Kentucky and Tennessee both gone

‘This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with their commands are prisoners, and that Nashville is in their power: Kentucky and Tennessee both gone, 12,000 of our men are prisoners.’ This is from a diary kept by the crippled and housebound teenager, LeRoy Wiley Gresham, during the American Civil War. Not published until 2018, the publisher compares it to Anne Frank’s famous WW2 diary.

Gresham was born in  1847, in Macon, Georgia, to John Jones Gresham - an attorney, judge, twice mayor of Macon, textile company president, plantation owner of some 100 enslaved people - and his wife Mary Baxter Gresham. Aged eight, a chimney collapse crushed his left leg, causing lifelong impairment. Despite physical limitations, he was precociously intelligent: a voracious reader of Shakespeare, Dickens, Latin and Greek classics; an adept chess player; and a talented mathematician and poet.

Though Gresham never fully returned to health, he remained under continuous care, receiving various Victorian remedies including morphine, opiates, plasters, belladonna, and mercury - all to little effect. Over the years, Gresham’s condition worsened: by 15 he described himself as ‘weaker and more helpless than I ever was,’ later contracting both pulmonary and spinal tuberculosis (Pott’s disease). He died on 18 June  1865, at the age just 17 (only weeks after the Civil War’s ended). Further information is available at Wikipedia.

Gresham is remembered today because of a near daily diary he kept from June 1860 to June 1865. It remained largely unknown until featured in the Library of Congress’s 2012-2013 exhibition, The Civil War in America, and in Harper’s Magazine and in The Washington Post. Subsequently, in 2018, historian Janet E. Croon edited and annotated the diary, releasing it as The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865 (Savas Beatie). This edition includes extensive footnotes, family charts, a medical foreword, and appendices highlighting his final years. Much of the book can be sampled at Googlebooks, and images of the original pages are available at the Library of Congress website. Reviews can be read here and here.

The publisher says: [The diary] captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South.’

9 November 1861

‘Warm and very windy. Lockett and Bates came and spent the morning with me. No more from Port Royal. Mother is terribly scared. There has been a great battle at Columbus, Kentucky. Our side was commanded by Gen. Pillow. The Yankees by McLernand and Bradford. 8,000 men. Our ammunition gave out and we charged with the bayonet and routed them. They threw away all encumberments. The paper says “it is a bloody battle and brilliant victory.” A great many women and children came up from Savannah this morning. Aunt Sarah among them; Cousin Eliza comes up tonight. Gov. Brown’s message is out today. I have a bad pain in my back and took a Dover’s Powder. Bob Lockett hit Allen on the head with a rock today. We had a great deal of fun last night. Mary Campbell stayed to tea. We had a “white horse” to our delight and the terror of Allen, who cried like a baby. I played chess with Uncle LeRoy who beat me because of the above frolic. He left for the plantation this morning. Father bought Thomas a pair of boots.’

20 December 1861

‘Cloudy and warm. Great news! Minister Adams has demanded his passports. War with England is thought to be inevitable! Mr. Faulkner is in Norfolk. The 3rd regiment has been moved back to Norfolk. The Yankees have certainly got their hands full. A fight is hourly expected in Kentucky! Father bought Thomas an elegant new knife! Cotton is 42 cents a pound in New York! Father was advanced 15 cents a pound! Thomas has got a very bad cold. I got a letter from Wilson yesterday, giving a description of his journey to Athens. The wagon came up bringing Betty, her baby, and a boy ‘Bil.’ Uncle LeRoy came this evening at nine o’clock.’

21 December 1861

‘Warm, clear, delightful. I went round on Bond’s Hill to see the funeral procession of Mr. Bloom. It was in Mr. Johnston’s house. Colonel J. E. Jones commanded the military. Sam does not get along well at all. He has not gone one curb down. They were too large. The news about Minister Adams is contradicted.’

22 December 1861

‘Cold, damp. Rained in the night pretty hard. I took a Dover’s Powder on account of my leg. There is an account of a small fight on the Potomac. Our side was repulsed with 30 killed and as many wounded. No more from Mason and Slidell. The coals popped so tremendously we moved into Mother’s room. Dr. Fitzgerald came to see Betty yesterday and put a plaster on her and gave her some medicine.’

1 January 1862

‘The New Year comes in with a clear cool day. All the folks went to the Supper last night and Thomas stayed home with me. Mr. Emmett Johnson is to be buried here today. Mother has gone down now to help give the supper out to the poor. Tracy came up to see us yesterday. Played a game of chess: Tom beat me. Thomas wrote to Uncle Richard today. Mrs. Vardell, Mrs. Ralston’s sister, died very suddenly here yesterday.’

2 January 1862

‘Warm and cloudy. Took a game of chess: Tom beat me. ‘Ginco Piano’ opening. Maty, Wills, and Olivia Bates spent the morning here. It is rumored that they are firing on Fort Pickens. The fort commenced first. There are also reports of fighting between Savannah and Charleston. Finished The War of Roses. The weather today is as warm as in spring. Uncle Richard has got back to Portsmouth again and Uncle John is opposite.’

17 February 1862

‘Cold, damp, raw. Had very considerable sore throat through the night and this morning. We were fighting all day at Fort Donelson and had whipped them, taking 1,000 prisoners and were driving them back with cold steel, &c. This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with their commands are prisoners, and that Nashville is in their power: Kentucky and Tennessee both gone, 12,000 of our men are prisoners. All the government stores in Nashville lost, and amid all this, Savannah is in imminent danger. So is Weldon, the key to all the railroads that run to Virginia. It’s perfectly awful! T wrote a letter to Mother today. It is reported that the enemy had shelled Bowling Green and, on account of some movement of the enemy, General Johnston had evacuated it. It commenced raining this eve at 3 and rained hard until now, 9 o’clock. Father and Uncle LeRoy took a game of chess: odds queen. Father mated Uncle LeRoy and I played 7 games of backgammon: I 4, he 3. Thomas and Uncle LeRoy played 7 games of draughts: Thomas beat 3 games.’

18 February 1862

‘Cloudy, damp, and rainy. Rained the whole night and until nine AM. Thomas is writing to Mother. Some people don’t believe that news about Fort Donelson. There has been a dispatch saying that Nashville has not surrendered and do not know about Donelson. Commenced to rain at ten AM, and has rained very hard until 9 PM. A rainy day truly. We received a short letter from Mother. She got along very well and was met in Sparta by the family. My sore throat is entirely well.’

We can conquer the world

‘Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government [Poland] are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.’ This is Joseph Goebbels writing in his diary in 1942, not long after the Nazis had formulated their Final Solution policy. Goebbels committed suicide 80 years ago today, the day after Hitler and his wife (see He loves me so much); but, unlike Hitler, Goebbels went to some lengths to preserve an historical record of his life - 75,000 pages of his diaries.

Goebbels was born in 1897 into a Catholic family at Rheydt, an industrial town in the Ruhr district. From early childhood he suffered a deformation in his right leg and wore a brace and special shoe, which left him with a limp. At the start of World War I he volunteered for military service, but was rejected. He studied at universities in Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg (where he was awarded a PhD), and then worked as a journalist, and tried to write novels and plays.

Goebbels joined the Nazi party in 1924, and became allied with Gregor Strasser, Nazi organiser in northern Germany. He came to the attention of Hitler, who gave him a private audience in April 1926, and then appointed him a party leader for the region of Berlin. He soon discovered his talent for propaganda, writing tracts such as The Second Revolution and Lenin or Hitler, and launching the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack). In 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag (one of only 10 Nazis), and the following year he became the Nazi party propaganda chief. In 1931, he marred Magda Ritschel, and they would have six children. However, Goebbels was an inveterate womaniser, and was known to have had many affairs.

Goebbels played a key role in successive election campaigns, and was instrumental in seeing Hitler elected leader in 1933. Goebbels, himself, was made minister for propaganda and national enlightenment, a position he then held until his death. He worked assiduously to centralise and control all aspects of German and cultural life, not only the press, but the media, the performing arts, literature, etc, purging them of Jews, socialists, homosexuals and liberals. At the same time, he ensured a development of high culture, such as Wagner’s operas, and plenty of light entertainment for the masses. Once war began in September 1939, his influence over domestic policy strengthened, and, increasingly, with Hitler appearing in public less, he became the face and the voice of the Nazi regime. As a dedicated anti-Semite, Goebbels was strongly linked to the Nazi Final Solution policy, and, especially, the deportation of Jews from Berlin.

In the final stages of the war, Hitler, before killing himself, appointed Goebbels Chancellor of Germany, but it was empty gesture, since a day later - on 1 May - Goebbels and his wife killed themselves, having already murdered their six children. Further biographical information on Goebbels can be freely obtained online at Wikipedia, the Jewish Virtual Library, or from the pages of Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death by Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel available at Googlebooks.

Goebbels began to keep a diary in 1923, shortly before his 27th birthday, while unemployed. Most of his early entries were about a young woman with whom he was having a turbulent relationship (and whom, in fact, had given him the diary). According to biographers, the diary quickly became a kind of therapy for the troubled young man. Apparently, these early diary entries show little interest in politics, and there is no mention of Hitler or the Nazi movement until the following year. i.e. after Goebbels first met Hitler in July 1925.

In 1934, the year after Hitler had become Chancellor and appointed Goebbels a minister, Goebbels published an edited version of his diaries for propaganda purposes: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei. Eine historische Darstellung in Tagebuchblättern (From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery: A Historical Account from the Pages of a Diary). This was translated into English in 1938 and published by Hurst and Blackett as My Part in Germany’s Fight.

