World War II Behind Closed Doors (5 page)

The shops of Lwów and the other towns and cities in eastern Poland soon emptied of goods because in the early days of the occupation the Soviet authorities instituted a novel way of robbery. They set an exchange rate of one Soviet rouble for one Polish zloty – whereas in reality the zloty was worth far more. This meant that Red Army soldiers could ‘buy’ whatever they wanted from the shops. The consequence, of course, was that the zloty became worthless. Boguslava Gryniv witnessed the catastrophic effect of this development on her neighbour, a teacher of Latin and Greek at a prestigious Lwów school: ‘State employees were well paid and he had put all his money in a savings bank. At the first intimation of war he had withdrawn all his money from the bank. He had a suitcase full of money…. One day [his nephew] came round and said: “We are having a fire today. Uncle is burning his suitcase”. He went and got the suitcase and then he emptied the banknotes on the fire, saying: “This is my thirty years of service – these are my savings”. It was mere paper now’. A primitive barter economy soon replaced the sophisticated previous world of banks, paper money and cheques. People would ‘give away their fur coats in exchange
for three to five litres of petrol’, or take a sweater to the green grocer's to buy ‘a bucket of potatoes’.

And the Soviets didn't just destroy previous certainties, such as the security of currency – they swept away the whole concept of ownership of personal property. Red Army soldiers, looking for somewhere to live, merely walked down a street until they saw a house they liked, and then banged on the door and announced they were moving in. The first that Anna Levitska and her family knew about the appropriation of their comfortable villa in the suburbs of Lwów was when two Red Army officers appeared on their doorstep and announced: ‘We are going to be billeted with you’.

Each Red Army officer then took several rooms in the house and moved in with his wife. ‘They took over the furniture and all the other things’, says Anna Levitska, ‘which meant that everything was now theirs…. It was a small house which had five rooms – they occupied four of the rooms…. We no longer had any right to any of it…. Even the clothes: “This dress would really suit my wife,” he [one of the officers] would say [as he took it]…’.

Anna, her father and her mother had previously lived a happy family life in the house. Now they were all confined to one room: ‘We were just astounded by it all, you know. It was simply incomprehensible that these strangers who had no relationship with us whatsoever could just come and take over somebody else's property and furniture and things and consider this to be normal behaviour…that this was how things ought to be. It seemed utterly outrageous to us. We could not understand it and we suffered because of it. We suffered because we didn't know if tomorrow they might not say to us: “Get out of here! You have no business being here!” It was just terrifying’.

People like Anna Levitska's family – the so-called ‘bourgeois’ intelligentsia – were particularly at risk. As the Soviet troops moved into eastern Poland, they had distributed leaflets calling on the inhabitants to turn against their so-called ‘real’ enemies – the rich, the landlords and the leadership and officer class. This was an invasion designed to reorder and restructure Polish society. ‘They ordered us to line up and they checked everybody's hands’, recalled
one villager. ‘And they ordered to step forward those whose hands were not worn out from physical labour and [then] beat them with rifle butts, and one policeman was shot with a revolver’.
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Casual abuse of the ‘class enemies’ of the Communist system soon turned into systematic arrest. On 27 September – just ten days after Red Army troops had crossed into Poland – the Soviets came for Boguslava Gryniv's father. He was a prominent lawyer and head of the regional branch of UNDO – the Ukrainian National Democratic Party. Because UNDO was a legally constituted organization he felt he had nothing to fear from the Soviet authorities. He was wrong.

That day was a church holiday, so when there was a knock at their door the Gryniv family were surprised to see a member of the local Soviet authority. He said that Boguslava Gryniv's father was ‘invited’ to come and visit the temporary government. ‘And my mother said: “It's a holiday – we're having a special dinner. Come back after dinner”. I could tell by the expression on my father's face that he was a little bit nervous. He said to my mother, “As they are asking, I have to go”. As soon as they took him away, my mother announced that every evening we would kneel down in front of the icon and pray for our father to be returned to us. I think that was the most we could do, turn to God and ask that such a good, kind person as my father not be punished’. Boguslava Gryniv's father was one of the first to suffer at the hands of the Soviets in eastern Poland. Over the next months there would be many more.

