January 1, 1942–October 11, 1944
Serving with the U.S. Legation in Switzerland1
Bern, Switzerland
January 1942
The long, gloomy year of 1941 finally came to an end. It was a year filled with anticipation, forebodings, and pessimism as well as optimism, of waiting for events to take their course. It was filled with the hope that the end of horrors, deportations, tortures, and the killing of hostages would come with the dawn of a New Year and peace. It was the coldest year in France for the past seventy years according to the records. If the temperature was frigid, as indeed it was, the hearts of the French were in keeping with it.
As we take up life2 in this neutral country of Switzerland,3 we are surrounded by the enemy: Germany and Austria on the north and east, Italy in the south, and France bordering it on the west. We wait and work and look forward to the day when we shall return to the France that we love so well.
The light grows brighter as the swiftly changing scenes point, however slowly and with however great and numerous setbacks that try to bind us, to the real issue—to victory.
As the New Year dawns, the battle for North Africa between the Allies and the Axis powers becomes more active and takes on more extensive proportions.
The Swiss press that until recently has been somewhat pro-Axis, such as the Gazette de Lausanne, the Tribune de Lausanne, the Journal de Genève, and the Tribune de Genève4 is now almost 100 percent pro-Anglo-Saxon. The latter paper has a fear of communism. La Suisse5 is anti-Anglo-Saxon with a clever Axis propaganda; Le Courrier6 is pro-Allies.
Of the German printed papers, Die Nation7 is pro-Allies; Das Vaterland8 (Catholic) is also pro-Allies, while the Neue Zürcher Zeitung9 makes an effort to remain neutral.
We avidly read the press. From the headquarters of International Command10 in London, by radio we are kept en rapport with events in the Pacific and France. We watch our maps and follow the German victories and losses, the Russian victories and losses on the Eastern Front, and the operations of our armies and navy in the Pacific.
February 1942
Singapore falls,11 which is a defeat for the British. Mr. Churchill speaks over the radio in a sad and strained voice. He is unshaken in his determination and in the determination of the British people to fight with increasing strength.
Although food is plentiful in Switzerland, a number of products are rationed: meat, milk, butter, cheese, and chocolate.
A War for the Survival of the United States
During these historic days for us on the staff of the United States Legation in Bern, from time to time we receive written instructions from our able minister, Mr. Leland Harrison.12 He warns us:
Remember that the present is a war for the survival of the United States and the continuance of our political ideals and concepts, our institutions, our way of life.
Each of us individually has an important part in this war. We are fighting for America.
Let us guide ourselves accordingly.
This is war.
The slightest detail of our procedure may be of great usefulness to the enemy.
He is always desirous of learning the intimate details of our personal lives. An enemy agent wants to know where we live, how much money we spend, how much money we earn, and whether we are in debt….
Nail a Nazi lie when you hear it. Trace it.
…………………………….
We will win.
We are confident; we accept temporary news or reverses with equanimity; we take success in our stride and move steadily, quietly but inexorably forward, [which is] the surest, deadliest weapon against the faltering morale of our enemies.…
The war goes on. It seems outside, away from us in a way, in neutral Switzerland. In France we were in contact with our own people; England and the news seemed nearer. However, by radio and press we are able to follow our own armies in the Pacific, the Philippines, and Australia. We hear the news of our splendid American pilots, of their courage, their simplicity, their victories and defeats. At the end of February we read about the pilot who was given a decoration for bravery after he had recently cabled headquarters in Washington: “Sighted sub—Sank same.”13 For him, trained and disciplined to obey orders, he was merely proceeding with the daily routine.
British planes over Switzerland last night gave us a sleepless time. The Swiss anti-aircraft guns were not quick enough, or did it only seem that way? The Germans certainly cannot stop them. The British fly through this small country in ten minutes going 400 miles an hour.
