Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

  What horrified me was not so much that I went a couple of days without washing, shaving, eating, or sleeping as that I was out of the picture just when so many terrible events were taking place hourly.

  I managed to phone Rosetti from time to time, and he told me that the French had retaken Arras. All sorts of news was circulating in the regimental yard: Gamelin had committed suicide, Giraud had been captured while asleep, the Germans were everywhere victorious.

  I dragged myself around like a soul in torment. On the first day I had nothing to eat and didn’t even feel hungry. I looked longingly at the gates and walls. At night I lay on the floor in the adjutancy, completely exhausted. But after an hour or two of stupor, I woke up at 1:30 and spent the rest of the night waiting open-eyed for dawn to break.

  Regimental life is a crushing experience. Only in prison can people endure so much humiliation, so much mockery, so much stupid terror (not to be seen, heard, or asked questions). All the time I feel as if I am in a concentration camp.

  By some miracle I do not understand, however, as soon as I walk out through the gates and cast off my army tatters, I forget everything.

  Despite the optimistic tone of the Allied stations yesterday, the situation at the front appears to be extremely grave, even catastrophic. The Germans are at Calais. The really grave outcome now on the horizon is not that they will descend upon Paris, but that from Calais (and at this rate, Dunkirk’s fall is probably not far off either) they will be able to cut all links between France and Britain.

  All the attempts to boost morale are in vain. France is capable of not losing its head. It is no longer a question of nervous resistance, however, but of holding a force that has shown itself to be absolutely overwhelming. I look at the map and feel scared out of my wits.

  Saturday, 25 May

  No, Calais has not been taken—not yet, at least. I was confused by the map in yesterday’s Universul, which I did not look at closely enough.

  For the moment, the Germans have reached Boulogne but have not occupied the whole town. Their situation on the coast—according to French commentators—is “precarious.” I am a little irritated by the Allies’ habit of empathizing with the Germans whenever they have a victory, by using such words as “insecure,” “adventurous,” or “non-strategic.” After all, it is such insecure advances that have brought them right up to the Channel!

  Nevertheless, in the last two to three days the onslaught has been, if not halted, then somewhat retarded. Will a front be stabilized? Wrll a barrier finally be raised? I don’t know. I greatly fear the German pauses, from which you never know what will burst forth.

  During the two days of my confinement to barracks, grave and (for the moment) confused events have been taking place inside the country: a Legionary plot, an assassination attempt organized by a terrorist group recently returned from Berlin, arrests, and even, it is said, executions. If one adds the new and extensive call-ups, and the suspension of the Sixth of June celebrations,3 the panic of yesterday and the day before becomes understandable. Today everything seems calmer.

  The Italians are still wavering. They could enter the war tomorrow— but they may decide to postpone a decision, to give up their plans and change their attitude.

  From Paris-Mondial, the Ravel quartet played by the Calvet. In the last few days I haven’t been listening to any music. I have a horror of the German stations, which I cannot bear even when they play music. And now, apart from the war, nothing preoccupies me. I am obsessed with it.

  Monday, 27 May

  A letter from Poldy dated 18 May, when he left Sceaux for a “health instruction center” in I am not sure which region. In a previous letter he spoke of the Midi.

  I think that, having enlisted, he will feel more up to facing the war, which has so far been so demoralizing for him, as a foreigner and a civilian, in a little town such as Sceaux.

  The Germans report they have entered Calais. The French deny this but confirm they have given up Boulogne. With a delay of a day or two, all the German communiqués are proving to be true.

  For the moment, however, the invasion has lost its virulent momentum. The advance is more difficult, more uncertain. But I don’t yet dare to begin feeling hopeful.

  I visited Uncle Avram at the home. He is disfigured, shriveled, stooping, infinitely old, looking more blind than ever, half dead already. But at the same time he is obsessed with a sum of money he has in state retirement income (111,547 lei, he said with amazing precision) and concerned about what to do with some written receipts: to whom should he give them? how should he hide them?

  What a terrible people! In this respect at least, I do not resemble them at all.

  I do not live: I vegetate, wait, endure. I go to the barracks, return home, go to bed. I cannot read or write—nor do I have any wish to write or read.

  I am in a very bad physical state. I am running a kind of flu, which aggravates my idleness and disintegration. The only thing that still keeps me alert is the war. Otherwise I’d be in a state of slumber.

  This afternoon from London, some beautiful works by Purcell: a sonata for two violins, and a chacony. I read with surprise the relevant chapter in Combarieu: it is incredible that he lived nearly a century before Handel and Bach, whom he seems to me to resemble so much. (Less austere, of course, and less capacious.)

  Tuesday, 28 May

  The King of Belgium capitulated at dawn today. Dunkirk is left wide open; maybe it has already fallen. Leopold’s betrayal is humanly incomprehensible. A harrowing speech by Reynaud.

  Stupor, gloom, bitterness deep inside me.

