Posts tagged Eleanor Roosevelt

In Memoriam: Odd Nansen (12/6/01–6/27/73)

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Odd Nansen’s grave marker

Odd Nansen died forty-nine years ago today, age 71.

The anniversary of his death always seems like an appropriate time for remembrance and reflection. (See my previous observations on this date in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016).

Recently I finished reading No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  In it, Goodwin describes the difficult, often painful, and yet highly productive, marriage between Franklin and Eleanor, and how bereft she felt at Franklin’s sudden death in Hot Springs, GA on April 12, 1945.

In her nationally syndicated newspaper column “My Day”* written just two weeks later, on April 26, 1945, Eleanor quoted a little verse sent to her by a friend she had not seen in a long while: “They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind: In those whom they have blessed they live a life again.”  According to Goodwin, those simple lines inspired Eleanor to make the rest of her life worthy of her husband’s memory.  “As long as she continued to fight for his ideals, he would continue to live.”

Eleanor, an awkward and often lonely child, certainly proved herself worthy of her husband’s memory.  In December 1945, she accepted President Truman’s invitation to join the American delegation to the new United Nations.  In doing so, she was “setting forth on a new journey into the field of universal human rights that would make her ‘the most admired person in the world’—and an important figure in American public life for nearly two more decades.”

What better way, on the anniversary of Odd Nansen’s death, to honor his memory, than to continue the fight for his ideals, and thus prove ourselves worthy of his legacy as well.

Odd Nansen with Eleanor Roosevelt at the UN. Roosevelt was accepting the first UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award (1954)

*Eleanor wrote about Fridtjof Nansen several times in her My Day column, but that is a matter for a future blog.

Atlantic Crossing: An Idiosyncratic Miscellany*

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[* If you haven’t yet seen Atlantic Crossing, please stop reading this, and watch it.  Do not pass Go, and do not collect $200.]

June 7 is an important date in Norway’s World War II history.  On June 7, 1940, King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, and many Norwegian government officials, fled to Great Britain aboard the British destroyer HMS Devonshire.  On June 7, 1945, after exactly five years in exile, King Haakon returned to a free Norway, and to a rapturous welcome from the Norwegian people.

Both of these events—the King’s flight and his subsequent return—are recounted in the new, eight-part PBS Masterpiece series Atlantic Crossing.  I recently finished watching it with great interest.  Even if its central focus, the relationship between President Franklin Roosevelt and Crown Princess Märtha, is largely fictional (but “inspired by true events”), there is still a great deal of interesting overlap between matters I’ve previously written about here and the events depicted in the show.  I thought it might be fun to recount some of those connections.

I’ve already written (here) about the close connection between King Haakon VII and Fridtjof Nansen; how Nansen was instrumental in convincing Haakon, then a 33-year-old Danish prince, to become the king of the newly independent Norway in 1905, and how the two remained close personal friends until Fridtjof’s death in 1930.

Not only were Haakon and Fridtjof close, Crown Prince Olav was also good friends with Odd Nansen.  Nansen’s older sister Liv wrote a family biography where relates: “In the springtime they [the King and Queen] brought the Crown Prince, little Olav, out to Pølhogda so that our three small ones and he could play.”  Odd Nansen and Olav also attended the same school in Oslo together (although Odd was one grade ahead).  Olav was equally close to Odd Nansen’s wife Kari, and, following Nansen’s death in 1973, King Olav continued to visit her and play bridge with her and her friends.

Episode 2 depicts the German efforts to kill Haakon and Olav, once driving them and the cabinet ministers into the snowy woods during a bombing raid.  Although not stated in the show, this bombing raid followed on the heels of the government’s decision to fight on, rather than surrender to Germany’s demands.  Thereafter, Haakon and Olav were under constant German attack.  A similar bombing raid in Molde, Norway, in late April 1940 gave rise to a fish(y) tale, as I’ve previously related (here).

King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olaf, Molde, Norway

Florence (“Daisy”) Harriman (referred to as “Madame Ambassador” in the series) was America’s Minister to Norway in 1940.  She was only the second woman in U.S. history to be appointed to such a post.  Norway was an appropriate choice for such a pioneering appointment: it was the fourth country in the world to grant female suffrage (years before the U.S.).  According to her memoir, Mission to the North, it was Harriman who, at FDR’s request, personally conveyed upon her arrival in Oslo an invitation to Märtha and Olav to visit the U.S. in 1939, the event with which Atlantic Crossing begins.

