“Thank you, General, but I am not doing it out of any sense of devotion to the American cause. I see cooperating with you as the lesser of two evils. Indeed, there is no comparison.”
“Even so, you could have stood aside. Many of your people have done just that.”
“Then they are fools, General Miller. Besides, I have my reasons. Do you wish to know them?”
Miller thought he knew the answer. “Go ahead.”
“I believe there is a good chance that you will ultimately win. In any case, for me it is the only chance I would have to continue my life. Should that victory occur, I wish your government to know that I assisted you so that I will not be impeded in my efforts to find my wife and daughter.”
Miller thought about his wife and two sons back home in Oklahoma. The boys were grown and both were in the service. He understood totally. He always got a laugh by saying he wanted to go home and play with his children’s mother. His wife was a delightful and passionate woman he loved dearly, and his children were the joy of his life. He couldn’t imagine the agony von Schumann must be feeling.
“I can’t promise anything, but I will do what I can.”
“I understand. There is another reason for helping you, General Miller. We are both fighting the Russians. If you believe in the saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then we will soon be allies in fact, and not just in principle.”
Miller laughed. “Stranger things than that have happened, Herr Oberst. Nothing could possibly surprise me anymore.”
The several C-47S that carried General Marshall and his entourage had to make fueling stops on the way to Europe. Thus, a fatigued Steve Burke found that the air force base outside Reykjavik, Iceland, was a desolate and forlorn place, and surprisingly cold for the time of year.
From recently acquired experience, Burke knew it would take a couple of hours to refuel the planes and possibly change pilots for the next leg, which would take them to London. There they would spend a few days before going on to France. As he walked about the area aimlessly, a young captain came running up to him.
“Colonel Burke, General Marshall wishes to see you.”
Unlike that time in what seemed to be the distant past, he raised no foolish questions, only nodded and let the captain lead him.
Marshall had been in the first plane and had taken over the base commander’s office. He was seated behind a desk and had just finished a quick meal.
“Sit down, Colonel,” Marshall ordered as he pushed away his tray. “I need information from you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to tell me everything you know about Josef Stalin.”
When Burke’s face registered surprise, Marshall clarified the order. “Now, Colonel, I know what you’re thinking, that I doubtless already know a good deal about the man, and you’re quite right. But since I already know what I know, I want to know what additional information you might know. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Besides, we’ve got more than an hour to kill and I’ve pumped everybody else on the flight. Now, you’ve said you never met Stalin, so how do you know him?”
For a moment, Burke was flustered. Had the general forgotten their first conversation? Then he realized that Marshall was not upset, and perhaps was even gently teasing him in an attempt to increase his store of knowledge.
“Well, sir, since I do speak and read the language, I was able to go over his writings, his speeches, and even listen to recordings of his voice. His speeches are quite dull and he speaks in a monotone, by the way. In that regard, he is quite unlike Hitler, who was so bombastic and emotional.”
“What about Trotsky? Did you ever meet him?”
Now Burke was on firmer ground. “Yes, sir, I spoke with him on several occasions when he was in Mexico. Ironically, I was supposed to meet with him a few days after he was murdered by Stalin’s thugs back in 1940.” He saw he now had Marshall’s attention. “Trotsky was quite interesting. He really expected to take over Russia upon Lenin’s death. Like so many people, he totally underestimated Josef Stalin.”
“Haven’t we all,” Marshall said.
“General, Stalin is not a Russian. He is from the republic of Georgia, which is in the Caucasus Mountains and in the southern part of the Soviet Union. He was raised in a Russian Orthodox environment and even attended a seminary for a while. He may have thought of studying for the priesthood. Some apologists for him see this as a sign of impending or latent Christianity. I don’t. I see it as a need to be involved in some sort of belief, and he has chosen communism as his one true faith. Or perhaps it chose him.
“Sir, those Communists who ultimately took over from the tsar and the moderates in the revolution considered themselves world revolutionaries. They were so naive that they thought the world would turn their way and reject capitalism in a matter of months or, at worst, a couple of years. All they really needed was for the message to get out. For that reason, the first Communist leaders, like Lenin and Trotsky and even Stalin, were unwilling and unprepared to enter into agreements with foreign states they thought would shortly cease to exist. They thought nation-states would go the way of the dodo in their new workers’ world, and that the result would be a totally stateless worldwide society.”
Marshall chuckled. “It must be quite unsettling for them to see us all still here.”
“It is, but the point is very significant. The true believers, and this includes Stalin, see no difference whatsoever between the democracies and the totalitarian states like Germany. If you are not a Communist, then you are a capitalist and must be the enemy. They will enter into agreements of necessity and convenience when they have to, or it’s to their advantage, and repudiate them when they wish; thus, it was no surprise to me when the Russians signed that pact with the Nazis, and it is, somewhat in hindsight, no surprise that they have attacked us. They saw a chance for gain and they have taken it.”
“And again, we have underestimated Stalin.”
“Yes, sir. He became Lenin’s successor not because Lenin wanted him but because he was the most ruthless and determined of all the potential candidates to emerge after Lenin’s death. He will wait years for an opportunity and then take it without any care for the consequences. Do you recall what he did to the kulaks?”
“I believe they were farmers who opposed him.”
“In Russian,” Burke said, “the word kulak means ‘tight fisted.’ They were fairly prosperous farmers and other property owners and the poorer peasants were jealous of them. He simply burned their crops, sealed off their lands, and let them all starve to death. There were at least a couple of million of them and now they are all gone. Dead. It’s almost like the way Hitler murdered the Jews. He uses his army the same way. He purged it of most of its officers a few years ago and did the same thing with his political rivals. He had almost all of them killed.”
Marshall shook his head. “Of course I knew of the purges, but had not realized their scope or impact. What you are inferring is that he is willing to totally use up his army against us if it means victory for him and communism.”
“Yes, sir. A man like Stalin would think that another army can be built out of simply growing a fresh crop of children. He might consider their lives like a farmer considers wheat. Something to be planted and then harvested when needed.
“Sir, Stalin is quiet and meticulous. He did not even have an official title until a little while ago. The war has forced him to come out of the shadows and into the light, and I’m not certain he’s comfortable with that.”
“Interesting. Why?”
“Well, sir, he might have had a nervous breakdown when Hitler invaded in 1940. He’d had plenty of warnings regarding Hitler’s intentions, but chose to ignore them. Despite the fact that he doubtless planned on betraying Hitler at some future date of his choosing, he could not cope with someone else betraying him first. I believe the war with Germany was even more devastating to Russia and Stalin’s plans than we have estimated. Because of this, I believe he now has several fixations that are all based on previous utterances. First, he believes that he must have secure borders for his country, and that means a large buffer zone which includes Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. Second, he must eliminate Germany as a major power, preferably through absorbing Germany’s population and resources.
“And finally, he sees an opportunity to export the Communist revolution, which is most dear to him. Yes, he is a dictator and a murderer, but he is also a devout Marxist and feels that communism and capitalism cannot
