Christmas Eve 1943: Karin, Karolina Lindgren, Astrid and Sture.

 

NEW YEAR’S NIGHT

We’re just into 1943. I remember when we were children back home in Näs, we stayed up to see in 1918 and wrote ‘Long live 1918’ on the white wall behind the stove in our room. I wonder whether 1918 and 1943 will turn out to have anything in common; surely the war will have to end this year? I think it feels exactly like 1918. In the last few days I’ve heard from many directions that Sweden’s situation is serious again. But I hope it’s just exaggeration. And I hope there’ll be peace in the world next New Year – as I’ve hoped every New Year these past three years.

On Christmas Eve, Admiral Darlan was murdered in Algiers.

The outlook is black for Germany. Things are going badly both in Russia and in Africa; it could be disastrous. In Germany, people are saying: Den Krieg haben wir schon verloren [We’ve already lost the war]. And I think they’re right.

24 JANUARY

The situation is much as before, though things are going even worse for the Germans than they were. The British have marched into Tripoli and in Russia it looks like a sheer catastrophe. A German army is encircled at Stalingrad, over which they’ve fought tooth and nail. In Germany they’re playing funeral music on the radio to honour the heroes of Stalingrad. Every day there are reports of the Russians advancing afresh; in the Caucasus the Germans are making a planned retreat. The poor soldiers at Stalingrad are holed up in dugouts with entrances guarded by Russian marksmen. And it’s cold in Russia now. Poor people, I can’t help feeling sorry for the German soldiers for having to suffer so terribly, no matter how much I detest Nazism and all the acts of violence the Germans have committed in the countries they occupied. I think the Gestapo should be expunged from the face of the earth, but there are bound to be some decent Germans too, there simply must be.

However – Sweden is tightening its defences, the king made an extremely serious throne speech at the opening of parliament and Per Albin [Hansson] made a speech that pretty much amounted to ‘Don’t think you can come here, or we’ll soon show you otherwise!’ There’s a lot of talk about whether we’ll get that elusive second front here this spring as part of an Allied attempt to invade Norway. If that happens one can imagine the Germans demanding transit for their troops – and us refusing (which we all hope we would do) and then all hell would be let loose. We do transport ammunition and soldiers going on leave on our Swedish railways – and even that is too much, in my view.

Sture was out with a few journalist chums the other night and Beckman at [the news agency] TT, who ought to know what he’s talking about, claims Hitler’s fallen into a state of total apathy. Long may it continue! If only he’d been a bit more apathetic from the start.

In Stockholm they’re currently showing Mrs Miniver, which really is a delightful film and excellent propaganda for the Allies. It would do the Germans good to see it.

The winter thus far has been mild and still. Karin and I went skiing at Koa today.

29 JANUARY

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter about a Swedish newspaper that spread misinformation about transit arrangements. In fact, modest numbers of German medical officers and materials were transported through Sweden in 1940, none while fighting was in progress in Norway.]

This is really interesting, I think. Sadly there seems to be a widespread perception in Norway that we Swedes let German troops through while the fighting in Norway was still going on. It’s shameful of Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning to spread an assertion like that. We were scared stiff of the Germans then – April 1940 – and were standing to attention at the borders – how could we have let troops through? I don’t believe it. But we did let trains through with troops on leave after the fighting stopped, and still are doing; I wish we’d stop.

Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca to confer about new theatres of war. Wonder what they said about the Nordic countries?

Today the Nazis marked the tenth anniversary of their coming to power – without a speech from Hitler. According to the evening papers, Hitler was in Stalingrad to urge the surrounded troops not to surrender but to fight to the last man, because Germany’s fate was in their hands. ‘The Sixth Army must hold its positions to delay and obstruct the enemy advance,’ Hitler decreed. In other words, their Führer has ordered them to die, and I expect they’re sufficiently dutiful and pig-headed to obey.

As I said, there’s been no speech from Hitler today, and that seems pretty sensational – but Göring made one instead, more than an hour late, and it went like this:

[Press cutting, source unknown, with long extracts in Swedish from Göring’s speech.]

