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AT THE ABYSS
When Harry walks down the hallways of his new home, he gets the feeling of being at sea. The floor creaks under his steps and seems to move like the deck of a rolling ship. Chandeliers weighing half a ton begin to swing, and the crystal glasses on the table clink together. Again and again, the heavy curtain sways as though directed by an invisible hand while mysterious groans emanate from the venerable walls. You might think that Harry is imagining this. Perhaps his nerves are gone or his fantasy has run wild. But Harry’s senses aren’t deceiving him. His new domicile is in fact in disrepair, and unless something is done in the foreseeable future, it could collapse like a house of cards. The building in question is the White House.
In November 1944, Harry S. Truman ran for Vice President of the United States of America alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was the fourth time Roosevelt had put himself up for America’s highest office and, again, his ticket won. A few months later, on April 12, 1945, FDR suddenly died, making Truman president. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt gave him, his wife Bess, and his daughter Margaret a tour of the presidential residence.
“The White House looked splendid from the outside,” Margaret would remember. “But the private quarters were anything but comfortable in those days. It was not unlike moving into a furnished apartment, where no new furniture or equipment had been purchased for twenty or thirty years. The furniture looked like it had come from a third-rate boarding house. Some of it was literally falling apart.” Mrs. Roosevelt assured the new inhabitants that the place would look much better with a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Margaret chose Wedgwood Blue for her living room and pink for her bedroom. Bess Truman preferred blue for her bedroom and gray for her living room, while her husband’s bedroom was painted beige. The couple obviously slept apart. The Oval Office was made over in off-white. On May 7, the renovations were completed. That very day the Trumans moved into their quarters in the White House.
As the movers carry hundreds of boxes into the building, and a crane hoists Margaret’s grand piano into the second floor, President Truman learns from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Northwestern Europe, that Colonel General Alfred Jodl of the German Wehrmacht has capitulated at Eisenhower’s headquarters in the French city of Reims. Because Jodl has argued that the Wehrmacht leadership needs time to communicate the order to surrender down through the ranks, it has been agreed that Germany will officially cease hostilities the following day. Truman thus spends his first night in the White House secure in the knowledge that the Second World War will be coming to an end, five years, eight months, and seven days after it began.
When Truman awakes at the crack of dawn on May 8 in the presidential bedroom, he no doubt has little desire to think about the physical state of the building. A press conference, to be broadcast on the radio, is planned for 9:00 a.m. Word has gone round that the new president has something very important to communicate to the American people, and the press jockeys for position when White House spokesman Jonathan W. Daniels admits reporters into the Oval Office at 8:35. Also present are Bess and Margaret, Truman’s cabinet, and ranking American and British military commanders and congressional leaders. They’re seated on chairs ringing the president’s desk. The journalists have to stand. It’s so crowded that someone could pass out without hitting the floor.
Truman tells those in attendance that what he’s going to announce is top secret until 9:00 a.m. But it’s so brief, he adds, they’ll all have plenty of time to write their reports. The reporters laugh. Truman jokes that it’s also a special day for him personally. He’s just turned sixty-one. “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” someone calls out. Then the clock strikes nine, and Truman begins to speak.
“This is a solemn but glorious hour,” he says. “General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations.” He points out that the Second World War isn’t yet over and done with and that Japan and the United States are still locked in a terrible battle in the Pacific. He warns the Japanese that, from now on, the full might of the American military machine will be directed against them. The press conference is over in minutes.
While Truman accepts further birthday congratulations, shakes countless hands, cuts a huge cake, passes pieces to his closest staff members, and at some point goes back to work, New York prepares for what is by far the biggest American celebration of V-E Day. Masses of people gather in Times Square, getting ready for the tens of thousands of celebrants who will march down Fifth Avenue to showers of confetti. All in all, half a million people take part. But by evening, the city returns to its normal hustle and bustle. “Yesterday’s news had hardly any effect on the theatrical box offices last night,” the New York Times reports the following day. “Ticket booth attendants said that there were some seats canceled, but they were immediately snapped up by other buyers.”
V
How long has the German novelist Alfred Döblin waited for this day? How often has he imagined a gigantic sinkhole opening in the ground and sucking Adolf Hitler down to the depths of hell? Twenty times? Thirty? More? Döblin can’t say. “It’s good that this beast has finally been laid low, but what damage has it done!” he writes to friends in May. Some sixty million people have died, civilians as well as soldiers, and nine million men, women, and children have been murdered in the concentration camps and death camps, including six million Jews. Broad stretches of the European continent have been devastated.