Mission to the North describes the incredible chaos following the surprise German invasion of April 9, 1940, as well as the scramble by the American legation and the Norwegian government to stay one step ahead of the German invaders.

Harriman’s driver, Capt. Robert M. Losey (seen briefly in the opening scene of Episode 2), was killed in a German bombing raid in Dombås, Norway on April 21, 1940, becoming the first U.S. serviceman killed in World War II (see here). For her efforts in arranging the safe passage of Crown Princess Märtha and her children to the U.S. aboard the USAT American Legion, which sailed from Petsamo, Finland on August 16, 1940, she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav by King Haakon in 1942.

Capt. Losey and Ambassador Florence Harriman

Harriman’s counterpart, Wilhelm Morgenstierne, was Norway’s minister and later ambassador to the U.S. from 1934 to 1958.  He was also a close friend of Fridtjof Nansen, having served as an assistant to Nansen during World War I, when Nansen headed a Norwegian mission to the U.S. to secure relief from the Allied naval blockade.  According to Nansen’s sister Liv, Morgenstierne was even skiing with Fridtjof Nansen in early 1930 when Nansen began to feel unwell; Nansen died a few months later, having never fully recovered.

Fridtjof Nansen, daughter Liv, and Wilhelm Morgenstierne

As shown in the series, Morgenstierne had little success getting access to Roosevelt to plead Norway’s case.  Odd Nansen had much the same experience when he traveled to DC in the fall of 1939 to plead for more aid to Finland, which was then at war with the Soviet Union.  Here’s what Nansen wrote in his diary on January 21, 1940, about his efforts: “Sought an audience with Roosevelt today, but have not yet heard anything.  Everything is so damn slow and difficult.  I wonder if I should just go over to the White House and ring the bell.”

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt also had connections with the Nansens.  From 1935 to 1962, Eleanor wrote a six-day-a-week syndicated column called “My Day” which reached a readership of over 4 million in 90 newspapers at its height.  In her August 12, 1939, My Day column, Eleanor wrote:

“I remember meeting Mr. [Fridtjof] Nansen on various occasions.  You felt that he was suited to an outdoor life of adventure. . . .   Yet he spent years of his life at a desk interminably talking in diplomatic terms to people who diplomatically desired to do little or nothing.  It was a big sacrifice to ask of any man, and yet thousands of people who do not even know his name, have blessed the work he did on their behalf.”

In a December 1961 column, Eleanor revisited the topic of Fridtjof Nansen on the centennial anniversary of his birth, where she was even more effusive: “Nansen’s work has been discussed and commemorated all over this country.  The character of this man, I think, is one that every child in our schools should study and know.”

Also, in 1954, Eleanor Roosevelt became the inaugural recipient of the Nansen Refugee Award from the United Nations, in recognition of “outstanding service to the cause of refugees, displaced or stateless people.” (In 1961, the same Nansen Refugee Award was bestowed upon King Olav V of Norway.)

Odd Nansen with Eleanor Roosevelt at the UN. Roosevelt was accepting the first UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award (1954)

General Carl Gustav Fleischer was the hero of the Battle of Narvik, the first major Allied victory of World War II.  When Norway capitulated to the Germans, Fleischer was ordered to follow King Haakon and the cabinet into exile in Great Britain.  He left Norway June 8, 1940 aboard patrol vessel Fridtjof Nansen.  What’s Fleischer’s connection with the Nansens?  I haven’t found any—yet.  But I do know that Fleischer’s chief of staff during the Battle of Narvik was Odd Lindbäck-Larsen.  Lindbäck-Larsen did not go into exile with his general—he was imprisoned in Polizeihaftlager Grini and Kazettenlager Sachsenhausen along with Odd Nansen until the end of the war, and is mentioned several times in Nansen’s diary.

As noted, the final scene of Episode 8 shows Haakon, Märtha and her children all being cheered on by a crowd of delirious Norwegians in Oslo harbor.  Today, a statue of Roosevelt sits at that same harbor, a testament to Norway’s gratitude and high regard for his services on behalf of Norway during the war.  The scene in Episode 7, where the newly commissioned HRoMS Haakon VII is delivered to Norway, was the subject of my blog (here). And, as I wrote just last month, Haakon’s bodyguard upon his June 1945 return (as well as Olav’s earlier return on May 13, 1945) was none other than Gunnar Sonsteby.