Imagine having the gall to stand up and tell the poor, tormented German people that ‘the past ten years have demonstrated the innate power of our world view and the blessings it is able to bestow’. I wonder what the German people really think and feel, faced with the ‘blessings’ of National Socialism. A deadly war killing the flower of youth; the hatred and loathing of virtually all other nations; want and misery; horrific assaults on defenceless people; concerted brutalization and deculturing of its citizens, especially young people; torture, both mental and physical, of the populations of occupied countries; the informer system; the demolition of family life; the destruction of religion; ‘euthanasia’ for the incurably ill and mentally deficient; the reduction of love to a matter of basic procreation; the news blackout shielding them from the rest of the world and – unless all the signs are deceptive – total breakdown of the German people in the not-too-distant future. It’s simply impossible for many Germans not to have realized how royally duped they’ve been by their Führer and other leaders. And when, as I saw in a German letter, one calls Mrs Miniver pure propaganda, one clearly isn’t seeing very straight. A film that preaches humanity above all. I was almost as angry with that letter as I was with a Norwegian quisling; she claimed things have never been so free in Norway as they are now and she can’t see that the Germans are getting in the way in Norway, any more than she got in the way down in Berlin last year. If you can’t even see the difference in that, you must be a quisling or a Nazi. I’ve never heard anyone else make such grotesque assertions.

‘There’s a buzz of German and a buzz of Norwegian in the streets,’ she wrote, and the dear little love thought it was so nice – and then she signed off with a ‘Heil Hitler – Quisling’. So the German leader took precedence over the Norwegian.

Quisling seems to have gone down with flu, so he can’t receive the ‘people’s tribute’ on his first anniversary.

Yes – and Leningrad’s finally been relieved after a siege of a year and a half. You’d have to be Russian to endure the sort of suffering the population of Leningrad has had to go through. The dogs, cats and rats were all eaten up long ago, and according to Mrs Medin yesterday, she’d heard from Finland that human flesh was offered for sale towards the end – but it surely can’t be true. People only had the energy to be up for a short time each day, and a lump of bread and a drop of the wateriest soup was apparently their daily ration.

From time to time we get appalling reports of Russian rampages in the Baltic during the year they were in control there. Eighty thousand people were sent to Siberia and God knows where. Had a letter from Riga today, smuggled here. The writer said we presumably wouldn’t believe the accounts from there – but he swore they were true. Even women and children were shoved into cattle trucks and carried off; children were separated from their mothers, husbands and wives from each other, and so on. Rosén came the other day and said he was feeling sick; he’d seen photographs from the Baltic, and Bågstam had confirmed that she recognized several of the victims – these were pictures of actual scenes of slaughter committed by the Russians before they withdrew. No, let us never have to suffer the Russians here!

I must paste in Goebbels’ speech and Hitler’s proclamation too. Hitler’s presumably having another carpet-chewing session, as he didn’t speak in person.

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter: Goebbels: ‘The high point of our struggle is near’.]

And here’s what Hitler’s proclamation said:

[Dagens Nyheter article from 29 January 1943: ‘Unambiguous victory’ promised by the Führer.]

There would be plenty to say about the above, but I think Johannes Wickman’s comments in Dagens Nyheter will do the job:

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter from 31 January 1943 of Wickman’s piece ‘Jubilee without jubilation’.]

Say what you will about Wickman – but he’s not exactly neutral. I wonder what would happen if the Gestapo got hold of him.

The only thing I don’t like is the general tendency of Anglophiles to make the Russians into little doves of peace. I think we are going to discover that they are not.

7 MARCH

No major news to report. But one remarkable thing is the total reorganization of the German economy, making everything subordinate to the aims of the war. The occupied countries are starting to do the same, too. The other day there was a huge British air raid over Berlin, in which Zarah Leander’s villa was totally destroyed. Many hundreds killed.

Save the Children has launched a big drive to help the children of Europe – and they certainly need it. But Karin had put on a kilo at her last check-up and now weighs 29kg.

In Denmark there was an abortive bomb attack on German women. I can’t recall if I ever wrote about King Christian’s Hitler telegram. They say the clampdown in Germany’s treatment of Denmark is the direct result of this telegram. Anyway: Hitler sent the Danish king a telegram – I forget exactly when – it must have been for his birthday. The telegram was in the usual bombastic style, all about the new European order, etc. The telegram Christian sent in reply, with heart-breaking Danishness, read as follows: ‘Mange Tak Christian Rex’ [Many thanks Christian Rex]. No wonder Hitler was furious. Our newspapers only dropped hints about ‘the brief royal telegram’, giving no details. I heard the rest from Gunnar at Christmas.

And then there were presidential elections in Finland. Ryti was re-elected. He had a lot of trouble forming his government.

Yesterday there was a terrible accident at [the military training ground at] Ränneslätt. A charge of TNT exploded, seven soldiers were killed, six of them outright and another died later, and many were badly hurt. There are a lot of accidents even in our peaceable defence forces.

Hitler is staying silent and speaking only through deputies. Some say he’s dead, others that he’s lost his mind.

1 APRIL

In Africa, the British have stormed the Mareth Line and it’s not looking good for Rommel. We haven’t heard much from Russia: things are probably going badly for all of them. Hitler’s come back to life again after his long silence and made a speech or two. But German disintegration is in all probability only a question of time.