Wikipedia has a full entry on Goebbels’ diaries, and their history. Goebbels filled 20 hand-written volumes until 1941, and then - fully aware of their historical value - had them stored in underground vaults at the Reichsbank in Berlin. Thereafter, he dictated his entries to a stenographer, who typed up corrected versions. In 1944, he ordered all his diaries to be copied for safekeeping, and a special darkroom was created at his apartment for the diaries to be transferred to microfilm, a recent invention. The boxes of glass plates containing the microfilmed diaries were buried at Potsdam; and the original handwritten/ typed diaries were stored in the Reich Chancellery. Goebbels made his last entry on 10 April 1945.

Some of the original diaries survived the aftermath of the war - a complicated story involving ex-President Herbert Hoover and Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent Louis P. Lochner. (For more on this see Andrew Hamilton’s excellent article in Counter-Currents Publishing). These diaries were edited and translated by Lochner and first published in English in 1948 by Doubleday (New York) and Hamish Hamilton (London) in 1948 as The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943. Hamilton notes: ‘An instant bestseller upon its release, the book was serialized in newspapers and magazines and became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. The Hoover faction and Doubleday, however, were forced to surrender most of their profits to the Office of Alien Property and destroy 30,000 copies of the book still in stock. The original sheaf of 7,000 transcribed pages was, however, deposited at the Hoover Library at Stanford, where it remains today.’

Further extracts appeared in print over the years. In 1962, came The Early Goebbels Diaries: the journals of Joseph Goebbels from 1923-1926 (edited by Helmut Heiber, translated by Oliver Watson, published by Praeger, New York; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London). In 1978, came The Goebbels Diaries: the last days as edited Hugh Trevor-Roper (one of the central characters in the Hitler diary debacle - see Dacre’s non-fake diaries) and translated by Richard Barry (published by Putnam, New York; Secker and Warburg, London).

Controversy surrounded the publication in 1982 of The Goebbels Diaries: 1939–1941, as translated and edited by Fred Taylor (Hamish Hamilton, 1982; Putnam, New York). According to New York Magazine, the diary material was bought ‘from an unidentified German source in a shadowy deal in London’, and, ‘while no one is claiming the book is a forgery its story is one of publishing practices that seem, at the very least, sloppy and misleading to readers.’ The article goes on to explain how the diary pages may well have been doctored in an effort to tailor history from a Russian perspective.

Meanwhile, the 1,600 glass plates of microfilm buried at Potsdam had been discovered by the Soviets and shipped to Moscow, where they sat unopened for decades - until discovered by a German historian, Elke Fröhlich, in 1992. Then, over 15 years (1993-2008), Fröhlich and others edited the entire collection on behalf of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, with the support of the National Archives Service of Russia. They were published in a definitive edition of 29 volumes (each one about 500 pages) by K. G. Saur Verlag as Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I Aufzeichnungen 1923-1941. It has been estimated that despite the various English editions of the Goebbels diaries, only about 10% of the total, now published in German, has actually appeared in English.

A few extracts in English from Goebbels’ diaries can be found online. Most of the following were found on PBS’s website The Man Behind Hitler, but a couple (those from 1942) came from The Nizkor Project website (which has filtered out only those entries concerned with the fate of the Jews.)

4 July 1924
‘We need a firm hand in Germany. Let’s put an end to all the experiments and empty words, and start getting down to serious work. Throw out the Jews, who refuse to become real Germans. Give them a good beating too. Germany is yearning for an individual, a man - as the earth yearns for rain in the summer.’

17 July 1924
‘I’m so despondent about everything. Everything I try goes totally wrong. There’s no escape from this hole here. I feel drained. So far, I still haven’t found a real purpose in life. Sometimes, I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning. There’s nothing to get up for.’

13 April 1926
‘. . . I learned that Hitler had phoned. He wanted to welcome us, and in fifteen minutes he was there. Tall, healthy and vigorous. I like him. He puts us to shame with his kindness. We met. We asked questions. He gave brilliant replies. I love him. . . I can accept this firebrand as my leader. I bow to his superiority, I acknowledge his political genius!’

16 June 1926
‘Hitler is still the same dear comrade. You can’t help liking him as a person. And he has a stupendous mind. As a speaker he has constructed a wonderful harmony of gesture, facial expression and spoken word. The born motivator! With him, we can conquer the world. Give him his head, and he will shake the corrupt Republic to its foundations.’

26 October 1928
‘I have no friends and no wife. I seem to be going through a major spiritual crisis. I still have the same old problems with my foot, which gives me incessant pain and discomfort. And then there are the rumours, to the effect that I am homosexual. Agitators are trying to break up our movement, and I’m constantly tied up in minor squabbles. It’s enough to make you weep!’

15 September 1930
‘I am shaking with excitement. The first election results. Fantastic. Jubilation everywhere, an incredible success. It’s stunning. The bourgeois parties have been smashed. So far we have 103 seats. That’s a tenfold increase. I would never have expected it. The mood of enthusiasm reminds me of 1914, when war broke out. Things will get pretty hot in the months ahead. The Communists did well, but we are the second-largest party.’

31 January 1933
‘We’ve made it. We’ve set up shop in Wilhelmstrasse. Hitler is chancellor. It’s like a fairy tale come true! He deserved it. Wonderful euphoria. People were going mad below. . . A new beginning! An explosion of popular energy. Bigger and bigger crowds. I spoke on the radio, to every German station. “We are immensely happy,” I said.’

11 May 1933
‘Worked until late at home. In the evening, I gave a speech outside the opera house, in front of the bonfire while the filthy, trashy books were being burned by the students. I was at the top of my form. Huge crowds. Superb summer weather began today.’

20 June 1936
‘Yesterday: Schwanenwerder. We were waiting for Max Schmeling’s fight with Joe Louis. We were on tenterhooks the whole evening with Schmeling’s wife. We told each other stories, laughed and cheered. . . In round twelve, Schmeling knocked out the Negro. Fantastic, a dramatic, thrilling fight. Schmeling fought for Germany and won. The white man prevailed over the black, and the white man was German. I didn’t get to bed until five.’

23 October 1940
‘Churchill has issued an appeal to the people of France: impudent, offensive and bristling with hypocrisy. A revolting, fat beast. I drafted a speech with a sharp, withering response. If we don’t answer them, the English will continue to draw strength from their illusions.’

10 December 1940
‘Yesterday: A glorious day in Berlin. We are two hours late. Very heavy air raid on London. Some 600,000 kilograms. Entire districts of the city engulfed in flames. Only one aircraft lost. A really fine show. London is playing things down, but the American reports are strong and vivid. Nice to hear. The previous day they were talking about a decline in our offensive capability.’

24 June 1941
‘Sixteen hundred feet of newsreel from the start of our Russian campaign. Some of our new weapons are shown - huge monstrosities that smash to pieces everything in their way. The divine judgement of history is being passed on the Soviet Union.’

27 March 1942
‘Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government [Poland] are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor. The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention. A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophesy which the Fuehrer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It’s a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question. Here, too, the Fuehrer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.

The ghettoes that will be emptied in the cities of the General Government now will be refilled with Jews thrown out of the Reich. This process is to be repeated from time to time. There is nothing funny in it for the Jews, and the fact that Jewry’s representatives in England and America are today organizing and sponsoring the war against Germany must be paid for dearly by its representatives in Europe - and that’s only right.’

13 December 1942
‘The question of Jewish persecution in Europe is being given top news priority by the English and the Americans. . . At bottom, however, I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff. But the Jews will go on and on and turn the heat on the British-American press. We won’t even discuss this theme publicly, but instead I give orders to start an atrocity campaign against the English on their treatment of Colonials. Efforts are under way to declare Rome an open city, so that it won’t be bombarded. The Pope is studying the question of air raids on Italian cities and seems to be exerting pressure on the English to spare at least certain districts. The declarations issued by the Vatican on this question are extremely clever and cannot but win favor for the Pope, at least in Italy. But the Italians are willing to accept any help offered them in this painful situation. The Italians are extremely lax in the treatment of Jews. They protect the Italian Jews both in Tunis and in occupied France and won’t permit their being drafted for work or compelled to wear the Star of David. This shows once again that Fascism does not really dare to get down to fundamentals, but is very superficial regarding most important problems. The Jewish question is causing us a lot of trouble. Everywhere, even among our allies, the Jews have friends to help them, which is a proof that they are still playing an important role even in the Axis camp. All the more are they shorn of power within Germany itself.’

3 April 1945
‘At the daily briefing conferences the Luftwaffe comes in for the sharpest criticism from the Führer. Day after day Göring has to listen without being in the position to demur at all. Colonel-General Stumpff, for instance, refused to subordinate himself to Kesselring for the new operations planned in the West. The Führer called him sharply to order saying that the relative positions of Kesselring and Stumpff were similar to those of him and Schaub. In the West, of course, it is now and for the immediate future a continuous process of muddling through. We are in the most critical and dangerous phase of this war and one sometimes has the impression that the German people, fighting at the height of the war crisis, has broken out in a sweat impossible for the non-expert to distinguish as the precursor of death or recovery.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 May 2015.

My heart beats faster

Eighty years ago today Kim Malthe-Bruun, a brave young Dane, only 21 years of age, was executed by the Nazis for being involved with the Danish resistance movement. Soon after his death, his mother published some of Kim’s writings, including letters and diary material written during his incarceration. In one moving piece, written just a month before his death, he writes about feeling no fear while his heart beats faster every time someone stops outside his door.

Kim Malthe-Bruun was born in Fort Saskatchewan, near Edmonton, Canada, in 1923. His mother, Vibeke, originally from Denmark, decided to move back home with Kim, then nine years old, and his younger sister. When still young he signed up with the merchant navy, and then, after the German occupation of Denmark, he joined the Danish resistance. In 1944, he was arrested by the Germans for being involved in the shipping of weapons from Sweden to Denmark. He was tortured, and then, on 6 April 1945, he was executed. A little further information is available from Wikipedia.

