“How thoughtful,” Levin said. “And by the way, Jeb, did you notice that all the equipment was distributed by colored soldiers? Any thoughts on that?”
Carter scowled. “Actually, I have many thoughts. I have no problem with Negroes in the army so long as they aren’t officers and so long as they aren’t in combat.”
“Why not?” asked Jack. “Wouldn’t putting them in the fighting actually save white guys’ lives?”
“Yeah, but it’s not that easy,” Jeb said. “Put a gun in colored boys’ hands and rank on their shoulders and they’ll begin to think they’re equal to white men and nothing good can ever come from that. Then they’ll come home and want to go to school with us, be our bosses, and then maybe marry my sister. Now my sister may be truly ugly and desperate to get laid, but I still don’t want her marrying a nigger.
“On the other hand,” Jeb continued, “I sure as hell don’t want them sitting on their asses at home while I run the risk of getting shot at. I admit it’s a dilemma.”
“Blacks served in the Union army way back in that misunderstanding we call the Civil War,” Jack said, “and in combat. And we’ve had colored units in wars since then.”
“That’s right,” Jeb said, “and did you know that several thousand free blacks volunteered to serve the Confederate army?”
They’d never heard of that. “Why?” Jack asked.
“Beats the hell out of me,” Jeb answered. “If any are still alive go ask them. But let’s quit talking serious stuff and get some of that bottled dog piss they call beer.”
Levin concurred. The beer was low-alcohol, but it was better than no alcohol and, besides, Levin’s contacts for booze had dried up, temporarily they all hoped. “Might as well enjoy ourselves before we get tossed to the Nazi wolves.”
When the Nazis first invaded the Soviet Union, rumors flew that Josef Stalin had collapsed from the unexpected shock of Hitler’s betrayal of their nonaggression pact and had suffered a nervous breakdown. If they were once true, and no one knew for certain, they no longer applied. Stalin was in complete command of the Soviet war effort. His military title was Supreme Commander in Chief, and in theory there was a military hierarchy under him called the Stavka, but in reality Stalin controlled it. He also headed the Communist Party and was the Soviet Union’s prime minister. In effect, the massive Soviet Union was a one person empire. Stalin ruled alone and with an iron fist. The blood of millions of his own people was on his hands. He didn’t care. He cared only for the worldwide expansion of communism, and the Soviet Union was the tool that would do it.
It galled him that converting the world’s oppressed working people to communism had to take a back seat to defeating the vile fascists who were now led by the odious Himmler. The Nazis had broken the treaty with the USSR, invaded, slaughtered, raped, and plundered. They had nearly brought communism and the Soviet Union to ruin.
Both Field Marshal Georgi Zhukov and Foreign Minister Vacheslav Molotov sat in scarcely disguised terror as Stalin’s cold eyes fixed on them. They were in a large and ornate office in the Kremlin, one that had once served the Czar Nicholas II and other Romanov nobility. If anyone thought their presence in the home of the czars was incongruous, they didn’t mention it. Zhukov and Molotov had begun to sweat. Stalin had murdered thousands of military officers and politicians. Two more wouldn’t matter.
Physically, Stalin was a small man with a peasant’s habit of smoking cheap cigarette tobacco in his pipe, resulting in a noxious cloud of smoke around him. He was crude and undereducated despite having spent time in a Russian Orthodox seminary.
“Comrade Molotov,” Stalin said flatly and coldly, “is it true that the Hitlerites have initiated contact with Sweden regarding the Swedes their functioning as a broker for peace?” He smiled without warmth. “Or should we now call the Germans Himmlerites?”
Molotov smiled wanly at Stalin’s small joke. “It is true, Comrade Stalin, although nothing appears to be forthcoming regarding either England or the United States. They seem fixed on their policy of Unconditional Surrender.”
“Have the Germans asked to contact us?”
“Not yet,” Molotov replied. “It appears the Nazis are waiting for the current campaign for Poland to play itself out.”
Stalin nodded. The thought of negotiating with the hated Germans was worse than repugnant. Still, he knew just how much the mighty Red Army had deteriorated. There were many fine units left, but second and third rate divisions were also being used in key areas, which meant that the poorly trained and inadequately equipped infantry were simply cannon fodder.
The same was true of his once proud armored forces. The tanks, in particular the T34, were magnificent, and the larger Stalin series were at least a match for the German Tiger and King Tiger, but their crews were raw and inexperienced. The Germans had their own problems with manpower, but theirs were easier to hide when fighting a defensive war, and the Germans were masters of defense.
The Soviet air forces were large in numbers and steadily improving, but they too lacked the skills necessary to fight the Germans in the air. The Nazis didn’t have the numbers of planes they’d had in the past and their pilots were of a lower quality. On a qualitative basis, the Luftwaffe remained hugely better.
He accepted the simple truth that Russian peasants who’d never even been in a car would take forever to become mechanics, tank commanders, and pilots, while it came as almost second nature to German youths who had a long term familiarity with things mechanical. He knew that millions of Soviet soldiers had never seen a toilet, much less the engine of an airplane.
“Comrade Zhukov, your armies are now well into Poland and approaching East Prussia. The German defense is stiffening. When will you break them?”
Zhukov suppressed a shiver. He decided to answer truthfully. Why not, he thought, since Stalin had his spies everywhere and doubtless knew as much as he did. Zhukov was one of several leaders of what the Red Army referred to as “Fronts,”
Konev and Rokossovski being two of the more senior ones and both were Zhukov’s rivals. He and Konev had a particularly bitter relationship based on personal ambition. Stalin understood that and played them against each other to keep them off balance. Neither Konev nor Rokossovski was at this meeting and each was doubtless seething and wondering what was transpiring behind their backs.
Zhukov answered. “Comrade Stalin, the days of breaking through and surrounding whole German armies like we did at Stalingrad, or hammering them to destruction at Kursk are over. The Germans fight much more rationally and logically without Hitler to lead them and make his senseless demands that each piece of ground be held to the last German soldier. We will push them back, but it will be a slow and tedious process and we will suffer enormous casualties.”
Stalin barely nodded. Casualties were nothing to him as long as communism was safe. So many of his enemies misread him. They thought of him as a bloody and vicious dictator who used communism as a front for his iron-fisted and sadistic rule. They were wrong. Josef Stalin was a confirmed and dedicated communist committed to expanding his version of Marxism to the world, no matter what it cost. He was more than a dictator. He was a fanatic communist dictator.
He was also a realist. In the heady days after the fall of the Romanovs and the subsequent Bolshevik takeover, he and his mentor, Lenin, had been stunned when the proletariat of the world hadn’t risen in support of Russian communism. Now he understood that much of the world wasn’t ready, and that included many people in his own Soviet Union. In particular, the people of the Ukraine had welcomed the Nazis as liberators before they found out the truth. Therefore, he had to tread lightly, at least for now.
He was also concerned about the so-called communists who were fighting the Nationalists in China. They were peasants, not workers, and he doubted the depths of their commitment to true communism. He sometimes thought it would be good to side with the corrupt and incompetent Nationalists and purge China of her ersatz communists. After that purging, of course, he could easily turn on the Nationalists and impose true communism. That would have to wait. His first priority was the destruction of Germany.