March 1942
The Italian papers are still pompous in their sureness of victory. I quote from the Il Giornale d’Italia14 (translation from Gazette de Lausanne March 20, 1942):
The French [who] are not content to have been beaten by arms are climbing toward a total political defeat.…They do not consider themselves yet out of the conflict nor reconciled with Germany and Italy, and still hope for the defeat of the Axis. This is confirmed by the challenging attitude they assume the moment the semblance of failure appears for the Axis in North Africa or on the Soviet front.
The French continue to wish for victory for England and the United States, which they are ready to support by all their available means, with many phrases of protestation more or less sincere, of the fierce and contemptible British bombardments that destroy their houses and kill their laborers, without any evident reason.
This state of the French soul is perfectly well-known to and strictly watched by Germany and Italy….
April 1942
Bern in April. Spring comes again. The purplish pink quince trees are blossoming in their beauty, and the cherry blossoms are luxuriant and colorful in their display in the surrounding gardens.
Clouds and light play over the peaks of the Bernese Oberland,15 still covered with snow and ever changing with every mood. At night over the mountains the little Swiss châlets are lighted one by one like candles on an altar.
There is a little calm and strength in those bewildering heights, a vastness that makes our little lives, our petty ambitions, our destructive wars, our discontent, and our selfishness vanish as in a mist.
Arcades, cafés, all these thirteenth and fourteenth-century structures and homes, and the fountains and their statues are scenes such as I had seen in pictures in my childhood before I ever came to Europe. In their quaintness and exotic coloring, they seem to have been placed there for my special interest and amusement but would soon vanish into unreality. They do not seem real, that is they do not seem part of the common day. In contrast, in France I am one with the country as I drive through it; I am one with every street in Paris, every bridge, every view. It is part of me….
Spies Are Everywhere
Summer 1942
Pierre Laval, who has returned to power as Prime Minister with the Vichy government,16 urges the French to go to Germany to help win the war against the “enemy,” as the radio tells us. The response of the French is an increase in the Résistance and the clandestine press.
We live in an atmosphere teeming with intrigue of spies and 5th columnists. Two young Swiss university students recently were executed as spies working for a “foreign power,” accused of being corrupted by the “foreign power.” As one Swiss remarked to me, “We are not accustomed to executing people in our country. Every day it is a question of giving away military secrets followed by penalties, typically death and life imprisonment. These boys are only twenty-five or twenty-six years old, even younger.”
Five hundred thousand men are reported to be in the French Résistance.
With Germany developing all fronts, the news of a second front of the Allies becomes stronger.
“British and American forces stationed in Great Britain,” writes the Neuchâtel L’Express,17 August 5, 1942, “are animated by an offensive spirit as seen in the numerous manœuvres of landing” (in North Africa).
The end of this month finds little headway being made toward victory. The Russians are holding on, and we are fighting our way in the Pacific through victories and defeats.
I motored to Lugano and Locarno in Italian Switzerland for a vacation. I forgot for a moment the war-torn fronts, the catastrophes, and the news of the incessant trend of blood and death that reaches us every day.
I found Lugano18 to be like a lovely woman who has lived and loved throughout the years. She played for high stakes in her casino when she was young and beautiful—when she had rulers of empires, diplomats, and reigning sovereigns at her feet. Now, perhaps a bit tired, she is still a hostess to the great and important and to thousands of tourists and holiday makers. The tourists do not come during these war years in such numbers, and the hotels are only half-full. The war, this injurious war, has victimized beauteous, neutral Switzerland, and she must wait with the belligerent countries for the Allied victory before her thousands of guests will again visit her.
Locarno, too, is a great lady.19 She has had a distinguished past and has been a proud hostess. She has received statesmen and officials, and her landscape has been the scene of international treaties and conferences. There is an élégance about Locarno as she lies with languor and stateliness along the beautiful Lago Maggiore; she, too, waits for the war to end so that she may again receive her visitors.