After the war, Vibeke edited a selection of her son’s diary-like letters, some written when he was still a seaman and some written from prison, as well as diary material found hidden in the Copenhagen prison. These were published by Thaning & Appel soon after Kim’s death. They received a wider audience when, in 1955, Random House published a translation (by Gerry Bothmer) into English titled Heroic Heart: The diary and letters of Kim Malthe-Bruun 1941-1945. More recently, in 1996, substantial excerpts from Kim’s diary appeared in Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries by Laurel Holliday (Simon and Schuster). Much of this latter - which was reissued in 2014 - is available to read online at Googlebooks (and is the source of the extract below).

In general, Kim’s published letters are diary-like, factual, about his daily life, trials and tribulations, but the following text (3 March 1945) was found, after the German capitulation, in Vestre prison. It was written in microscopic writing on the back of a letter Kim had received toward the end of February 1945. Around this period, it is known that Kim was being tortured and, at least once, was sent back to his cell in an unconscious state.

3 March 1945
‘Yesterday I was sitting at the table. I looked at my hands in amazement. They were trembling. I thought about it for a moment. There are some things which produce a purely physical reaction. Suddenly, as I was sitting here, I was possessed by the desire to draw something. I got up and started to sketch on the wall. I was fascinated and became more and more absorbed. Under my hand suddenly appeared a farmer, standing by a barbed-wire fence. I sat down, got up and made some changes, sat down again and felt much better. All day I worked on it. There were so many things which I couldn’t make come out the way I wanted them to. I studied it, stretched my imagination to the utmost and was suddenly completely exhausted. I erased all of it and since then even the idea of drawing makes me sick.

I’ve been thinking about this strange experience a good deal. Right afterwards I had such a wonderful feeling of relief, a sense of having won a victory and such intense happiness that I felt quite numb. It seemed as if body and soul became separated, one in a wild and soaring freedom beyond the reach of the world, and the other doubled up in a horrible cramp which held it to the earth. I suddenly realized how terrifically strong I am (but perhaps I only tried to talk myself into this). When the body and soul rejoined forces, it was as if all the joys of the world were right there for me. But it was as with so many stimulants; when the effect wore off the reaction set in. I saw that my hands were shaking, something had given inside. It was as if there had been a short circuit in the roots of my heart which drained it of all strength. I was like a man hungry for pleasure and consumed by desire. But still I was calm and in better spirits than ever before.

Although I feel no fear, my heart beats faster every time someone stops outside my door. It’s a physical reaction.

Strange, but I don’t feel any resentment or hatred at all. Something happened to my body, which is only the body of an adolescent, and it reacted as such, but my mind was elsewhere. It was aware of the small creatures who were busying themselves with my body, but it was in a world of its own and too engrossed to pay much attention to them.

I’ve learned something by being alone. It is as if I’d reached rock bottom in myself, which usually can’t be seen for all the layers of egotism, conceit, love, and all the ups and downs of daily life. It is this which makes me feel as if I’d had a short circuit within me. When I’m with the other people, their interests, their conversation, act as a balm, covering the rock bottom in myself with a warm compress. When I’m alone, it is as if layers of skin were being scraped away. Your mind is not at ease, you can’t concentrate on reading, the spirit as well as the body must keep pacing up and down. I suddenly understood what insanity must be, but I knew that this was like everything else which has happened to me, and in a couple of days I’ll be myself again.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 April 2015.

Peter the Great at war

Peter the Great, who died all of 300 years ago today, is widely regarded as a pivotal figure in Russian history, responsible for modernising and westernising the country through extensive reforms. Though not a diarist himself, Patrick Gordon, a friend and military adviser for over 10 years, did keep a diary, one that is widely accepted as providing ‘unparalleled insight’ into some aspects of Peter’s reign.

Peter grew up on the Izmaylovo Estate (near Moscow) and was educated at the Amusement Palace from an early age by several tutors (one of which was Gordon). When his father died in 1676, he left the sovereignty to Peter’s elder half-brother, the crippled Feodor III, but the government was largely run by Artamon Matveyev, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter’s greatest childhood benefactors. When Feodor died in 1682 childless, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky and Naryshkin families over who should inherit the throne. Peter jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696, but because Ivan was partially incapacitated, a council of Russian nobles chose the 10-year-old Peter to become tsar, with Ivan’s 25-year-old sister Sophia as regent.

In consequence of Sophia’s overt exclusion of Peter from the government, he did not receive the usual education of a Russian tsar. Instead of being confined within the narrow bounds of a palace, he grew up in a free atmosphere, enjoying, it is said, noisy outdoor games often of a military ilk, his favourite toys being arms of one sort or another. Early in 1689 Peter’s political marriage was enacted to Yevdokiya Fyodorovna Lopukhina. That same year 1689, after a failed coup by Sophia, Peter forced her to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family. After assuming sole control and over time, Peter implemented sweeping changes across Russian society, government, and military - though the reforms came at a significant human cost due to forced labor and harsh implementation.

Influenced by travels in Western Europe, Peter sought to bring Russia closer to European standards and practices, and indeed laid the groundwork for Russia’s emergence as a European power. He is credited with establishing the senate, reforming government structure, and creating the ‘table of ranks’ to determine precedence based on merit rather than birth. Economically, he encouraged the development of industry, commerce, and education, establishing factories, shipyards, and schools throughout Russia. He introduced the Julian calendar, reformed the Russian alphabet, and launched the first Russian newspaper. And, in 1703, he founded St. Petersburg.

Peter created a modern standing army and built Russia’s first navy, significantly enhancing the country’s military capabilities. With the initial help and advice of Gordon (who rose to the rank of general), Peter engaged in several significant military campaigns throughout his reign: the Azov campaigns of 1695-1696 against the Ottoman Empire resulted in the capture of Azov and access to the Black Sea; the Great Northern War, lasting from 1700 to 1721, against Sweden (which ultimately led to Russia’s emergence as a major Baltic power); and the Russo-Persian War from 1722 to 1723, which temporarily expanded Russian influence in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region.

Peter married twice and had 11 children, though many died in infancy. His eldest son from his first marriage, Alexis, was convicted of treason and executed in 1718. Before his death, Peter issued a decree changing the rules of succession, allowing him to choose his heir. However, he died on 8 February 1725 without naming a successor. Further information is widely available online - at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, World History and Library of Congress (which lists primary sources).

Peter the Great did not keep a diary himself. However, his close associate and military adviser, Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, maintained a detailed diary, one that is widely accepted as providing ‘unparalleled insight’ into some aspects of Peter’s reign. See A soldier of fortune for a biography of Gordon and much about his diaries. The Gordon diary manuscripts were held in the archives of the Imperial Russian foreign office, and a complete German translation, edited by Dr Maurice Possalt, was not published until the mid-19th century. Only parts of the diary appeared in English, in 1859, thanks to the Spalding Club which published Passages from the Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (AD 1635-AD 1699), as edited by Joseph Robertson. A 1968 edition is readily available to read online at Internet Archive.

However, much more recently, the diaries (1635 to 1699) have been published in full across six volumes by Aberdeen University Press. The sixth and final volume, edited by by Dmitry Fedosov - Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries 1635-1699 - appeared in 2016. On its website, the publisher quotes the historian Professor Robert Frost: ‘The sixth and final volume of The Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries is in some ways the most significant of all. It covers the vital period in which Peter the Great launched his challenge to the traditional Russian system and set Russia on the path to great power status. Gordon played a central role in two of the great dramas of these years: the successful siege and defence of Azov, which firmly established Russian power on the Caspian Sea, and the crushing of the Revolt of the Streltsy, the most dangerous early challenge to Peter’s reforms. Gordon’s diary gives unparalleled insight into these dramatic events and adds much to our knowledge of one of the most significant and charismatic rulers in Russian history. Gordon tells the story with characteristic detachment and a wealth of detail. As a diarist he ranks with Samuel Pepys, and the publication of Volume VI marks the completion of a project for which Dmitry Fedosov and Paul Dukes deserve to be congratulated. After three centuries, the original text of a hugely important historical work, and what can also be seen to be a significant literary achievement, is fully available for the first time.’

Every one of the six volumes is freely available to read online or to download. 

Here is a brief AI overview of what can be found out about Peter from Gordon’s diary.

‘- The diary mentions many contacts between Gordon and the young Peter before and during the tsar’s seizure of power from his half-sister, Regent Sophia.

- Peter’s challenge to traditional Russian systems: Gordon’s diary covers the vital period when Peter launched his efforts to modernise Russia and set it on the path to becoming a great power.

- Peter’s military campaigns: As a general under Peter, Gordon likely recorded details of military operations and strategies employed by the tsar.

- Peter’s personality and behaviour: Gordon’s diary entry from 1690 suggests that Peter enjoyed the company of his boyars, counsellors, and officers, indicating his sociable nature.

- Peter’s early governance: The diary provides context for the political climate during the young tsar’s rise to power and his initial years of rule.

- Peter’s interactions with foreigners: As a Scottish officer in Russian service, Gordon’s diary likely includes observations on Peter’s attitudes towards and dealings with foreigners in his court.’

Here are several verbatim extracts from volume VI of Gordon’s diaries (though the older, single and much edited version is easier to digest!).

1 July 1698

’45 men of Coll. Hunder[t]marks reg-t being by lott to dy were brought out, and after some supposed intercession mercy was showne that every two should cast lotts; w-ch being done & they set apart, it was told them that if yet they would tell who were the ring-leaders of the mutiny, they should be let go tree. After some pawses they began to mumple & tell of one or two, who being brought to the torture, without much ado confessed themselves guilty & told of 3 or 4 more, who were also brought to the torture, and after some stripes they confessed also. So were set apart and ordered to prepare themselves tor death, and these on whom the lotts had fallen wer let tree.

Orders came in the afternoone that these who had twice deserted & some others should be hanged.’