  Friday, 31 May

  The Army of the North is still resisting at Dunkirk and trying to take to the ships. Calais and Lille have fallen. There is no longer any talk of a possible linkup with the armies of the South. No one expects anything other than an end to the fighting in the north, through either capitulation or retreat, in the next twelve, twenty-four, or forty-eight hours. And then? I fear that the Germans will resume their attack on Paris, and even more that there is no stable front on the Somme. What has happened on the Meuse may be repeated on the Somme (more easily, because there are no fortifications there). It is possible that the Italians will await this new offensive before entering the war—an event they keep announcing and preparing.

  I can no longer be "objective." The so-called "objectivity" that I see in so many people (Camil included) seems to me a way of accepting things, of reaching an accommodation with them. Almost everywhere, not only fear of the Germans but respect and even sympathy for them are on the rise. "What devils!"

  People are stunned when they should be horrified.

  I thought about this yesterday evening as I listened to Ion Marin Sadoveanu giving his impressions of Vienna (from which he had returned). For him the German victory is no longer in doubt. He claims that the Germans have so far committed only 4 percent of their resources (men, raw materials, food, etc.) to the war. All that drives me out of my wits, especially when it is explained "objectively" and even with a protective- melancholic feeling for the French: "I feel sorry for them, but there's nothing I can do."

  Not for a moment does it occur to these objective minds that a German triumph will bring enslavement, their own enslavement.

  But the difference is that whereas it will bring them only enslavement, it will bring us death. This is a difference that completely changes one's way of looking at things.

  Sunday, 2 June

  Dunkirk is still resisting. The Allied radio stations claim that most of the Army of the North has been shipped across to England. In any case, the resistance is exceeding expectations, and the disaster—which seemed immense after Leopold’s surrender—has been somewhat attenuated.

  Now the fighting in the north is expected to end, and the next stage will become clearer. A new German offensive? An Italian attack in the Mediterranean? A pause?

  I saw Dupront yesterday, and he reckoned that if the Germans want at all costs to break through at th
e Somme, they will break through—though it would mean very heavy casualties. He has a feeling that Weygand will try to wear the Germans down by making them pay a high price for “quelques percées successives.”4

  In general, my conversation with Dupront was highly instructive. He blames the French disaster on the powers-that-be: “general staff, civil service, diplomatic corps.” He believes that a victorious France will emerge structurally changed at the end of the war.

  Gafencu was replaced yesterday by Gigurtu.5 This expresses politically the terrible wave of defeatism that has been sweeping the country for the last ten days. Actually, “defeatism” is not the right word. It is a kind of admiring, stunned acceptance of the German triumphs. And beneath the startled amazement that has held sway for a number of months, ever since the beginning of the war, the old Romanian anti-Semitism (with its eternal promise of deliverance) has been expectantly bubbling up.

  Blank, Zissu—both terrified and cracking up—telephone me and invite me round. I am a little sick of my millionaire friends. I don’t have money to pay the rent, and they are set on having abstract conversations.

  On Friday I drew the last ten thousand lei for Accidentul. From now on I don’t know what I’ll do. If war comes it will find us without money, without food, without anything. If I knew that they would have enough to eat at home, things would feel a little easier to bear.

  Wednesday, 5 June

  Dunkirk was occupied yesterday, and at dawn today the Germans launched their new offensive to the south, mainly along a line from Laon to Soissons. It is clear that they are aiming for Paris, which they bombed yesterday (250 people killed).

  During the days that resistance continued in the north, I lived in a state of relative calm. It is true that the Allies suffered heavy casualties. But the fact that last week Dunkirk did not seem lost and was by some miracle actually resisting, as well as the fact that in the end 350,000 soldiers were carried to safety by sea, reduced the scale of the disaster and made it to some extent bearable.

  Now, however, we are in another period of high tension. The Somme offensive seems to be as violent as that on the Meuse. The French communiqué this evening was confused, and I don’t have the stomach to listen to the German one. The thought that Paris might fall takes my breath away. I don’t have the courage to consider it full on, or to think it through to the end.

  Sunday, 9 June

  The situation is very serious. “Nous sommes dans le dernier quart d'heure, ”6 said Weygand in this morning’s order of the day. Paris is in the zone of operations, and evacuation seems to have begun. Until yesterday the front seemed to be more or less holding. But in the evening twenty new German divisions went into action. The battle is terrible along the whole length of the front, from the sea to Montmédy, with the pressure especially acute at Soissons. I don’t have a map of France and cannot follow the references in the communiqué. I can feel in it the effort not to give in, not to fall prey to despair, but there is no disguising the awful danger.

  Poldy is at a training center in Toulouse, but we have no direct news of him.

  Monday, 10 June

  Yesterday German motorized columns reached Giross and Rouen! How much further is it to Le Havre? How much more to Paris? The French communiqué says by way of consolation that the Germans have not managed to cross . . . the Seine.

  It is excruciating news.

  And, as if a final humiliation were necessary, the British are departing in haste from Narvik.

  You ask yourself how much longer the French will resist. You ask yourself with dread whether everything is not going to collapse from one hour to the next.

