Spirit of the Elbe Is Gone?

During my stay in Washington, D.C. as bureau chief of Izvestia, I took part in numerous TV and radio programs, discussing Soviet-American relations with US politicians, journalists, and political scientists.

One of those occasions stucks out in my mind as it dealt with a unique event at American television.

On April 19, 1985, I got one more chance to speak in the International Edition TV program which used to be shown on Fridays by PBS (Public Broadcasting System). I was its regular guest since 1983 and this time I told about my phone interview with Frank Huff, former Private of the 273rd Regiment, 69th Infantry Division of the US Army. 40 years earlier, he and Second Lieutenant William Robertson, Corporal James McDonnell and Private Paul Staub exchanged historic handshakes with the Red Army Lieutenant Alexander Silvashko and Sergeant Nikolai Andreyev at the Elbe River in Germany.

Three months before the said TV show, Ronald Reagan took office as President of the United States for his second term. He continued to call the USSR an evil empire and maintained tension in bilateral relations in many ways.

In March 1985, I was planning a business trip from Washington to Miami where I wanted to meet Marcel Albert, the second highest-scoring French ace of WW II who had settled down in the USA afterwards. During the Great Patriotic War, Albert joined the Normandie fighter group, a Free French fighter unit that was sent to the Soviet Union to help fight the Germans. He shot down 23 German planes and became one of 4 French pilots who got the Hero of the Soviet Union award. I intended to interview him on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Victory Day, but the American authorities banned my trip to Florida. Thus, my talk on the International Edition TV program provided American viewers with a unique opportunity to hear about the historic meeting at the Elbe River.

Actually, on April 25, 1945 three different meetings of Soviet and American servicemen took place at the Elbe River. The last such event happened at 4 p.m. and it became the most famous one. Its participants were depicted on a bronze bas-relief, which was cast in memory of the said meeting and was installed at the Arlington National Cemetery in Wasgington D. C. vicinity to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. The monument carries an inscription in English and Russian: «Spirit of the Elbe.

In recognition of the cooperation by American, Soviet and Allied Armed Forces during World War II. This marker symbolizes the link up of Soviet and American elements at the Elbe River on 25 April 1945. In tribute to the partnership in the battle against tyranny».

Those who made this memorial sign used a photo taken a day later, on April 26, 1945, by American war correspondent Alan Jackson. The person on the far left is Frank Huff.

The same day of April 26, 1945, another US reporter, this one working for the “Life” magazine, took a staged photo, capturing a friendly handshake between Robertson and Silvashko against the backdrop of “East Meets West” poster. This picture became famous around the world and was used as an illustration for a report published in “Life” under the headline “End of the War in Europe”. In reality that war was over only two weeks later, and, unfortunately, thousands of courageous fighters against Hitlerism did not live to see it. One of them was Nikolai Andreyev, who joined Alexander Silvashko in their meeting with American servicemen near the German town of Torgau. Andreyev lost his life in May during the liberation of Prague.

I spoke with Frank Huff on phone in early April 1985. In spite of the prevailing situation in the United States, he did not hesitate to grant an interview to a Soviet journalist. During our conversation he demonstrated a tenacious memory, plus sincere admiration for his Red Army comrades in arms, stressing their friendliness and hospitality: “After we shook hands, the Russians threw a huge feast using captured food and wine.”

The Soviet command awarded Huff and his comrades with medals which they treasured all their lives. And their own commanders awarded them American insignia of military distinction. Robertson and Huff provided personal reports about the meeting at the Elbe River to the commander-in-chief of the US Army in Europe, future president of their country, Dwight Eisenhower.

At the time of our telephone conversation, Frank Huff was 63 years old and had been on a disability pension for 19 years. As a veteran who had personally experienced the horrors of war, he wished that neither his children nor his grandson would ever have to take up arms. Through me Huff conveyed the same wish to Soviet war veterans, calling them people of rare courage and bravery. And he asked me to convey his special, warmest regards to Alexander Silvashko and other Soviet participants of the meeting at the Elbe River. Needless to say that I was only happy to do that in my report that was published by Nedelya, weekly supplement to Izvestia.

Also, I told John Grassie, the producer of International Edition program, about my interview with Frank Huff. This is how I got a chance to talk in International Edition special issue 40 years ago. In my address to American TV viewers, I said:

“On the 9th of May, at 7 p.m. Moscow time, the people of the USSR will commemorate the end of the Second World War. All the factories will stop, the theaters will interrupt their performances and all other regular human activities will be suspended, as my country people will observe a minute of silence. At that instance we shall whisper words of gratitude to our elders, who through their courage and sacrifice have preserved our society from annihilation by the Nazi invaders.

The reason we attach such importance to this event is based on the belief that he who ignores the past is running the risk to inflict upon himself new, and possibly worse, tragedies. Despite all the atrocities that the Soviet people had suffered at the hands of the Hitlerite hordes, we never felt any hostility towards the people of Germany, victims of Fascism themselves. But we shall never reconcile with the Nazi ideology, its adepts and executors. To pretend that the war against Nazism was just another war, to think that this abhorent philosophy is buried forever in the graves of those who tried to impose it by force on the rest of humanity, is, to us, a very dangerous naivete, if not a subtle attempt to create a Fascist Frankenstein.”

In the United States of those times, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the Hitlerite invaders was perceived as the Unknown War. (That was the official title of a 20-part documentary serial of American-Soviet coproduction released in 1978). Whatever, this is how many Americans learned that in the city of Leningrad (called St. Petersburg now) alone, more Soviet people perished in 1941-1945 than US citizens died in the entire Second World War. (It cost USA 407 thousand killed, plus 671 thousand wounded. One of the 671 thousand was Frank Huff).

During the Biden administration Russian diplomats in Washington D. C. were denied the right to visit the Spirit of the Elbe monument at the Arlington National Cemetery. A week ago that ban was lifted. Yesterday, however, the new US President, Donald Trump, made an astonishing statement by claiming that “we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. Nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance.” And he did not even bother to mention the Soviet Union’s role in that war.