RIBBENTROP RETURNS

On the same day that Boguslava Gryniv's father was arrested in eastern Poland a very different human interaction was taking place in Moscow. In the light of the swift conquest of Poland, the Soviet government had asked their new friend Joachim von Ribbentrop to return to the Kremlin to finalize the exact borders that would now exist between them. The mood – on both sides – was jubilant. The Soviets had occupied their ‘sphere of influence’ without
meeting any significant military opposition – they hadn't even formally declared war on Poland. And, despite the Germans having faced fierce Polish resistance, they had by now almost completely consolidated their hold on western Poland – indeed, Warsaw would fall the next day, 28 September.

The contrast between Ribbentrop's first, almost furtive visit four weeks before and this grandiose second one could scarcely have been greater. Ribbentrop now needed not one but two Condor planes to deliver himself and his entourage. The reception at Moscow airport was, according to General Köstring who accompanied him, ‘a ceremony of huge dimensions’.
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There was a guard of honour and a band played the ‘International’. Above the airport fluttered a number of Nazi flags. The fact that the crosses of the swastikas were hung back to front was dismissed by the arriving Nazis ‘smilingly’ as ‘a little mistake’, since the ‘intention was good’.

Ribbentrop landed in Moscow at six in the evening, and by ten o'clock he was ensconced with Stalin and Molotov at the scene of their previous encounter – Molotov's office in the Kremlin. Stalin expressed his ‘satisfaction’
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over the German success in Poland as well as the expectation that the collaboration between the Soviet Union and Germany would remain positive. Then, true to character, Ribbentrop began with a series of extravagant, vague statements about the immense value of the friendship between the two countries. He emphasized that the Germans wanted to ‘cooperate’ with the Soviet Union. But such was his pomposity and overblown eloquence that it wasn't completely clear what form he hoped this ‘cooperation’ would take. Stalin, who impressed foreign diplomats with his ability to cut through to the heart of any discussion, replied that ‘the German foreign minister has hinted cautiously that by “cooperation” Germany did not imply any need for military assistance or an intention to drag the Soviet Union into a war. This was well and tactfully said’.

The Soviet leader then went on to make what, on the face of it, was an extraordinary statement (remarks, moreover, that remained secret until the 1990s when Gustav Hilger's detailed minutes of this meeting were discovered in Ambassador Schulenburg's
papers).
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‘The fact is that for the time being Germany does not need foreign help’, said Stalin, ‘and it is possible that in the future they will not need foreign help either. However, if, against all expectations, Germany finds itself in a difficult situation, then she can be sure that the Soviet people will come to Germany's aid and will not allow Germany to be suppressed. A strong Germany is in the interests of the Soviet Union and she will not allow Germany to be thrown down to the ground’.

Was Stalin really laying open the possibility of the Red Army offering military assistance to Germany if the Nazis ever found themselves in a ‘difficult’ situation? For the Western Allies this would have been a terrifying prospect. Of course, in the event, nothing came of Stalin's words. The Germans never found themselves in sufficient ‘difficulties’ to pursue any potential military alliance. But Stalin's statement still shows how far he might have been prepared to go in pursuit of his alliance with Hitler, and it remains, given what was to happen later, an enormously embarrassing comment for him to have made.

Stalin then moved on to discuss practicalities, and revealed that he wanted to revisit the question of the borders drawn up at the 23 August meeting. He now wanted to exchange some of Soviet-held Poland – the territory of Lublin and the southern part of the Warsaw region – for a free hand in Lithuania. That way, the Soviet Union would keep the eastern territories of Poland which contained significant numbers of Russians and Ukrainians, and give up those areas that were overwhelmingly Polish in ethnic origin. The discussions continued in this intensely pragmatic way. Ribbentrop announced that Germany wanted the forest of Avgustova between East Prussia and Lithuania (apparently only because the area was supposed to offer good hunting), and Stalin revealed how the Soviets planned to put pressure on each of the Baltic states in turn to ensure that they complied with Soviet policy.

