War Diaries, 1939-1945

by Astrid Lindgren

  And this is the work of the people who created ‘Stille Nacht’. I came across this satirical version by Arnulf Overland in one of my letters the other day:

  Silent night, holy night

  Dad’s been nabbed, what a fright.

  No one can tell where they’ve shut him away.

  Nobody knows if he’s in there to stay.

  Clothes on – don’t hang about!

  They said as they bundled him out.

  Peace on earth, peace from above

  Child, beware your own brother’s love.

  His traitor’s kiss and your fate is foretold

  ‘Winter Aid’ is out in the cold.

  Wolves in sheep’s clothing. Beware!

  They’re with us everywhere.

  Yuletide peace, peace all around!

  Hear the guns’ rattling sound!

  Deck the halls with paradise green

  The loveliest corpses that you’ve ever seen.

  Angelic voices sang

  even at Yang-tse Kiang!

  27 DECEMBER

  The German battleship Scharnhorst was sunk up at the North Cape yesterday afternoon by British naval forces. There can’t be much left of the German navy now.

  [Press cuttings: picture of the Duke of York, which sank the Scharnhorst, unidentified source; lines from Hasse Zetterström’s column in Svenska Dagbladet, 29 December 1943, likening German treatment of some Danish children to Herod’s behaviour, headed ‘As for Christmas’ by Astrid; long article ‘The implication of Jewish persecution’ by Hugo Valentin, Dagens Nyheter, 28 December 1943.]

  1944

  Astrid, Karin and Lars, 1943.

  7 JANUARY

  I don’t seem to have had time to write anything since New Year. Nor did I cut out any of the ‘reviews’ of 1943 that were in the papers. But I’ll stake my money on it being the ‘year of peace’ that has just dawned. There’s got to be peace in 1944, and an end to this anarchy.

  They announced the day before yesterday on ‘Sveriges Radio’, as it’s to be known from the start of this year, that Kaj Munk, the clergyman and poet, was taken from his home in Vedersø, shot in the head with a pistol and then thrown in a roadside ditch. It’s sad and upsetting enough to make you weep. The number of acts of violence in Denmark is growing from day to day; it seems worse there than anywhere else.

  Reports came through the other day that the Russians have now reached the old Polish border, which has not been in their hands since the first week of the Germany–Russia war. Every communiqué speaks of German withdrawal to prepared positions and planned retreat – but only ever retreat and more retreat.

  Now the children and I are at Näs. It hasn’t been as lovely as last year, when the woods were like a fairy-tale forest with thick snow on every tree and bush – this year there’s no snow at all. But it’s been nice all the same, especially Twelfth Night when I had a couple of wonderful hours skating on the frozen Stångån [river] with Karin, Gunvor, Barbro and Karin Karlsson. I haven’t spent much time with Lars, he’s had Göran for company, and anyway, we haven’t been getting on very well; Lasse’s very touchy these days. But things will improve. I hope!

  Finnish authoress Hella Wuolijoki has been given a life sentence for spying for the Russians.

  14 JANUARY

  I was going to paste in a few things about the murder of Kaj Munk, which still shocks and upsets people, but I’ve mislaid the cuttings. So the best thing, while I still remember, is for me to try reconstructing the newspapers’ version of events. So – Kaj Munk, who lived and worked in an insignificant little parish named Vedersø but whose words reached far beyond the borders of his parish and his country, had been out to some kind of little hunting lodge with his wife and children on that unfortunate day. When they got home and were having a meal, two, or it might have been three, uniformed men turned up, claiming to have an arrest warrant for Munk. He took a small bag, got in their car and was driven away – and was later found lying in a ditch, shot through the forehead. Today’s papers say investigations revealed that those who did it were members of Frits Clausen’s party.

  In Italy the old Fascists who forced Mussolini out in July have been on trial and the verdicts are in. Most were sentenced to death, among them old Ciano, whose sentence has already been carried out. Ciano wanted to be shot from the front, with his eyes uncovered. According to yesterday’s paper Edda Ciano, Mussolini’s daughter, informed on her own husband. It all sounds like ancient Rome, if you ask me.

  23 JANUARY

  Since I last wrote there’s been a big hoo-ha between Russia and Poland over their future borders; just as one would have expected, the Russians have proved unwilling to meet the Poles’ demands.

  In Russia they are now fighting it out for Leningrad; the Germans certainly seem to be surrounded there. In Italy, the battle for Rome is expected any day.

  I’m sure other things have happened, too, but I don’t recall them just now.

  Oh yes, the Allies are nearing Rome.

  And Argentina has broken with the Axis. The same Argentina which has been a long-standing and loyal Axis stronghold, but that’s all over now. A letter to Axis ‘agents’ in Argentina was intercepted, but the Germans claim it’s a forgery.

  6 FEBRUARY

  Nordahl Grieg, who was fighting with the free Norwegians based in Britain, has been killed.

