Marion Kummerow - From the Ashes

“That’s such fantastic news.” Marlene hugged Georg and even Dr. Ebert mustered a smile.

“We should move right away. Better not run into those thugs again tomorrow,” Marlene suggested.

“They aren’t all bad. Berlin is a mess and they need to adapt first.” Georg as always tried to see the positive in every person.

“Well, they could have adapted without forcing themselves on every woman in town and stealing every last valuable piece,” Marlene growled. As nice as Georg was, why on earth did he have to defend the Russian monsters?

“I agree, that wasn’t appropriate, but this behavior has stopped. The Soviet Command probably had no idea their troops were going on a rampage like that.”

Marlene glared at him, “Why do you still believe the Russians have a single good bone in their bodies? Evidence suggests otherwise.”

“We have to give them a chance. They came here to implement an anti-fascist and democratic government. This cannot be done in a few weeks; therefore we need to be patient and in two or three years from now we can judge them on their merits.”

As far as Marlene was concerned, she didn’t want to wait three years. She had made her decision the moment the Americans arrived and miraculously had not behaved the same way as the Russian beasts. The Americans were another unwelcome occupying power and she wished them gone sooner rather than later, but in their presence, she at least didn’t have to fear for her physical safety.

Dean had learned to hate the meetings in the Allied Kommandatura with a passion. It was the governing body of Berlin, consisting of the commandants and their deputies of each of the four victorious powers.

He didn’t doubt the good intentions of the statesmen who’d decided at the Yalta conference to govern Berlin as a quadripartite city with unanimous vote. But the Soviets had turned the institution into a veritable battlefield with them on one side and reason on the other side.

It wasn’t different on this day, when General Sokolov complained, “This behavior is an affront to our sovereignty and cannot go unpunished!”

Dean felt the pulse in his temple and whispered to his translator, “What’s he want this time?”

“More reparations,” Bob hissed.

“Oh no! Not the reparations again. Haven’t they already stolen everything that’s not nailed down?” Dean leaned back in his chair. Sokolov was on a roll and that meant more endless hours of abuse. Why, oh why, had Eisenhower refused to attack Berlin and given the Soviets first dibs?

As Dean had expected, Sokolov launched into a lengthy tirade about the great Soviet Union and their courageous war heroes who had borne the brunt of the Nazi attack and single-handedly won the war. He elaborated on how the Red Army had broken the backbone of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad and thus deserved all the praise, while the Western allies actually had done little to nothing except in the last throes of the war, which didn’t do much more than shorten it by a few weeks at most.

Everybody in the room, including Sokolov himself, knew this wasn’t true. It was thanks to the American lend and lease act in 1941, under which thousands of locomotives, rail cars, aircraft, trucks, machine guns, ammunition, medicine and what not, were given to the Soviets, that had made the victory at Stalingrad possible.

“It’s intolerable that our military personnel is held back at the sector border and our trucks are searched before being allowed to cross.” Sokolov stared directly at Dean, and waved with a document as he continued, “Here it clearly states that military personnel of the victorious powers are free to move around all of Berlin.”

Dean sighed. He knew he’d get a mouthful from General Clay as soon as the Soviets took this up to the superordinate Allied Control Council that effectively had the same function for all of Germany as the Kommandatura had for Berlin.

“General, please, let’s stick to the facts. You had two months to pilfer every single piece of value from Berlin.” Dean noticed with delight how Sokolov’s face reddened. “And you may continue to do so in your own sector, but I warned you several weeks back that your soldiers are not welcome to come to our boroughs and steal what belongs to us.”

“In the Yalta conference we were awarded ten billion Reichsmark!” Sokolov shouted.

I’m sure you have extracted more than that already. Lying thieves that you are. Dean was wise enough not to voice his thoughts, because he didn’t want to stir unnecessary trouble. His own government was filled with appeasers, bowing to every Soviet whim, somehow hoping they would change and become model world citizens if they acquiesced to enough of their demands.

Hadn’t those appeasers learned their lesson with Hitler? The Russians were the world’s biggest liars, swindlers, and cutthroats, intent on skinning their trade partners alive. They couldn’t be trusted, because they promised anything, signed anything, provided it was beneficial for them, and then would scrap the pledge the moment it didn’t suit them anymore.

“Nobody said you’d get them all at once and certainly not by stealing from our sector what we need to rebuild the city. I will hold up your trucks at the sector border until you stop stealing from us,” Dean said and noticed with joy the helpless expression in Sokolov’s face.

The French and British commandants both kept quiet, which Dean had come to expect. The Frenchman rarely said a word and if he did it was to diplomatically calm the waves, while the Englishman might rant and throw hissy fits, but never go into open confrontation with Sokolov.

Apparently, the only person standing in the way of Russian dominion over Berlin was Dean. The burden weighed heavily on his shoulders and he lay awake at night, trying to conjure up ways to keep the Soviets from stealing the city from under his ass. He’d even resorted to sleeping with his pistol under the pillow, thanks to anonymous death threats and telephone terror that he attributed to the Russians.

But if Sokolov believed he could wear him down, he’d come up against the wrong opponent. Dean wasn’t called blockheaded for no reason, and the more clubs Sokolov threw between his legs, the more he set his ambitions on resisting him.

Dean asked his driver to take him to the Café de Paris. The nightclub was in the French sector and had the reputation to have the best food, the most talented singers, most beautiful waitresses and plenty of pretty women willing to keep an Allied officer company. Just what he needed to wind down after ten grueling hours of not reaching a single common point at the Kommandatura.

The Café de Paris did not disappoint, and he settled at the table with a group of French officers he knew, when a new singer stepped on the stage. She was announced as Fräulein von Sinnen and looked absolutely stunning with her shiny platinum-blonde hair carefully combed into soft waves. Her beautiful face with blue eyes was styled to perfection with whatever tricks women used to make their eyes appear big and bright. She wore a full-length glittery silver dress with thousands of sequins sewn onto it that hugged her female figure like a glove – both the dress and the soft curves were a rare remnant of Berlin’s grandeur before the capitulation.

He wondered what Fräulein von Sinnen’s backstory was and how she’d managed to elevate herself above millions of miserable, starving women in the capital. There simply wasn’t enough food in the city to properly feed the population, not even on the black market.

Officially, Dean frowned upon the black market, but he rarely ever took an action against it, especially not since his arch enemy Sokolov had chosen to aggravate the food situation further by using the produce from the neighboring states Brandenburg and Mecklenburg to feed his army, and not the Berliners. But that was another point where he didn’t see eye to eye with the Russian…