Target Churchill

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From the shattered window of the German warden’s former office, General Ivan Vasilyevich Dimitrov observed the crowded yard; men packed like sardines, freezing in the icy late-February cold, a sorry, stinking lot of traitors awaiting transport to oblivion. He chuckled at the euphemism, rubbing the stubble on his chin, squinting from the smoke of the cigarette hanging from his lips.

Following in the wake of the advancing combat troops, Dimitrov always chose the largest prison in town for his temporary Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del command post, invariably an annex to a now-abandoned Gestapo headquarters with its underground cells and thick-walled torture chambers, the interior tailor-made for his purposes.

Dimitrov’s NKVD rifle regiments had trailed the path of General Zhukov’s astonishing offensive now heading swiftly towards Berlin. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, NKVD Chief, had directly ordered them to show no mercy, to concentrate on anything with the barest stench of collaboration or disloyalty. As soon as Zhukov’s combat troops rolled out, Dimitrov’s job began. He had ordered his commanders to not put a fine line on discriminating between the Germans and Russians, men, women or children.

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