We will not let them liberate a thing. The Americans will be stopped before Berlin, whatever the consequences and regardless of the lies they give as their intentions."

Stalin glanced at the clock on the wall. It was midafternoon. "In a few hours, we will commence the greatest bombardment the world has ever seen. Then more then two and a half million men will assault Berlin and drive toward the Elbe. I will inform both Zhukov and Koniev that they are to expedite the pincers movement behind Berlin and seal off the rear approaches to Berlin."

Molotov, normally impassive, paled. "But, Comrade Stalin, what if the Americans are already in Berlin or within the pincers?"

Stalin smiled tightly. "Then so be it. The Americans will squeal very loudly and learn a lesson."

"WHAT IS THE comrade tank commander staring at this fine night, this most wonderful of evenings, which signals the end of the Nazi empire?"

Commander Sergei Suslov climbed down from the dark turret of the T34 tank and stretched his tired muscles like a cat.

"Comrade driver," he said with a tired grin to his slightly insane crewman Ivan Latsis, "I was staring at Germany across the lovely Oder River and wondering how much longer they can possibly hold out against our armies."

They glanced across the clearly visible river where hundreds of flashes of light on the heights overlooking them showed where shells were impacting with horrible regularity. Each man had to speak clearly, as the noise level was deafening. Suslov wondered how it could be endured.

"They are not responding to our barrage," Latsis said.

If that was the case, Suslov could not blame them. His company, his brigade, were part of the largest army the world had ever seen. It had more men, tanks, guns, and planes than could have ever been dreamed of only a few years prior, and had been accumulating and gathering its strength along the Oder for what would surely be the final assault on Berlin, only thirty miles away.

Suslov said, "They have very likely withdrawn from their fortifications, which we are so intently bombarding, and will not return to them until the advance units start to cross the Oder. Only then will they respond to our invitation to do battle."

The Germans on the hills had an excellent view of the Russian preparations, but had chosen not to waste ammunition on them or to give away the location of their few remaining heavy guns. Suslov could not complain about that decision on their part, nor could he complain about the fact that he and his armored brigade would not be part of the first wave. Instead, they would follow once a bridgehead had been secured and would be part of the breakout.

Latsis was constantly brooding, his face looking particularly dour in the flickering lights of the distant explosions. "I hear a rumor that we won't be allowed to attack Berlin, that the honor will fall to others."

Suslov shrugged and tried not to see the hate on the other man's face. "It would be an honor I could do without. Tanks are meant to fight in the open, not in streets. I had all the city fighting I could ever want at Stalingrad."

Latsis agreed reluctantly. The name of Stalingrad was both sacred and evocative of slaughter on a mass scale. Suslov had taken another tank and crew through the battle, been wounded, and returned to duty as this tank's new commander a few months earlier.

"Even so," Latsis insisted, "I would like the opportunity to destroy a portion of the city and the people inside it."

"I know," Suslov said gently.

Latsis had told them several times what had happened to his village when the Nazis took it. It was not just that the people had been killed, but how they had died. Slaughtered

was the better word, although even that was inadequate to describe the rape and torture that had preceded death in so many cases. Latsis was obsessed with the fact that both his mother and his sister had been gang-raped and mutilated by a bunch of Nazis, and left to die. He had found through the handful of survivors that his thirteen-year-old sister had lived in screaming agony for a few days after, but that his mother had died almost immediately.

Suslov slapped Latsis on the shoulder in an attempt to break his driver's dark mood. "Don't worry, there's more of Germany than just one city. You'll have your opportunity to make them squeal."

Latsis grunted and moved away, leaving Suslov to wonder just what was in store for those Germans in Berlin. There were hundreds of thousands of Russians with stories just as horrible as the one Latsis told. As for himself, he had no love for the Nazis, nor hatred either.