Here in Sweden there’s been a lot of hot air and questioning in parliament about a German courier plane that had to come down in the water at Lekvattnet, which produced a worrying lack of reaction from the Swedish armed forces, except for a 17-year-old member of the home guard, who has received a medal for his resourcefulness. The ‘courier plane’ was full of German soldiers and had machine guns on board, albeit not assembled. The affair has caused a lot of displeasure in Britain.

Allied invasion is anticipated in one place and another, before too long. In Denmark, acts of sabotage have increased dramatically.

The British bombing raids on Germany and Italy are having an impact.

GOOD FRIDAY

A week ago, most probably on Friday the 16th, the Swedish submarine Ulven disappeared with its 33-man crew. The sub had been taking part in naval exercises down on the west coast and was last seen on Thursday afternoon. The Ulven didn’t appear on Friday for its scheduled exercises and investigations began. A week has passed since then, in which the interest of the whole Swedish nation has been focused exclusively on the Ulven. All hope is now lost. It’s assumed that the sub got into such trouble that it was stranded on the seabed, unable to manoeuvre, its crew still alive for as long as their oxygen lasted. All possible resources were put into looking for it, with all the expertise that Swedish science can [illegible word], and in the end the anguished father of one of the crew paid for a flight to bring down Karlsson, the clairvoyant from Ankarsund in Västerbotten. But not even the clairvoyant could locate the Ulven. The weather’s been dreadful, one storm after another, which stopped the divers going down. Things looked really hopeful to begin with. The papers declared that the Ulven had been ‘localized’, but by God that didn’t mean they’d found it. There were reports of knockings heard from the Ulven, but as none of them were in Morse code, I don’t think they really came from the submarine. Today’s paper says: ‘At 6 on Tuesday morning the last knocking was heard on the hydro-phones – since then there has been silence.’ As this would more or less correspond to the length of time the crew could be assumed to have stayed alive, it does make you wonder.

On Sunday evening the Swedish submarine Draken reported that on the Friday morning, that is, the day the Ulven vanished, and in the same waters, it was fired on by an armed German merchant vessel. The commander of the Draken, the prize blockhead, didn’t tell anyone until Sunday evening. Protests have been lodged in Berlin with a demand for a prompt investigation of whether the same merchant vessel shot at the Ulven. We can only hope that this was the case and that the men aboard Ulven died a quick death rather than enduring a week’s horrendous suffering. But if it turns out that the German ship, which is called the Altkirch by the way, sank the sub in a way that left parts of it watertight and the crew still alive, then I hope they kill the commander of the Draken who couldn’t spit out what he knew until the Sunday evening.

The navy has suffered a great tragedy, much worse than Hårsfjärden in my view. I read a moving letter from a sailor; he wrote that he and his fellow seamen were sitting round talking about the Ulven ‘and there wasn’t a single one of us not in tears’.

Today spring seems to have arrived in earnest! And the Ulven men will never get to see another spring. The commanding officer had been married just over a year and his wife is expecting their first child any day now.

In England, Churchill has announced that intelligence has reached them about German intentions to use gas on the eastern front. Churchill is preparing the Germans for the fact that if this is true, gas will immediately be released over German port cities and war-related industrial sites. This is going to be a lovely spring and no mistake.

But today out at Djurgården among wood anemones and yellow star of Bethlehem in the sunshine it was glorious. Lars has gone to Småland, so it was just Sture, Karin and me. Karin and I played ‘golden shoes and golden hat’, which you had to undergo various trials to win. On the subject of golden shoes: today we’ll hear about shoe rationing, and if the papers are to be believed it’s going to be more than somewhat strict. I’m so annoyed I didn’t at least get Karin’s shoes half-soled for Easter.

9 MAY

Since I last wrote, here’s more or less what has happened. We’ve had a reply to our protest about the Draken and it’s a damned cheeky one, see below:

[Unidentified press cutting.]

Just the sort of insolence you’d expect from those bastards. So Germany’s to have the right to decide how our Swedish subs behave in Swedish waters! But we responded in no uncertain terms, probably in sharper tones than we’ve ever dared before. The Germans said nothing about the Ulven in their memo.

This was the Swedish government response:

[Unidentified press cutting.]

I suppose the most disquieting thing of all was that the damned Germans laid a minefield in Swedish waters. It was probably that minefield which decided the Ulven’s fate. Because the other day they found the Ulven, for which they’d hunted so intently and desperately. And it was lying more or less in the middle of that mine belt at a depth of 52 metres. They still haven’t found out how it met its end, but it doesn’t seem to have had a collision or been fired on. The bow looked ‘compressed’, said the divers who went down. It was a fishing boat that found it. All are eager to find out whether the crew died instantaneously, which seems likeliest and what we all wish and hope for. Presumably it hit a German mine, and in Swedish waters. So now it must be time to stop the hateful transit permits to Germans ‘going on leave’, which the whole Swedish nation is furious about.

