party.”
“I don’t see how that would work,” objected Roosevelt.
Now Stalin was shaking his head. “Speaking for myself, I care even less about German elections than I do about Europe’s Jews. Frankly, I have no faith that the German people are capable of reform, and I really don’t see that an election would be enough to curb their militarism. As far as I can see, the only condition I would insist on would be the payment by Germany of war reparations to Russia. This would have a twofold effect. First, it would go a long way toward preventing the German Reich from ever making war again. And, second, it would only restore that which Germany’s aggressive war against Russia has destroyed.” Stalin waved his hand dismissively in the direction of Roosevelt. “Everything else is of little account to us, including the matter of the Fuhrer’s retirement. Indeed, we should probably prefer to have one strong man in charge of the country rather than see it collapse into the anarchy that would surely follow on his retirement. At the very least, we should prefer him in semiretirement only, at the Berchtesgaden perhaps, with Reich Marshal Goring taking over the day-to-day running of the country.”
Roosevelt smiled uncomfortably. “I don’t see that I could ever sell that kind of deal to the American people,” he said.
“With all due respect to the president,” Stalin said, “Russia has had greater experience of making deals with Germany than the United States. There is no reason to suppose that a deal cannot be reached now. Still, I recognize your difficulties in this regard. Might I suggest that your best policy might be to present the American people with the fact that there existed a fait accompli between Germany and the Soviet Union and that there was very little you could do about said fait accompli except to recognize that fact and deal with it.”
I could already see the direction these negotiations were headed in, and how Stalin was determined to have a peace, albeit at the right price. And I remembered something that John Weitz had said to me back on the Iowa: that Stalin’s greatest fear was not the Germans, but that the Russian army might mutiny, as it had done back in 1917.
“I have two conditions,” said Hitler, holding up his hand almost imperiously. “My first is that the British should return the German deputy fuhrer, Rudolf Hess.”
“I am opposed to the return of Hess,” said Stalin. “The British have held Hess in reserve in order that they might make a separate deal with Germany. But what is more offensive to us is that Hess went to the British to solicit their help as an ally in an attack on Russia. This we cannot forgive. We say that Hess must stay in prison.”
“Haven’t the Russians tried to make a separate peace with Germany themselves?” Roosevelt asked. “Has Marshal Stalin forgotten the negotiations in Stockholm between the Soviet ambassador, Madame de Kollontay, and Germany’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop? I don’t see how you can criticize the British for doing what you yourselves have done.”
“I did not criticize the British,” said Stalin. “Only Rudolf Hess. My objection was only to his repatriation. But since we are on the subject of negotiations for a separate peace, it did not escape the attention of our intelligence services that your own personal representative, Commander George Earle, and von Papen, the German ambassador in Turkey, also held a series of peace talks.”
There was long silence. Then Hitler, smiling now, a little gleefully it seemed to me, as if he had enjoyed this display of tension between Stalin and Roosevelt, spoke up: “My second condition,” he said, “is that Germany cannot afford to pay any war indemnities. All property removed from occupied territories will be returned, of course. But it only seems to us fair that each should bear his own costs. For Germany to pay war reparations to Russia would then open the way to other claims by Britain, France, Poland, and the rest. Where would it stop? And what would Russia say to paying war reparations to Poland? And what about Italy? Would they pay Abyssinia at the same time as they tried to make a claim on Germany? No, gentlemen, we must wipe the slate clean, or there can be no real peace. Need I remind you that it was the bill presented to Germany by the League of Nations, and more especially the French, after the Great War of 1914 to 1918, that left Germany with no alternative but to go to war again?”
“Speaking for myself,” Roosevelt said, deliberately echoing Stalin’s turn of phrase, “I care less about war reparations than I do about the return of Rudolf Hess. Neither of these matters is an issue for us.”
“That is because you have lost so little,” said Stalin, somewhat irritated. “I don’t see how we could ever meet our lend-lease payments without receiving German war reparations.”
