A World Gone Mad: The Wartime Diaries
It will hardly be a popular birthday to celebrate. Here’s a voice from the depths of the ordinary people:
[Typed transcript of a letter Astrid saw in her work at the censor’s office, a rather erratically written and misspelt outpouring, a personal view of the warring sides and the progress of the war in Swedish.]
Oh, and I forgot to write that Britain and Russia have occupied Iran and forced it into submission.
6 SEPTEMBER
[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 6 September 1941: ‘Quisling attacks Swedish opinion’, reporting a Quisling speech in which he accuses the Swedish press of repeatedly publishing untrue propaganda critical of the ‘new Norway’.]
It’s enough to make you choke! I hope he dies alone! I’m glad to hear he’s apparently suffering from insomnia and accidentally took an almost fatal dose of sleeping tablets the other night.
Germany on the rampage all over Europe. O Lord, for how long? And they take all the food, wherever they go. Like a plague of locusts in Egypt. The following three cuttings from the daily papers are all from the same day (7 September 1941):
[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter: ‘Germans execute French hostages’: three Frenchmen held in reprisal after an attack on a French soldier in Paris are put to death. Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter: ‘All Jews in Germany forced to wear yellow star’. Press cutting from Stockholms-Tidningen: ‘All Norway without radio’, radio sets confiscated from all except members of the National Unity Party.]
11 SEPTEMBER
A state of emergency was declared in Oslo yesterday. At the first special court [of summary justice], two people were executed by firing squad, one received a life sentence, two got fifteen years and another got ten. Those executed were a leader of the trade union confederation, lawyer Viggo Hansteen, and union chairman Rolf Wickstrøm. And this in a Nordic country! It makes your heart feel like bursting in your breast with impotent rage and despair.
No one is allowed out after 8 in the evening. God, how they’ll hate it in Norway!
Quisling’s latest speech apparently caused outrage in Norway and a general strike was planned in Oslo. The official response was to impose a state of emergency.
And in Russia they’re at it hammer and tongs. The youth of Finland is bleeding to death on the battlefields. Several people I know of through work have fallen, among them Väinö Tanner’s only son, who was engaged to a Swedish girl. Leningrad’s communication lines to the rest of Russia are severed. There are rumours of a separate peace between Russia and Finland on the basis of the old borders.
1 OCTOBER
Things have happened [in English] since I last wrote.
On 17 September the Swedish navy suffered a terrible disaster in Hårsfjärden [fjord]. For reasons as yet unexplained, the destroyer Göteborg exploded and sank, taking two other destroyers down with it, the Klas Horn and the Klas Uggla. There was burning oil all over the surface of the water where the poor crew were trying to save themselves. Thirty-three men died (as luck would have it, most were on shore leave). According to our letters, the aftermath was an appalling sight to behold. Arms, legs and severed heads were strewn everywhere and salvage teams were going round with sticks, hooking down tattered flesh and guts from the branches of the trees. One of them describes finding one of his best friends, his face untouched but the rest of him horribly mangled, another wrote of standing on the jetty, about to light a cigarette when a human arm suddenly hit him in the face. There’s speculation that it was caused by negligence when they were demonstrating a new torpedo but we have five accounts that all swear they saw a bomb fall from one of the planes circling over Hårsfjärden. If they’re right, it was all caused by an accidental bomb drop. The idea of sabotage also suggests itself – particularly as we read in the papers today that another gang of saboteurs, who favoured explosives, have been arrested.
Further reports from the domestic front say that there’s a shortage of eggs now. I’m glad of my 20kg of preserved eggs, because we only get 7 eggs per person per month.
In Norway the special court was dissolved after a few days, but now they’ve introduced it in Czechoslovakia and the death penalties are coming thick and fast. The Norwegians have been told to hand over their blankets to the German fighting forces, or there’ll be hell to pay. All the occupied countries have to give their entire food stock to Germany but even so the people are starving there, too, like the rest of Europe. The food situation in France is intolerable, and it’s the same in Finland and Norway.
The Finns have taken Petrozavodsk, the evening papers say. The Murmansk railway line has been entirely cut. But I’m sure there won’t be any resolution in Russia in time for the winter.
And we’ve moved from 12 Vulcanusgatan to 46 Dalagatan, despite the war and the high prices. I can’t help feeling pleased about our new flat, though I’m always aware that we’ve done nothing to deserve our good fortune, when there are so many without a roof over their heads.
My 1940 pocket diary went astray in the move.
We now have a lovely big living room, the children each have their own room and then there’s our bedroom. We’ve bought quite a lot of new furniture and made it look really nice; I really don’t want it to get bombed.
10 OCTOBER
The Germans are about 150km from Moscow, apparently, and 170 Russian divisions are said to be surrounded. It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not.
11 OCTOBER
Tomorrow is the last day we’ll be able to enjoy Danish pastries and other butter-enriched dough products. Oh, I don’t think I made a note here about the egg ration, which was set a while ago at 7–8 eggs per person per month. Luckily I’ve got a good number preserved, but they are for another year, if the war lasts!
