last tank, telling him that the other two men were cooked.
Carter’s other tanks were catching up to the trucks which couldn’t move fast on rough terrain, nor did they have a chance to unlimber and man their guns. Again, men abandoned their vehicles and ran for their lives.
Overhead, Morgan watched the slaughter. There may have been people down there, but they were the enemy and the presence of the towed eighty-eights told him they’d been shooting and killing Americans. With a roar, a quartet of American fighter bombers, P47’s, flew low and began to strafe the fleeing Germans. Morgan hoped to hell that the flyboys could tell which side was which. They could and they chewed up the vehicles that Carter’s tanks couldn’t reach.
“You called for the cavalry?” Carter radioed. “If you did, we sure as hell didn’t need them.”
Jack wasn’t so sure. It looked like several German half-tracks would have made it. Carter was a cocky bastard.
Prudently, Carter called a halt to his advance. He didn’t want his men getting tangled with the Germans and a tragedy to occur.
“Hey, Bomber,” he radioed to Jack.
“What, Rebel?”
“Looks like the good guys won one today.”
“Yeah, Carter, but I’ll bet you a dollar that the Air Force takes full credit for this little barroom brawl.”
Molotov had given his report and sat nervously while Stalin contemplated the consequences of the German proposal. Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron and bloody fist. In his zeal to first consolidate communism in the newly formed country, and to export it to other countries, he had been ruthless. Millions of reasonably well-off peasants, the kulaks, had starved when he’d forced them to live in communal farms, and millions of others had died in the civil war that had resulted in him taking the reins of power from Lenin on that man’s death. People had made the mistake of underestimating the small, rumpled, and often crude man with the thick mustache.
Above all, however, Josef Stalin was a realist. The Soviet air forces ruled the skies over the Germans, and Soviet armor and artillery outnumbered the enemy and were qualitatively better in many areas. Numerically, the vast Soviet horde was hugely dominant.
Realistically, however, the Red Army’s march into Poland was slowing. The army continued to go forward, but now in small, painful steps instead of great sweeping advances. The reasons were several. The Germans had withdrawn isolated pockets of their soldiers to form new and stronger defenses. The Germans had retreated closer to their bases which meant they could be supplied more easily while the Red Army’s replacement equipment, manpower and ammunition had farther to go. Also, the Germans were now fighting behind a shorter defensive line.
Worse for Stalin’s ambitions, the professional German generals were now running the war and not the erratic and insanely stubborn Adolf Hitler. Not for the first time did Stalin wish that Hitler was still alive.
Zhukov’s warning of several weeks earlier was coming true. The mighty Soviet war machine was running out of gas, and, in some ways, literally. There was little fuel, and the army was indeed exhausted. If it collapsed, so too might Josef Stalin and his dream of communist expansion.
So, he wondered, what might be the outcome of a truce?
Obviously, as Zhukov said, it would grant time for the army to rest and re-fit. But what about the political and long-term aspects of a truce?
Stalin agreed that communism’s long-term enemy was the United States and, as the war was progressing, America increasingly looked to be victorious and unscathed while Russia would be in tatters after having won a Pyrrhic victory. Worse, America would soon be in possession of the powerful nuclear weapons being developed in New Mexico and elsewhere, and would be in a position to impose a peace. His spies were keeping him reasonably well up-to-date on America’s progress towards an atomic bomb. He shuddered at the thought of a victorious America having such a weapon. The Germans, too, were working on a bomb and Soviet scientists were trying to apply the information stolen from the Americans toward building their own, but so far without success. He’d thought of executing a few of the Soviet Union’s physicists, but thought better of it. Not even fear could improve the pace of acquiring knowledge. He’d purged the Red Army of thousands of officers prior to the war and suffered for it. He would not do the same with the few scientists he had.
The idea of Germany and the United States tearing each other’s throats out appealed to him. Germany would buy time and quite possibly win a negotiated peace for itself, but Russia would be the stronger and could simply abrogate any truce at her convenience. Thus, Russia’s new war with Germany would be against a seriously weakened opponent, and the United States would be in no position to intervene.
He was unconcerned about England and France. The French were in no position to affect anything militarily, while the British were far more concerned with conserving their manpower than they were in fighting and winning a war. His intelligence said that English were growing disenchanted with Churchill’s leadership and a war that seemed to drag on forever. Churchill might not survive the next election. It was incredible to him that the England and the United States would permit political opposition, especially during a war. To Stalin, political opposition was synonymous with treason and the reason the Gulags existed.
A respite would give him a chance to tidy up his own house. The self-titled Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia was showing signs of becoming independent of Moscow, which was intolerable. Granted, Yugoslavia and Tito were still fighting the Nazis from behind German lines, but, if the war paused, perhaps the Germans would do the Soviet Union a favor and crush Tito. Perhaps they would withdraw and let Russia do it.
Another benefit from a pause in the fighting would enable Stalin to resolve his relations with China’s growing communist movement. He could join forces with Mao Zedong and throw the Japanese out of Manchuria and Korea; thus earning Mao’s gratitude. Or he could ally with Chiang Kai-Shek, dominate that man and subsequently destroy him. Mao called himself a communist, but Stalin considered him a peasant and worse, a potential rival.
Regardless, the attack on the Japanese would also aid the Americans whom he wished to destroy. It was an irony he understood and appreciated. The Americans would be grateful while two more countries would be added to the Soviet bloc. Three if China was counted.
If he did it correctly, Stalin thought, he could confuse the Americans and leave them wondering just what had happened to them.
Stalin smiled grimly and Molotov shuddered at the sight. “We will negotiate with the devil, Comrade Molotov.” Stalin wrote furiously on a sheet of lined paper while puffing equally furiously on his pipe. “And here are the terms we will settle for.”
Molotov scanned the sheet and nodded approval. “The Allies will realize rather quickly that we have departed the war.”
Stalin was unperturbed. “Then we will have to have a reason that is plausible enough to justify our defection.”
“Do you have something in mind, Comrade Stalin?” The question was rhetorical. Stalin always had a plan.
Again Stalin smiled, this time with humor. “The French, of course. The French are always good for something. They think the world turns on them and the sun rises and sets on Paris. They cannot abide being second fiddle to the damned Americans and the British. The communist party in France is very strong and, since many of its members were in the Resistance, fairly well provided with light arms. I believe they would provide us with a most useful distraction.”
CHAPTER 11
The dead american soldier more resembled a pancake with flattened arms and legs than a human being. He looked like a cartoon character that could have been peeled off the ground like a coat of paint. Being run over by a