Our diplomatic section in Bern, lying outside the central part of the city and across the bridge that separates it from the business district, is singularly interesting in these war years. For here, friends and enemies elbow each other on trams and in the public gardens, on the streets, or in the shops. There is no salutation between the Allies and the Axis powers. Recently on the tram going into town stood a big German quite near us on the platform. Last night a party of Japanese attached to their legation was celebrating at the same restaurant where one group of Anglo-Saxons was dining; their table was placed quite near our own. The Italians, too, are much in evidence; they sell their products in the city: laces, leather goods from Florence, and shoes from Rome. One of the buildings belonging to the Italian Legation is next to one of the châlets our government took over to house our numerous staff, and the one in which my work is done. I see them at the windows, young and gay, and I often wonder of the destiny that has thrown them in with the Nazis; they seem so apart in character and spirit.
American Embassy in Vichy Faces Uncertain Times20
November 1942
November was ushered in with snow and cold and events. American and British troops with the fleets arrive off the coast of Africa. Algiers has surrendered to the Allies.21
Swiss troops are moving towards the Italian frontier. The Swiss obviously are nervous.
Vichy France and the United States sever diplomatic relations as the Germans take over all of France.22 In November the Embassy of the United States in Vichy was interned by the German government in Lourdes.23
The French fleet at Toulon is scuttled with the loss of nearly all the crews of more than sixty cruisers; two submarines escape.24
Christmas came and went and was much like another day but for the delightful reception our minister, Mr. Leland Harrison, gave to the staff.
Admiral Darlan is assassinated in Africa.25
The Maquis26 becomes organized and is a meaningful participant in the Résistance movement. Hundreds of young Frenchmen are taking to the mountains to escape deportation; they do not want to work in Germany or work with German organizations. They leave their families and their homes in groups or alone. Patriots of France, they refuse to become slaves of the enemy. With no army, they join a clandestine legion in the fight to free their country.
The Start of a New Year: 1943
The year 1942 passed quickly and 1943 was upon us before we realized that it had actually come. The end of the war is predicted this year by the Allied generals…. How immense, how intense is the prayer in every heart for peace.
The Swiss press related the great fear of the Nazis as the Allies land in North Africa.
Our Radio Bulletin quoted the Los Angeles Times27 of January 25, “The two British raids on Berlin28 are admitted from German sources to have done considerable material damage…. Coming at a time when Nazi backsets in Russia were reluctantly being conceded by the Nazi propagandists, they must have been profoundly discouraging. For two thousand days they (Nazis) have been bullies who could not take it when the going got rough, and on whom decent treatment was wasted because they construed it as a sign of weakness….”
And from The New York Times of February 1 (1943):
“There was drama at the Nazis’ celebration of the tenth anniversary29 of their rule….But it was drama in reverse.…There was drama in the absence of Hitler himself, who did not dare to face his people, his party….There was above all supreme drama in the British bombs falling from the skies in the midst of the festivities—bombs which interrupted the show, terrified the listeners and provided a fitting handwriting on the walls of the Nazi citadel.…The German people are told to suffer and sacrifice more than ever on the ground that Russia is now using up its last reserves. They are not told that behind the Russian armies stands the American arsenal as well. Instead, the Nazi leaders attempt to paint in glaring colors the Bolshevist menace facing Europe in case of a Russian victory.…”
Our Embassy, now in Lourdes, leaves for Baden-Baden, Germany. (They will be interned for the duration of the war.)
German General von Paulus, and what is left of his army, surrendered to Russia at Stalingrad.30 The Swiss press recounts the slow awakening of the German people to the danger they are in.
British and American aviators downed with their planes in enemy countries, or having parachuted from them, escape to Switzerland. They arrive in Bern every day to report to their Legation. Their stories, teeming with interest and danger, are many and varied.
Our Military Attaché, General Legge,31 related to me the time he went to the army hospital to visit a young wounded aviator. The aviator had fallen in Germany and was barely able to walk to the frontier to safety. Our General asked him how he had escaped. The man seemed embarrassed; he hesitated and did not reply. After a few kind words from his commanding officer, he said, “Well, you see, Sir, it was either him or me. I’m sorry, Sir, awful sorry, but I had to kill him—the German who was following me with his pointed gun. I turned quickly and, I’m sorry, Sir, but I had to kill him.…” A tale of war and death, told in all simplicity by a plain lad who had never learned in all its fullness the brutalities and exigencies of a desperate war…. He was “sorry.”
