The House by the Lake Page 15

  A hundred metres away, Gerda Radtke was hiding in her wine cellar, with her three sons and a few neighbours. They too heard a sharp rap on the door, and the same demand: send out the women. Gerda stepped forward and, reassuring her children, said she would deal with the problem. Outside there were six or seven Soviet soldiers, who seized Gerda, and her three sons, who were holding on to her. The soldiers bustled them up the stairs to the kitchen, where they raped Gerda, one soldier after another, in front of her sons. When Burkhard, by then seven years old, tried to stop them, the soldiers just batted him away. His mother tried not to scream, aware that her sons were watching, not wanting to scare them further.

  After the attack, the soldiers returned to the cellar where they found the neighbours on their knees, begging to be spared. The soldiers allowed the villagers back to their homes, but informed Gerda Radtke that they were requisitioning hers. She would be allowed to live upstairs, while they would occupy the ground floor.

  Over the next few days, word of the Soviet advances in Berlin filtered back to Groß Glienicke. Leaflets were dropped from the air into the village by passing planes, declaring that Hitler had been found dead in his bunker, having apparently committed suicide.

  Finally, on 2 May 1945, Helmuth Weidling, the German commander of the Berlin Defence Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov of the Soviet Army. The hammer and sickle now flew over the Reichstag.

  Six days after the surrender of Berlin6, the senior generals and admirals of the German army, navy and air force were flown to the capital and driven to the newly established Soviet military headquarters. There they signed the act of unconditional surrender in front of representatives from the British, American, French and Soviet governments. Following the German submission, the Soviet soldiers held one celebration after another at the barracks on Döberitzer Heath – in the old Olympic Village where Jesse Owens had practised his long jump nine years earlier. Each time there was a party, the Soviet soldiers would come to the Radtke house and take Gerda away. Often, she was gone for more than twenty-four hours. Once she escaped, but the soldiers found her and brought her back to their barracks. When they were finished with her, she would return deeply traumatised.

  Gerda’s house had also now been transformed into the local Soviet headquarters. But it was not only the ground floor that had been taken by the occupying forces. The small barn, which was located twenty metres from Gerda’s house and eighty metres from the lake house, had also been requisitioned, and turned into a brothel where local women volunteered their bodies in return for food and protection.

  The women of the village were not the only ones to suffer. As soon as they arrived, the Soviets began hunting down anyone they suspected of war crimes. One of the first to be seized was Wilhelm Bartels, the farmer whose building had been bombed during the war. Pointing at the Poles still working on the farm, and learning of the worker who had died in the bombing, they accused him of overseeing slave labour. He was loaded onto a truck and driven to Ketschendorf, a Soviet camp ninety kilometres east of Groß Glienicke. At least ten young men were also taken, including two sixteen-year-olds, who were accused of being part of the Werwolf resistance movement. Neither Wilhelm Bartels nor the youngsters were seen again7.

  14

  HARTMANN

  1945

  AT 7.15 A.M. on 30 June 1945, seven weeks after the war’s end, a convoy of British trucks and jeeps – known as Staging Post 19 – set off from Hamburg in western Germany towards Groß Glienicke in the north-east. The mobilisation was part of a wider effort by Britain, France and America to match the Soviet forces in Berlin.

  As the convoy trundled eastwards, the only other vehicles they passed were American and British jeeps travelling at speed, or trucks carrying troops. The carcasses of destroyed tanks and personnel carriers littered both sides of the road. The towns and villages they passed through were deserted. Nobody was walking on the streets; the only sign of human activity were the white flags hanging from people’s windows and balconies. After a journey of 280 kilometres, they arrived in Groß Glienicke, and heeded for the Gatow airfield.

  Since its capture at the end of April, the airfield had been under Soviet control. Now, following an agreement between the occupying powers, it was to be temporarily handed over to the RAF’s Staging Post 19, and would be available for use by American, French, Soviet and British planes. According to the airfield’s logbook – filled in each day by the British commanding officer – ‘The aerodrome had been previously occupied by the Russians who, before departure, had taken nearly all the easily removable equipment etc. and left litter and confusion behind them.’ In order to clean up the facility, the British ‘hired local civilians to clear the airfield and secured permission from Russians to do this’.

  Two weeks later, on 15 July1, a group of dignitaries flew into Gatow. Their arrival was again recorded in the logbook. ‘The great day began very quietly. At 9 o’clock when the security troops had taken up position it was already very hot. The tarmac now filled with distinguished personages. Russians being most colourful, including Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Andrey Yanuarevich Vyshinsky, wearing a single large Marshal of the USSR star, plus a dozen Russian officers.’ Next to arrive was an American plane, carrying President Harry S. Truman along with Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Henry Arnold, and Secretary of State James Byrnes. ‘At 16:00 came the great moment for which the spectators had most eagerly awaited,’ the logbook continued. ‘The PRIME MINISTER’S SKYMASTER drew up on the tarmac, and excitement ran high when the steps, specially made for the occasion, were set in position and the familiar figure of the PM, with cigar, appeared. He was greeted by Field Marshal Montgomery and Air Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas and host of high ranking American and Russian officers.’