  Ten divisions of Germans are encircled at the Dnieper and at risk of annihilation. Their only links with their own side are by air. Their commanders flew to see Hitler and asked permission to capitulate, but Hitler said no. The Russians have now almost reached the Estonian border and the Estonians are fleeing in droves. To Finland and Sweden. Lots of them have been coming across to Gotland in small boats. Anything rather than fall into Russian hands.

  At present we have around 40,000 refugees in Sweden. I’m not sure if I wrote about the ‘police training’ in the camps for the Norwegians. They call it that, but it’s more like regular firearms training and military service. I gather from Norwegian refugee letters that they wear British army uniforms. I also saw it reported that they’re being trained by British officers. One letter I saw, from Georg von Wendt, said Norwegians were being deported [from Norway] as a direct response to the weapons training being given to our Norwegian refugees. The deportation continues and Sweden does nothing, and presumably can do nothing, about it. But we made vocal protests about it in advance. The refugees here don’t like us much, but perhaps that’s only natural. It’s dismal being a refugee, and easy to turn your frustration on your hosts. The Norwegians seem particularly resentful of us. I think I shall cut out an article by Aksel Sandemose in Vecko-Journalen. ‘The people of France are starving and freezing’, Célie Brunius wrote in Svenska Dagbladet today. Everything goes to Germany, as it does from all the other occupied countries. There’s nothing to buy, no clothes, no shoes, no china, no food, nothing. In free France, it’s even worse.

  8 FEBRUARY

  The day before yesterday, that is, when I last wrote, the evening news reported that about 200 Russian planes had carried out a bombing raid on Helsinki, inflicting great damage. This is believed to be the start of a campaign on the Russians’ part to force the Finns into peace. There’s very obvious alarm about the Russians now, in the letters and elsewhere.

  Elsa Gullander told us yesterday that the Finland Aid Society rang to ask her if she could take Taina back. ‘It might be nicer for you than compulsory billeting,’ they said, and told her that Sweden is ready to take 800,000 Finnish refugees if things go catastrophically in Finland. All of Karelia is being evacuated again; what unspeakable misery for the Karelians, who returned to their land with such high hopes when the Russians were driven out. It’s awful to contemplate the fate of Finland – and the poor Baltic states! Russian submarines have ventured out into the Baltic again, so our merchant vessels are back travelling in convoys. All the children and old people are being evacuated from Helsinki. I’m worried about the future – even here in Sweden,
we will no doubt have heavy fates to bear, we can’t expect everything to unfold in total peace here.

  Peace, when it comes, might not be anything to rejoice about but just the opposite. By then, many of these poor little countries will have had to give up their freedom to live in eternal slavery.

  17 FEBRUARY

  The billboards tell us Helsinki is under violent Russian bombardment. And former minister Paasikivi is currently in Stockholm, dragged from the sanctity of private life to discuss peace with the Russians. That’s what the whole world thinks, at least, though he doggedly insists he’s here in a private capacity. But the idea of a Finland–Russia peace is currently in the air; it could even be 12 March again [as in 1940], who knows?

  Berlin is still being pounded by bombs. I’m just reading The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig; it’s a few years now since he, a refugee, took his own life somewhere in South America. He experienced two world wars and also the happy time before the First World War, when humanity’s illusions were still intact. It’s a sad book, especially as one always has the author’s bitter fate at the back of one’s mind and knows it is shared by countless other individuals, perhaps as warm-hearted as he seems to have been.

  I have a quiet spell for my writing this evening. Sture’s in Göteborg, Lars is doing his homework in his room and Karin has just been sick and gone to bed. She’s going through some kind of nervous crisis, which expresses itself in exaggerated attachment to me and anxiety that something might happen to me. This concern only descends on her in the evenings. On Tuesday, Sture and I were off to dinner at the Viridéns, for Alli’s 40th birthday, and when I came to say goodbye to Karin she said, ‘You’re saying farewell, as if you weren’t coming back!’ And when I got back, she had my dressing gown draped over her. I only hope it’s just a phase.

  Alli’s dinner was a great success. The other guests were the Gullanders, Ingmans, Abrahamssons, Eveos and Palmgrens, plus the Hultstrands and a Miss Nyberg. Sigge took me in to dinner. I must write down what we had, partly because I enjoy writing about food and partly because one never knows, in times like these, how long we can carry on eating this way in Sweden. So: three cocktail sandwiches, mushroom croustade, asparagus soup with cheese straws, turkey with vegetables, ice cream and hot chocolate sauce. Sherry with the soup and dessert, red wine with the turkey. And then a little late-night supper: meatballs, mushroom omelette, herring salad and herrings au gratin. We danced and larked about and at 2 a.m. the people in the flat below called to complain, because by then we were dancing a polka fit to make the whole house shake. Enough of all that, I’m off to bed.

