Forgotten bastards of th.., p.9
Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front, page 9
Some of the American pilots would refuse to take food after noticing that the kitchen staff failed to wash their hands after visiting the Soviet-style latrines. Captain Newell, who found the beds and bedding perfectly satisfactory, reported that the latrines were in a “deplorable state.” He was echoed by Parton, who wrote in June 1944 that “If the Russian kitchen may be termed bad, their latrines can only be called indescribable.” The Americans refused to use the Soviet latrines, which consisted of a row of holes in the floor, often covered with excrement. They demanded the construction of new facilities, though the only type of latrine the Soviets could build was already on display. Eventually the Americans gave up and built their own latrines at each of the Poltava-area bases. They could do nothing about the latrine facilities in Kharkiv, Kyiv, and other Soviet-run bases, which the Americans visited from time to time.
For the locals and Red Army soldiers, among whom the American medics frequently observed bad teeth and signs of malnutrition, poor sanitation was coupled with inadequate medical care. According to the chief American surgeon at the bases, Lieutenant Colonel William M. Jackson, it was fifty years behind American standards. Jackson set up separate hospital facilities on each base, staffed by American personnel. Captain Newell wrote in his report of April 1944: “The Soviet standards of diet and sanitation are so vastly different from those of the American people that little change can be prognosticated.” Major Parton quipped in his report that “bathing among the local populace appeared to be at best a biennial event.”24
The Soviets tried hard to deal with the problems pointed out to them by the Americans, although matters of sanitation and personal hygiene were embarrassing to address. Some Americans turned the Red Army soldiers’ poor hygiene to their advantage. Private First Class Martin Kloski from Jersey City told American military reporters that “Russian women keep things very clean. They manage somehow, although there’s hardly any soap. Russian men, though, are another story. I figure that the fact that we kept clean, and that our uniforms were neat, is one of the big reasons we made a hit with the gals.”25
Colonel Kessler was pleased. “GIs walk around the town just as they walk around London,” remarked the American commander. Less pleased were the secret-police officers at the Poltava headquarters of the People’s Commissariat of State Security (NKGB), the civil security service that monitored the attitude of the local population to the presence of Americans. They spotted some Americans attending church services, which was barely tolerated in the USSR. Others shared with the locals their impressions of comparative living standards in the United States and the Soviet Union, which were anything but in favor of the latter. “You do five dollars’ worth of work, and you could live perfectly well on that in America, but here, for that amount, you wouldn’t be able to buy a kilogram of bread,” one of the American servicemen allegedly told a secret-police informer. He continued: “America is really heaven on earth; here there’s nothing but suffering.”
Especially worrisome to the authorities was the attitude of the locals to the Americans and the hopes they cherished in connection with their arrival. Ukraine had been a problem for the Soviets ever since the Revolution of 1917, when its political and intellectual elites pushed for independence from Russia and created a state of their own. The Soviets managed to crush Ukrainian resistance only by making major concessions to local cadres and agreeing to support the native language and culture. The Soviet Union was created in 1922 as a quasi-federal structure largely to pacify the Ukrainians and Georgians. It gave both rebellious republics and a score of other Soviet nations a degree of autonomy that they would lose with the consolidation of the Stalin regime.
In the early 1930s Stalin starved close to four million Ukrainians, along with millions of other Soviet citizens, in his attempt to collectivize agriculture. As noted earlier, Poltava, Myrhorod, and Pyriatyn were among the areas of Ukraine that suffered most from the famine. Stalin took advantage of the crisis to attack the Ukrainian party cadres and launch an assault on the nation’s cultural revival. Ukrainians living outside Ukraine and constituting the largest national minority in Russia proper were reregistered as Russians almost overnight. Contemporaries speak of those events as a Ukrainian genocide.26
As the Third Reich invaded Ukraine in 1941, many locals wanted to see the German divisions as portents of the arrival of European civilization and long-awaited liberation from Stalin’s brutal rule. Many used the occasion to reclaim their non-Soviet identity and restore a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent of Moscow. Although the Germans allowed that, they went on to establish a reign of terror in Ukraine. The main victims were Jews: close to a million Jewish men, women, and children, or every sixth Jew who died in the Holocaust, came from Ukraine. Young Ukrainians were hunted down to be sent to labor camps in Germany, producing a huge forced emigration—2.2 million Ukrainians ended up there by 1944. Ukrainian nationalists, briefly tolerated in 1941, also fell victim to the German regime as their leaders were killed and their followers driven underground.27
By the time the Red Army came back to Ukraine in 1943, there were few believers in German liberation, but the population did not forget or forgive the Soviet atrocities of the revolutionary and interwar eras. Well aware of this, the Soviet authorities were concerned that Ukrainians had been exposed to anticommunist propaganda during the German occupation and were now anything but loyal to the Soviet regime. With the arrival of the Americans, foreigners of a different brand, the secret police was all eyes and ears.
