War Diaries, 1939-1945

by Astrid Lindgren

  In Denmark it really is infernal. The mass arrests go on. Postal and telephone links are still cut.

  This war has now lasted almost as long as the last one, so it’s got to end. On 11 December 1943 there ought to be an armistice, if it’s to be exactly the same number of years and months as the last world war.

  5 SEPTEMBER

  The day before yesterday, the 3rd, exactly four years since Britain declared war on Germany, the Eighth Army crossed the Strait of Messina and landed on the ‘toe’ of Italy. As I write this, things are progressing rapidly, several bridgeheads have been secured and the Italian population is coming out with white sheets as a sign of surrender. The Germans are presumably getting ready to defend a line further north. Italy, of course, wants nothing better than to get the Germans out of the country so it can capitulate in peace and quiet. The kids are kicking up a rumpus, so I can’t write any more, but these certainly are thrilling times.

  Well, Karin picked up Aftonbladet and Lars is sitting reading, so I can write that it’s been a glorious day of brilliant sunshine. Karin and I cycled across Norra Djurgården to Djurgårdsbrunn and then went home and had roast chicken for dinner. Sture’s sitting in the armchair at the moment, fast asleep and snoring, while the children and I read my war diaries. Then Karin’s off to bed and I shall read her some of In Search of the Castaways, and after that I shall enjoy settling down with Churchill’s My Early Life.

  9 SEPTEMBER

  Yesterday evening when I was perched on the edge of Karin’s bed reading her In Search of the Castaways, Lars barged in and told us that Italy’s agreed to unconditional surrender. It was expected, but it nonetheless felt rather special to experience a red-letter day in this war, and I gave both children a 25-öre coin as a memento. The proud Axis is dislocated and in Germany many a bitter word has been spoken of treachery, with much cursing of Victor Emmanuel in particular. And of Badoglio, too. The ceasefire was signed back on 3 September on Sicily, but has been kept secret, presumably so the Italian fleet would have time to get into Allied ports.

  How long can the Germans hang on? Things are going wretchedly in Russia, really wretchedly, and now the Allies will have a firm foothold in Italy and perhaps in the Balkans as well, before long.

  Numerous death sentences have been passed in Denmark. And they aren’t getting any Swedish newspapers any more; it’s one affliction after another. Large numbers are escaping to Sweden.

  10 SEPTEMBER

  It’s not much fun in Italy. The Germans have occupied Rome, according to this evening’s radio news, plus other parts of the country, so now the Germans and Italians are fighting each other as well as the Allies. King Victor Emmanuel is said to have abdicated in favour of his son Umberto. Crown Princess Marie José has apparently fled the country with her four children. What’s more, the Germans have occupied Albania, where they were expecting an Allied invasion. Those long-suffering Italians deserve our pity, poor devils. I expect they thought things would finally calm down now, but then they got even worse.

  20 SEPTEMBER

  Terrible for Germany on all fronts. In Italy it came to a battle at Salerno, which initially looked as if it was going down the drain for the Allies and was proclaimed by the Germans to be the new Dunkirk, but which has now evidently been won by the Allies, though with major losses. And in Russia things are looking disastrous for the Germans.

  Why can’t that disgusting man keep his mouth shut? Italy is in a wretched predicament, with the Germans and the Allies fighting like mad over its territory and Italians joining in on both sides. And then Musso wants them to spill even more blood to blot out the disgrace. He could spill his own, if you ask me.

  On Thursday evening just as I was going to bed, around 10 because I was tired after the day’s mushrooming excursion, the phone rang – and it was Esse. He’d travelled from Copenhagen early that afternoon and he dashed over to see us straight off the train. The Swedish consul in Copenhagen strongly advised all Swedish citizens to get back home, and Esse is in fact a Swedish citizen, even though he doesn’t speak any Swedish. Just imagine, it took a world war to get him home to Sweden. It was a very self-assured and go-getting young man who stepped into our flat, with extremely affected manners. He couldn’t stop talking about the current situation in Denmark, and it was a tale of sabotage and misery. He claims all the young people in Denmark are ‘illegal’ and join in the sabotage. Esse himself told Lasse that he’d helped to blow up a factory, dressed in German uniform. It’s understandable that the young people are throwing themselves fervently into patriotic activities, but it certainly isn’t entirely for the good. Doubtless the destructive tendencies that are in everyone will be stirred up alarmingly, and it won’t be so easy afterwards to go back to a normal life where blowing up factories and smashing windows isn’t encouraged.