  Churchill and Truman had intended to go straight to Potsdam, where they were scheduled to meet Joseph Stalin to discuss Europe’s post-war future, but the Soviet leader was delayed for a couple of days due to a minor heart attack, so instead they were driven into Berlin for a tour of the damaged city.

  Berlin was a wasteland. Many of the city’s most significant structures were in ruins, including the Reichstag, the Reich Chancellery, the People’s Court and the Gestapo headquarters. The Berliner Stadtschloss, the massive royal palace on the banks of the River Spree, was roofless and burned out. The city centre’s main streets – the Kurfürstendamm, Unter den Linden and Friedrichstrasse – were a sea of stone and rubble.

  An estimated 100,000 civilians had been killed during the Battle of Berlin. Over 300,000 Soviet soldiers died during the campaign. If one added in the hundreds of thousands who were captured and later died in the Soviet camps, German deaths in the Battle of Berlin exceeded one million.

  Of the 4.3 million people who had lived in Berlin before the war, only 2.8 million remained. And this diminished populace now faced ruin. The Berlin air was so thick with smoke from the persistent fires that it was hard to navigate the streets. The city had no functioning water supplies or sewer system. Its transportation was non-existent. There was no heating fuel, no electricity and food was scarce. The telephone and postal networks had collapsed, as had most of the city’s bridges and train tunnels. Over a million Berliners were homeless. As he was driven around the streets of the German capital, Churchill was shocked by the devastation2.

  On 17 July, the three victorious leaders met at the Cecilienhof in Potsdam, the same building where Adolf Hitler had met the Kaiser’s son during the Day of Potsdam in 1933. This 176-room former royal palace was built on the shores of the Jungfernsee, some ten kilometres south of Groß Glienicke, and was now the venue for the so-called Potsdam Conference.

  At first, the talks proceeded in a celebratory atmosphere. During the daytime, sitting in large armchairs at a round table in a wood-panelled room, conversations proved relaxed and positive. In the evenings, the leaders hosted lavish dinners and entertainments. Then, a week into the conference, on 24 July 1945, Truman casually
mentioned to Stalin that the USA now had a ‘new weapon of unusual destructive force’. The Russian premier replied that he was glad to hear it and hoped the Americans would make ‘good use of it against the Japanese’, but showed no special interest.

  In the second week, tempers deteriorated as negotiations focused on the key outstanding issues of reparations, political control and territory. At the end of the third week, now exhausted, the Allied leaders announced the end of their deliberations: they would establish a process for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals with a trial slated to take place later that year in Nuremberg; there would be new external borders for Germany, Austria and Poland; and Germany would have to pay the Soviet Union reparations in compensation for the losses endured during the war, including 10 per cent of its industrial capacity. In contrast, the US and UK delegations did not insist on reparations, wary of provoking a backlash from the German people similar to that seen in the years after the First World War.

  Also announced was the Allies’ plan for the post-war administration of Germany. The country would be split into four zones, respectively controlled by the Americans, French, British and Soviets. In addition, the city of Berlin, located within the Soviet zone, to the east of the other three, would likewise be split into four sectors. It had always been Stalin’s intention to control Berlin after the war’s end, so it was with great reluctance that he agreed to this redrawing of Germany’s internal borders. In effect, the western neighbourhoods of Berlin – including Wilmersdorf, Charlottenburg and Spandau – would now form a capitalist island within a sea of communist control.

  On 6 August, four days after the conclusion to the Potsdam Conference, the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima3, instantly killing 80,000 people and destroying 70 per cent of the city’s buildings. On 9 August, a second bomb was launched on Nagasaki killing 40,000 people. Three weeks later, on 2 September 1945, Japan signed its unconditional surrender, during a ceremony held aboard the USS Missouri docked in Tokyo Bay.

  The Second World War had finally come to an end.

  The first map that came out of the Potsdam Conference placed the entire village of Groß Glienicke, including both sides of the lake, within the Soviet zone. But the British wanted their own airport4. So, on 30 August 1945, they asked the Soviets for permanent control of the old Luftwaffe airport at Gatow, whose runway terminated a few hundred metres from the lake’s eastern shore. The Soviets consented, and in return received land in Staaken, a few kilometres to the north. The result was that Groß Glienicke was separated from Gatow, with the boundary between West Berlin and East Germany now running down the centre of the lake.

  The houses on the west of the lake – where the Meisel, Munk and Radtke homes stood – would continue to be located within Groß Glienicke and controlled by the Soviets. Meanwhile, the houses on the eastern shore were administratively folded into the village of Kladow and, from now on, would become part of the British sector of West Berlin.

  At first, the agreements made at Potsdam had little impact on the village. The Soviets set up a border control at the Potsdamer Tor5, while the British established their own control point at the Spandau Tor, a similar stone arch on the Berlin side of the old Groß Glienicke Estate. Villagers were able to cross between the zones without restriction, unimpeded if they wanted to travel for work, shopping, or to visit family members.

