Елена Ржевская - Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter - From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker

We came off the ring road to a metalled forest road which ended at a green wooden gate in a high, sheer fence. The driver got out to open the gate. It seemed odd that there was nobody on the gate: no watchman, no security. A short distance away Zhukov, in a black leather coat, was strolling along the front of a two-storey house with imposing columns. He came over to me, said hello, and added, ‘There, we never did meet back then,’ referring to the 1st Byelorussian Front in Berlin.

It was hardly surprising, the distance between me, a translator at the headquarters of one of the armies making up the front, and him, its commander, was just too great.

In the hallway he helped me out of my coat, himself threw off his light leather coat, and we entered a vast hall, ceremoniously flooded with light from a huge crystal chandelier, although the daylight would have been quite sufficient.

‘Well, where should we sit?’

The fact that Marshal Zhukov was in civilian clothes made our meeting seem unofficial, but that it was taking place in such a grand setting made it less easy for a visitor to feel there was nothing official about it. The design was that of a grand, official hall, with fine, large windows that brought the garden up to the house. Everything was enormous: the table in the centre of the hall, end-on to the entrance doors and stretching away into the interior of the room; the convex buffet installed in an extremely broad niche on the wall opposite the windows; the sheer size of the carpet. Everything here belonged to those far-off days when we were the victors. Of the fashions of later years there was not a trace.

Zhukov was straightforward, natural and attentive, although there was still some awkwardness and formality (on my part). It was disorientating for me that Marshal Zhukov was in civilian clothes: that was something I took time to adjust to. In my imagination he was always in military uniform. As time passed, however, the tone became more cordial and relaxed.

Zhukov himself and the atmosphere of his house, his enforced removal from the course of events, his loneliness, his vulnerability to his much loved, playful little daughter: I took in so much during the hours of our meeting that, when I returned home, I sat until late into the night writing it all down in my notebook. The main thing, though, was the rather challenging conversation we had.

For our first few minutes together eight-year-old Masha was present, which made everything unforced and homely. Zhukov then sent her off to have her dinner, and said he had read my book. That was what he called it, although what he had seen was only my manuscript retyped on to a duplicator. He had been given a copy by Novosti, who had signed a contract with me for the translation rights. By this time the book, Berlin, May 1945, had been translated and published only in Italy, but German, Finnish, and Polish translations were being prepared. In Russia it had not been published as a book: there was only a magazine publication, which he had not seen.

He touched on his own memories of the Berlin campaign, asked me about my army service, and enquired about the archives I had worked in. Finally he got round to his real concern. Here I can quote Zhukov verbatim, because I recorded his words in my notebook. Marshal Zhukov said,

I did not know Hitler had been found, but now I have read about it in your book and believe it, even though there are no references to archives, which would be customary. I have faith in you, though, and in your conscience as a writer. I am writing my memoirs and have just now got as far as Berlin. Now I have to decide how I am to write about this.

He was speaking unhurriedly, flatly, contemplatively.

I did not know that. If I now write that I did not know, it will be taken to mean that Hitler was not found, and politically that would be the wrong thing to do. That would play into the hands of the Nazis.

After a pause, he said, ‘How is it possible that I did not know that?’

We were sitting at a round coffee table. The deputy of Josef Stalin, the supreme commander-in-chief; the hero of famous battles; the illustrious marshal who had accepted the surrender of Germany in Berlin and reviewed the Victory Parade of our troops on Red Square in Moscow was asking a rank-and-file translator why he did not know something it was inconceivable under any circumstances that he should not have known. Where in the world, in what other country could such marvels and phantasmagorias occur?

It was not a question I had seen coming, but I knew what strict secrecy had surrounded everything connected with the discovery of Hitler, and that it was reported by order of Stalin directly to him, bypassing the army command; bypassing, as I now learned, even Marshal Zhukov.

I said, ‘That is something you would need to have asked Stalin.’ That might have sounded insolent, and I did not want to repeat it word for word in my account, so I altered it slightly to, ‘Why that was so, is something only Stalin could explain.’

Zhukov immediately rejected that. ‘Under any circumstances, I should have been informed of this. I was, after all, Stalin’s deputy.’

I had, of course, no clear and convincing answer to that. Having come into possession of such an important historical fact, and perhaps not yet sure what use to make of it, Stalin had instinctively turned it into a secret. Perhaps his decisions were affected, as I wrote, by the difficulty and volatility of the relationship between these two men. It shows us Zhukov as someone whose directness was innate, something Stalin valued, but for just as long as the war continued.

Stalin had no sense of responsibility to the historical record, to the people living in the USSR, or the world. Reality was reality only to the extent that it suited his pragmatic ends, otherwise, as far as he was concerned, it simply did not exist. He evidently had no intention of letting go of such a crucial piece of information as that Hitler’s body had been found and the matter closed. What if he decided he did not want it closed?

‘If this had gone through NKVD channels, then Beria would have been in on the informing of Stalin. He said nothing,’ Zhukov reasoned, sincerely believing, it seemed to me, that that proved Beria could not have known.

At that moment I did not recall that, in the Council of Ministers Archive there was a document proving that Beria did know. Checking a few days later through what I had copied out, I again came across it. There is a detailed note sent via the government communications network, addressed to Beria and dated 23 May 1945.

‘Serov was there too, in Berlin. He still lives in the same building as I do, on Granovsky Street. I asked him. He does not know.’

General Serov who in May 1945 was Beria’s deputy, did know, if not then, then somewhat later. There are documents to prove it. But it continued to be a secret kept from Zhukov.

‘I wanted to ask you,’ Marshal Zhukov said, still in the same even, although now not so meditative, tone, ‘to help me out with a few things here.’ And then, with heavy emphasis, ponderously, ‘Since what I write in my book will decide the fate of yours…’

He sat back in his armchair and crossed his legs, and suddenly there was that heavy, menacing jaw familiar to the whole country from his old portraits.

‘If I write that I know nothing about this, you will not be believed.’

He said that more brutally than I am managing to convey here, because it is not only a matter of the words, but of the way they were delivered, a matter of his posture, and that suddenly so prominent chin. He was not asking (although that was the word he had used), but compelling, not appealing but forcing compliance, which should be all the more zealous for being done under duress. There was a strained pause. Allowing it to drag on for a time, Zhukov asked, ‘Do you have extracts copied from documents? Do you still have them?’