War Diaries, 1939-1945

by Astrid Lindgren

  In the Dutch letters I read about the blackout. Under the new regulations, no one’s allowed out after 9 (or perhaps it was 10?), or before 4 in the morning. If you have guests, they either have to clear off home early or bring a blanket and bed down in a corner. Cue much flirting and laughter (according to my Dutch informant) when the guests have to find a berth until 4 o’clock comes round. Ah well, even this year of grace 1940 has its compensations!

  I still think the Norwegians deserve our pity most. There’s been a clothes collection for Norway and I scraped together a few things, among them my old ski boots which I bought on that memorable cross-country hike, God knows how many years ago; it must have been 1924.

  In Finland things are superficially calm, I suppose, but there’s no real sense of security. Finland, like Sweden, now admits to allowing the transit of German soldiers going on leave but there’s a rumour going round that the Germans are staying in the country. According to one report, which naturally can’t be true, there are currently 100,000 Germans in Finland. Be that as it may, Finland is investing all its hopes in Germany now, for protection against Russia; how justified they are in this remains to be seen. Anyway, the Russian peril is a constant, menacing threat for both Finland and Sweden – and right now we are concentrating our defence forces up on the Finnish border.

  There’s trouble brewing in the Balkans. Romania and Hungary can’t agree. Germany has stationed a lot of troops in Romania, apparently hoping to inject a bit of life into the Romanian army, which is rotten to the core. This has led Britain to threaten to break off diplomatic relations with Romania. Little Greece is quaking in its boots. Britain will soon be opening the ‘Burma Road’. I haven’t a clue what that means, but it sounds ominous.

  Sweden is still at peace. Almost every letter includes a sigh of gratitude for this miracle. Because it really is a miracle. And Sweden is the Shangri-La where you can still get food, cakes and chocolate. On all their postcards to Finland, Finns who are over here on visits are in raptures over the chocolate, fruit and cakes. The fruit trees froze last winter in Finland, and Estonia too, so there’s been hardly any fruit this year.

  Words can’t express how pitiful it is to read letters every day containing desperate pleas from the poor Jews for visas and entry permits to one country or another. They roam the globe, forever rootless and homeless, from what I can understand. So many are writing just at the moment with New Year wishes, enquiring after relations who have settled in Buenos Aires or died when a bomb hit Tel Aviv.

  And it feels strange to read letters from people who are writing about women and children they know personally who have been killed in bombing raids. As long as you’re only reading about it in the paper you can sort of avoid believing it, but when you read in a letter that ‘both Jacques’s children were killed in the occupation of Luxembourg’ or something like that, it suddenly brings it home, quite terrifyingly. Poor human race: when I read their letters I’m staggered by the amount of sickness and distress, grief, unemployment, poverty and despair that can be fitted into this wretched earth.

  But the Lindgren family is all right! Today I took my well-nourished children to the cinema to see Young Tom Edison. We live in our nice, cosy home; yesterday we had lobster and liver pâté for dinner, today ox tongue and red cabbage; hard-boiled eggs and goose liver on our smörgåsbord (we’ve Sture to thank for that extravagance). But of course it’s only on Saturdays and Sundays that such gluttony’s allowed, and even then it makes me feel guilty, thinking about the French and their 200g of butter a month.

  I’m earning 385 kronor a month, thanks to the war. Sture (thanks to the war) is virtually a director at M. [Motormännens Riksförbund, the Swedish motorists’ association] and it’s probably only a matter of time before he’s officially appointed. At the board meeting on the 27th they’re discussing whether to give him a pay rise. We’re far too fortunate. And I’m so grateful; naturally I try to impress my gratitude on God, so He will continue His kindness in the future and hold His hand over me and mine.