2 July 1698

‘This day were 72 persons hanged to fyve and to three on gibbets. Many streltsees as on the former dayes sent away, the officers & sojours who convoyed them getting a months pay, the sojours getting provisions sent from Mosco, and the podvods who remained with us getting to a kopike a day.

Wee examined many this day and sentenced 4 to be beheaded, and ordered the sick & wounded with 4 persons more tor future further inquisition to be left in the monastery, so that but 25 persons remained here.’

3 July 1698

‘This day his Majesty letters came to dismiss the army and was read publikely, in the beginning whereof wee had all thanks for our services. The gentry departed immediately, and three of the sojours regiments aft[er] dinner. The Generalli[ssi]mus and wee his Towarises with cancellary, chancellours &c writers with the Butirsky regiment stayed all night.

This day were the last of the streltsees sent away.’

19 October 1698

‘Many executed.

Roman & Michael came from Evanofsky and brought with [them] on 4 podrodes 2 kades with honey, 2 czetferiks of hairegroates, a czetverik with a czetfericzok of oate-groates, a 3d p[ar]t of a tunne of brandy, a czetfert & 5 czetferikes ot rey meale, a bagge with wooll, 2 pillowes with feathers.

The Imperiall Envoy gave me a visitt.

My regiment ordered to releeve the guards in his M. Hoffe, castle & towne.’

20 October 1698 

‘The Great Ambassade at audience by his Majesty. Was at a great deale more ease this bygone night & today as before.

Payed of the potter Simon Osipuf for 1,431 potts to the 3 ovens in the after chambers & the one in the after hoffe in the lower roome, at 3 dengees the pott, 21 rubles 15 alt. 3 dengees.

My regiment releeved the guardes in the towne.’

21 October 1698

‘I kept my bed still.’

22 October 1698

‘A great feast by Leo Kirilovitz [Naryshkin], where his M. & others.’

It is worth noting that Peter was much moved by the death of Gordon as shown by the final two paragraphs in Joseph Robertson’s edited version of Gordon’s diaries: ‘His strength was now fast failing, and during the following summer he became so weak that he was unable to leave his bed. He died at seven o’clock in the morning of the twenty-ninth of November, 1699. The Czar, who had visited him five times in his illness, and had been twice with him during the night, stood weeping by his bed as he drew his last breath; and the eyes of him who had left Scotland a poor unfriended wanderer, were closed by the hands of an Emperor.

Peter himself ordered the funeral procession, and took his place in its long line, accompanied by all the pomp of his empire, and followed by the representatives of most of the great powers of Europe. The body was carried on the shoulders of twenty-eight colonels; two generals supported the footsteps of his widow, and twenty ladies, the wives of high Muscovite dignitaries, walked in her train. The religious obsequies were performed by the priests of the church which he loved, in the first chapel of stone which the Roman Catholics were suffered to raise in Moscow. It was built chiefly by his bounty, and his tomb was dug before its high altar, in a vault.’

Praise from the King

‘I was invited to go to Buckingham Palace for Dinner to meet Mrs Roosevelt, the wife of the President of the United States who is over here on a visit. She is the guest of the King and Queen. [. . .] Before dinner when the King and Queen joined the party in the ante-room, the King as he shook hands with me said that he thought the Ministry of Food was doing an excellent job, and said that he and the country were grateful to me.’ This is from the diaries of Frederick James Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton, who died 60 years ago today. The published diaries cover Woolton’s time during World War II under Churchill, first as Minister for Food and then Minister for Reconstruction. 

Woolton was born in 1883 in Salford, Lancashire, the only surviving child of a saddler. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and the University of Manchester. He hoped to pursue an academic career in the social sciences but his wish was frustrated by his family’s financial circumstances; instead he became a mathematics teacher at Burnley Grammar School. In 1912 he married Maud Smith, and they had two children. Having been judged unfit for military service, he became a civil servant, first in the War Office, then at the Leather Control Board. At the end of the war, he became secretary of the Boot Manufacturers’ Federation, and joined the John Lewis organisation, becoming director in 1928 and chairman in 1936. 

Woolton was knighted in 1935 and was raised to the peerage in 1939 for his contribution to British industry. His career took a significant turn during World War II when, in April 1940 and despite not being affiliated to any political party, he was appointed Minister of Food. He established the rationing system, the National Food Campaign, and the introduction of free school meals and milk for children. His business acumen and communication skills earned him the affectionate public nickname of ‘Uncle Fred’. 

In 1943, Woolton was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and then, after the war, from 1946 to 1955, he served as Chairman of the Conservative Party. His efforts in rebuilding and revitalising the party were credited with the Conservative victory in 1951. In 1956, he was further honoured when he became Earl of Woolton with the subsidiary title Viscount Walberton. After the death of his wife in 1961, Woolton married Dr Margaret Thomas, the family doctor who had cared for his first wife. He himself died on 14 December 1964. Further information is available from Wikipedia and Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts.

For two periods in his life - 1940-1945 and 1953-1960 -  Woolton kept a diary. However, there seems to be no clear explanation as to why he started to write a diary, why he stopped, nor why he restarted in 1953. Nevertheless, a selection of extracts (alongside letters, a few official papers and other official materials) were published in 2020 by Oxford University Press for The British Academy as The Diaries and Letters of Lord Woolton 1940-1945 (edited by Michael Kandiah and Judith Rowbotham). OUP says this work ‘showcases a wartime figure who has in prior academic work tended to be relegated to the sidelines, enabling an understanding of the importance of the roles undertaken by Woolton, and a better appreciation of his wartime contribution.’ A review found at The Churchill Project suggests that Diaries and Letters is ’an important and revealing addition to the scholarship of the era.’

Here are several extracts

3 February 1941

‘I took to the cabinet proposals for dealing with the milk trade . . . My proposal, in short, was to remove the minimum price for milk and let free competition have its way with the result that milk would have been cheaper.

The proposal was opposed by Mr Alexander (ex-Co-operative Society) who made a very good capitalist speech, supported bv Mr Bevin, who wanted the country to buy out all the milk people and run a nationalised milk scheme. The Labour people were quite solidly against what would have been tor the benefit of the community, in spite of the fact that they are supposed to be anxious to do something about the milk trade.

The Prime Minister asked if the little milkman would be subject to the ravages of competition. And so I withdrew the Report.

The Prime Minister had previously asked me why I had produced it, and I told him that the politicians had been trying for years to get something done about this trade, but since they now didn’t seem to want anything to be done. I wasn’t interested.’

11 March 1942

‘I made a statement in the House of Lords about the introduction ot the 85 per cent extraction flour. I did not make a long speech - merely a statement ot the whole of the facts, and said that the Government knew that it would not be popular with the people, but as it saved a considerable amount of shipping space in the year they also knew that people would accept it without complaint. The House accepted it all right, and Horder came along and spiked the guns of all the people who would complain on medical grounds, by saying that anybody who could eat bread at all could eat wheat meal with impunity as it suited all digestions. The announcement got a very good press. The country doesn’t mind what is asked of it so long as it feels that there is both reason and control.’

19 March 1942

‘I had a very bad attack of colitis in the night, and went this morning to a Privy Council meeting wondering how I would manage to stand through it. I managed but only just.

After the meeting the King took me to his room: he immediately said that I didn’t look very well, and pulled up an easy chair for me to sit in. He talked very intelligently about the food situation, and very frankly about my colleagues! He spoke of Bevin - and mentioned in passing that when he (Bevin) sat in the chair in which I was sitting he bulged all over the sides.  He said that Bevin has no understanding of the mind of the people, adding ‘Neither has the Prime Minister’ The King has been brought up to do the industrial side of the Royal job and he knows more about working men than the Minister of Labour. The King told Leathers a few days ago that the two of his Ministers of whom he always heard as really being in charge of their departments and getting their jobs done were himself and me.’

12 May 1942

‘I made a speech in the House. Lord Arnold had put down a motion about beer. He’s a bigoted teetotaller of the worst variety and made a speech which was little short of offensive. It was difficult not to adopt the same tone with him, but I tried to make a reasoned statement. I suggested to the House that at a time when we were calling for the maximum physical effort from the working-man it was unfair to deprive him of his glass of beer if he wanted it. The House was with me.’

1 June 1942

‘We had a Cabinet Meeting this evening at which I explained the proposals that we intended to put into force to reduce waste of transport and manpower in the milk industry: it’s a scheme to rationalise distribution. I had had charts prepared which had been put up in the Committee Room. I didn’t observe when I went in that they had been put up over the map of Europe that was hanging on the wall, and as soon as I sat down Winston growled at me ‘So you’re disfiguring the map of Europe now’! He was in his best form, and when I’d explained the scheme, which I did in a series of quick thumbnail sketches - which I think it took most of the Cabinet all their time to follow - if they did - and Winston pronounced it a good scheme and silenced any questioning by remarking that ‘He’d follow Lord Woolton anywhere’! There was method in it all: the Honours List is to be published next week and it was being made clear to the other Ministers that there was a reason for this selection.’

9 June 1942

‘In the afternoon I went to the House to address an All-Party meeting of members on the work of the Ministry. I took charts with me, and did the thumbnail sketch technique on them. They were very impressed and indicated their approval of the way we were doing the job.’

13 July 1942

‘We had a Cabinet meeting in the evening. There has been a secret debate about the shipping position, and the press has been urging that more information about the state of our shipping should should be given. The cabinet decided that an impartial statement should be made. It to be that no information would be given! Doesn’t sound very impartial to me.

We also discussed the probable food situation in Europe after the war, and everybody seemed very concerned about how we should feed the starving nations of Europe. Winston was very downright: he realised that there could be no question of the immediate removal of rationing restrictions on food, but said that he felt the people to be considered first were the people who had sweated and toiled to win the war, and that if we had worked and endured as we should have to, in order to gain the victory over the Nazis, both for ourselves and for the other European countries, he felt that we were the first people to be considered so far as food was concerned. I think he’s right, but we can’t leave the other countries to starve because we’ve won the war. It’s going to be a problem.’

