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Rape, plunder and suicide became commonplace. Soldiers entered the Haus Dahlem, an orphanage, maternity hospital and foundling home, and repeatedly raped pregnant women and those who had recently given birth. All told, the number of rape victims in Berlin—ranging from women of 70 to little girls of ten—will never be known, although Ryan reports estimates from doctors that run from 20,000 to 100,000.
Stalin's Scheme. Before the Soviet troops entered the city, most Berliners had been sustained by the hope that the Americans and British would not allow the city to fall into Russian hands; under daily attack by U.S. and British bombers, they still spoke of the Americans and British as liberators rather than conquerors. Ryan's account of the incredible blunders and political naivete that destroyed the hope is one of the most engrossing portions of the book.
Whatever the catastrophic political results, Ryan argues that Eisenhower made an eminently sound military decision when he ordered back the advanc ing units of the U.S. Ninth Army and refused to consider Berlin a worthwhile military objective. That is an argument that is still debatable. What cannot be disputed is the Allies' great mistake in accepting Stalin's word that he also considered Berlin to have no strategic importance. Actually, Stalin always considered the city a prime prize. Through interviews with surviving Soviet military people, Ryan provides a fresh account of how Stalin called his marshals to Moscow and craftily hatched his scheme for the massive offensive to snatch Ber lin before the Allies did.
Britain's Plan. Ryan also draws on long-forgotten documents to demolish the notion that Franklin Roosevelt drew up the zones of occupation for Germany. Actually, the plan was Britain's. F.D.R. was first shown the occupation plans in 1943, when he was aboard the U.S.S. Iowa on his way to the Cairo and Teheran conferences. He was both ir ritated and troubled, says Ryan, because the British plan, called Operation Rankin, placed the U.S. zone in the southern German provinces. "We should go as far as Berlin," Roosevelt said. "The U.S. should have Berlin. The Soviets can take the territory to the east."
Roosevelt even drew the zones he favored on a National Geographic map, placing Berlin on the boundary line between the U.S. and Soviet zones. He held stubbornly to his position throughout the war, but his wishes were never made known or they went unheeded. At Yalta, when the Big Three formally accepted the British plan, Roosevelt was too ill and dispirited to continue the fight. No one protested that provision had not been made for Anglo-American access to ruined Berlin. Stalin didn't complain, either.