Statue of FDR in Oslo Harbor

In the series Harry Hopkins is shown so often in FDR’s White House that it seems like he must live there.  Well, in fact he did – for over three and a half years.  For a time Hopkins was Roosevelt’s closest aide and confidant, fulfilling many important roles during World War II.

Now, most of my readers know that I am something of a book collector.  Years ago I purchased a book inscribed to Harry Hopkins by its author, James Norman Hall (of the literary partnership Nordhoff and Hall, authors of the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy—still one of my all-time favorites).  Not only is the book inscribed to Hopkins, Hopkins himself signed it while in the White House in February 1942—when much of the action of Atlantic Crossing was taking place.

Norm Hall’s inscription to Harry Hopkins

Harry Hopkins signature, the White House, February 1942

Hopefully, this miscellany has provided some additional color on the many characters depicted in Atlantic Crossing, and will make your next viewing (undoubtedly soon) all that much more meaningful.  Enjoy!

April 26–A Day for Anniversaries

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My readers have by now undoubtedly noticed that I have a thing about anniversaries.

Today is no exception, and marks several important such anniversaries, including the fact that my mother, were she still alive, would have turned 100 today.

Also, today is the fourth anniversary of the re-appearance, in print, of the English version of From Day to Day, following a 67-year hiatus.  Perhaps equally important, this week represents the ten-year anniversary of my chance decision, in late April 2010, to purchase a newly published memoir called A Lucky Child, written by Thomas Buergenthal.

As I’ve pointed out to the audiences I have addressed, once you have, like me, amassed almost 5,000 books at home, the impetus to purchase yet another book comes quite easily.  And so I had little hesitation in purchasing A Lucky Child even though I knew almost nothing of the book’s contents or its author—no reviews, no advertising, no recommendations—beyond what I could see on its cover.  And yet A Lucky Child and From Day to Day, taken together, have changed the entire course of my life over these past 10 years—and hopefully for many more to come.  The people I’ve met, the stories I’ve heard, the history I’ve learned, have all changed me indelibly and, I feel, for the better.

I recently came across a quote, attributable to Eleanor Roosevelt, when explaining how her husband’s polio affected him.  “Anyone who has gone through great suffering,” she said, “is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.”

Now, I make no claim to any such suffering.  In fact, I’ve led an incredibly privileged life.  But I feel that one can vicariously experience something of the suffering of others.  And the experiences of Tom Buergenthal and Odd Nansen—whose stories I’ve read, and re-read, and absorbed—have engendered, I hope, “a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.”  I certainly cannot imagine a better insight into such problems than the combined experiences of these two special people provide.

Even if this is all true, it still begs an important question.  Why did I choose to purchase, and read, Tom’s memoir in 2010, which in turn induced me—via a single footnote on page 177—to search out Odd Nansen’s diary?

Perhaps the best explanation I can come up with is one I found in a book review written a few years ago.  The reviewer observed: “The life of an artifact or work of literature is subject to happenstance.  How it travels and settles, takes root and effloresces, depends on so many various and unpredictable factors—on wars and the weather, on one reader’s serendipitous encounter or a rare individual’s advocacy. . . .” (emphasis added)

So, while I still scratch my head in wonder, I accept that I was fortunate to have had not one, but two, serendipitous encounters with such inspiring works, and the opportunity to advocate for them.

And that, as Robert Frost might say, has made all the difference.

Upcoming Events

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Book Signings

  • April 11, 2024: Our World, Kiawah, SC
  • May 5, 2024: Hadassah, Stonebridge, Monroe Twp, NJ
  • June 2, 2024: Yiddish Club, Monroe, NJ
  • June 3, 2024: Wilton, CT Public Library
  • September 28, 2024: Swedish American Museum of Chicago (Virtual)

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"Your presentation was outstanding, and the audience was captivated by your deep and touching involvement in this amazing web of World War history, intrigue, and tragedy. Your deep understanding of the Nansen/Buergenthal connection really helped to bring history alive for our members."

Thomas Huber, President
Life Long Learning at Sun City Carolina Lakes

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