In Los Angeles, the city in which Döblin sought refuge five years ago, he notes: “Perhaps my exile will be over in a few months — but what comes next? Life is a series of adventures.”
V
A good week after Adolf Hitler’s suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery, wild rumors are swirling around Berlin. “Hitler is in Japan, in Spain, near Hamburg, he’s shot himself, and he has fallen in the battle for the Reich Chancellery,” Else Tietze muses in her diary. Her real name is Elisabeth Anna Henriette, but for as long as she can remember, everyone just calls her Else. She doesn’t quite know what to make of all the talk. “If God granted him a soldier’s death, He would have done very well by him. I still believe that the man wanted to do good, but he must have gone insane at the end.” Mrs. Tietze insists that she was never a true National Socialist. On the other hand, the Russians were Germany’s enemies. Nonetheless, when she walks through the streets of the Reich capital now, she doubts Hitler more and more. “You almost get the feeling that Hitler only wanted to leave his enemies a completely destroyed Berlin and didn’t even think about the poor, unhappy people.”
Else Tietze is in her early seventies and lives in a stately apartment in Holsteinische Strasse, not far from Stuben-rauchplatz square in the district of Steglitz. Her husband, Richard, a retired colonel, died three years ago. The people in her building, which has miraculously survived the war without major damage, address Else as “Mrs. Colonel,” which always makes her particularly happy. Her Richard was a respected man, she thinks. People held him in high regard, and some of that now seems to have rubbed off on her a bit. The Tietzes had three children — Traute, Hildegard, and Richard Junior — but Else hasn’t heard from them in several weeks. When the Red Army reached Berlin, Traute and her husband, Hans, fled head over heels to southern Germany. They’d heard that Stalin’s troops usually made short work of members of the SS like Hans. Else’s son, Richard, followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the army. He’s said to have been fighting in Potsdam — there has been no trace of him since. Her daughter Hildegard is the only one Else knows is safe. She married a piano maker and emigrated to the United States in 1933.
“Our longing and worry are sometimes too much,” Else complains more than once these days. It gnaws at her not to know how the children are doing. Although she has previously never spoken much about her feelings, to say nothing of putting them in writing, she has been keeping a diary for a few weeks. It’s her “intimate journal,” a place to confess the fears and worries that torment her, as well as her fragile hopes. If Traute and Richard are still alive, she wants to give them her diary someday. Until then, Else records her experiences as best she can. On May 8, she writes: “The children are already playing happily in the street here again, and on my way today, which took me past many Russian vehicles, I saw a Russian cutting a thick slice of bread for a boy who accepted it with a smile. Incidentally, they have scores of horses, most very good-looking, not small Russian horses, but beautiful, large ones. No doubt they were all stolen and confiscated German ones.”
V
May 8, 1945, is a busy day at Buckingham Palace. At 11:00, there is the usual changing of the guard, a ceremony that has continued uninterrupted throughout the war. At the same time, King George VI is handing out “Distinguished Service Medals” and “Military Medals” to 270 soldiers who acted with bravery beyond the call of duty. Around noon, Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in a civilian vehicle to have lunch with the monarch. When the crowds that have congregated in front of the palace recognize him, the police have to restrain them. The seventy-year-old leader is the man of the hour, the person regarded as the driving force behind the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, and now that peace is finally at hand, the British people want to celebrate with their prime minister. After lunch, Churchill returns to 10 Downing Street to deliver a radio address. “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead,” he says. “Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued. The injury she has inflicted on Great Britain, the United States, and other countries, and her detestable cruelties, call for justice and retribution.”
Meanwhile, the crowd in front of the palace has swelled to some one hundred thousand. Cries of “We want the King!” go up, at first individually, but soon as a collective chant. Then the balcony door opens and for the first time that day King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret appear before their subjects. The king wears a Royal Navy admiral’s uniform, and Princess Elizabeth fatigues from the “Auxiliary Territorial Service,” the women’s division of British Army, which she joined earlier in the year. Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret are both dressed in blue.
Churchill is on his way from Downing Street to the Ministry of Health in Richmond House. There, on the balcony, he makes another speech. “My dear friends, this is your hour,” he calls out to the crowd. “This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole . . . Now we have emerged from one deadly struggle — a terrible foe has been cast on the ground and awaits our judgment and our mercy.” The celebrations know no bounds. All in all, around two hundred thousand people take to the streets. Later that afternoon, the king has an official audience with Churchill and the members of the War Cabinet in the Bow Room, where official receptions are held. At 5:30 p.m., the royal family returns to the balcony to greet the crowds, this time alongside the prime minister.