  23 FEBRUARY

  Yesterday evening when it was time for me to go down to work, Karin was afraid as usual that something might happen to me. I told her there was no need to worry; nothing would happen in our peaceful land. ‘If we lived in a country at war, where there’s bombing,’ I said, ‘that would be different.’ So off I went to work, and on the 10 o’clock news they said that a short time earlier, unknown aircraft came in over Stockholm and dropped a load of bombs on Hammarbyhöjden, then flew on over Södertälje and Strängnäs and dropped more there, too. There was no air-raid warning and no anti-aircraft fire (because the planes had sent out SOS signals). I’m grateful the bombs didn’t fall here in Vasastan, because it would have done serious damage to Karin’s nervous system. I kept the paper from her this morning, so she still doesn’t know about it. The planes were Russian.

  It’s Karin and Lars’s half-term holiday, though Karin only gets three days. Lars has gone on the school trip up to the fells at Enafors. Karin’s been in bed with a cold part of the time but she and I also went out skiing. Today Elsa-Lena, Matte and their mums came round. The children were out on their skis. Some lovely sunshine.

  3 MARCH

  Well, as the article alongside shows, peace between Russia and Finland is on the cards. But Finland is dubious – and no wonder! – Norwegian and Danish refugees express their contempt of our terror of the Russians, but we know it’s justified.

  [Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 1 March 1944: Moscow willing to receive Finnish delegation. Russia reveals its terms.]

  The translation opposite of a letter from a Latvian wife (smuggled out) to her husband in Portugal describes how it feels in Latvia (where they now have to put up with the Germans, after all).

  [Typed transcript of a letter from Astrid’s work at the censor’s office.]

  And now the Russians are nearing their border. When the Germans collapse there’ll be no hope for the Baltic states, as far as one can judge – and then, poor people.

  Tage Bågstam told us poison has been distributed to the population so they can kill themselves if the worst comes to the worst. And I can’t help feeling it will!

  20 MARCH

  Either nothing much has been happening in the war or I’ve been too lazy to write anything. The most noteworthy thing at present is the peace negotiations between Finland and Russia. They’ve been going on for some time but without result, it seems. The Finns refuse to yield, despite pressure from Britain and the USA. The whole thing strikes me as rather mysterious. Finland’s more or less got a knife to its throat and will surely have to agree to the Russians’ conditions before long. King Gustaf apparently contacted Mannerheim and Ryti and appealed to them to try for a peace settlement.

  On the home front, Karin’s had a nasty case of the measles and still isn’t allowed out of bed. I’m currently having really good fun with Pippi Longstocking.

  21 MARCH

  I feel I’ve neglected to keep track of the Finnish–Russian peace negotiations as I ought; I don’t think I’ve even said anything about Russia’s conditions. They largely boil down (as far as one can tell) to the 1940 border and the internment of all German troops in Finland, with Russian help if need be. Finland’s reply up to now has been ‘no’, they want the conditions more precisely defined first, but the Russians want them to surrender first and argue it out later. Given the Finns’ mistrust of Russia, no wonder the Finns want some guarantees first.

  1 APRIL

  Lots of people are getting their call-up papers at the moment. Sture came home the other day and said the Germans plan to occupy Finland the same way they did Hungary, but I hope it isn’t true. I’m so fed up with the war I can’t bring myself to write about it. What’s more, I’m in bed with a sprained foot. Bother!

  4 APRIL

  On this day I have been married for 13 years. The beautiful bride is stuck in bed, however, which gets pretty boring in the long run. I like it in the mornings when they bring me tea and white bread with smoked ham in bed and I get the bed made for me and the place nicely tidied around me, but I loathe it at night, when I have to have some kind of hot compress on my foot and it itches like mad and Sture’s asleep but I can’t get off to sleep myself. I’m reading Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and working on Pippi Longstocking.

  It doesn’t look as though there’ll be peace in Finland. It’s time for the children’s programme on the radio, so I can’t write any more for now.

  It’s possible that this diary contains a disproportionate amount about the Germans’ rampages, because Dagens Nyheter is our daily paper and that’s more anti-German than any other rag and never misses a chance of highlighting German atrocities. It’s beyond all doubt, however, that such atrocities do actually happen. Even so, it says at the end of this cutting about Poland that the Poles ‘would prefer the German regime’ to the Russian ‘if there were no other choice’. That’s probably also the case in the Baltic states and other countries, but for that to appear in Dagens Nyheter must be a slip-up.

  [Press cuttings from Dagens Nyheter, 5 April 1944: ‘Executions on the Streets of Warsaw’ ‘Warsaw children in gangster leagues’: children neglected, stealing guns; prices rocketing; segregated cinemas for Germans and Poles; ‘Eminent Hungarians in concentration camps, others taken to Vienna as hostages’.]

  16 APRIL

  The battle for Sebastopol, the final German strongho
ld in the Crimea, has started. The southern front looks precarious, I must say, the Russians are in Romania and will soon be threatening the German oil supply. They’ve also crossed the Czechoslovak border.

  The Allies are cross with us and other neutral states for supplying things to Germany. And send us stern memos about it. But we don’t care.