28 July 1942

‘Mabane had his first debate in the House of Commons as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food and I went to listen to it. He did very well, and there was really very little raised that was of any importance. On the whole the House is pleased with the conduct of the Ministry of Food - although one of its late parliamentary secretaries - Boothby, who was sacked from it - did his best to be difficult.’

18 August 1942

‘I had a talk with Kingsley Wood, who told me that he thought I’d done my job as Minister of food, and he wanted me to tell Winston this, and look for fresh worlds to conquer, he told me again how well he considered the food problem had been managed, and told me that he thought I ought to hold very high office in the Government.’

24 October 1942

‘I was invited to go to Buckingham Palace for Dinner to meet Mrs Roosevelt, the wife of the President of the United States who is over here on a visit. She is the guest of the King and Queen.

It was a small party - the King and Queen, and Mrs Roosevelt, Hardinge, the King’s private secretary and his wife, and Lascelles, one of the assistant private secretaries, and his wife, Ernest Bevin and myself.

Before dinner when the King and Queen joined the party in the ante-room, the King as he shook hands with me said that he thought the Ministry of Food was doing an excellent job, and said that he and the country were grateful to me

I sat next to the Queen, whilst Mrs R. sat on the King’s right-hand with Bevin next to her. The Queen was charming - as she always is - and I had a long conversation with her, chiefly about religion. We were agreed that the only thing that is going to bring England - and the other countries - back to real peace is a re-awakening of a spiritual sense. We talked much about this and I felt that I was sermonising, and begged her pardon adding that she might have thought the Archbishop of Canterbury was talking to her, except, of course, that I felt he would have discussed banking, not religion.’

28 October 1942

‘I dined with Harriman at his flat. Harriman was in a most pessimistic mood about the provision of shipping: said that we were going to be extremely hard put to it and he thought that British agriculture ought to be altered: that we ought to grow more wheat in this country and less feeding-stuffs for animals, thereby saving shipping, both on the importation of wheat and on the importation of meat, since, if we grow less animal feeding stuffs we should have to slaughter our cattle.

I refused lo be drawn into the conversation saying that I thought the only way in which I could possibly get on with Mr Hudson [Minister of Agriculture] was if we each minded our own business.’

Patients becoming hysterical

‘Yesterday evening was really frightening. The air-raid siren went off at eight o’clock, just as we were giving the patients their supper. The anti-aircraft guns immediately began firing very close by. Then suddenly there was a huge burst of thunder and the sound of breaking glass. I was in the women’s ward at the time, and the patients immediately began shouting and groaning, many of them becoming hysterical.’ This is from a diary kept by Lena Mukhina - born 100 years ago today - during the early months of the Siege of Leningrad. She was only 16 at the time, but the diary is said ‘to paint a picture of a city reeling from the impact of war and the struggle of its innocent, defenceless inhabitants for survival’.

Mukhina was born on 21 November 1924 in Ufa, some 1,000 km to the east of Moscow. In the early 1930s, she moved with her mother to Leningrad. There she experienced the first six months of the Nazi siege, part of the time working in a hospital. In June 1942, she was allowed to leave on a special train carrying evacuees to Kotelnich in the Kirov Oblast. But, somehow, she ended up in Gorky where she began a milling apprenticeship at a factory training school. It was not until the autumn of 1945 that she returned to Leningrad, and there she enrolled at the school of art and industry. Three years later she graduated with a degree in mosaics. After only a few weeks as a mosaic artist, and a spell working in a mirror factory, she was made redundant, and headed for Moscow to return to the flour milling industry.

In 1950, Mukhina became a labourer at the Southern Kuzbass thermal power station, rising quickly to become a designer - for the organisation’s slogans, displays etc. However, by 1952, she was working at the Kuntsevo Mechanical Works, where she remained for 15 years, mostly in the branding department. Before retiring due to ill health, she worked as a painter of designs on fabrics at the Kuntsevo Factory of Artistic Haberdashery, and as a homeworker for the Soviet Army factory. She died in 1991.

Mukhina is only remembered today because of a diary she kept for a year, partly during the Siege of Leningrad. This was donated anonymously to a state archive in 1962, only to be rediscovered half a century later by Sergei Yarov. It was edited and printed in Russian (2012) before being translated into English by Amanda Love Darragh - published by Macmillan in 2015 as The Diary of Lena Mukhina. Some pages of the English edition can be previewed at Googlebooks, while the full work can be read freely at Internet Archive (with log-in).

The following paragraph comes from the editors and authors of a foreward (Valentin Kovalchuk, Aleksandr Rupasov and Alexsandr Chistikov): ‘This diary, written by sixteen-year-old Leningrad schoolgirl Elena (Léna) Mukhina and miraculously preserved from that dreadful era, gives us a human insight into the last days of peace and the first days of war. With astonishing candour and a mix of childish naivety and adult wisdom, it paints a picture of a city reeling from the impact of war and the struggle of its innocent, defenceless inhabitants for survival. The obvious talent of the writer captures our attention from the very first pages, swiftly drawing us in and holding us in a constant state of suspense as we experience the tragedy and heroism of ordinary, everyday people, on whom nations are built and by whom history is both made and recorded.’

4 October 1941
‘I haven’t written for such a long time. But today I feel an urge to write. Dear God, what are they doing to us, to my fellow Leningraders and me?

I’m working in the hospital wing of the Clara Zetkin Institute of Maternity and Infancy Protection. We hospital orderlies work twenty-four-hour shifts: I work from nine in the morning to nine the next morning, then I have a day off until nine the following morning. So I am able to sleep only every other night. It’s very hard, but not unbearable. However when I don’t manage to get any sleep at all, just a few moments dozing in the bomb shelter, then it’s horrendous. For example, now it’s quarter to seven. Between half past seven yesterday evening and six o’clock this morning there were six air raids. Of these, two lasted about three hours, two lasted two hours, and the final two were an hour and a half and an hour. I’m working in a hospital and it’s very hard work, but I’m getting used to it. On the positive side, on days when I’m working I don’t go hungry and I’m entitled to a first category ration card with 400g of bread per day.

I haven’t seen Tamara since we composed that note to Vova and promised to see each other the following day. Yesterday I wrote her a note and asked Rozaliya Pavlovna to give it to Osya, so that he could pass it on to Tamara. So 1 still don’t know anything about the fate of my message to Vova. But I have no regrets about writing to him so abruptly.

During one of the air raids I somehow got talking to Ida Isaevna about friendships between men and women. You can love only one man, but at the same time it is possible to be friends with many men. Ida Isaevna told me that when she was seventeen she was friends with some of the boys she knew, and their friendship is still as strong as ever. Five of them from her class were friends - two girls and three boys.

We’re also two girls - Tamara and I, and three boys - Vova, Misha and Yanya. I don’t know why we aren’t friends. Do the boys treat us badly? No. Are they somehow unsuitable as friends? Again no, on the contrary. They’re exactly the kind of boys it’s good to have as friends. So what’s wrong? I don’t know. But in my opinion, we don’t know how to talk to one another.

It’s a pity, such a pity. In these bleak wartime days we are the only five from our class left in Leningrad. We could be developing lifelong friendships. There’s nobody stopping us. Dima, Emma, Roza, none of the other girls are here. But still!

Tamara and I both have fairly calm temperaments. The boys are also quite reserved. Relations between us feel somehow strained, because we’re so formal with one another. Besides, Yanya is not really like the rest of us. He’s so studious, it’s hard to be friends with someone like that. We would become friends more easily if relations between us were simpler, more straightforward. Like normal relationships between boys and girls. If we were attracted to one another. If they made advances towards us. . . and we resisted.’

18 October 1941
‘Yesterday evening was really frightening. The air-raid siren went off at eight o’clock, just as we were giving the patients their supper. The anti-aircraft guns immediately began firing very close by. Then suddenly there was a huge burst of thunder and the sound of breaking glass. I was in the women’s ward at the time, and the patients immediately began shouting and groaning, many of them becoming hysterical. Anisimov ran in with the duty doctor. Somehow they managed to restore calm. When it had quietened down a little I carried the plates to the canteen with another orderly. They told me I could scrape the leftover kasha out of the pot. I had just started eating when I became aware of a strange noise coming from outside the window - people shouting, and police whistles. I asked one of the nurses what was happening. She reacted with astonishment: “Didn’t you know? There’s a fire out there, across the street. The Karl Marx factory is on fire. Go and have a look.” She took me to the bathroom and drew the curtain to one side, and I saw how bright it was outside, brighter than daylight. Great tongues of flame were shooting up into the sky, and red smoke was swirling all around. Yes, it was an enormous fire at the Karl Marx factory, across the street from our building. I understood straight away what the noise was. It was the sound of firemen working and shouting to one another, fire engines arriving and the droning of the water pumps. They didn’t manage to put the fire out until four o’clock in the morning.

Vladimirova died in the night. They brought a new patient with a head injury and a seventeen-year-old boy with a neck injury, who had been one of the firemen on the roof.’

See also Only Tanya is left.

The worst is yet to come

‘We stand at the turn of the year more hopeless and depressed than ever during these unfortunate four and a half years of the World War. In the past, we still saw the possibility of a favorable conclusion to the serious crisis for humanity; today, this glimmer of light is only tiny, barely perceptible. The war is only over in theory; it rages on in an even more terrible form than before. Let us not deceive ourselves; the worst is yet to come.’ This is from the published diaries of Alfred Hermann Fried, an Austrian pacifist born 160 years ago. He is remembered for cofounding the German peace movement, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and championing the use of Esperanto.

