A month ago the storks passed south over Berlin. Last week the violet skies of Avignon were grey and winter rains shuddered over the cobblestones of Paris. Ice edged out from the banks of canals in Holland, and in the Dolomites snow crunched underfoot. Ukranian peasants used to say: "nash didus ide," meaning that winter, a bundled-up old grandfather, had come to visit. They did not say that this year. All Europe feared the fourth winter of World War II. It would be known as the year of organized hunger.
When the Germans first marched in, the soldiers had clicked their heels, given up their seats on trams to old ladies, tried to make friends. Theirs, they said, was a program for a salvation of Europe. There would be a New Order in which all men had work and all had bread.
Last week the Nazis were carving out their New Order with terrible fury. For millions in Europe the cost was, at the very least, hunger—the sustained hunger of malnutrition. Yet the hunger that diminished Europe's strength also increased Europe's hatred and rebellion.
Norwegian Gjestost. Before the Germans came to Norway there were big breakfasts of goat's-milk cheese (Gjestost), fish puddings of haddock, eggs and butter, fried cakes cooked with brandy. Last week 2,250,000 Norwegians (out of 3,000,000) suffered from malnutrition. Hitler's Gauleiter, Josef Terboven, had flatly announced that he did not care if thousands of Norwegians starved. The Germans confiscated cattle, whale meat, the herring catch, potatoes. Starvation, as tragic as that in Greece, confronted the descendants of Vikings.
An explosion wrecked the Göring-operated Fosdalen Iron Mines. A 400-mile strip of central Norway, including Trondheim and Skien, the home of Henrik Ibsen, was promptly placed under martial law. The Nazis rushed 25,000 troops to the coast and other danger points. In a floodlit courtyard in Trondheim, six blackshirted SS men shot 25 hostages picked haphazardly from civic leaders. North of Trondheim the Nazis also turned on their own troops, executed one in every seven of 1,000 men who had mutinied.
Swedish Snaps. The polar bears in Stockholm's Scansen have not had their full rations of raw meat for three years. Neither have the Swedes had their sill & snaps (herring & aquavit) as often as before. They have managed to maintain their national Thursday evening meal of pea soup and pancakes—and they have managed to stay out of war.
But the Norwegian flag, draped in black crape, was flown at half-staff last fortnight in some Swedish towns.
Finnish Kalevala. When tourists came to the land of 1,000 lakes, the co-op restaurants in Helsinki served stuffed cabbage, onions and great slices of roast beef. In the summer young people danced on the hilltops under the moon. In the winter they leaped from steam baths into snowbanks and shouted that life was good. They ate wild strawberries and boasted of their glass works, their great forests and their splendid modern buildings.
Last week the Finns dug their potatoes and prepared for the Northland's long and dreary evening. Germany sent occasional shipments of corn to the Finns. It scarcely compensated for the cripples haunting the street corners.