  26 SEPTEMBER

  The other day, Eden said more in the House of Commons about Hess’s mission to Britain. It was a peace plan he brought over. This boiled down to Britain being granted a free hand in its empire in return for Germany getting free hands on the continent; the German colonies would be returned, Russia would be banished to Asia. If Britain didn’t agree to peace on these terms, Germany would totally crush them and keep Britain in subjugation for evermore. Hess claimed to have set off without Hitler’s consent, but it would be Hitler’s intentions he put forward, at any rate.

  Smolensk has fallen! Kiev is bound to be next. And the Russians will probably soon drive the Germans over the border.

  3 OCTOBER

  In Denmark, the Germans are now persecuting the Jews. Several thousand are to be deported. The Swedish government has lodged a strong protest in Berlin and also offered to take in all the Danish Jews. It probably won’t achieve anything. In the meantime, huge numbers of Jews are fleeing over to here.

  Naples is in Allied hands. It’ll be Rome’s turn soon.

  We’ve got to save gas now, and the result is that we’ve got our hot water back. There’s no describing how nice that is and how much easier it’s made the housework. See below a touching observation on the hot-water question, a cutting from Söndagsnissestrix.

  [Press cutting of a cartoon, 3 October 1943. One grubby little boy says to another: ‘So that’s the end of all our fun’.]

  10 OCTOBER

  The proclamation overleaf by some dependable old Nazi is pretty symptomatic of the turn of the tide in recent days. It also says a good deal about the great indignation in Sweden at the treatment of the Jews in Denmark. Jewish refugees are currently coming across [the strait of] Øresund in droves. It actually looks as though the Germans aren’t bothering to try to stop them. We’ve apparently got 6,000 Danish refugees, mostly Jews, in the country. The Swedish anti-Semites are having a field day, distributing leaflets that call the refugees a collection of murderers and rapists.

  These past few days I’ve been so cast down by Rut’s tragedy. Thursday was when it happened and it’s so dreadful that I refuse to believe it. Yesterday they released her and she’s got to wait three weeks for the verdict. I spoke to her on the phone today and I’ve never heard a voice so brutally broken. And it’s another tragedy that can be ascribed to the war, because if there hadn’t been a war, she’d never have had this job, and if she hadn’t had this job, she wouldn’t have been exposed to such shocking temptation.

  [Press cuttings from Aftonbladet: vitriolic Nazi complaints about the Swedish press; new Italian minister has to swear allegiance to God and Mussolini; a long article by Karl Olivecrona about the persecution of the Jews in Denmark.]

  20 OCTOBER

  I forgot to write that Italy, Badoglio’s Italy, that is, declared war on Germany a few days ago. And today it says in the paper that Mussolini’s going to draw back. Quite right, too. Germany’s Russian front has been broken. There’s an exchange of British and German prisoners of war through Swedish mediation in Göteborg.

  I’ve included this photograph of the exchange of POWs just for the soldier’s face. To me, it expresses al
l the yearning of every soldier around the world.

  [Photo from Aftonbladet, 20 October 1943, caption: A‘ young Englishwoman, married to a Swedish sailor, found her brother and was able to talk to him for a few minutes’.]

  24 OCTOBER

  In the early hours of Friday morning an Aerotransport plane, the Gripen, was shot down off Smögen, by (it was later established) a German Junker. The Gripen continued to fly for 20 minutes after it was fired on but then a fuel tank exploded, the plane came down in flames and crashed into a cliff face. Thirteen passengers were killed, two were rescued, two Russian diplomats’ wives, each with two children, were found to be among the passengers. The plane’s captain and first officer both leave wives and young children. And after the board meeting last Sunday, Sture came home beaming with delight to announce that he’s to fly to England for work. But all flights are now grounded until further notice, thank God, so he won’t be able to kill himself in a plane just yet.