Another development: the ‘safe conduct by sea’, which the Germans stopped in January, was reinstated a few days ago. Perhaps we can start getting some essentials in again, a bit of coffee and some shoe leather so they can relax the strict shoe rationing slightly.

Well everything I’ve written here has been about Sweden. But of course there’s been plenty going on in the wider war as well. Tunis and Bizerte have fallen, so the game is up for the Axis in North Africa. This is a success of the first order for the Allies, of course, their greatest of the war so far. The remains of the Axis army are squeezed into a tight corner on the Cap Bon peninsula and thousands upon thousands have surrendered.

There’s also been quite a row, which I haven’t really followed, between the Russian and Polish governments. I didn’t even know there was a Polish government, but I presume it’s based in London. Anyway, the Polish government has demanded an investigation, through the Red Cross, of some dreadful mass graves in Katyn (I think it was called), where the Russians killed and buried 10,000 Polish officers after they annexed Poland. Yes, God preserve us from the Russians! They’ve also been rowing about Poland’s future borders and relations with Russia, but as I say, I haven’t been paying attention.

22 MAY

So warm and so lovely, what a blessing! Unbelievably good weather. The day before yesterday, Karin turned nine. Elsa-Lena and Matte were here. Karin got a watch, a school bag, a box of chocolates, one book, one pair of overtrousers from us, and several books from our visitors. For dinner we had not only Matte but also prawns, radishes, sardines, ham and eggs, and the rest of the cake.

Lars took his English exam the same day, which will decide his final mark in the subject. A school year is drawing to an end, thank goodness, because it’s all been quite a trial since he had those warnings from school [about potentially poor grades], and I’m sure I’ve nagged more than I should. He’s bound to fail his German; as for the other subjects, we can only hope and pray for the best.

I’m back at work on Monday after a delightful week and a half off for a terrible cold. While I was in bed I wrote a few odds and ends and sent them in, first to Stockholms-Tidningen, which bought one of my light articles and returned three, then to Dagens Nyheter, which returned both the pieces I’d sent them. On one of them, Staffan Tjerneld had written some comments, starting with ‘The girl can write, there’s no question about it,’ but it was too short and not true enough to life, hah hah!

Enough of this drivel. A minor detail such as Stalin dissolving the Comintern probably deserves a mention. It was in the papers yesterday and has caused a great stir all round the world, of course. It would mean that Bolshevism has renounced the idea of world revolution. I very much doubt that’s the case; the Comintern will still exist but under cover, and the whole device has probably just been dreamt up to curry favour with public opinion in Britain and America.

I can’t remember if I wrote that the British bombed two so-called barrages in Germany, resulting in huge destruction and large-scale flooding. A German Jew in exile is said to have given the British the idea, which will now be the excuse for fresh persecution of the Jews in Germany.

That’s all for today.

3 JUNE

No particular news from the war, I don’t think. Something called ‘Attu’, which the Japanese held, has fallen. When the few hundred warriors who were left realized they wouldn’t make it, they turned to face the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, bowed deeply and then charged the enemy with one last banzai cry, to be mown down to the last man, according to the papers. So much for ‘Attu’ – I don’t know what the implications are in the general chaos.

The bombing is more devastating than ever. At work I saw an Italian propaganda photo – a maternity hospital in Italy had been bombed and the picture showed many dead and maimed – it was simply awful.

In the papers the other day they said that, in all, 100,000 people in Athens are dying of hunger. Sixteen hundred a day, when things are at their worst.

But in Sweden we’re doing remarkably well on the food front, a very distinct improvement. Lots of meat and bacon and there’s suddenly fish available, so they’ve lifted fish rationing. It’s really easy to be a housewife now. Butter’s the only tricky thing.

Ascension Day was fine and the warmer weather arrived and I was angry as heck with Sture for the usual reason [in English], so I went out cycling with Karin, in the morning with Alli and in the afternoon (after dinner) just the two of us, to Koa. It’s so beautiful now, the lilacs and chestnuts are blooming like mad. I wanted Lasse to come with us too, but he prefers to go his own way nowadays.

WHITSUN EVE

Such a gorgeous Whitsun Eve, and so hot. Everything’s abnormally early this year. Here we are in our living room with the windows wide open, and it’s more or less like sitting in the park. The sounds are intensely summery: the clack of heels on the pavement outside, the noise of the children in the park, and when the trams speed by it sounds almost as if they are coming straight in here.

