How Stalin really envisioned the future Germany would become clear only four years later, when the German Democratic Republic was established. At Yalta Stalin confined himself to the telling prediction that, indeed, Germany did have a future.121 Time would show that Stalin envisioned this future to be in a Sovietized Europe.
In reading the Yalta documents on the rights of small nations, one is struck by the actual similarity of what appear to be different viewpoints on the part of Stalin and the Western leaders. Stalin made it perfectly clear that he would never agree to submit any action of the great powers to the judgment of the small nations: "Do you want Albania to have the same status as the United States? What has Albania done in this war to merit such a standing? We three have to decide how to keep the peace of the world, and it will not be kept unless we three decide to do it."122 Somehow, Stalin complained, certain liberated countries had gotten it into their heads that although the great powers had shed blood for their liberation, they could accuse the great powers of not taking the rights of small countries into account. (One wonders whether Enver Hoxha, who wrote a heart-felt book about Stalin, ever read the papers of the Yalta conference.)
Roosevelt agreed that the great powers bore the greater responsibility and that "the peace terms should be written by the three powers represented at Yalta" (emphasis added—A. N.).123 Churchill observed conciliatorily: 'The eagle should permit the small birds to sing, and care not whereof they sing."124 But the "Mountain Eagle," as Stalin was sometimes called in the USSR, having just deported entire lesser nationalities, wanted the "small birds" to keep silent altogether. Andrei Vyshinsky, no doubt on Stalin's orders, warned Charles Bohlen (Roosevelt's interpreter at Yalta and later ambassador to Moscow) that the Soviet Union would never agree to the right of the small powers to judge an act of the great powers. When Bohlen observed that the U.S. delegation at the conference always had to keep in mind the concern of the American people that the rights of smaller nations be protected, the former public prosecutor snapped, "The American people should learn to obey their leaders." Bohlen sarcastically retorted that if Vyshinsky were to visit the United States, he, Bohlen, would like to see him tell that to the American people.125 A little while later Vyshinsky, the "prosecutor of death" in the purge trials, would go to New York as the Soviet delegate to the United Nations and would tell the American people and the "small birds" that chirped there what they needed to know. And the American press would sing the praises of Vyshinsky's mind, energy, and wit.
A frank exchange, as it were, between the democratic and Soviet experience of rule took place at Yalta. Several times during the conference Churchill, seeking a concession from Stalin, reminded him that general elections were soon to take place in England and that if a satisfactory outcome were not reached at Yalta he could be removed from power. After all, the Soviet Union had no better friends than he and Eden. Stalin consoled his "comrade-in-arms" with the thought, "Victors are never kicked out," and added for the British prime minister's edification: "People will understand that they need a leader, and who could be a better leader than the one who won the war?" Churchill tried to explain that England had two parties and that he belonged to one of them. "Stalin has a much easier task since he was only one party to deal with." Stalin weighed the situation: "One party is much better," he said profoundly.126
Who would know better than Stalin?
The United States and Great Britain gave de facto recognition at Yalta to the formation of the Soviet empire, whose European borders stretched from the Baltic in the north to the Adriatic in the south and in the west to the Elbe and the Werra. In the Far East, in exchange for joining the war against Japan, the USSR received Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile islands, so that its borders almost reached the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Only a small strip of water would now separate the USSR from Japan.
The signing of the agreement which stipulated the conditions for the Soviet entry into the war against Japan crowned the Soviet empire. The president of the United States and the prime minister of Great Britain became this empire's godfathers, but these godfathers were hardly being altruistic. They obtained what they felt was most vital for their respective countries at the time when the war was coming to an end in Europe: agreement on a general policy regarding defeated Germany, recognition (albeit only verbal on the Soviet side) of the dissemination of democratic principles in the liberated countries of Europe; approval of the new world organization of nations; and Soviet agreement to enter the war against Japan. Given the domestic political situations in the United States and Britain, the prevailing pro-Soviet sentiment in the West, and finally the actual military situation at the time, it is unlikely that the United States and Britain could have achieved anything more.
THE CAPITULATION OF GERMANY
The final Soviet offensive, operation Vistula-Oder, began on January 12, 1945. On two fronts (the First Byelorussian and First Ukrainian) the command had concentrated 45 percent of its regulars, 70 percent of its tanks, 43 percent of its guns and mortars, and its entire air force. At that point, the Soviet forces were twice the size of Germany's in soldiers, three times in artillery, and seven times in aircraft.127
From January 12 to January 17, the German defenses were breached along a wide front. At the beginning of February the Soviets took Silesia, reached the Oder, and established a bridgehead on the river's left bank. The German army suffered enormous losses: thirty-five divisions were completely destroyed, and twenty-five lost between 60 and 70 percent of their regulars.128 According to Soviet figures, the Germans suffered half a million casualties, killed, wounded, or captured. The Red Army also took many guns and airplanes. At that point, Soviet troops were between 80 and 160 kilometers from Berlin.
On April 25 American and Soviet troops met in the vicinity of Torgau, on the Elbe. On April 26 the war entered its final stage. On April 30 Hitler committed suicide. On May 1 Soviet soldiers raised the victory flag in Berlin. The day after, the fight for Berlin was over. On May 7 the Soviets reached the Elbe along a wide front. On May 8 Germany signed an unconditional surrender in Karlshorst, a suburb of Berlin, Zhukov signing for the Soviet Union.
The war that had started on September 1, 1939, was over.
A CHALLENGE TO THE REGIME
Among the most complex problems of the World War II period in Soviet history, and one that Soviet historians are not allowed to study, is the question of collaboration on the part of some Soviet citizens. The Soviet literature on this subject endlessly repeats the same stereotyped formulas about the traitor Vlasov, the general who defected to the Germans, and the just retribution that came to him. Yet it was not just a question of Vlasov.
At the end of the war the Wehrmacht had in its ranks over 1 million Soviet citizens of various nationalities, including several hundred thousand Russians. These people came from many different backgrounds and had chosen to collaborate with the Germans for a variety of reasons. Many prisoners of war, having been abandoned by their government, signed up with Vlasov as a means of surviving in the German camps. They probably hoped to cross over to the Red Army at the first opportunity. Others hoped to sit things out until the war ended. There were those, however, who joined the Nazis of their own free will, out of political conviction or simple hatred of the Soviet government, which they wished to overthrow and replace with one more to their liking.