Throughout the year we followed our lads in pride and sorrow in the Pacific: from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands32 to Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands…33
In July Sicily is taken by the Allies.34
Mussolini resigns as Badoglio takes over power.
In September the Italian peninsula is invaded at Reggio Calabria by the British and Canadian armies.35
In September the Nazis evacuate Sardinia.36 General Giraud enters Corsica.37
November sees the bombing of Berlin; it was the greatest of the war by the Royal Air Force. There are now unmistakable signs that they have gone beyond the handwriting on the wall….
Again the New Year. It dawned with hope. Far from war operations, we were avid for news as day by day victory was blazoned over the radio or in the press from one mouth to another….
The Allies pass through Rome taking the city on June 4.38
The Allies land on Normandy beaches, France, June 6.39
The Allies take Caen in August, as the Russians cross into Germany.40
The U.S. Army advances toward Paris coming through Chartres.
August. The French Army enters Paris as the German General von Choltitz41 surrenders to General Leclerc42 at Gare Montparnasse.
The Wehrmacht continues to leave the country. The confusion in France is beyond all count. Each man is for himself. No general law exists. Later, groups headed by patriots enter the Préfecture de Police and the public buildings as the swastika is torn down and the Tricolor is hoisted high above the city.
The insurrection of the French in Paris and throughout the country takes on great proportions.
The French General Kœnig becomes Military Governor of Paris.43 We listened hour after hour to the radio; we heard the bells of Notre-Dame and the churches tolling triumphantly; we heard the cheers and “La Marseillaise” sung with voices echoing victoriously:44
Aux armes, citoyens!
Marchons, marchons…
To arms, citizens
Let’s march, let’s march…
We heard the journalists who were following the victorious armies. “I have been kissed,” shouted one American, “by every woman in Paris: beautiful ones and ugly ones, old and young, fat and thin….”
American Embassy in Paris Is Reestablished
At the end of August the telegram from the Department of State in Washington, which we had waited for three years, reached the Legation in Bern.45 Urgently needed in the American Embassy in Paris, it said in substance.46 There were ten or twelve names in it. My own was included.47
Six weeks passed before we were able to travel in France.48 There was no way, no means of transport from the French-Swiss frontier through the country to Paris. Railroads and bridges were destroyed. Motor roads were almost impassable; they were obstructed and demolished by the bombing or the sabotage of the French Résistance.49
We appealed to the Army.50 After negotiations between the Department of State and the War Department,51 we took the train from Bern52 to the Swiss frontier53 where the automobiles of General Patch’s army met us.54 The sight of the Tricolor, of the French uniform, of the Customs officer, and of the French soldier on guard on the soil of France moved us deeply. We, who had seen this land fallen in defeat, humiliated and crushed, were privileged to be among the first to enter it victorious and free.
“France, my country,” writes a patriot, “you will be reborn, more alive and younger, always new with a countenance, no doubt more serious; but, little by little, the scars and suffering of the past will be obliterated.”
“One and regenerated, France will lead on to her destiny!”
On October 11, 1944,55 we swept triumphantly through France in the cars of General Patch’s valiant 7th United States Army,56 over broken roads and deep excavations, past countless buildings completely destroyed and beautiful forests turned into arid wastes, on to Paris, to our Embassy.57
I have come to the end of my journey. I am going home.58 Home? Can you go back home? Can you go back “to romantic love,59 back to…dreams of glory and of fame,…to singing just for singing’s sake,…back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country,…away from all the strife and conflict of the world,…back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory”?°
Only as I seek my home in love, in hope, and in an unwavering faith in the Principle of all harmony can I find it—can I find that freedom of the soul which is the only freedom for me….
Paris, 1955
_______________
° You Can’t Go Home Again. Thomas Wolfe.