Karin’s gone out to Solö [in the Stockholm archipelago] with Matte and I’m glad she’s there for this heatwave, even though it feels rather empty at home without her. She had her exam on the 8th and got Ba [a satisfactory pass] in all her subjects except music and gymnastics. Lars, on the other hand, came home with a sorry set of results (Bc [a bare pass] maths, B? [a pass?] in English, history, chemistry and French), which is such a shame after he got such good marks last year. He doesn’t seem to have realized he’s in upper secondary school now. He had some work as a bicycle messenger this week and earned 50 kronor, and next week he and Göran are off on a cycle trip. I wish I could go with them because the summer’s so glorious it makes you want to get out of town instantly. But – it can’t be denied that it’s extremely lovely here, in the most beautiful summer city on this earth (so I think, though I haven’t seen that many others) and all I want to do is get out on my bike in the evenings to enjoy the profusion of flowers and all the greenery, the floral scents and the totally fantastic evening sky. The season of rapture, and I certainly am enraptured!

We marked the start of Whitsun with a dinner of radishes, hard-boiled eggs with anchovies, asparagus, veal chops and mazarin tarts. It’s beyond belief that we’re suddenly so well off for food; it’s the simplest thing in the world to be a housewife, though expensive, of course.

Meanwhile, the Italian island of Pantelleria has capitulated after a devastating bombardment. ‘You keep writing and writing,’ says Sture. ‘Are you writing about Lampedusa?’ Lampedusa is the next island the Allies will take. The mood in Italy must be lower than low. After all, the occupation of Pantelleria can be seen as a little prelude to invasion, since it was originally Italian territory. There’s a lot of talk of invasion these days.

Today the papers say the report on the 1941 Hårsfjärden accident indicates that the cause of the disaster appears to be sabotage. How horrible!

In Russia, the Germans and Russians are preparing to go on the offensive. In Germany, the Allies are continuing their dreadful bombing, last night targeting Düsseldorf and Münster, Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven in what’s said to be the biggest bombing raid yet. I read in a letter from a pilot today that in Germany they claim 200,000 people died when the barrages were blown up a while back. The British pilots who carried out the bombing were apparently specially trained for a month for the mission. The devastation being visited on the world is just growing and growing. The sanctity of life is held in contempt. In this delightful summertime [first line of a Swedish hymn]…

2 JULY

Since I last wrote, the king has managed to turn 85, a landmark that’s attracted a lot of press coverage here and abroad. There was great excitement in Stockholm on the day and it was all very festive, but I was so busy getting Lasse’s kit ready for the cycle trip that I didn’t even get a chance to go and see the procession through town. It was as dry as tinder all through the early summer and we were desperate for rain, but why did it have to rain partout at precisely 5 p.m. on 16 June when the king was in his open carriage? Yet it did, of course, and everybody worried because the king was getting wet. He’s incredibly popular, our old king, and the whole world sent him congratulatory telegrams. The Swedish people are convinced it’s King Gustaf we have to thank for our country not being at war, and it’s entirely possible that they are right.

Then it was midsummer. Lars and Göran’s cycle trip took them round Östergötland and Småland. Karin was out at Solö and had her ride in the hay cart as promised, but came home with Sigge Gullander on the evening of Midsummer Day. Sture and I took a bike ride out to Saltsjöbaden and had a really nice time.

That was followed by a couple of hectic days while I got everything ready for Karin and me to go off to Småland, which we did on the 27th. And now we’re here, and the children are enjoying it to the full, as am I.

The war continues more or less as usual. An American offensive in the Pacific, they said on the radio news this morning. Invasion, invasion, invasion, they can’t stop talking about it, and what they mean is an Allied invasion on the continent – not like 1940, when ‘invasion’ meant a German invasion of Britain, which we were expecting any minute, but it never came. That was when Hitler should have mounted his invasion, when he had his big chance, but he missed it.

Anyway, we haven’t seen any invasion yet, though things look rather ominous in Sicily. The Allied bombing continues, with feeble resistance from the Axis. Cologne Cathedral, probably Germany’s finest piece of architecture, has suffered bomb damage and the German newspapers are yelling about British vandalism – but what did they do in 1940?

17 JULY

There have been major developments since last time, but our busy days in Småland left me no time to write about them. It started with a big Russian offensive, with massive bloodshed on both sides. At Kursk, I think it was called. Then a few days after that big battle started, the Allies pulled off a landing on Sicily, where there’s now heavy fighting. It said on the news that the Allies are only 10km from Catania and it’s surely only a matter of time until all resistance is beaten down. After that it’ll probably be the mainland’s turn, I expect. I suppose you could call this the start of the much-vaunted invasion. The Allies are dropping leaflets over Italy, urging the Italian people to sue for peace.