My darling daughter starts school this autumn. I’m having a few problems with her at the moment: she’s hostile and disobedient and always showing off. I do hope it’s just a phase.
5 NOVEMBER
The battle goes on and the world endures optimum suffering. Nothing but devilry and hooliganism wherever you look. Reading the paper yesterday evening I was plunged into depression by the woeful state of the world. Britain’s considering a declaration of war on Finland because Finland won’t make a separate peace with Russia, and the USA is urging Finland in the same direction. The USA tried to mediate an agreement between Finland and Russia back in August, but Finland refused.
The Germans are now about 40km from Moscow, which is to be defended ‘to the death’. Today’s story: Stalin sends a telegram to Hitler, ‘If these irritating border incidents don’t stop, then I shall mobilize.’ There’s something in that. It’s true that the Germans have penetrated far into the country but great, sacred Russia is still not that easy to mobilize. There’s an article in Dagens Nyheter today about the winter war, which appears scarcely avoidable, though the Germans must have been pretty sure Russia would be on its knees before winter arrived. Just reading the article froze me to the bone, given the appalling difficulty of fighting such a war. The Germans have taken the Crimea, evidently suffering enormous losses.
Other things that have happened recently include the following:
The Germans sank an American destroyer, part of a convoy, which was admittedly not taken lightly by Roosevelt, but was still not considered sufficient provocation for war.
And Europe is starving. Athens has nothing to eat, the paper said yesterday, and in France they are surviving on vegetables as best they can. In Germany things are far worse, even though they grab everything they can, and in Helsinki the police had to break up the crowds queuing to buy herring.
Those German ruffians are still running amok; the Norwegians have had to give them blankets, ski boots, anoraks, tents, skis, radio sets and almost all their food and (according to Aina Molin) their latest demand – bedclothes. The Jews of Berlin are being forcibly transported to Poland in massive numbers, and one can imagine what that means. They’re accommodated in ghettos surrounded by barbed-wire fences and are now s
hot without warning if they try to venture outside their enclosure. Their food rations are no more than half what other people get.
The other day there was a sign in some kind of bookshop on Beridarebansgatan [in Stockholm]: ‘No admittance to Jews and half-Jews.’ A crowd gathered outside and there was a terrible fuss; now the ÖÄ [the over-governor, the highest city official] has ordered the owner to put the sign where it can’t be seen from the street.
Talking of Gräuel [atrocity propaganda], one hears awful accounts of Russian rampages in the Baltic states before they had to retreat in the face of German advances. Nails driven through babies’ tongues while their mothers looked on, and other such horrors one almost refuses to believe, but they’re very likely true. Human sadism seems capable of going to any lengths. Thousands upon thousands are missing, hauled off to Siberia or killed.
Misery knows no borders, it seems, and there’s no end in sight.
6 DECEMBER
Independence Day in Finland brought a declaration of war from Britain. We live in a strange world and no mistake: in winter 1939, Britain asked Sweden to let British troops through to aid Finland against Russia, which was secretly being helped by Germany to suppress that troublesome little band, the Finnish people. But the Russians have suddenly assumed such great, sacred and heroic proportions in British eyes that it’s now ‘Shame on you, Finland!’ for going on the attack. And former allies Germany and Russia are at daggers drawn. Things change fast. Yet the only possible state of affairs is that both the British and the Americans understand Finland with heart and soul, though they have to say otherwise. And I read in a newspaper somewhere that the Poles and Russians have agreed to ‘let bygones by bygones’. That seems to me a rather cute way of describing many centuries of hostility and 100 years of oppression on the Russians’ part. But hatred of Germany can evidently achieve wonders.
Oh, I forgot to mention – Hangö [Hanko], bone of contention since the 1939 negotiations between Russia and Finland – is again in Finnish hands.
8 DECEMBER
WORLD WAR no. 2 is now a fact. Japan opened hostilities on the United States yesterday by repeatedly bombing Pearl Harbor on Hawaii, and Manila. Later, a statement was read on the radio in Tokyo that from dawn on Monday morning a state of war existed in the Pacific between Japan on one side and the United States and Britain on the other.
Japan has attacked Thailand, which immediately capitulated in the face of the threat to bomb Bangkok.
Now all we are waiting for is America’s declaration of war on Germany. Then the Axis Powers will be united against the democracies – one gigantic battle spanning the globe.
We currently have fighting in the Russian forests, the Libyan desert and on sunny Hawaii. And it all started because the Germans wanted Danzig. It makes one feel quite light-headed to think about it.
The fact is that things aren’t all going the Germans’ way in Russia. The war that was meant to be over long before winter arrived is carrying on as if nothing’s happened. In the Moscow area things are moving forward for the Germans, though slowly, whereas on the southern front they were forced to pull back, with major losses. You don’t break mighty Russia just like that. There’ll surely be no Christmas leave for German soldiers this year. Pity the poor little soldiers all around the world!
And King Leopold, who has been a widower since that tragic day in August 1935 when Queen Astrid died in the car crash, has remarried.
11 DECEMBER
The Japanese have sunk two big British battleships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, the morning papers reported. In the Pacific. Huge outcry in Britain. They think the Japanese have death pilots willing to sacrifice their lives to pull off a grand coup for their [Britain’s] enemy.