Fried was born in Vienna into a Hungarian-Jewish family on 11 November 1864. He left school aged 15 and started to work in a bookshop. In 1883 he moved to Berlin, where he opened a printing press. It was there that Fried became a steadfast pacifist and befriended Bertha von Suttner. Together, in 1892, they launched the magazine, Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!) - which from 1899 became Die Friedenswarte (The Peacekeeper). He co-founded the German peace society, and became known for advocating ‘fundamental pacifism,’ peace as the ultimate solution. He wrote and published countless articles in his magazines calling for peace and harmony among nations.

The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 was a turning point in the development of Fried’s philosophy of pacifism. Thereafter, in his appeals to the German intellectual community, he placed more reliance on economic cooperation and political organisation among nations as bases for peace, and less upon limitation of armaments and schemes for international justice. ‘War is not in itself a condition so much as the symptom of a condition, that of international anarchy’, he said. ‘If we wish to substitute for war the settlement of disputes by justice, we must first substitute for the condition of international anarchy a condition of international order.’

Fried was a prominent member of the Esperanto movement, and in 1903 published an Esperanto textbook. In 1909, he collaborated with Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine of the Central Office of International Associations in the preparation of the Annuaire de la Vie Internationale. In 1911 he received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Tobias Asser. At the outbreak of World War I, he moved to neutral Switzerland, and worked continuously for an end to the conflict. After the war, he returned to Austria to continue writing and advocating international peace. He died in 1921. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Nobel Prize website, and the Jewish Virtual Library.

During the war, Fried kept a diary, one which he later published in four volumes as Mein Kriegs-Tagebuch (My War Journal). The diary is available online at Internet Archive and, thanks to a ZIMD digitisation project, at this dedicated website. A short introduction at the latter states: ‘Bernhard Tuider [from the Austrian National Library], who wrote one of the few well-founded works about [Fried’s] war diaries, was fascinated by their power. 1,600 pages about the World War from a man who, as a journalist at the NZZ in neutral Switzerland, worked through up to 50 international newspapers every day. The war diaries are unique in their quality and can be counted as part of the heritage of the world culture of peace.’ However, as far as I can tell, the diary appears only to be available in the origial German.

In the diary, Fried documents his activities and those of colleagues in the peace movement; expresses dissatisfaction with the peace settlement; and details his journalistic campaign against the Versailles Treaty. As a whole, the diary served as a platform for Fried to argue that the war proved the validity of his pacifistic analysis of world politics. A more detailed look at Fried’s diary can be found in an article by Tuider. Moreover, a list of the original diaries is available at the online archive of California.

The following two extracts have been sourced from the digitised files and then translated by Google.

31 December 1915
‘The hopes for peace that were kindled by the article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung prove to be vain. The proposals are rejected by friend and foe alike. People’s minds are too clouded to be able to see that this is not about the terms of peace at all, but only the beginning of discussions. The tools of reason should only be put into use. That is the main thing.

On the other hand: England, England so proud of its freedoms, is introducing general conscription. This is a step backwards in culture for all, which we owe to this war. And a bad prospect. If England is only now beginning to prepare for a continental war, how long will it last?

In France, the Socialist Congress has passed a resolution in favor of continuing the war until a permanent legal peace is achieved. The resolution was adopted by an enormous majority of 2,736 votes to 76.

These are two events that do not mean peace, but war. The continuation of the war and increased bitterness, increased destruction. Hundreds of thousands of young men are to be sacrificed again. That is the meaning of these two events that conclude the war year of 1915.

Last year I raised the question here whether the terrible war would end on New Year’s Eve this year. ‘For those who can measure the magnitude of the shocks that these five months of war have already brought about, it may seem questionable whether New Year’s Eve 1915 will already descend upon a Europe liberated from war.’ - Questionable. And yet I concluded hopefully with a ‘perhaps.’ It is a solemn seriousness that, after the end of this bloody year, provides the answer to the questioning view of the previous year. And today one dares not look into the future of the new year with the same doubt. Everything that must come is terrible. The slaughter has lasted too long; Europe has been destroyed for too long. Our generation can no longer hope for peace. I conclude my notes for 1915 with a curse on the year that has passed away, on the year that has been stolen from us, with a curse on the insane arrangers of this war.’

31 December 1918
‘A year ago we stood before Brest-Litovsk. Today we stand before Versailles. Is it going to be the same? Is the Entente victors going to repeat the fraud of the German military, who then spoke of a peace without territorial cessions and compensation and then emphasized their ‘power position’ and forced the most shameful peace of conquest? Pichon recently spoke in the French Chamber of the annexation of the Saar region as compensation for the injustice committed against France in 1815. Will they ultimately want to restore the integrity of Troy? The failure of the English elections has strengthened Lloyd George’s power politics. All pacifists and politicians of reconciliation have been defeated. These are elections like the Hottentot elections in Germany in 1912. The new state of the Czechoslovaks was in no way different from Wilhelmine Germany in its early days. The areas of the German-Austrians and Magyars are still being occupied and Czechized. In ultra-German Reichenberg, where the town’s police wore spiked helmets in the Prussian style, the Czech language is being introduced as an official language. The Italians want to hold on to the German territories in Tyrol and are constantly coming into conflict with the South Slavs on the Adriatic. The peace that is about to be concluded and which was originally under the sign of the Wilson program threatens to become a new affirmation of the power principle. There is therefore a danger that it will not be peace again, only a period of truce, interspersed with seeds of conflict that will soon flourish under the expected regime of violence. Is it possible that after this terrible object lesson we are threatened with something like this, that the madness that we thought we had overcome has survived? It is clear that if this is to happen, the efforts of those who want to radically overcome the current situation, who believe that new life can only blossom from the total destruction of this society, will gain strength. The German militarists, in their delusion, were the pioneers and firing guard of Bolshevism. Should the military and the militarily minded politicians of the Entente blindly follow in the footsteps of their Prussian predecessors? - The victory of the principle of force in Versailles would mean the victory of the world revolution in its most radical form. Indeed, it would even leave no other hope that the unbearable pressure of the militarism that will still be maintained after this war will be removed. The people who have the decision to shape the coming peace agreement take on a great responsibility. It depends on them whether the institution of war is eliminated by a rational decision or whether its elimination is achieved through decades of terrible bloodbath in the civil war.

We stand at the turn of the year more hopeless and depressed than ever during these unfortunate four and a half years of the World War. In the past, we still saw the possibility of a favorable conclusion to the serious crisis for humanity; today, this glimmer of light is only tiny, barely perceptible. The war is only over in theory; it rages on in an even more terrible form than before. Let us not deceive ourselves; the worst is yet to come.’

Reality is unbearable

‘Reality is unbearable, because it is not fully experienced; it is not fully visible. It reaches us in fractions of events, snatches of accounts, echoes of gunfire - horrifying and impenetrable - in the clouds of dust, in fires, which as history says “reduced everything to ashes” although nobody really understands these words.’ This is Zofia Nałkowska, an influential Polish author born 140 years ago today, writing in her diary during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her diaries, which are said to have ‘stood the test of time to a greater extent than her novels’ were published in six volumes, but only in Polish.

Nałkowska was born on 10 November 1884 into a family of intellectuals in Warsaw. She went to a boarding school before entering the ‘Flying University’, a secret educational establishment aimed at teaching Polish scholarship (rather than the ruling Russian ideology). Aged 14, she made her debut as a poet in Przegląd Tygodniowy; thereafter publishing poems in other Warsaw magazines. In her 20s, having abandoned poetry, she began to contribute short fiction and articles to Echa Kieleckie, a weekly magazine  established thanks to the revival of political life in Poland.

In 1904, Nałkowska married the writer and publisher Leon Rygier, though they separated in 1909. Later, in 1922, she would marry Jan Jur-Gorzechowski, a soldier in the Polish Army, but this marriage, too broke down, in 1929. Her first literary literary success came in 1923 with Romans Teresy Hennert (The Romance of Teresa Hennert), and a slew of popular novels followed. For a while, she worked for the Polish government, in the Foreign Propaganda Bureau, but after returning to Warsaw in 1926 (having lived in Wołomin, Kielce) she ran a literary salon and travelled through Europe. In 1933 she joined the Przedmieście literary group. In 1935, she went to live with her mother, and during the German occupation, she ran a tobacco shop with her sister Hanna.

For years she was the vice-president of the Polish PEN Club; she was active in the Main Board of the Association of Polish Writers; and she was a member of the Legislative Sejm. In 1949 she was a delegate to the Congress of Defenders of Peace in Paris. In November 1949 she became a member of the National Committee for the Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s Birth. Granica - which would become her most famous work of the interwar period - earned her the State Literary Award in 1935. She died in 1954. Further information is available from Wikipedia and Culture.pl.

Nałkowska wrote a diary for nearly 60 years beginning with her early youth and continuing through to her death. These journal entries were collected into six volumes and published in Polish by Czytelnik. According to Culture.pl, her diaries show ‘she had a talent for observation and introspection as well as intellectual flourish and emotional depth.’ Moreover, ‘[the diaries] have stood the test of time to a greater extent than her novels’. The following extracts - translated into English - were sourced at Culture.pl, which also has more substantial information about the diaries.

1900
‘It is hard to believe to what extent happiness depends on money. . . Shortage surrounds me (. . .) There is something tasteless about poverty. It is such a sorrowful condition that one constantly wants to shake it off as if it was a sticky spider web. (. . .) I am writing at a table made of door laid on an old wooden washbasin and covered with a shabby time-worn bedspread. I [am] writing by light of a candle burning out in a candlestick greened with age. I can smell a wonderful bouquet of flowers placed in a preserve jar. Browned basket with Hanka’s stones, a very old dressing case from my aunt, a chewed penholder.’

1902
‘In as much as I lead a literary life, I write a real-life diary. There is no ‘fiction’ here. Whilst writing, I am always in a hurry to squeeze in as much as possible not to miss anything. I do not care about the form; I cram facts one after another leaving ponderings and effects aside. What I achieve in this way is a certain directness, certain freshness of life, which I highly appreciate.’