  Nevertheless, somewhere deep inside me, I still hope and wait. . .

  Midnight

  Italy has declared war on France and Britain! Hostilities begin at midnight Italian time—that is, in ten minutes from when I am writing these lines.

  Reynaud made a short speech that was deeply despondent but also deeply resolute. I listened to it with tears in my eyes. I could have cried, but I stopped myself. I spent the evening at the French Institute, among French people. It was a depressing yet consoling evening. No, I don’t believe everything is lost—I don’t want to believe it, I can’t.

  So here we are cut off from Poldy We have to accept that we will not receive any letters, any news.

  This evening the French communiqué was very grave. The Germans have crossed the Seine at several points.

  Tuesday, 11 [June]

  The battle is taking place to the north, northwest, and northeast of Paris. The city appears to be surrounded on three sides. Will it resist? For how long?

  The government has left for the provinces. The newspapers have ceased publication. The Paris radio stations no longer operate. I can still listen to Lyon P.T.T., with considerable difficulty, as well as to French voices on shortwave that are no longer the familiar ones of Paris-Mon-dial.

  Even now, however, I can pick up Radio Paris on longwaves: a symphonic concert conducted by Engelbrecht (a Liszt Mass). So, if I can still hear an orchestra playing there, it means we are still not speaking of a city that is about to fall in a few hours.

  Yet the communiqué I heard a short while ago leaves no room for hope, at least as far as Paris is concerned. A few times during the day, at home and in the street, I felt like bursting into tears. I still find it impossible to grasp all that has happened, to believe that it is all true.

  Friday, 14 [June]

  Has Paris fallen? According to Radio London, Bullitt cabled at 2 a.m. that the Germans had entered the city. The French legation in London knows nothing. If I understood the news program just now in English, London was still in telephonic contact with Paris at seven o’clock this morning.

  In any event, when I went to bed at eleven last night, Paris-Mondial was still broadcasting news and music. The Germans were thirty-two kilometers away from Paris. At one point the French were launching a counterattack. The situation was extremely grave, but it did not look as if everything would come to an end in the space of a few hours. Two days of resistance still seemed a possibility.

  Reynaud spoke on the radio last night. It was a testament, a leave-taking, a final cry of despair—the kind of declaration that is made on the brink of surrender. The shock delivered to France appears to be mortal. The messages exchanged between London, Paris, and Washington are no longer even expressions of alarm. One might say that the situation has been accepted. There is more stupor than alarm.

  Saturday, 15 [June]

  Paris was occupied yesterday. The communiqué states that fighting is continuing to the east and west, but it does not say where. The Maginot Line has also come under violent attack. An attempt is being made to cut off French troops in Alsace-Lorraine from those in the rest of the country.

  Surrender is starting to be mentioned: I don’t believe it, I don’t want to believe it. But the truth is that you can’t see a front being put together that will hold.

  Eugen Ionescu, who is back from Paris, says some disturbing things.

  Mircea Vulcânescu, on the other hand, who has returned from London, believes that the Allies will end up victorious. In his view, it is a war that will be decided not in Europe but at sea.

  Maybe, maybe . . . but meanwhile our lives are lost.

  Sunday, 16 [June]

  At Bordeaux the Council of Ministers is in almost permanent session. Yesterday evening, this morning, this afternoon . . . It may be that they are preparing a form of surrender. All the signs are that resistance has ceased. Even more depressing than the military disasters (the Maginot Line broken, Verdun occupied . . . ) is the style of the communiqués. You would say there is no longer a high command, no longer a front, no longer any attempt to resist or to check the advance. In another three days, maybe five, it will all be over.

  On the Eiffel Tower, the swastika. At Versailles, German sentries. At the Arc de Triomphe, the “unknown soldier” with a German “guard of honor.”

  But the terrible things ar
e not the trophies or the acts of provocation: they could even arouse and maintain a will to survive among the French population. What scares me more is the “harmony” operation that is about to follow. There will be newspapers, declarations, and political parties that present Hitler as a friend and sincere protector of France. When that time comes, all the panic and all the resentments will find release in one long pogrom.

  Where can Poldy be? What will he do? What will become of him? And what of us here?

  Monday, 17 [June]

  France is laying down arms!

  Pétain, who replaced Reynaud last night, announced at two o’clock today that he will “attempt” to put an end to hostilities. Through the intermediary of Spain, he asked the Germans to inform him of the terms of surrender. Hitler is demanding unconditional surrender.

  It is just as at the death of someone very close. You don’t understand, you don’t believe it has happened. Your mind has seized up, your heart no longer feels anything.

  A few times the tears welled up inside me. I should like to be able to cry.

  Footnotes

  1. "But as this part of my notebook was stolen along with several others by a man in my service, I shall not deprive him of the profit he hopes to gain from it. Besides, it would be difficult for me to chew twice the same piece of meat."

  2. High mountain.

  3. In English in the original.

  4. A wealthy Brasovian family with an interest in the arts.

  5. Wife of the novelist N. D. Cocea.