“The anti-Soviet element, mostly on the list of suspects under surveillance, is trying to establish ties with the Anglo-American aircrew,” reported Lieutenant Colonel Chernetsky, the head of the Poltava NKGB (the Commissariat of State Security) to his Kyiv boss, Serhii Savchenko, on June 30, 1944. The locals were impressed by American technological achievement, considering them culturally superior not only to the Russians but also to the Germans. “The Americans have built an airport in Poltava that we could not even dream of,” asserted a construction office worker Serhii Ivanovsky. “They have brought special flagstones from America with which they have paved the whole airport. They don’t let our people in there for supervisory duties. The Americans, like the Germans, are highly cultured and very rich; even here, they don’t deny themselves many trifles and luxuries.”
Some even expected an eventual American takeover of Ukraine: the Americans were the second foreign army in the region in the course of the previous three years, and it was easy to imagine that the new foreigners, no matter how rich and cultured, wanted the same as the Germans. Antonina Korsun, a fifty-year-old schoolteacher, allegedly told a secret-police informer on June 3: “The Americans have organized their airports … with a certain purpose in mind. They don’t want to fight the Germans on the front but send our fighters there; while our men are on the front, they’ll establish themselves all over Ukraine and take it over with no fighting at all. The Germans conquered Ukraine openly, but the Americans are taking it by stealth. Which is better, only time will tell … .”
Some of the Poltava-area residents, such as Stepan Kanarevsky, a fifty-three-year-old employee of the Poltava city retail department, welcomed an American takeover as a way of freeing his country from communist rule. “I’m very glad that there will be no communists, and that the Americans will be in charge,” Kanarevsky allegedly confided to one of his acquaintances. “I took an interest and rode a bike around the airport myself; our people only have patrols there, but all the rest are Americans who could deliberately kill off our young people raised in the communist spirit and take over themselves.” If one believes the secret-police stooges, Kanarevsky was ready for another war, this time between the Soviets and the Americans, and there was no doubt whose side he would take.
Many hoped that the arrival of the Americans portended changes in the Soviet political regime. Olga Smirnova, a woman in her late thirties who studied English and was suspected of anti-Soviet sympathies, stated: “I don’t know how the political system of the USSR will change in form after the war, but it cannot remain as it is, for England and America will help us in that regard.” Serhii Ivanovsky, impressed by the cultural superiority of the Americans, was more specific about his expectations of change. He told a secret-police informer: “I think the Americans will suggest to us that the party apparatus be prevented from interfering in affairs of state; they will teach us, and they are worth learning from.” Others, such as the twenty-five-year-old sports official Anatolii Baev, envisioned a restructuring of the Soviet Union along the American model. “I think it’s no accident that the Americans are traveling around Siberia and looking closely at its riches, and the appearance of American air bases on our territory will bring about the end of the existence of the Soviet Union, and completely separate republics (states) will be organized, as in America,” said Baev (rather unwisely) to an NKGB informer.28
The attitude of the local Ukrainian population to the arrival of the Americans was quite different from that of Red Army officers and soldiers. The latter, especially young officers and technicians, indoctrinated in Soviet class-based thinking and sharing official prejudices against the capitalist West, grudgingly accepted American economic and military prowess, compensating where possible by asserting their sense of their own ideological and cultural superiority. The locals, especially those who had lived in the Russian Empire as children and experienced the German occupation as adults, were not impressed by Soviet propaganda that sought to demean the Americans, viewing their arrival as a change for the better—as heralding reform of the Soviet political system by limiting the power of the party; or the expulsion of the communists altogether; or undoing the takeover of Ukraine.
On the morning of June 11, 1944, the Soviet military and the locals bade farewell to the American pilots as they took over the Poltava, Myrhorod, and Pyriatyn air bases. Altogether there were 129 Flying Fortresses and 60 Mustangs in the formations that assembled above Gribov’s Myrhorod air base before flying southwest on a course for Italy. It was the last day and the final mission of Frantic Joe.
To General Eaker’s disappointment, weather still did not permit the bombing of the Mielec airplane factory, so he designated the German airfields near the Romanian town of Focşani as the new target. Other airplanes of the Fifteenth Air Force took off from Italian bases to divert the attention of the Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft defenses from the shuttle bombers coming from Poltava. The bombing was a success: at the Focşani airfields six workshops were completely destroyed, as were six barrack-type buildings; the fuel facilities and filling station were set on fire. Also significantly damaged were numerous other buildings and facilities in the area. The bombers did not hit the town itself.