  Yesterday I read a letter from a Danish Jew. The writer named someone who had his nails pulled out to make him give the names of his accomplices in illegal activity. In the course of this torture he betrayed various names including that of the letter-writer, who would now have to escape to Sweden. He also named several 80-year-old Jewish women who were pushed into the hold of a ship when they were being transported to Poland, so the fall would kill them. All those mentioned by name were evidently known to the recipient of the letter. The writer also claimed that 11-year-old Danish -Jewish girls had been taken to brothels in Germany.

  All we can do is hope it isn’t true.

  7 NOVEMBER

  I must be ravin’ mad [quotation from the home help in Småland who exclaimed ‘I must be ravin’ mad, wearing red trousers when Olle’s dead’], not writing a word about the Allies’ conference in Moscow. It’s been going on for quite a while. The British and American foreign ministers (Eden and Hull) are there. This is what everyone’s interested in at the moment and there’s great unease in Finland and other places about what might result.

  It will soon be 11 November, Armistice Day, and Germany’s in the grip of 11th November psychosis, one newspaper reported. The fact is that the whole world is waiting for the collapse of Germany, which really ought to come soon, given how bad things are on the eastern front. Yesterday I met a woman who’d been to Germany quite recently. People can’t laugh there, she told me; their faces are grey and they seem to have given up entirely.

  Badoglio has demanded Victor Emmanuel’s abdication, I read the other day. I don’t know if it’s true, but it certainly seems unlikely that the house of Savoy will get through this war with its crown intact.

  There are lots of stories going round about the king of Denmark. One story goes that when the Germans were planning to introduce the Star of David in Denmark, on the same model as in Germany, the king of Denmark said that in that case, he would be the first to wear it. And they never did bring in the Star of David. There’s another story that when the Germans proposed to raise the swastika at Amalienborg, Christian said that a Danish soldier would instantly lower it again. ‘Then that Danish soldier will be shot,’ said the German commander-in-chief. ‘I am that Danish soldier,’ said the king.

  11 NOVEMBER

  The First World War ended 25 years ago today. Does anyone hold a minute’s silence any more, like they used to between the wars? I don’t think so. And all the little ‘unknown soldiers’ around the world, buried with such pomp and splendour, is there anybody who remembers them? Or are they forgotten on a day like today in favour of all the unknown soldiers confronted daily and hourly with [the realities of] life at the various fronts. Dear Lord Jesus, can’t it be over soon?

  I heard a dramatized documentary (one of Gierow’s) on the radio this evening. It was called 1918 In Memoriam. It made me so melancholy, 1918 was supposed to be the very, very last year of war in the history of mankind, but it wasn’t to be. It was so sad to hear about all those who fell on the Somme and the Marne; their deaths were so utterly in vain; so completely unnecessary, since it was all going to happen again 25 years later.

  On this Armistice Day there are reports in the paper of pogroms against the Italian Jews and other cheery topics. On this Armistice Day I had to take Lars to the eye specialist for the first time. I do hope he’s not going to have bad eyes! On this Armistice Day Sture’s got a committee meeting, and on this same day I am very sleepy, so I can’t write any more. My kids are asleep in their beds.

  29 NOVEMBER

  Now we’re into Advent, and can gradually start looking forward to Christmas. We snuggle up round the fire together and think how wonderful it is to have a home to be in, at least that’s what I do. But I wonder how the Berliners feel about the prospect of Christmas. This week has seen the start of blanket-bombing of Berlin. District after district is being obliterated. It’s too gruesome to think about. I don’t like the British having to do this to win the war. Admittedly the Germans have already set an example with Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry and London, but it’s just as ghastly when Berlin is the target, and one doesn’t want the British behaving like the Germans. If only it was guaranteed that the bombs only fell on Nazis, but unfortunately they hit masses of innocent people, too. If one could just bundle together the Gestapo with all its murdering henchmen and bomb them to death, I wouldn’t have an ounce of sympathy.

  Sweden is pretty much flooded with refugees. We apparently have about 50,000 of them here. And we’re drowning in refugees’ post at work.

  3 DECEMBER (FRIDAY EVENING)

  This Friday evening 17 years ago I was lying there in labour, oww, the pain was terrible! It’ll be nice to go to bed now and know one will at least probably sleep without pain. And tomorrow Lars will be 17. If he lived in Germany he would be, or would already have been, packed off on war service, not right to the front but even so.

