By May 2, the Red Army killed the last of the Reichstag defenders and controlled the building. The next morning, two soldiers re-enacted the raising of the hammer-and-sickle over the Reichstag for photographers.
General Helmut Weidling, commander of the Berlin defences, surrendered unconditionally to General Chuikov on May 2. On the same day, the German forces north of Berlin, and forces in northwestern Germany and Denmark surrendered to the Western Allies. German forces in Italy and Austria surrendered to the Americans on May 3.
It took until May 5 for the Germans in the Netherlands to surrender to Canadian General Charles Foulkes, the same day that Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goering, surrendered at the Austrian border. The next day, the fortress city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) surrendered to the Soviets.
Thirty minutes later, General Alfred Jodl, on Reichchancellor Donitz’s instructions, offered to surrender all forces fighting the Western Allies—in effect, a separate peace, allowing the Germans to continue resisting the Soviet Union. The Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, responded that unless the Germans surrendered unconditionally, he would order western lines closed to the Germans, forcing them to surrender to the Soviet Union.
No German soldier wanted to surrender to the communists. In the early morning of May 7, 1945, Jodl signed the unconditional surrender for all German forces to the Allies. In Berlin, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed a surrender document for General Georgi Zhukov.
But it wasn’t quite over. The last man Hitler named as Commander in Chief of the Army, Ferdinand Schorner, continued fighting in Czechoslovakia. He deserted his post on May 8 as Europe began celebrating V-E Day. The Soviets launched the overwhelming Prague Offensive, and the last German units, Army Group Centre, surrendered on May 11.
There were other pockets of fighting by Nazi fanatics, but the war was over.
It had left more than twenty million dead men, women and children.
In a camp east of Berlin, Maurice’s unit had orders to guard refugees—Germans, mostly, whose homes had been destroyed by the fighting, or commandeered by Red Army officers and commissars.
Days before the fighting ended, Maurice and his comrades received orders very different from what they had heard for the past several months. “We’re going to clear the roads,” a new commissar said. He was short and prematurely balding, and he walked with a painful-looking limp.
Within hours, the unit was working alongside local people, clearing rubble and smashed vehicles from major roads. Commissary units fed the locals alongside the soldiers, and Maurice saw other teams repairing buildings to provide some housing for the refugees. He saw a line of civilians, mostly women, stretching for a block outside a new soup kitchen, where soldiers doled out whatever food they could provide.
But at night, groups of Red Army soldiers prowled the streets. They broke into houses that still stood intact, and raped women as old as eighty, as young as eight.
“Come with us, Maurice,” said Pavel, another private in Maurice’s new unit. He was very young, thin and usually very angry. “The fighting’s over. Let’s have some fun.”
But this was not what Maurice considered fun. “No, thanks, Pavel,” he answered.
“What are you, a faggot?” Pavel leered.
Maurice shook his head, fighting to stay calm. “Got a girl back home in Minsk,” he lied. So far, the Russian boys in this unit had not questioned him when he said he was from Belorussia, not Ukraine.
“So?” Pavel shrugged. “She won’t know if you don’t tell her.”
Pavel and four other Russian soldiers returned a few hours later, reeking of liquor, piss and sex, their pockets bulging. “Look at this stuff,” Pavel said, dumping jewelry and silverware on the ground. “I told you that you should come with us. Fucking Germans are so rich. Why did they have to invade Russia? Fucking greedy, that’s what they are.”
“You took this from the locals? You could be shot for that. There are orders.”
Pavel barked a laugh. “Are you joking? The fucking commissar was there. He took the most of all.” He held up a gold ring with a purple stone. “Nice, isn’t it? This ugly hausfrau gave it to me so I wouldn’t touch her.”
The ring looked relatively cheap to Maurice, but to someone from a collective farm, like Pavel, it was a treasure. “So, you left her alone?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“Fuck, yes. She was fat! I fucked her daughter instead. She was sweet. She loved it.” He rolled his eyes and cooed, wrapping his arms around Maurice in horrible mimicry. “Ooh, ooh,” he whined. “You should have heard her.”
“You speak German?” Maurice asked.
“Fuck, no,” Pavel waved his hand dismissively. “Not a word. But I know when a woman loves fucking.”
Maurice thought more about how to get away from the Red Army.
Rejection
May 1945
No gardens bloomed. No window boxes proved the homeowner’s gardening skill in May. The sunshine was warm, but there wasn’t a living tree on the Unter den Linden, the street named for the trees that once lined its length.
Maurice picked his way through the shattered city, climbing over pieces of buildings and statues, dodging the trucks and jeeps that zipped officiously along the few streets where tanks and construction machines had cleared paths through the rubble. Water dribbled from broken hydrants and from the ends of pipes where bombs had blasted the streets into craters. Few windows contained any glass. No streetlights worked, but aside from official jeeps, Land Rovers and trucks, and the occasional tank, there was no traffic.
Gradually, he made his way to the Charlottenburg section of the former Nazi capital, the British-occupied zone. He found the British headquarters, in a once-white, five-storey office building with a concave-curving front.
Official and army vehicles made a barrier across the front. British soldiers stood guard beside the broad main doors, through which streamed men in uniform in both directions.
Long lines of people in civilian clothes stood along walls in various places on the main floor. Non-commissioned British soldiers bustled along the corridors, bearing messages. Occasionally, he saw French or American officers. He stood up straighter when he saw a brown uniform with maple leaves on the sleeves, but the tall man disappeared around a corner before Maurice could catch his eye.
Two Soviet officers strode down the hall. Maurice tried to fade into the wall until they passed him.
He stopped a friendly-looking sergeant, who directed him to an office on the second floor. He got in a lineup and finally stood in front of a young, blond lieutenant behind a small wooden desk. He summoned his best English to explain his case.
“I’m sorry, Private,” said the lieutenant. “Majah Owens cannot see you without an appointment. Can you come tomorrow at—” he looked down at an appointment book placed precisely in the centre of the desk—“ten o’clock?”
Maurice thanked the lieutenant and strode out of the building as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. Frustration burned behind his ears. I should be used to waiting by now. One thing that unites all armies in every country in the world is the way they make you wait.
He made his way back to the centre of Berlin, occupied by the Soviet Red Army. The city looked unreal, a living nightmare of blasted buildings, cratered streets and military vehicles. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from around the world jammed the streets. Maurice dodged as an American jeep roared down the centre of a cleared street, swerving drunkenly from one side to the other, narrowly missing twisted lampposts. He saw grinning GIs and two desperate-looking young women, their blouses blowing open. The men held bottles of wine.