OBSESSIONS OF BERLIN
the organized terroristic minority to control all situations. But with the
Russians at the gates of Berlin, defeatism became more widespread. With
the Russians within the city, revolt became possible. But the Russians
were not interested; they did not look for help but for loot.
The loot had been promised to the Russian troops-mostly made
up of Mongolians-as the price for taking the city. The women were
among the spoils. Despite the disaffection within the German ranks, the
fight for Berlin took longer than was expected, the Russian losses were
greater than contemplated. The barbarism of the Russian troops is now
excused by the ferocity of the Nazi defense that enranged the Rus–
sian soldiers. Their rage, it is explained, could not be controlled; it took
some time before the Commissars were able to bring order into the chaos
and deprive the individual soldier of his right to rape, steal, and kill, in
favor of the systematic expropriation executed by the army in the name
of the state.
The Nazi stalwarts had the choice of dying fighting or com–
mitting suicide. They found it easier to get killed. They hated the Rus–
sians and they had no love for the Germans. Whoever was not with them
in this last battle was their enemy. Unwilling adolescents and feeble old
men were forced into the
V olkssturm.
Those who could not handle a
gun, or manipulate a hand-grenade, were kept busy building barricades.
Refusal to work or to fight led to immediate execution. Everywhere the
defeatists were hanging on the lantern posts. Attempts to cut them
down were again punished by death.
The luck of battle shifted from day to day, sometimes from hour
to hour. The unwilling soldiers of the
V olkssturm
threw their guns away
as soon as the Russians entered their street, only to pick them up again
when they were driven back. They would be killed either way: by the
Russians if found with a weapon in their hands, by the Nazis if found
without their guns. But in the final stages of the battle more and more
Germans joined the Russians in the hunting down and killing of the
Nazis. They tore down the barricades they had erected to slow the
Russian advance. They helped take care of snipers. They recognized
the Nazis who had shed their uniforms, and destroyed them. They im–
provised red flags, reorganized the Communist Party, occupied the
apartments of Nazi party-members, plundered and killed on their own
account.
However, the Russians refused to distinguish between Nazis and
anti-Nazis; all Germans were fascists and capitalists. They even out–
lawed their own German Communist Party, only to allow its legal re–
organization at a much later date-with the arrival of Wilhelm Piek
1109