“I think the Fuhrer has made a good point, Marshal Stalin,” said Roosevelt. “If he pays you reparations, then what war reparations will you pay the Poles?”
Hitler, trying to contain his pleasure, now seemed intent on playing the peacemaker between Roosevelt and Stalin. “But is it possible,” he said, “to reach any kind of negotiated deal at all without the British? Am I to conclude by their absence that they will agree to nothing? Will Germany negotiate a peace with Russia and America only to find herself still at war with Britain?”
“Don’t worry about Britain,” Roosevelt said. “It’s the United States and the USSR that will decide things from here on. America certainly didn’t come into this war to restore the British Empire. Or the French. The United States is footing the bill in this war, and that gives us the right to pull rank. If we want peace, there will be no more war waged by the Western allies, I can assure the Fuhrer of that much at least.”
At this, Stalin smiled broadly. I began to be concerned that the president had bitten off more than he could chew. It was bad enough for Roosevelt to try to deal with Stalin on his own, but to deal with Hitler as well was like trying to fend off a pair of hungry wolves, each attacking from a different side. For Roosevelt to have admitted to Stalin that Britain was almost irrelevant to the decision-making that lay ahead-that Russia and America would dominate the postwar world-was surely more than Stalin could ever have hoped for.
1030 Hours
Himmler was congratulating himself, not just at having pulled off these secret talks but also at the way his Fuhrer was handling things. Hitler actually seemed to be enjoying the conference. His grasp of affairs had suddenly improved and he had even stopped indulging in his two common mannerisms: the compulsive picking at the skin on the back of his neck and the biting of the cuticles around his thumbs and forefingers. Himmler wasn’t sure, but he thought it was even possible that Hitler had dispensed with his usual morning injection of cocaine. This was like seeing the old Hitler, the Hitler who had made the French and the British dance to his tune in 1938. What would have been hard to believe but was now quite obvious was just how divided the Allies were: Churchill’s refusal to negotiate, or even meet, with Hitler was understandable, but it seemed extraordinary to Himmler that Roosevelt and Stalin should not have agreed on a common position before sitting down with the Fuhrer. This was more than he could reasonably have expected when, secretly, they had left Prussia and traveled to Teheran, leaving a stenographer named Heinrich Berger to impersonate Hitler at the Wolfschanze and Martin Bormann in effective control of the Greater German Reich.
The Russians had, he admitted, behaved with great hospitality. Von Ribbentrop said that Molotov and Stalin seemed no less friendly than when he had visited Russia in August 1939, in pursuit of the nonaggression pact. And their control of security and secrecy had been predictably excellent. No one was better at keeping secrets and manipulating public perceptions than the Russians. Secrecy was, of course, the reason that Stalin had insisted on having the Big Three in Teheran. The peace talks could not have been arranged anywhere else, except perhaps in Russia itself. Just look what had happened to the secrecy of the Allied talks in Cairo, Himmler reflected. Even so, it had been Himmler’s idea to use General Schellenberg’s Operation Long Jump as a way of demonstrating German good faith to the Russians. Giving up those men to the NKVD had been regrettable, but it was made easier by the late discovery that most of Schellenberg’s team were not German at all but Ukrainian volunteers. Himmler cared nothing for these men, and as a result he had been able to denounce them to the NKVD without scruple. As for the handful of renegade German officers and NCOs, they would be on Schellenberg’s conscience, not his.
Of course, the warmth of the Russian reception had a lot to do with the secret payment of ten million dollars in gold from Swiss bank accounts held by Germany into those of the Soviet Union. How right the Fuhrer had been about Russia: it was the very acme of the capitalist state headed by a man who would do anything, make any sacrifice, and take any bribe to pay for the realization of his idee fixe. And, despite what Hitler had said in front of Roosevelt, he was already reconciled to paying Stalin a fifty-million-dollar “bonus” if a peace could be negotiated at Teheran, for this was a drop in the ocean compared to the gold Germany had on reserve in its secret Swiss bank