This afternoon there was an even bigger sensation. The Axis has declared war on the USA. It was expected, of course, but even so it feels rather ghastly that the whole globe has now been drawn into the tangle. For us here in Sweden it will mean all communication with the USA is cut off: post and so on has all been going via Germany.
And China has declared war on Germany.
At work today I also saw some awful pictures of Finnish children who had been carried off to Russia and had now come back. I haven’t seen anything as horrifically emaciated and deformed since the days of the World War, sorry, I mean the First World War. But this is how all the children of Europe will look by the end of it all.
26 DECEMBER
Since I last wrote, something remarkable has happened: von Brauchitsch, supreme commander of the German army, has stepped down and been succeeded by Hitler himself. There’s much speculation as to why. Perhaps it takes the Führer’s personal intervention to energize the troops in Russia, where things are going badly for Germany and the wretched soldiers have to live in dugouts in minus 40°. The November offensive against Moscow has to be seen as an error of judgement; the general belief is that Hitler himself ordered it, going against von Brauchitsch’s opinion, and that B. has now been made a scapegoat. Be that as it may, this development is interpreted as a sign of weakness.
The war has continued unabated over Christmas; the Japanese are raising merry hell in the Pacific, Hong Kong has fallen, Manila is very vulnerable, etc., etc.
At Näs we celebrated Christmas in the usual manner with loads of food, and some splendidly seasonal weather, starting on Christmas Eve (we’d had a snowless winter until then) with a heavy fall of snow, which made all the trees and bushes look like a Christmas card for the day itself. Today, the 26th, it’s minus 10.
The predominant feeling here in Sweden as Christmas approached was naturally a profound and fervent gratitude that we can still mark it as we do.
(Though we’ve had to settle for ten Christmas tree candles per child this year.)
1942
Astrid, 1942. From the Svenska Dagbladet archive.
1 JANUARY
A new year begins. I wonder what the three gentlemen opposite are expecting from the New Year. Hitler, at any rate, looks as if he’s had a few sleepless nights. Churchill looks sad and troubled; only Roosevelt looks hopeful, in that American way. But maybe the photo was taken before the Japanese attacked.
[Newspaper pictures of Roosevelt, Churchill and Hitler pasted in.]
Things aren’t looking all that bright for Germany, in fact. They can’t conceal how badly things have been going in Russia for quite some time now! When all is said and done, we can only give a sigh and hope: please let Germany keep Russia in check! Because what will happen otherwise?
How will things look, when this is all over? Still no sign of the peace that all humanity is longing for. How many souls will be despatched ‘to death and deadly night’ before deliverance arrives?
In Norway, 11 of its nationals were executed by firing squad a few days ago. Sheer instinct for self-preservation makes it hard not to wish Germany defeat!
1 FEBRUARY
[Short press cutting: account of 1 February 1942 by Gunnar Cederschiöld of Stockholms-Tidningen on the privations being suffered by the people of Athens.]
This is Greece today, according to Stockholms-Tidningen’s correspondent. And it isn’t that much better anywhere in Europe except here in Sweden. France will have to approach Germany, I read in one of the papers the other day; they can’t bear the food shortage and misery any longer. In Belgium people are fainting from hunger on the street, in Finland and Norway things are wretched and of course in Germany too. I don’t know what it’s like in Russia, but it doesn’t take much imagination to guess.
And we’re having yet another dreadfully cold winter. People will freeze and come to harm, it’s enough to make you weep.
At a formal ceremony at Akershus [Fortress] on Sunday afternoon, Reich Commissar Terboven announced that Quisling is to be prime minister of Norway.
23 FEBRUARY
Since I last wrote there have been major developments, which I should have entered in here far more regularly. One of them is that Singapore has fallen, which happens – it?
??s said – only once a century. I’d saved a cutting about what happened, but seem to have mislaid it. The Japanese show of strength in the Pacific is exceptional. To think that Singapore, a fortress Britain has used for maintaining a key position for centuries, could be taken by the Japanese after so short a time – it says a lot about the abilities of the Japanese and maybe even more about the appalling nonchalance of the British. It led to a governmental crisis in Britain, but Churchill managed to ride out the storm as usual. There was even more consternation about a week ago (I think it was the 13th or 14th) when two German battleships, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, put to sea in broad daylight from Brest, where they had been subjected to intensive bombing for months, and made it back home to the North Sea without the British lifting a finger. To go back to the Pacific, where the most important events are currently being played out, attacks are expected imminently on Sumatra, Java, India and the Burma Road, and Australia, where all men fit for military service have been called up for defence duties. I simply can’t fathom what Britain and America are playing at – the Japanese are carrying on like monsters. They say things have been appalling, these past few weeks in Singapore. The fortress could only be defended on the seaward side, it seems, and the Japanese came stealing across the Malay peninsula, where there seem to have been scarcely any defensive measures. Lack of water was ‘the last drop, which made the cup run over’ (a fine way of putting it). Women and children were evacuated over to Sumatra as the bombs rained down. The British had scarcely any aircraft in Singapore; how is something like that even possible?