the Soviet Union were brushed aside in Moscow, and the fact of the Soviet rejection registered in Washington. Stalin had every reason to take ‘war-shortening’ measures seriously; remaining in the coalition was one, but again not at the price of a Russia so physically debilitated and so fearfully bled as to be incapable of participation in the post-war settlements. Any and every pressure had to be exerted for the ‘Second Front’, which Stalin understood at the end of October would take place in the spring of 1944. Almost on the eve of the Teheran conference, Stalin jabbed the conscience of his allies, complaining on 6 November that German divisions from Italy and the Balkans—adding France to the list ten days later—were moving to the Eastern Front. This pot had to be kept constantly on the boil.

From the moment of his first private meeting with the President, who prided himself on his ability to deal with the Soviet leader and win him for the cause of peace and democracy, Stalin could discern disparities between the British and American positions over the waging of the war and the winning of the peace. Stalin took upon himself the onus for the delay in meeting the President, but explained that ‘the front’ called; somewhat gloomily, he sketched out events there—the fall of Zhitomir, the threat to Korosten, the
Wehrmacht
moving up fresh divisions. The President responded by stating that this was the purpose of the present meeting, to take thirty to forty German divisions off the Red Army’s back. In a rapid, verbal tour of the world, President Roosevelt touched on many items—merchant ships for Russia, France, the Far East: in his denigration of de Gaulle and his ill-concealed contempt for the Chinese Army, Stalin seemed bent on reducing the world to its ‘Big Three’ proportions, suffering no other contenders, ruling out France through defeatism and China through incompetence. Over the colonial areas, India in particular—a topic the President warned Stalin to leave alone in his dealings with the Prime Minister—this computation was reduced almost to a ‘Big Two’ progressivism. The meetings drew to a close shortly before 4 pm, when the first plenary session of the Teheran conference was due to begin.

At the express wish of Stalin and the Prime Minister, President Roosevelt took the chair. After an exchange of compliments, he launched into a Western view of the war, reviewing the Pacific and European theatres and emphasizing the strain that the war against Japan had put on operations in Europe. Shortage of ships and landing-craft had ruled out a cross-Channel attack in 1943 but the Quebec conference had decided upon
Overlord
for 1944. In the event of a major operation in the Mediterranean,
Overlord
would not be feasible, and would have to be delayed for anything up to three months for a lesser attack. None wished to see
Overlord
delayed, but on the question of a further Mediterranean operation before the invasion the President and the Prime Minister were anxious to have Soviet advice on the optimum strategy for drawing the greatest weight off the Red Army: Italy, the Balkans, the Aegean, the enlistment of Turkey—a number of variants had been discussed, as well as landing in southern France.

Stalin then spoke of the Soviet Union. He directed his opening remarks with unerring accuracy, commending Allied successes in the Pacific, excusing the Soviet forces from immediate participation but promising their speedy entry against Japan once Germany was defeated; the Soviet Far Eastern forces would be tripled for the attack in which the Soviet Union would join the ‘common effort’. The Soviet Far Eastern Front did not meanwhile go untended; for more than eighteen months it had provided vital reinforcements to the European front, all the while maintaining its level of strength by local mobilization. In 1942 the
Stavka
ordered the establishment of a new post, Deputy Chief of the General Staff (Far East). Senior officers from divisional level upwards rotated for periods of duty on the European front to acquire experience of modern warfare. At Kursk General Anapasenko, Far Eastern Front commander doing his ‘tour’—
na stazhirovku
—on the European front, was killed by a shell-burst. His place in the Soviet Far East had been taken by General Purkayev, an experienced ‘shock army’ commander who later took over the Kalinin Front. In the autumn of 1943 the Soviet Air Force also took stock of the reports on the state of Soviet air strength in the Far East and set about modernizing it.

The Soviet announcement about eventual participation in the war against Japan was not new, for an assurance on these lines was delivered at the October conference; but coming as this did from Stalin himself, and directed as it was to the President, it meant a formal guarantee. In return for the Western powers bringing the heaviest weight against Germany, the Soviet Union would contribute to the elimination of Japan, taking on the Kwantung Army in Manchuria and providing bases for bombers in the air assault on Japan itself. By its very place in the proceedings at Teheran, Stalin’s undertaking was not merely an announcement but also a pre-emptive bid, tugging at American desires and fears—the desire to strike hard and deep into Europe, the fear of being burdened with a prolonged war in the Far East. Stalin offered a way out in return for a quick kill in Europe. The picture he now went on to present of the war on the Soviet–German front was by no means sombre: though the Germans had anticipated the Soviet offensive in July, the Red Army’s considerable successes had surprised Stalin himself, who had surmised German strength to be greater. Soviet offensive operations had slowed or halted for the moment, and the Germans had recovered the initiative west and south of Kiev—they were in fact bent on retaking Kiev—but the wider initiative remained with the Russians. Both Russian and Western estimates of German strength on the Eastern Front more or less tallied, but it was news indeed that the Red Army had 330 divisions in the field; more information than ever before on Soviet operations was forthcoming at Teheran, though the disclosures were enormously discreet, not least because the Red Army had well over 450 divisions in action and a margin of strength therefore greater than Stalin acknowledged.

Without denigrating the Italian campaign, Stalin dismissed it as a staging area for an invasion of Germany, if only because of the Alps, which Field-Marshal
Suvorov in his time had found a formidable barrier. Turkey was better, but still a long way from Germany. The direct route lay through France, and it was here that the Anglo-American armies should attack. Stalin wanted
Overlord
, without the trimmings and within the shortest possible space of time. Although in October the Russians had urged greater effort upon their allies to bring Turkey into the war, now Stalin showed less enthusiasm for the Balkan theatre; and here he came into direct collision with the Prime Minister, who set out ‘the British position’ in the wake of Stalin’s remarks. Mr Churchill stressed that what had been done by the Western allies up till now had been secondary, but it represented all that could be done, given the resources.
Overlord
was a definite commitment for the late spring or summer of 1944—leaving a full six months, time which ought not to slip away in passivity but which should be geared to operations utilizing the resources within the Mediterranean without causing any delay with the cross-Channel attack. Once Rome fell to the Allied armies, it should prove possible to open a ‘Third Front’ ‘in conformity with, but not in substitution for,
Overlord’
—a landing in southern France, or an attack into the German flank from a bridgehead high up on the Adriatic; greater activity in the Balkans and increased support for Tito; the enlistment of Turkey in war and thereby the opening of the Dardanelles, leading to a direct supply route into Soviet Black Sea ports and inducing ‘a political landslide’ among Germany’s tottering allies; and finally (as a reminder from the President) a thrust north-eastwards from an Adriatic foothold.

Stalin straightaway went about dissecting the Prime Minister’s arguments, sticking to numbers—the strength of the forces earmarked for
Overlord
, the number of divisions left in the Mediterranean, the number of men involved in any attack on southern France and what manpower might be drawn off in the event of Turkey entering the war. The Prime Minister duly presented the military statistics, promised proof of them, and stuck by his case that there would be no great offsetting in strength for
Overlord;
on the contrary, here was a sensible and profitable use of available manpower. At this, Stalin shoved the arithmetic aside and came out bluntly against any division of forces between Turkey and southern France.
Overlord
, he insisted, was basic to 1944: once Rome had been captured, troops in Italy could be landed in southern France, from which they could link up with the invasion force launched from the north. Turkey was a non-starter.