  29 OCTOBER

  Yesterday morning, Italy went to war with Greece. Or, as one might expect, ‘Greece bears total responsibility for the commencement of hostilities’ – of course. Italy had merely issued a request to be allowed to use some strategic points on Greek territory to pep up its stagnating offensive in the eastern Mediterranean. But lo and behold, Greece wouldn’t agree to that, making the Italian newspapers declare it ‘the last straw’. The question now is whether Britain can do anything to save Greece. The Mediterranean fleet is certainly strong, but in the air Britain already has enough to do, defending its empire in North Africa. Now the battle for the Mediterranean will get going in earnest, I daresay. Poor Greece! Yugoslavia can’t do a thing, because if it does, it will immediately be attacked by Italy and Germany. Romania obviously can’t do anything, Bulgaria doesn’t want to. That leaves Turkey, which definitely has reason to intervene, but the geography isn’t on their side.

  Dear little Hitler has been zooming about from one country to another for a while now. First he was in France, meeting old Pétain to lay down the broad outlines of a separate peace with France, then he went to meet Franco to persuade him to drag Spain into the war on the Axis Powers’ side (I don’t think he succeeded though; Spain can scarcely endure a British blockade), then he was off to Florence to see Mussolini and cook up this Greek business, i.e. it was all planned well in advance.

  Here in Sweden last week, on 24 October, we suffered the worst accident that has ever befallen us, I think, in terms of human lives lost. At Armasjärvi up by the Finnish border, 46 young servicemen died when a ferry carrying 102 sank in the bad storm.

  6 NOVEMBER

  Franklin Roosevelt has been re-elected president of the USA for the third time, which is unprecedented in American history. They thought Willkie had a good chance but when it came to the crunch, Roosevelt won a resounding victory. Rejoicing in Britain, as this means better prospects of America joining the war.

  This is what the first ration cards in this war looked like. Coupon A8, crossed through, went on margarine, I seem to remember.

  [An undated and unidentified newspaper article plus four little coupons with the names of the four family members.]

  Other than that I’m sure it was sugar and coffee we used these first emergency cards for, and soap and washing powder. To date we still have cards for sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, flour and bread, washing powder, bacon and ham, I’m pretty sure that’s it. We’re quite short of coffee now, since the rationing period was increased to seven weeks from the original four. Other rations seem fairly generous to me, though I recently read a letter from a woman who was complaining that ‘there’s not much sugar and very little flour, and hardly any bacon at all’. However, people have been stockpiling butter, and today there’s not a knob of butter to be had in the whole town. It would be better if they brought in coupons for butter, too. There are whispers that there’s only one theory which can explain the shortages of one thing and another, and it’s that the Germans are commandeering provisions from us – and I think it must be true, despite all the government’s emphatic denials.

  At work today we heard some alarming news via a letter from that little Baby Jesus, Sven Stolpe, to a woman in Finland. He said that the Germans are censoring post from Finland; letters that he had received were clearly stamped with ‘Deutsches Wehrkommando, Rovaniemi’ [German Armed Forces Command, Rovaniemi]. If this is true – and there have been indications before – then Germany is plainly leading all the Nordic countries by the nose, whether we will or no. And of course it’s happening. You can tell from so many of the letters that pretty much the entire Swedish nation is aware of the fact. What strange political constellations can come about! The Nordic nations are democratic with heart and soul and can’t possibly reconcile themselves to dictatorship on the German model. Germany and Russia were originally mortal enemies, or at any rate, their respective ideologies were absolutely alien to each other. But they’re
allies now, all the same. It seems to me our whole country is overwhelmingly pro-British – but we’re nonetheless obliged to throw in our lot with the Germans. Germany’s presence in Finland is viewed by the Finns as protection against the Russians, but if one takes that to its logical conclusion it would mean Russia and Germany falling out and Finland and Germany, in all likelihood with Sweden’s help, waging war on Russia together – and by going to war on Germany’s side, making an enemy of Britain. Dear oh dear, what a muddle!

  Little Greece is fighting pluckily and seems to be making some gains, perhaps largely because the Italians are even worse soldiers than the Greeks.