The Germans were better prepared to attack the bombers and their fighter escort this time than they had been on June 2, with flak heavier and Luftwaffe fighter pilots more aggressive. But the losses were still minimal. One Mustang crashed on takeoff, and seven turned back because of technical problems, as did six Flying Fortresses. One more Mustang went down over Yugoslavia because of technical problems, and one B-17 was lost to enemy fire. Unfortunately, that plane was carrying an American photographer who had taken numerous pictures of the Poltava air bases. Those in the know hoped that they would not fall into enemy hands.29
Now that it was over everyone considered Frantic Joe a stunning success. On June 12, the day after General Eaker’s return to Italy, Averell Harriman sent a telegram to Major General Anderson in London, congratulating the deputy commander of the US Strategic Air Forces in Europe, who had overseen the shuttle-bombing operations on behalf of General Spaatz. Arnold was happy to reciprocate with a similar telegram. “I wish you would express my heartfelt appreciation to the General Officers on the Red Army General Staff and the Red Air Force who cooperated with us in making this operation a success, and request them to convey these sentiments to their officers and men.” The future looked bright both for the continuation of Frantic Joe—or whatever the next name was—and for the Soviet-American alliance. In addition to the Northern France, the Americans were fighting on the Eastern Front. A Grand Alliance had taken its final shape.30
7
Death to Spies
One man who desperately wanted to get on an American plane and leave for Italy with the returning Flying Fortresses was Maurice Reymond. A captain in the French Army before the war, he had been brought to central Ukraine under uncertain circumstances by the Germans and remained there when Soviet forces recaptured the region in the fall of 1943. Reymond made contact with the American commanders in late May 1944. With the second front opened in France on June 6, he hoped that the Americans would fly him to Italy or North Africa, where he could join his compatriots. But the Red Army counterintelligence officers who monitored Reymond’s visits to the Poltava base were determined to prevent that by all means possible. They trusted neither Reymond, whom they suspected of being a spy for the Germans, nor the Americans. Reymond would stay in Poltava under secret-police surveillance.1
“Allies are allies, but it must not be forgotten that the USA is an imperialist country, and there will probably be spies and saboteurs in the contingent,” wrote Vladlen Gribov, recalling the indoctrination he and his colleagues had received before the arrival of the first Americans at the Myrhorod base. They were also told to be careful when talking to one another, as they could be overheard: “among the Americans there will be those who conceal their knowledge of Russian.” Finally, they were ordered to “count legs,” meaning the number of crew members who arrived with each Flying Fortress. Upon landing, the Americans left the plane through an open hatch in the floor of the aircraft, legs first. The number of crew members was supposed to be ten, therefore the number of legs twenty. Should there be more, the Soviet mechanics were instructed to write down, unobtrusively, the number of the plane with extra passengers and report it to the counterintelligence officials.2
Reports filed by Red Army officers and soldiers would eventually reach the desks of the officers of the Soviet military counterintelligence service known as SMERSH (Smert’ shpionam), which stood for “Death to Spies.” The formation of SMERSH was part of a major reorganization of the security services by Joseph Stalin after the Battle of Stalingrad. As the Red Army began to drive out the German occupiers, Stalin decided to improve the counterintelligence work supervised by his security tsar, People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrentii Beria. The dictator apparently feared a drastic increase in the number of spies not only from behind the German lines but also among the population of the newly recaptured territories. A special Commissariat of State Security was formed under the command of Beria’s former deputy, Vsevolod Merkulov, and charged with civil counterintelligence. Another part of Beria’s counterintelligence empire was subordinated to his other deputy, Viktor Abakumov, and incorporated into the People’s Commissariat of Defense. Stalin personally named it SMERSH. Two smaller SMERSH outfits were created within the People’s Commissariat of the Navy, and under Beria’s command in the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, but Abakumov’s SMERSH maintained its status as the country’s main counterintelligence agency, with its boss reporting directly to Stalin.
The American air bases in Ukraine became the responsibility of Commissar of State Security Second Class Abakumov and his SMERSH outfit, whose main task was combating German spies. The powerful apparatus of SMERSH officers and informers was now turned against the Americans. Whatever the state of Soviet-American relations at the highest level, Abakumov and his men were to act on the assumption that the Americans had come to Ukraine not so much to fight the Germans as to spy on the Soviets.
They built up a huge network of informers, reminding Red Army personnel that their American allies were “capitalists” hostile to the Soviet regime. Ironically, those American officers friendliest toward the Soviets were considered the main threat, as they could not only spy more effectively but disseminate politically harmful views. SMERSH sought to keep the allies separate, trying to disrupt any unauthorized contact between the American airmen, their Red Army counterparts, and the local population. No similar arrangements were ever put in place or even contemplated in the United States with regard to the Soviet officials or the hundreds and thousands of Soviet sailors who visited the American mainland to pick up supplies under the terms of the Lend-Lease program. Soviet suspicion of and spying on the Americans was a peculiar feature of the Grand Alliance.
Given the political importance of the Poltava-area air bases, Abakumov decided to send an officer of the central SMERSH apparatus there. Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Sveshnikov was the deputy head of the SMERSH department overseeing counterintelligence activities among the Red Army airborne troops. Given the location of the bases, Sveshnikov seemed a natural choice. Now in his mid-thirties, a native of central Russia, he had been recruited into military intelligence in 1932 while serving with the Red Army in Ukraine. He spent the rest of the decade there, rising through the ranks of the military intelligence apparatus. At the time of the German invasion in June 1941, he was in charge of the counterintelligence department of an Air Force division stationed in the city of Uman, on the other side of the Dnieper from Poltava, Myrhorod, and Pyriatyn. He was therefore well prepared for the Poltava appointment and quite conversant with local conditions.3