I forgot to write about our phenomenon Gunder Hägg, who’s in America and running like the blazes. He’s run three races, all at different distances – and though he didn’t beat his own world records he beat his American opponents. ‘Gunder the Wonder,’ they call him – and tonight he’s running his fourth race. We all take a keen interest in his success and he’s considered a first-rate ambassador for Sweden in the USA at the moment.

Sture, Karin and I arrived here in Furusund the day before yesterday. Lars is still in Småland, busy with farming, German and maths. We picked our first chanterelles yesterday. Summer isn’t very reliable this year, you have to seize the moment. And now I’m off to bed to read a bit of All världens berättare [Storytellers Around the World]; today it’s [Maupassant’s] ‘Ball of Fat’.

25 JULY

Well, as the following newspaper cuttings show, Hitler and Musso had a meeting, and Rome got bombed. The assumption is that Hitler wanted to see Musso to stop him making a separate peace deal. ‘Italy chooses the path of honour’, the Italian papers said as a riposte to the leaflets – but there are peace rallies going on in the country and the people want peace. On Sicily the Allies are moving forward little by little; it’s going terribly well, Churchill says. In an order of the day issued on Saturday, Stalin declared that Germany’s July offensive had been stopped and 70,000 Germans had fallen. Berlin doesn’t consider the summer offensive to have reached its peak yet. The number of Russians killed is put at a third of a million. Even if both sides are telling packs of lies, you can’t help being petrified at the thought of all the human misery behind it.

Recently I’ve been reading in Grimberg’s history of the world about ancient Rome and all the bloodbaths and atrocities, proscriptions and wars of conquest. Reading the papers and coming across the same geographical names, one simply despairs at how little humanity has learnt in the intervening centuries.

In spite of everything people have started to hope, not tomorrow, perhaps not this year, but at least not in some hopelessly distant future. And Italy’s going to collapse pretty soon, everyone thinks so.

And then Gunder Hägg ran his best US race yet – an English mile in 4.05.3.

And summer’s really arrived now. Sture, Karin and I have been making the most of it here in Furusund: we row to our bathing island in the mornings and Linnéa and I pick berries in the afternoons. Lasse’s still in Småland and I miss him like mad, especially in the evenings. But he’s happiest there, and he’s coming over for a brief stay in a week’s time, before he and I go back to town to get down to the German and maths. Karin swims like a little fish now and is thrilled that she’s bold enough to throw herself in pretty much anywhere.

26 JULY

I wrote that last night. But on the radio this morning we heard the really sensational news: Mussolini has been dismissed by [King] Victor Emmanuel and Marshal Badoglio has been appointed his successor. Hey ho! Tiddley pom and fiddle-de-dee! The hydra of Fascism has lost its head. Now – now – now perhaps humanity is starting on the road to recovery of its full health. That bastard who (having shaken some life into those Italians, one has to admit) despatched the peaceable Italian people to Abyssinia on a war of conquest in 1935, initiating all these years of unrest, who once there unleashed gas attacks on defenceless natives, who thanks to his intervention in Spain prolonged the terrible civil war and who, incidentally, by creating Fascism, also provided the conditions for that civil war, and also the conditions, or to be more precise, the model, for National Socialism in Germany, which in turn caused this most terrible world war of all time – this grand bastard has now been sent off into a corner to await the verdict of history, which will assuredly be harsh. Phew! That was a long sentence, but we’re talking about world history here. They say he’s ill, stomach cancer, and if anybody deserves stomach cancer, it has to be him.

So that was Benito Mussolini! Could it be Hitler next please?

Prime Minister Churchill’s statement in the House of Commons on Tuesday, on the situation in Italy, began like this:

29 JULY

The Fascist Party has been dissolved. Serious unrest in Milan. Running battles in the streets. Many civilians and soldiers killed. The masses are demanding immediate peace. The military arsenal stormed. Demonstrations in support of the Soviet Union.

An American newspaper correspondent called Victor Emmanuel ‘a moronic little king’, which upset Roosevelt.

4 AUGUST

Today there was a memorial service for the crew of the Ulven, which has finally been brought up from the watery grave where it has been lying since April. Five died of mine injuries (German mine in Swedish waters, of course) and the rest drowned – a quick death, that is – and thank God for that.

And Sibylla had her fourth princess last night.

6 AUGUST

Finally, finally they’re stopping the transit arrangements that the whole Swedish nation has detested so much. I expect Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning and Trots Allt will be shouting for joy, they fought like lions! After all, this breach of neutrality was forced on us and it gives us a clear sense of Germany’s current weakness that it’s granted us ‘permission’ to stop the wretched business. In Norway there’s been huge bitterness against us because of the transits and the view there is most definitely that they started while the war in Norway was still going on. I hope and believe that our government’s firm denial of this is a true reflection of what happened.