  Then in September 1945, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany announced a series of land reform measures. Private properties would now be limited to one hundred hectares, equivalent to one square kilometre. Farms were seized, split into smaller units and redistributed to the landless. Forty-five per cent of East German land was affected with over seven thousand farms expropriated. Landowners, often accused of ‘Nazi activities’ and ‘war crimes’, were forced to find alternative employment. Many were also sent to labour camps that were located within East Germany, some of which had been established within former Nazi concentration camps.

  However, the Soviet Military Administration had failed to prepare for the massive changes resulting from their reforms. For a start, many of the Neubauer, as the newly installed farmers were known, lacked sufficient machines to plough the fields or to collect the harvest, and most of those who had been tasked with running the farms lacked the knowledge or skills to achieve their government-directed goals. The results were immediate: food production collapsed, malnutrition rose, and with mansions and farm buildings now demolished, in ruin or in disrepair, the already limited housing stock was reduced yet further.

  Groß Glienicke was spared none of this. The first consequence of the land reform was that the former workers of the estate were dispossessed of their houses, including families such as the Radtkes – even if they owned the properties outright. Next, twenty-nine current tenants were given the opportunity to buy the land they occupied. This included the Meisels who were now offered the chance to purchase the land underneath the lake house, even though they owned a residence in West Berlin. But as the Meisels were still in Austria, they were unable to take advantage of this opportunity. The final repercussion related to the schloss itself. As soon as they had taken over the village the Soviets had occupied the schloss – by now there was barely any furniture left since the Schultzes had removed anything of value back in the 1930s. The schloss represented everything that the Soviets disliked: an extravagant building, an unused resource, a symbol of feudal power and injustice. During the early days of their occupation, a group of Soviet soldiers even chiselled off the Wollank family crest from the top of the Potsdamer Tor.

  Then, sometime during the extremely cold winter of 19456, a fire erupted in the schloss’s upstairs sewing room. It was never determined if this was an accident or an act of arson. Within minutes, the alarm sounded at the fire station. Jumping into their truck, the volunteer firemen raced under the Potsdamer Tor, passing the gate to the lake house, down the dirt track, before arriving a minute later outside the schloss. They were met by a line of Russian soldiers who barred their way. Soon after, the British arrived, also carrying fire equipment, but they too were prevented from taking action by the Russians.

  Since the schloss stood within the Soviet zone, the fire was clearly their responsibility. Yet the Soviets made no effort to put it out. Instead, they focused on removing the few items left inside the building. The blaze quickly grew out of control and the roof collapsed. The beautiful frescos in the hallway were destroyed, as were the sweeping staircase and the ballroom. By now, almost the entire village had gathered to witness the schloss’s end; it was as if their old way of life was burning to the ground before them. This fire marked the climax to the terrors experienced by the villagers since Soviet troops had taken control.

  For Burkhard Radtke, life in Groß Glienicke had been paradise for most of the war years. After 1945, he later recalled, it felt ‘like falling into hell’.

  Shortly after the Soviets arrived in Groß Glienicke, Hanns and Ottilie left the lake house. Hearing what had happened to their neighbours, they decided it would be safer to be in the capital than in the village.

  Having closed the shutters, covered the furniture with sheets and locked the front door, they set off with their few belongings for Berlin. There was no public transport at the time, and as Soviet drivers were unlikely to help a couple of struggling civilians, Hanns and Ottilie had to walk. It was a little over thirteen kilometres to their apartment in the capital’s western suburbs, and the journey took them most of the morning. As they arrived in the Berlin district of Spandau, they found that the Freybrücke, the old iron bridge spanning the River Havel, had been blown up, forcing them to follow the other pedestrians and use a series of jerry-rigged structures to cross the river. Eventually, they reached their apartment at Giesebrechtstraße 9 in Charlottenburg. Here they waited, shocked by the devastation around them, but glad to be out of Groß Glienicke, and safe in the city.

  Once again, the lake house stood empty. For the second time in its history, its s
huttered windows endured a long summer, autumn and winter unopened and unwarmed by human company and the heat from a fire. Inside, the air grew stale and cold, while outside, a strange normality returned to the village.

  In January 1946, an unexpected visitor arrived in Groß Glienicke. Hanns Alexander had spent the war in the British Army, rising to the rank of captain. Now he was back in Berlin working as part of a British war crimes investigation team.

  Finding nobody at the lake house, Hanns walked over to the house next door, looking for Fritz Munk. It had been Professor Munk who had urged the Alexanders to flee Germany for their lives back in the 1930s. The two men greeted each other warmly. The Munks had survived; although the sons, Klaus and Peter, had taken part in campaigns in northern Italy and Russia, thankfully neither had been injured. Fritz did not mention what his wife had witnessed during the Soviet occupation.

  Hanns’s news was that almost all of the Alexanders had made it to England. He and Paul had served in the British Army from 1940. His parents were doing well, although he worried about his father’s health. At the end of the war, Bella had lost her husband, when the car he was driving in south-west England had been hit by a plane just as it was landing.

  His sister Elsie and her husband Erich had had a second son in 1942, Michael, and then – eager to assimilate, and worried about sounding too German – they had changed their name from Hirschowitz to Harding. Elsie, however, had found it harder to adapt than her parents or siblings. She missed Germany. Most of all, she missed the house in Glienicke.