That night there was a lavish banquet in the Andreevsky Hall of the Kremlin. In contrast to the shabby utilitarianism of Molotov's office, the banqueting hall was ‘decorated with flowers and covered with precious porcelain and gold-plated cutlery’.
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Amidst this tsarist
splendour, members of Ribbentrop's extensive entourage mingled freely with the Communist leadership. Stalin introduced Lavrenti Beria, chief of the NKVD, to Ribbentrop with the memorable words: ‘Look, this is our Himmler – he isn't bad [at his work] either’.
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The atmosphere was friendly, and much alcohol was consumed. ‘In terms of presentation, generous hospitality and warmth of atmosphere’, recalled the German diplomat Andor Hencke, ‘this dinner was one of the most remarkable events I have witnessed during my twenty-three-year-long diplomatic career’.
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Stalin insisted on walking around the banqueting hall and toasting each member of the German delegation individually. Meanwhile, Molotov took every opportunity to drink to Stalin's health, celebrating him as ‘the Soviet Union's great leader and the spearhead of German-Russian friendship’. Stalin reacted jokingly to Molotov's toadying: ‘If Molotov wants to have a drink’, he said, ‘I certainly don't mind. But he shouldn't always use me as an excuse’.
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At the banquet the German diplomat Gustav Hilger was placed next to Lavrenti Beria. The Soviet secret police chief – short, bald and cruel-hearted – was not the most congenial of dinner companions. Hilger later recalled how Beria kept trying to make him drink more than he wanted to. Stalin, sitting diagonally opposite, noticed the friendly dispute between the two and asked what was going on. When Hilger explained, Stalin replied: ‘Well, if you don't want to drink, no one can force you’. ‘Not even the chief of the NKVD himself?’ asked Hilger as a joke. ‘Here at this table’, said Stalin, ‘even the chief of the NKVD has no more say than anyone else’.
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Molotov proposed a toast to Ribbentrop. ‘A hearty welcome for our guest who brings with him such good fortune!’ he declaimed. ‘Hurrah to Germany, her Führer and her Foreign Minister!’

‘Being immediate neighbours once more’, said Ribbentrop in reply, ‘as Germany and Russia had been for so many centuries, represents a hopeful foundation for friendship between both countries. The Führer considers the further realisation of that friendship entirely possible in spite of the differences that exist between both of our systems. In that spirit I propose a toast to the health
of comrades Stalin and Molotov who have given me such a sincere welcome’.
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After the banquet the German party left for the ballet, to watch the Bolshoi perform
Swan Lake
. Stalin and Molotov for their part immediately began the process of threatening the leaders of the Baltic states. Waiting for them elsewhere in the Kremlin was the Foreign Minister of Estonia, who was informed by Molotov that thirty-five thousand Red Army troops would be despatched to be garrisoned in his country. ‘Come on, Molotov’, said Stalin, ‘you're rather harsh on our friends’. The Soviet leader then suggested the troop numbers should be reduced to twenty-five thousand.
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In the early hours of the morning the German and Soviet delegations met up once again and, after Hitler had been consulted by phone, the details of the agreement were finalized. A map was brought in and Stalin signed it in huge letters, joking: ‘Is my signature clear enough for you?’
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To a number of those present at the talks in the Kremlin, this was the beginning of a new world order. ‘To me it seemed certain that the new German-Soviet friendship’, recorded Hilger, ‘sealed by two solemn treaties, would be of advantage to both partners and that it would be of long duration’.
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But it is unlikely that Stalin thought this was a deal to last – much more likely that he saw it as a way of standing back while the Nazis and the Western Allies slugged it out between them. He is alleged to have said at a Politburo meeting on 19 August that ‘the Soviet Union had to do everything possible to prolong the war and exhaust the Western powers’,
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and the Non-Aggression Pact certainly fitted that self-serving purpose.