  The Germans have committed another truly wicked deed. On 30 November all Norwegian students were detained, to be sent to Germany. The Swedish government has complained in the strongest terms, but who knows with what result. The deportations apparently haven’t happened yet. There’s outrage in Sweden; the Swedish students are holding protests and demonstrations.

  The bombing of Berlin goes on and on. Last night was terrible.

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  Sture, Karin and I went to Skansen [open-air museum and zoo](Lasse didn’t want to come; he wanted to sleep) this Christmas morning, while Grandmother stayed at home to mind the house and ruined some oat biscuits in the oven. It’s misty, autumnal weather, not a bit of snow, and the ground hasn’t frozen to any depth, either. But our feet were freezing, Karin’s and mine, though it was nice that there weren’t many other people at Skansen; the great tits fluttered over to us and perched on our hands when we were trying to feed a shy little squirrel. There was a little deer running around free and that came up to sniff us as well.

  Then we went home for some Christmas food, and now I’m sitting in front of the fire to write.

  This is the fifth war winter – and we have more food than ever. In my refrigerator I’ve got two big hams, brawn, liver pâté and pork ribs, herring salad, two big pieces of cheese and some salt beef. Besides that, all my tins are full of home baking: ginger snaps, oat biscuits, brandy rings, almond fingers, gingerbread and meringues.

  This is the second Christmas we’ve spent in Stockholm – and it all went off well again. This year, I’m pleased to say, Karin wasn’t ill. She read the Christmas story from the Bible for us and played Father Christmas, too. The sack of presents was so heavy she could scarcely drag it in. Sture and I gave each other half a lamp = one whole one, with a blue pottery base and a natural-coloured silk shade. Apart from that the presents were for the children, of course: Lasse got a sports shirt, tie, woollen scarf, sport gloves, pants (2 prs), a puzzle, sweets, three books (Red House, Chaffer K, Above Suspicion – Helen MacInnes’s), two rolls of film, money, brush and comb, slippers – and Karin got slippers, ice skates, a ski jacket, brush
and comb, socks and mittens, a white jumper knitted by me, two paintboxes, the Let’s Sing Now songbook, Peter No-Tail’s Great Escape, Mary Poppins Comes Back, Unforgettable Tales, money, sweets, etc.

  Tomorrow the Frieses are coming round for a Christmas party and on the 27th Lars and Karin are off to Småland, with me following on New Year’s Day.

  I don’t know a single person as fortunate as we are. Sture’s getting a pay rise of 4,000 kronor a year from 1 January. And Mum and Dad gave us 1,000 kronor as a Christmas present again.

  I really enjoyed getting things ready for Christmas here in our home, and all the while I felt a profound gratitude that this is still possible and that we live in such a peaceful part of the world. It sounds trite, but never mind, I feel so grateful that I can’t put it into words – and am acutely aware that these must be the happiest years of my life, surely nobody can do as well as this in the long run? I’m fully expecting that trials will lie ahead. Everything’s thrown into such sharp relief by the rest of the world being so full of misfortune and misery, such concentrated misery that when I heard the bright voices of a children’s choir from Germany singing ‘Stille Nacht’ I went out into the kitchen and wept. Those children with their angelically lovely voices are growing up in a country where the whole idea is to do violence to other human beings. A book by a Czech author came out this autumn. It’s called The Dead Look On [by Gerald Kersh] and is about the obliteration of the Czech village of Lidice after the murder of Heydrich. No one in the village had anything to do with the murder but the Germans wanted to make an example of them. So all the men over 16 were shot, after digging their own graves, all the women were sent as forced labour and all the children over three were taken away to some unknown destination in a lorry, in which 157 children were packed together in a space intended for half the number, so they had to stand the whole way. According to the book, the journey took seven hours, and several of the children were dead on arrival. I don’t know how accurate the details in the book are, but if only half of them are true, the Germans have committed a bloody deed that will cry out to Heaven for all eternity. Then the whole village was blown up; within 24 hours, there was nothing left to indicate that the place had ever been a peaceful little village full of peaceful people.