God knows whether the war is actually going to end soon, all the same! Germany’s debacle is hanging in the air, so to speak. Things are going lousily in Russia, the Russians have taken Orel, in Sicily Catania has fallen and it’s soon going to be a Tunis in miniature. Italy hasn’t given up, however, even though the people are demonstrating and demanding peace. The dreadful bombing of Germany goes on; one can’t help weeping over the accounts from Hamburg, just think, there are still children there, it’s heart-rending, terrible, unbearable. I’ve just read Jean-Jacques Agapit’s book [Dites-le ‘leur’ (Tell ‘Them’)], an account of the hell that wounded French prisoners of war went through at a German hospital. The whole book is drowning in blood and pus and I’m now so fed up [in English] with everything war-related that I haven’t the words for it. And how must it be in the countries where they have those atrocities right in front of their eyes on a daily basis? It’s a good book, but still didn’t make such an impression on me as Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which came out between these two world wars. When I was reading it, I would creep under the covers at night (this was at Atlasgatan) and shed tears of despondency, and I remember thinking that if there was ever another war and Sweden thought of joining in, I would go on my knees to the government and implore them not to let all hell break loose. I would shoot Lars myself rather than let him go to war, I thought. How they must suffer, the poor mothers on this insane planet. When I thought of the crew of the Ulven and when I read Agapit’s book, I tried to imagine my Lars on the sunken submarine (when we thought they were trapped on the seabed, still alive) or in a fever with suppurating wounds in a war hospital, and simply imagining it was so agonizing I could hardly endure it! So how must it feel to those for whom such things aren’t imagination but cruel reality? How can it be possible that humanity has to suffer such torment and why do we have war? Does it really take no more than a couple of individuals like Hitler and Mussolini to drive a whole world into destruction and chaos? Please, please, please let it be over soon, the bloodshed at least; then there’s bound to be all the other misery that follows in the wake of war. Grandmother goes around these days all perky and optimistic and thinks that as soon as we have peace, everything will be all right again. She seems sure humanity will be happy as long as the coffee starts flowing again and rationing is scrapped, here and abroad, but the utterly desperate wounds left by the war aren’t going to be healed by a drop of coffee. Peace can’t give mothers back their sons, or the little children of Hamburg and Warsaw back their lives. The hatred doesn’t end the day peace comes, those whose relations have been tormented to death in German concentration camps won’t forget anything just because there’s peace and the memory of the thousands of children who starved to death in Greece will most certainly still be in their mothers’ hearts, if those mothers themselves survived. All the war-wounded will still be limping about with a leg or an arm missing, those who lost their sight are still just as blind and those whose nervous systems were torn to shreds in the inhuman tank battles will not recover, either, just because peace arrives. But still, but still – please let peace come soon, so people can gradually start coming back to their senses.

And yet – what is peace going to look like? What will happen to poor Finland? And will Bolshevism, with all the terror and tyranny it implies, be given free rein in Europe? Those who have already lost their lives in this war could turn out to be the most fortunate.

Summer 1943 is drawing to a close – or perhaps it’s just how I see it, since my summer leave is over. Tomorrow Lars and I go to Stockholm. The weather here in Furusund has been fine and warm, but today it rained and felt quite autumnal in every way. Karin and Linnéa are going to stay on for a while. Karin’s finally overcome her fear of swimming in deep water. She’s also learnt to jump from the springboard on the jetty, to her own huge gratification. Lars is coming back to re-sit his German and maths. We’ve had various clashes while we’ve been together this summer because he’s so averse to studying in the holidays.

[Typed transcript of a letter from Astrid’s work at the censor’s office from Norway about hatred and revenge propaganda, terrible treatment inflicted by the Nazis and a call for the Norwegian people to swear a solemn oath never to forget Gestapo terror. Also a press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 15 August 1943: ‘Huge losses on both sides in the Battle of Orel’.]

That’s all for today!

26 AUGUST

As has been reported – Roosevelt and Churchill met in Quebec. Stalin wasn’t there, the little squirt. It caused a great sensation when Litvinov, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, was suddenly called home and replaced by someone else. This has been interpreted as a sign that the Russians and the other two Allied partners have fallen out with each other. Russia wants a second front, and as such they will accept nothing but an invasion across the Channel. Every amateur pundit has something to say these days about the possibility of a separate peace between Germany and Russia, which would really put Britain and America in a spot. For Germany, it would probably be the only way out of a collapse that looks imminent. The bombing of Berlin has started and is expected to proceed much as in Hamburg.

