The moment Melnikov set down the receiver, his hand darted back as if the black Bakelite phone were a loaded pistol."This is Melnikov. Put me through to the Special Operations Directorate," he barked. "By any means necessary, ensure the mission's success. Depart at once. Bring back every man of talent the Great Soviet Union requires."
Historically, Operation Osoaviakhim began three months after the Americans launched Operation Paperclip. By the time the Soviets moved in October, the war had been over for months and Washington had already scooped up the choicest German scientists.
It wasn't that Soviet efficiency lagged behind—if anything, their execution was sharper. The problem was mindset. In the immediate aftermath of victory, the Soviet imagination was consumed with retribution—plunder, trials, purges—not with the continuation of war by technological means.
Then came a scrap of intelligence—source unverified, truth uncertain—that jolted the NKVD awake: the Americans, British, and French were already in motion. Lavrentiy Beria's instructions were as clean and cold as a scalpel: get there first.
The prime target was the German Army's rocket research center on the Baltic coast, birthplace of the V-2. Also on the list were Saxony and Thuringia—territories in the Soviet zone where, before surrender, a flood of researchers and equipment had been relocated from Berlin.
At the top of the priority list: Wernher von Braun and his entire V-2 team.
Melnikov dispatched the Special Operations men straight to the front, granting them an extraordinary privilege—independent judgment in the field.Beria, meanwhile, was on the line to Red Army commanders already inside Berlin, instructing them to guard scientific institutions and keep a sharp eye for high-value personnel. Then he stepped out into the knife-edge chill of the Moscow night and made his way to the Kremlin to brief Stalin in person.
By the time he emerged, Beria was calm, even satisfied: he had full authorization. The war was over, but the shadow war had begun.
And in London?Far from the rubble of Berlin, British civil servant Alan Wilson was preoccupied with matters that, on paper, looked trivial—cigarettes, liquor, and a little precious grain. But in a starving, defeated Germany, these were harder currency than gold.
They would go to the Continent not just to soothe a beaten people, but to sift the rubble for anything worth taking home. Alan even considered having the Nizam of Hyderabad send one of his sons along—Indians, he mused, might be better suited to the "panning for gold in the muck" sort of work.
In Alan's mind, his dealings with the Nizam were never meant to be one-off trades. Asking Hyderabad to send grain to Europe was hardly unreasonable—trading a fraction of colonial surplus for a splash of global goodwill was a bargain. As for the Nizam's subjects? Well… a monarch's prestige is worth a little "shared sacrifice."
He left the logistics to the Nizam's London steward. The man's name and connections opened doors that Alan could not, even in the City's most discreet banks.
He also still wore another hat—acting as a courier for Lord Mountbatten's family in London, relaying messages to India.One day, leaving their townhouse, Alan mentioned casually, "The Foreign Office's Permanent Undersecretary is finalizing the list for the European mission. I may be heading out soon. My contacts with New Delhi won't be interrupted. The General's wife will understand, I'm sure."
"Europe's still dangerous," Edwina Ashley replied, with a faint nod. "But the war is ending. I only hope to see my husband and daughter soon."
Alan smiled, keeping his opinions on India's reality to himself.
Berlin, Final Days.
Overhead, thousands of Soviet aircraft poured tens of thousands of tons of bombs and incendiaries. On the ground, nearly a thousand artillery pieces per mile hammered the city into dust.
Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front pushed in from all sides—backyards, basements, metro tunnels, sewers. Street by street, building by building, the infantry advanced under the cover of tanks and engineers wielding flamethrowers and explosives.
The fight around the Reichstag was the fiercest. The once-grand dome was a hollow shell after repeated bombing. Two Soviet battalions stormed in, clearing the building floor by floor, room by room. Corridors and stairwells became killing grounds; knives, bayonets, grenades, heavy machine guns, and flamethrowers shredded what was left of the German defense. The walls looked like honeycomb.
By 2 p.m., the Reichstag was in Soviet hands. News of its fall reached the Führerbunker.Hitler put a pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.Grand Admiral Dönitz, his chosen successor, confirmed the death.
The dust had settled—at least, for now.