  And now the first snow has arrived and the second winter of the war is upon us – with its attendant tears, privations, wants, misery and anxieties for all the people of Europe.

  10 NOVEMBER

  The nice old gentleman with the umbrella who was always running late, our 1938 dove of peace, hugely admired by us all because he really did seem to have found a way of avoiding war – that is, Neville Chamberlain – passed away last night. So he didn’t live to see how this spectacle would end, which is probably just as well. I shall never forget those alarming days of September 1938, when the clouds of war were massing more threateningly than ever, and how wonderful we thought it was when Chamberlain resolutely stuck his umbrella under his arm and flew off to Munich. Things calmed down, we thought the millennium was at hand and Chamberlain had the esteem of a whole world – apart possibly from the Czechoslovaks. But within the year, Herr Hitler was poised again – and this time even Chamberlain could see that being nice wasn’t enough. But it was rather late in the day by then. He has had to suffer an immense amount of blame ever since and has come to be seen as the personification of democracy’s incompetence. Germany’s secret weapon – that’s Chamberlain, as some wag put it. And after the Munich assassination attempt and the German accusations that the British were behind it, people said it was obvious Chamberlain had set it up – because it happened ten minutes late. Be that as it may, he was a fine old man and I’m glad he has escaped from this troublesome planet of ours. Perhaps God will give him a nice little place in Heaven – ‘blessed are the meek’ – where he can sit under his umbrella undisturbed.

  15 NOVEMBER

  Yesterday I turned 33. Children and husband ceremonially presented me with a bag and a sewing box in the morning. Karin attired in her pale-blue dance tunic. We had duck and red cabbage and a cake for dinner; there wasn’t the slightest trace of belt-tightening. From home they sent me a splendid box of assorted foodstuffs including 2kg of butter. That’s the best birthday present anyone could wish to receive just now. It’s literally impossible to buy butter in Stockholm at present because so many people are hoarding it. We’re only allowed to buy small pats each time. But there’s plenty of butter in the rest of the country, I think.*

  Since I last wrote, two things have happened: a dreadful earthquake in Romania left tens of thousands dead, and Molotov went to see Hitler. The Swedish people and presumably other peoples, too, are racking their brains about possible results of the visit. We’re pretty convinced the Germans are capable of the most nefarious horse-trading if need be, but we assume it’s about the Balkans, while presumably the Balkans hope and believe it’s about us.

  * No, we sent loads to Finland, presumably for the German troops’ use.

  17 NOVEMBER

  Albert Engström died last night. The third of our greats, first Selma Lagerlöf, then Heidenstam and now Albert, all in one year. He was the son of Grandmother’s cousin, ‘if that’s anything to boast about,’ as Mrs V. [presumably Alice Viridén] said.

  23 NOVEMBER

  The Greeks have actually driven all the Italians out of their country; battles are raging in Albania. I expect Germany will soon have to intervene and help its distressed Axis partner, which has never been able to get through a war unaided. In Britain they say: ‘Fair’s fair. In the last world war, we had Italy as an ally, so now it’s Germany’s turn.’ King Boris of Bulgaria went to see Hitler, Hungary has made a pact with the Axis Powers. Turkey’s preparing for war.

  Finland seems very jumpy. We’ve seen reports in the letters that some places in the Hangö [Hanko] area have been evacuated, including Ekenäs. (Lies!) Some letters even said the Germans had pulled out of Finland again, which really worried us. But Brita Wrede said yesterday that her brother-in-law from Finland said the Russians were also withdrawing from Hangö [Hanko]. Dare we interpret this as an indication that Hitler and Molotov have made some kind of – dare we call it ‘gentleman’s agreement’, to remove troops from Finland because they are more urgently needed elsewhere? We’ll have to see. The other day I had a letter from a German major-general staying at the Grand Hotel, Stockholm, to an Oberleutnant at a hotel in Vasa [Vaasa], containing among other things a photo of the sender with the words [in German] ‘In grateful memory of past work in Lapland autumn 1940’ written on it. He also writes that Mannerheim awarded him ‘Commander of the White Rose of Finland’– I’d like to know what for. He goes on to hope that the war will bring him back together with the addressee in some other place – ‘that would be very nice’. I think it would be ‘very nice’ if the war ended, instead.

