At the end of my first day in Berlin I was convinced that the city was in its death throes. Human beings could not continue to live in this horrendous garbage heap. But by the end of my first week I was beginning to change my mind. Berliners were getting enough food and water to keep them standing up and, in some residential areas, electric power was available for short periods each day. The wraith of a public transport system had been conjured up to service ration depots and medical aid posts. More and more people were finding employment in public works supervised by the Russians. Thanks to Russian experience in dealing with the problems of their own devastated cities, epidemic diseases were controlled. All in all, I believe that the Soviets in those early days did more to keep Berlin alive than the Anglo-Americans could possibly have done. The Russian method of maintaining order and achieving results in the essentials was not inhibited by humanitarian niceties. They understood mass psychology. They realised that the sooner Berliners could be encouraged to help themselves, the better it would be for all concerned.
Within a few weeks of the surrender they encouraged the publication of newspapers. They restored broadcasting service, permitted the organisation of public entertainments, and announced that they would approve the formation of trade unions and democratic political parties.
Some sort of rational, ongoing arrangement had to be made for the education of millions of children of school age, an education that must not perpetuate the corrupt philosophy of nazism. Typically, the theorists of Western democracy addressed the problem with more righteous zeal than horse sense. No tainted word or phrase should remain in the textbooks used by German schools they declared. The schools must stay closed pending a complete purge of educational literature. The Russians were far more realistic – at least in Berlin. Even before the Western allies took over their zones they encouraged the reopening of primary schools in the least mauled suburbs, employing teachers with no notable track record as Nazi activists. West of the Elbe the reopening of schools was delayed for months.
Radio newspapers, politics, concerts… The Russians had cleverly nurtured regrowth in a desert of misery. They had shown a measure of mercy to the followers of the beast dead in its lair under a mountain of shattered stone. But Berliners didn’t see things that way.
Everywhere there was the same whispered story: "Thank God you British and Americans have come… We cannot tell how glad we are to se you… Russians are animals – ravening animals. The Russians have taken everything I possess, even my change of clothes. They rape and steal and shoot…"
Anti-Russian hysteria was so strident, so many tales of Russian atrocities circulated, that the chief of the Anglo-American public relations bureau saw it fit to summon correspondents to issue a "guidance".
"Remember, - he said, – that there is a strong and concerted movement among the German people to sow seeds of distrust and discord between the Allies. Germans believe that they can gain much by dividing us. I wish to warn you against believing German stories about Russian atrocities without thoroughly checking them.
Anyway, Russophobia was nothing new. The troops had encountered it all the way from the Rhine as they met thousands of panic stricken civilians fleeing westward. The Russians were coming! Anything on God’s earth to escape the Russians! Any heel was better than a Russian heel!
When you singled out individuals from the stampeding mass and questioned them, it almost turned out they had no first hand knowledge of Russians at all. They had been told this. They had heard that – from a friend or a brother or a cousin who had served on the Eastern Front… Certainly Hitler had lied to them. His master-race theories were absurd, his claim that the British were decadent and all Jews subhuman the raving of a disordered mind – but about the Bolsheviks, the Fuhrer had been right!
Goebbels’s propaganda had scored t least one success which would survive the disillusion of defeat. It had instilled into the German people a psy**tic fear of the "hordes from the East"/ When the Red Army advanced to the outskirts of Berlin a wave of suicide swept the city.