1913
‘I went to a fancy-dress party and two other balls and, in a sense, I bought myself out of melancholy. For a long time now I have known that it is a hygienic thing to immerse into a bathtub of foolishness and primitiveness. Yet, it is difficult for me then to close my eyelids completely. Through my eyelashes I can still see my distance from this cheerfulness, distance or even dysfunction.’

1914
‘I enjoy living. I am certain that if I wasn’t ill, I could say that I am happy. To observe the world from a hammock, balcony or various points in a forest. To think, think, think - beginning with early morning when I am so deathly exhausted and sleepy as if night did not exist at all, to the evening when looking in the mirror I can see that I am not young any more. The latter one is surly sad but not that important - as my curiosity about the world has remained unchanged; it’s an insatiable, burning curiosity.’

1915
‘My acquaintanceships have turned significantly licentious. Every single day there are visitors, groups of visitors I should say. However, I have always enjoyed looking at people - and even more so since I derive less pleasure from looking at myself.’

1 April 1942
‘It seems to me that I experience the irreversible and irretrievable passage of time stronger than others. Perhaps, the reason for it is my poor memory, who knows, if it hasn’t already started to weaken. The passage of my emotions and the passage of people who keep leaving and passing away, who leave nothing behind: this is the sole drive behind my writing. As always, I am not concerned with historical events, fate of entire nations, facts passing in the back motion - this is not what tempts me as others will deal with it in a much better way - but with the life as I have seen and experienced myself, that is totally doomed to failure. Not only am I someone in a boat drifting against the tide but as shores pass by, I am leaving myself behind. But the water itself, the essence of life motion, continues to pass out of my memory. Drifting, I keep leaving myself on those shores and at the same time I am sailing around myself. And I fail to achieve the goal of keeping records. I will never succeed, never be on time, never embrace, never accomplish, never remember everything. Pooh, it’s gone, it has evaporated, it’s lost for good. It sounds ridiculous that the most important of all my ‘worries’ is that everything will perish and be wasted, and I am the one to blame.’

28 April 1943
‘Reality is unbearable, because it is not fully experienced; it is not fully visible. It reaches us in fractions of events, snatches of accounts, echoes of gunfire - horrifying and impenetrable - in the clouds of dust, in fires, which as history says “reduced everything to ashes” although nobody really understands these words. This reality, both distant and happening next door, is bearable. What you cannot bear are your thoughts.’

29 April 1943
‘Solemn marches of the resigned, jumps into the flames, leaps into the dark. (. . .) I have lived next to it, I can live! But finally I feel bad, finally I have been changing into someone else. How can I be forced to it, to be inside it, to accept it while staying alive! It is not only a torture but also a disgrace. It is a terrible shame, not only compassion. One feels guilty for making any efforts to survive, not to go insane, or somehow retain yourself in this terror.’

14 December 1943
‘It has still continued, it has repeated over and over again - similar days go by: raids and then executions in the city streets. Or there - this I know. I think that I will be myself at that time, that I will never stop being myself. I think of it as if it was a discovery. When I walk where I don’t want to, when I am forced to leave my makeshift bed, my books and my letter files behind, and to do what seems so difficult when one is still surrounded by them - till the very last moment, however, I will be left with myself, who will be with me. And in this sense, I will remain myself. Because what is really important in the final moments are the morale and the peace that I am so certain of, as well as a total restraint of despair – because there will be no fear. Fear will be turned around; frozen; fear will be exactly that: resilience and strength. I can achieve it all if I am still myself. - That’s what I believe and that’s how I settle my own matters. Yet, it does not settle the matters of the others: those young ones whose lives are unfulfilled.

1 September 1946
‘I look like the old woman that I am. And realizing that old age is a shame, a disability; that an old age disqualifies; and keeping up appearances, a hairdo, a face “made-up” in spite of anything, neat clothes make it worse, make it the more visible. That’s it.’

The cost of stockings

Here is a final selection from the yet-to-be-published London in Diaries, this one about Marielle Bennett, a would-be actress, and a Mass Observation respondent during the Second World War. Her diary remains unpublished, and unnoticed within the Mass Observation archive, but it provides a fascinating record of what one unremarkable Londoner was experiencing day-by-day during the war years. See also The Drama of London in WWI, 34 heads on London Bridge, I was utterly amazed! and Innumerable ripples; countless diamonds.

Marielle Bennett and Mass-Observation

Only two decades after the end of the First World War, which had caused so much devastation and death, German aggression again drew Britain into a major military conflict. The Second World War, though, would go on to involve nations across the globe, and be considered as the deadliest conflict in human history. Despite the global nature of the war, Britain with its political centre as ever in London, was very much a dominant and central force, as well as a major military target - just as it had been in the earlier war.

It is no wonder that so many individuals uprooted from normal life and turned into active participants of war, living in adversity and close to killing and destruction, should have chosen to try and record the extraordinary things happening to and around them. There are, thus, many published diaries specifically about the Second World War, and even today, more than 65 years later, newly found or edited war diaries are popular publishing ventures. Only a relatively small number, though, were written in London - but, unlike diaries set in the city during peaceful years, all or most of the Second World War diaries do have much to say about the city itself.

Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat now largely remembered for his diaries, was in London during the war, and his diary - The Siren Years - is witty and readable. Anthony Weymouth, a physician who also worked for the BBC, gives a detailed but far dryer account in his Journal of the War Years. Frances Partridge, one of the Bloomsbury Set, published her diary under the title A Pacifist’s War. Colin Perry was just a lad, but his Boy in the Blitz, first published in 2000, is a lively, youthful take on London during 1940.

One of the most well-known of Second World Diaries, although not published until the 1980s, is that by Nella Last, a housewife in Barrow-in-Furness. Last was one of 500 or so individuals who responded to a call by the social research organisation Mass-Observation to write about their lives. It had been launched in 1937 to record life in Britain, ‘an anthropology of ourselves’, according to the founders. With little funding, it relied on volunteers to keep diaries or reply to open-ended questionnaires. Researchers also recorded, anonymously, people’s conversations and behaviour at work, in public places, and at sports and religious events.

Mass-Observation worked throughout the war producing thousands of reports and a series of published books. After the war, its emphasis shifted away from social issues towards consumer behaviour, and, in 1949, Mass Observation was registered as a limited company, and eventually incorporated into an advertising firm. The Mass Observation Archive is now held at the University of Sussex, and holds all the material generated between 1937 and 1949, with a few later additions, from the 1950s and 1960s. The project was re-launched in 1981, and today continues to collect information aimed at providing a structured programme through which ‘ordinary’ people can write directly about their lives, and at creating ‘a resource of qualitative longitudinal social data’.

Nella Last’s diary written for Mass-Observation was exceptional because of the quality of her writing, its editors said at the time of publication, but also for the length and regularity of Last’s writing. In fact, many of the diaries delivered to Mass-Observation were bitty and intermittent in character, and only very few have been published. While Last’s is not set in London, there is at least one published Mass-Observation diary that is: Love & War in London by Olivia Crockett, billed as London’s answer to Nella Last.

Another London diary in the Mass Observation Archive - but unpublished - was written by Marielle Bennett. As with Crockett’s diary, Bennett’s is also a blend of private feelings mixed with her reactions to the war and its effect on people and places. It opens in August 1939 with sporadic entries until October, and restarts in the summer of 1940 for a couple of months. The following year, she writes to Mass-Observation: ‘I have been very slack. . . however I will make a fresh attempt starting from this month.’ She restarts in May 1941 for a few weeks. There are also a few entries in 1942, 1946 and 1947.

Not much is known of Bennett, other than that revealed in her Mass-Observation diary. The start of the war finds her living with her parents at 53 Upper Park Road, NW3; but, by the middle of 1941 she is staying out of London near Barnet. She was separated from her husband in the mid-1930s, and in 1940 reverts to her maiden name (Vaughan). She calls herself an actress, though there is a little evidence in the diary of her working, at least until after the war, though she does visit, and write about, the theatre often. In the spring of 1941, Bennett’s grandmother dies, and thereafter many pages of the diary relate to her efforts to sell or trade her grandmother’s jewellery and clothes/furs.

From the start of the diary, Bennett shows an interest in psychology. She attends some ‘brilliant lectures’, but then, having decided to try and train as a psychiatric social worker becomes very depressed when trying to analysis herself. She abandons her training for a while, but returns to studying books at home, and making weekly visits to a therapist. She makes the acquaintance of various people who have known Jung or Freud, and in June 1941 becomes much more serious about her therapy, taking a more intensive series of sessions with her analyst, often thinking about her dreams, and doing ‘psychic paintings’.

There is a persistent sense in Bennett’s diary that she is writing for an audience (i.e. Mass-Observation, to whom she sends what she calls ‘reports’) not only because of the occasional comment such as ‘Sorry this report is so trivial but nothing of importance has happened to me,’ but also because of a vague sense, here and there, of her making an effort to provide information and observations. Nevertheless, on reading the diary, one feels very close to her, as though one is there with her, making curtains out of black satin, having trouble finding suitable clothes to wear in the air-raid shelter, and being frustrated that she no longer wants to go to the cinema because all the films are ‘only slightly covered propaganda’.

Mother bought many yards of black satin
1 September 1939
Walked over the heath and saw the balloon barrage etc. Help my parents to put up rolls of brown paper and tape for the black out. Does not prove to be very successful.

2 September 1939
Mother bought many yards of black satin, which we made into curtains all the after noon, which proved to be more satisfactory, but really hate all the preparation and found it very wearisome. Not that quite a number of acquaintances seem to be enjoying themselves, the sense of responsibility and having something to do seems to make them feel more important. [. . .] Went to the cinema, difficult to get home in the dark.