  Last night I read Tyskt väsen och svensk lösen [German Nature and Swedish Watchword], Fredrik Böök’s pamphlet, which has caused a lot of controversy. As Eyvind Johnson put it in a letter to Diktonius, Böök is such a fair-weather friend. I reckon he turns whichever way the wind is blowing, and just now there are terrible gales blowing across the northern countries. I think Böök is pretty much right in what he says about the psychological roots of Nazism, but as for his blind, naive faith (assuming it’s genuine) in the advantages for us of becoming part of a new order after these truths of the last days, I can’t share that. I could never put my faith in a regime which created the concentration camps in Oranienburg and Buchenwald, which permitted, and backed, the pogroms in the autumn of 1938 and which sentences a Norwegian girl to a year in prison for tearing up a photograph of the Führer.

  30 NOVEMBER

  One whole year ago, a year to the day, the Finnish war started, and what a day!! It was the start of a long succession of them, filled with agony and despair, probably culminating in that hard day of peace when I expect all of us here in Sweden were painfully aware of how bitter they must feel towards us in Finland – in spite of all we’d done to help them. But as for the most crucial and important thing – active intervention – we didn’t do that, even though almost all of us, when feelings were running at their highest, took an extremely activist stance. But our wise government, which at the time we all scorned and loathed, held us back – and subsequent world events have proved them right, of course. But we didn’t know it last winter, and we felt awful, knowing that the Finnish soldiers were fighting alone, stretched way beyond human capacity. I wonder whether any people has ever felt so deeply for another as we did then; we were in the grip of an unrequited love for Finland and in our love and desperation we gave Finland everything we could possibly think of – money, hundreds of millions of kronor, if you add it all up, arms, ammunition, clothes, food, bottled blood, skis, horse blankets, ambulances, medical aid, woollens that we knitted like mad, wedding rings and goodness knows what besides. Here in Sweden we took in thousands upon thousands of children and the factories worked weekends for Finland, with people donating a day’s wages a month, and so on ad infinitum. Yet even so we constantly had a dreadful sense of not doing enough. But the bitterness the Finns most certainly felt towards us when peace was made has definitely faded now and on the whole I think the Finns are actually grateful to Sweden, because when all is said and done, without Sweden the outcome of the war would probably have been even worse. I believe that for as long as I live I shall remember Finland’s war of 1939–40, its ‘Winter of Honour’, when a whole people struggled for its freedom beyond the limit of its abilities. Finland’s war, Finland’s soldiers fighting in their white camouflage suits, the unbe
lievable cold, the unbelievable battle on the Karelian Isthmus, at Suomussalmi, at Petsamo it’s all still so vivid in our minds that there’s no comparing it to anything else, and the emotions we felt that winter are beyond all comparison, too.

  10 DECEMBER

  Things are difficult between Sweden and Norway. That is, our feelings for the Norwegians haven’t changed, but there are recurring indications that they feel a lot of rancour towards us. They think we let Germans come through here during their war against Norway. And 34 railway carriages are certainly said to have passed through Sweden carrying ‘medical orderlies’ and food supplies during the war – I don’t know if that report is true, but the Norwegians must have some basis for believing what they do. The Germans, of course, are doing their best to stir up the bitterness. We hear awful things from Norway, there really does seem to be a reign of terror there, but the Norwegians refuse to be cowed. Or at any rate, it looks as if the National Unity Party and Quisling won’t be able to keep the people in order. Quisling was down in Berlin the other day. God grant that the Germans realize that sort of thing won’t work on the Norwegians.