There’s been a lot of unrest in Denmark of late, loads of sabotage and out-and-out clashes between Germans and Danes, especially in Odense.

After lots of intensive revision with me, Lars re-sat his German and maths and made it into the next year. Karin’s started in year three and got a new ‘Miss’, Mrs Adin, who seems to be quite sharp and not all that young. To celebrate Lars getting through, he and I went with Karin’s express permission to the 7 p.m. show at the pictures. Sture got home at 8.30 to find Karin crying bitterly. She’d started her homework, revising her times tables, and found that in her sleepy state she didn’t know them. So then she sat up with Sture until I got back at 9.30, and threw herself into my arms in tears. But I soon consoled her. Then she fell asleep and forgot the whole affair. She couldn’t escape a little throat infection before school started, and today I’m in bed with a tickly sore throat. But I shall get up in a little while and pop down to NK [department store] to buy some blouse fabric for Karin and some material to repair my fur with. We’re also going to bottle 10kg of French beans, so the day won’t be wasted.

THIS EVENING

There are reports in Aftonbladet of major disturbances in Denmark. I’ll cut out the piece.

29 AUGUST

I forgot to save it. But today we heard that a state of emergency has been declared in Denmark. Yesterday telephone lines with Denmark were cut, and here in Sweden we were seriously worried about what was happening. Today we’ve had the explanation. The Danish government was given an ultimatum to restore order in the country, which has been jeopardized recently by sabotage, strikes, street riots and the like. As the government didn’t consider itself able to succeed, a state of emergency was imposed. Anyone who argues is hauled up in front of a German court martial; strikes or incitement to strike are punishable by death. All gatherings of people are prohibited, as is all traffic after dark. Traffic between Sweden and Denmark has been halted (and there’s us with the Danish national athletics team in Stockholm today). Communication by telephone – and telegraph – is still blocked. I bet it’s going to be as hellish in Denmark as in Norway.

A Swedish civil plane, the Gladan, on a flight from England to Sweden under Captain Lindner vanished last Friday and hasn’t been heard of since. It was probably shot down. Swedish fishing boats off the west coast, which were peacefully fishing in international waters as they always have, came under machine-gun fire from a German merchant vessel. Twelve fishermen are missing.

King Boris of Bulgaria died yesterday, officially from angina pectoris (just back from a conference with Hitler), but according to the rumours shot in the abdomen by a police inspector. He is succeeded by his six-year-old son, Simeon II.

So this has been the state of affairs in Denmark since Sunday 29 July 1943. I must definitely paste in the proclamation of the state of emergency as well!

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 30 August 1943: ‘Regulations for the state of emergency in Denmark’.]

30 AUGUST

I think they’re running completely wild in Denmark. Just listen:

[Astrid’s following comments are interspersed between pasted-in press cuttings. Dagens Nyheter, 30 August 1943: ‘Nine Danish ships flee to Sweden, the rest sunk’. ‘Copenhagen naval port blown up’. ‘Battle for the Lifeguards’ barracks’. “I’m a dead man,” declared Denmark’s civilian Nazi administrator Dr Best after visit to Berlin. ‘Danish government under German military guard’.]

Mussolini’s daughter and son-in-law seem to have got away.

[Unidentified cutting.]

Eleven Norwegians have been executed for spying.

Germany has sent a ludicrously caustic reply to our protest about the shooting of Swedish fishing boats:

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 30 August 1943: ‘Sharp response from Berlin to fishermen’s protest’.]

And the Germans are furious with the Swedish press for stirring up agitation against Germany. Which it is, in fact.

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 30 August 1943: ‘PS The Swedish press is spiteful’.]

A rather silly article about Mussolini by Dagens Nyheter’s Rome correspondent:

[Press cutting from Dagens Nyheter, 30 August 1943: ‘Dictator’s bathing-resort flirtation turned into idyllic triangle drama’.]

1 SEPTEMBER

[Unidentified press cuttings about Denmark with a map (the eastern edge showing Spain, Portugal and Ireland is missing)]

I put in the truncated map above just to show how poor little Sweden is squeezed in Germany’s grip, just like Switzerland. But notwithstanding that, we’re cursing and swearing at Germany, we and the Swiss. The map in its original state showed how pitifully few European countries have been able to stay out of the war: Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Éire. Seeing the map, you really understand what an extraordinary blessing it is that we still have peace, and are so well off in every way, for now, with the war passing its fourth anniversary and our neighbours up here in the north in such dire straits.

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 all 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.

And this is the work of the people who created ‘Stille Nacht’. I came across this satirical version by Arnulf Øverland 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.

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.]