3 September 1939
Hear the Chamberlain speech out of my window from a neighbouring wireless. Do not listen after I hear we are at war. The air-raid warning came as rather a surprise. Did the proscribed things, closing windows etc. Mother worried because my father is driving some greyhounds to the country and she did not know where he was. However all is over.

Gas masks; the cost of stockings
30 September 1939
I met my friend, who is at present touring in a comedy, we did some shopping. I discovered that stockings are up 1/-, my usual 3/11 cost 4/11. The colours were not good either and little selection. The assistant told me that their usual 1/6½ ones will soon be sold at 2/11 and are not fashioned (fully). [. . .]

After tea I went with my family to the pictures. I carried a gas mask for the first time as I did not know whether I could get in the films and I knew my father would not want me to have a long argument, which I should have done had I been alone. The films were “Hound of the Baskervilles” and another with Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew. Very patriotic and upholding of the military tradition in American. Very obvious and silly film, I thought.

1 October 1939
At six I went over to a friend’s flat in Westminster. The bus was slow. Noticed an ARP warden on duty outside the flats. Walked over to Chelsea via the embankment to see an acquaintance. She said she was hoping to go to Rumania for the Quakers to help with the refugee problem. Had dinner. Was told of a young man who has decided to join up because he cannot bear the thought of carrying a civilian gas mask down Oxford Street! Had a bottle of claret and went to bed.

How little meat one gets at Maison Lyons
3 October 1939
Noticed what little meat one gets nowadays in the 1/6 luncheon at Maison Lyons. Was telephoned by a pacifist friend who invited me to a meeting.

4 October 1939
Went to the hair dresser. The shop was so quiet, I was there four hours and only saw two other customers. The head man has been called up for the Territorials. The second who did my hair said “I was going to join the navy, but my girl doesn’t want me to, she says let the others go first.” Then he said his parents want him to return to S. Africa where he can get a job. He said “supposing the U Boats get me?” and remarked that he would hate to leave all his friends as he has been here many year.

7 October 1939
I stayed in most of the day and refused to go to the cinema with my parents. I have decided not to go to this form of entertainment while it continues to be only slightly covered propaganda. I’d prefer to keep my money and see a theatrical show. For the most part thank God the theatre is still fairly free.

Not all shows are musicals or comedies YET
13 October 1939
Went to “Music at Night”. The Westminster was fairly full. In the programme the management appealed for support and good attendances otherwise they will be “One of the war’s first casualties.” Excellent show, do not think they will have to worry. But getting home was awful, pouring with rain and so few buses. However it was worth it to me. I noticed a good many uniforms in the audiences, women as well as men. I do not know whether this is the type of play appreciated during war time, but it was certainly gratifying to know that all shows are not musicals or comedies YET.

14 October 1939
Noticed a local shelter has been pulled down and is being rebuilt. Spoke to a tobacconist who said the heath is ruined now owing to the trenches and guns etc.

Air-raid suits going out of fashion
26 August 1940
Start out with the intention of buying an air-raid suit for me. First we went to Bournes but they had nothing I liked. Then to Dickens and Jones who had the very thing at 41/2 guineas but we could not afford more than 2. Then to Swan and Edgars where they were horrible, trying to be very feminine instead of tailored, bits of fur and coloured scalves hanging about. Then to Weiss in Shaftesbury Avenue. The sales girl said they had gone out of fashion and most women prefer trousers and a sweater now. They had nothing suitable either. Some terrible things like striped pantaloons at 16/11. Eventually, rather hot and cross, I made up my mind to give up the idea and buy something else with the money.

28 August 1940
Called for Mother and we went together to Victoria and picked up tickets for the matinee of “Cornelius” Had lunch at Zeeta’s, service very slow, think the girls are inexperienced and overworked. The theatre was a superb show. Beautifully produced and the type casting excellent. In fact I have not enjoyed anything so much for ages. The audience was pathetically small and had to applaud like mad.

Bombs in Kentish Town, Kilburn and Fitzjohns Avenue
29 August 1940
Heard from the charwoman that Kentish Town got a bomb. That accounted for the noise being so near. Also heard that Smiths factory at Cricklewood had got some. Charwoman said that everyone “turned as white as a sheet.” Her husband will watch from the doorway but when she goes near he has “a fit”.

30 August 1940
After a quiet night I went up to Hampstead in the morning to order a new book that Priestly recommended on the wireless “The End of Economic Man”. [. . .] Father rang up [. . .] he had heard that our district had been bombed. However he said Fitz Johns Avenue had shattered windows, we did not verify this.

31 August 1940
Hear that Kilburn has been bombed. Stay in for first warning. I set off to meet a friend, but first took some old silver to a place where they buy metal for Spitfires, at first the man only offered me 2/3, I protested as it was 4 pieces. [. . .] Eventually we compromised and I took 9/-. I believe he would have gone to 10/- but I did not persuade him. He said he would lose over the deal. I bet he does!! He said he was going to close the shop next week as he does not like the raids and he thinks they are going on indefinitely. He was a lively old man and I liked him. he told me to get out of Hampstead on account of the Jewish refugees as Hitler would be after them. [. . .]

‘Dirty swine, everyone ought to be killed’
Met my best friend - an actress is who now married and just about to give birth. I am to be the godmother. We intended to go to coffee and then a doctor in Queen Anne’s Street, but we had just met when the warning went, as were in Evans, we sheltered there. Very comfortable. The first shelter I’ve been in. My friend varnished her nails most of the time [. . .]

Went to the Hollyrood and had two lagers. Telephoned another friend and then the sirens sounded again. We could not get back into the pub so we chased along Oxford Street to the Horseshoe where we went down the dive and had another and waited for the all clear. I went to the lavatory then, to find the attendant, a woman about 50, in an uproar. “Dirty swine, everyone ought to be killed, they are not fit to live. We ought to have killed them after the last war. Inhuman devils.”

4 September 1940
The pub was in uproar, because a very familiar figure - a man of about 40 - who I have often seen there came in in battle uniform of a private. Everyone teased him saying “Nice bit of stuff” and things like that. He seemed to think that nothing fitted him at all, and said his boots must have been worn in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

The whole of our street cordoned off
5 September 1940
Our char woman came today. She was very amused because a whole lot of children were shut in an air-raid shelter whether yesterday or the day before. “You could ‘ear the kids screaming fit to bust theirselves.” At last they were rescued by the warden, who must have inadvertently shut them in.

9 September 1940
The whole of [our] street was cordoned off [after a bomb in the night] and people from outlying districts came and peered over the ropes at us as though we were exhibits. We ourselves had to either tell the police when we left home that we should be returning in a few minutes, or else we had to produce our identity cards. We had huge squads of demolition workers to pull down the remains of the house [no 54], and the occupants who seemed to have either been away at the time or to have escaped with slight injuries stood outside and collected all the things that were still “collectable”, clothes were tied up in bundles and taken off. Of course nothing was much good from 54, but the house next door 56 was not quite so badly damaged. A baby and its parents usually live in that house but luckily had spent the night on the opposite side of the street and had not been injured. Some children had cuts and I saw several people walking round with cuts and bandages. I went up the street to post a letter and the demolition men must have taken a dislike to me in my trousers and one called out “Pleased with yourself aren’t you?” Which rather upset me, as altho’ I am terribly pleased to have escaped so narrowly, I am awfully sorry for the other people. Still perhaps I do look pleased with self. I hope not!

Mum nearly caught in trial gas attack
8 May 1941
We are now sleeping out of London and returning every day. We started to do that from April 17th after the heavy raid on London.

21 May 1941
Went into west end. Had an appointment with a psychologist with whom I am studying analytical psychology.

24 May 1941
I came home for lunch and then Mother went to Kentish Town to buy some things. She could not get any emerald green sating ribbon for a new night gown I am making. On her way back she was nearly caught by a trial gas attack the ARP had organised at the end of this road. She had no gas mask and they were laying out the people who had gone out without gas masks on the pavement as though they were casualties.

News full of aeroplanes and guns and ships
30 May 1941
Won at darts. Have done so for several evenings. My father’s greyhound came in second in the rerun for the Wembley Gold cup. It came in first in the first run. Very disappointing. One of the last dogs turned round and ran in the wrong direction causing the judges to ask for a rerun. The race was broadcast and naturally we were very excited when it won [on the first run]. Still second wasn’t bad, but hard luck on my father.

2 July 1941
Went to the films with my people and saw “Kipps” which I thought very good, and thank god not about the war. I got so fed up with all the propaganda we had to sit thro’ first. MOI film about WAAFs and another about Merchant ships and the news just full of aeroplanes and guns and ships.

Giving the boys something to look at
5 July 1941
A WAAF friend of mine telephoned that she was in Paddington waiting to go through to another depot. [. . .] I was in my bath when I got the message, but I dressed and hurried to Paddington in very quick time and we had a drink or two at The Norfolk Hotel, and she told me what terrible head aches she has had since she went on the gas course a fortnight ago. We went up to the services cloak room in Paddington Station and I was amused to find the room literally covered in photographs cut from Magazines like “Lilliput” of nude women. The cloak room attendant said it “gave the boys something to look at.”

21 July 1941
Had several conversations with people who expressed the opinion that “life isn’t worth living now”. Complaints about money, food queues, lack of cigarettes, and rationing of clothes seemed to abound.

23 July 1941
Then we went to see ‘Blythe Spirit’ which is one of the best productions I have ever seen. Margaret Rutherford as the medium was superb. I do not know when I have seen a more amusing and yet realistic characterisation. I could go over and over again and not get bored with that show. My friend saw a man come into one of the boxes towards the end of the play and look around at the audience intently and then make a great show of lighting a cigarette. She said it must have been Noel Coward as no one else would do it quite like that but I was too interested in the play to worry about the author! After that we went to get tea at The Prompt Corner only to find it closed. I was not surprised at that as all the places I hope to find seem closed. Eventually we got some at a nasty little cafe in Charing Cross.