English: 'This is 0 Day.' General Eisenhower said to the French people: 'Stiff fighting will come now, but after this the victory. The year 1944 is the year of complete victory. Good luck!'
BBC broadcast in English at one: 11,000 planes are shuttling back and forth or standing by to land troops and bomb behind enemy lines; 4,000 landing craft and small boats are continually arriving in the area between Cher- bourg and Le Havre. English and American troops are already engaged in heavy combat. Speeches by Gerbrandy, the Prime Minister of Belgium, King Haakon of Norway, de Gaulle of France, the King of England and, last but not least, Churchill. A huge commotion in the Annex! Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation? The liberation we've all talked so much about, which still seems too good, too much of a fairy tale ever to come true? Will this year, 1944, bring us victory? We don't know yet. But where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. We'll need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships and the suffering yet to come. It's now a matter of remaining calm and steadfast, of gritting our teeth and keeping a stiff upper lip! France, Russia, Italy, and even Germany, can cry out in agony, but we don't yet have that right!
Oh, Kitty, the best part about the invasion is that I have the feeling that friends are on the way. Those terrible Germans have oppressed and threatened us for so long that the thought of friends and salvation means everything to us! Now it's not just the Jews, but Holland and all of occupied Europe. Maybe, Margot says, I can even go back to school in October or September. Yours, Anne M. Frank
P.S. I'll keep you informed of the latest news!
This morning and last night, dummies made of straw and rubber were dropped from the air behind German lines, and they exploded the minute they hit the ground. Many paratroopers, their faces blackened so they couldn't be seen in the dark, landed as well. The French coast was bombarded with 5,500 tons of bombs during the night, and then, at six in the morning, the first landing craft came ashore. Today there were 20,000 airplanes in action. The German coastal batteries were destroyed even before the landing; a small bridgehead has already been formed. Everything's going well, despite the bad weather. The army and the people are 'one will and one hope.'
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1944
Dearest Kitty,
Great news of the invasion! The Allies have taken Bayeux, a village on the coast of France, and are now fighting for Caen. They're clearly intending to cut off the peninsula where Cherbourg is located. Every evening the war correspondents report on the difficulties, the courage and the fighting spirit of the army. To get their stories, they pull off the most amazing feats. A few of the wounded who are already back in England also spoke on the radio. Despite the miserable weather, the planes are flying dthgently back and forth. We heard over the BBC that Churchill wanted to land along with the troops on D Day, but Eisenhower and the other generals managed to talk him out of it. Just imagine, so much courage for such an old man he must be at least seventy! The excitement here has died down somewhat; still, we're all hoping that the war will finally be over by the end of the year. It's about time! Mrs. van Daan's constant griping is unbearable; now that she can no longer drive us crazy with the invasion, she moans and groans all day about the bad weather. If only we could plunk her down in the loft in a bucket of cold water! Everyone in the Annex except Mr. van Daan and Peter has read the Hunaarian Rhapsody trilogy, a biography of the composer, piano virtuoso and child prodigy Franz Liszt. It's very interesting, though in my opinion there's a bit too much emphasis on women; Liszt was not only the greatest and most famous pianist of his time, he was also the biggest womanizer, even at the age of seventy. He had an affair with Countess Marie d' Agoult, Princess Carolyne Sayn- Wittgenstein, the dancer Lola Montez, the pianist Agnes Kingworth, the pianist Sophie Menter, the Circassian princess Olga Janina, Baroness Olga Meyen- dorff, actress Lilla what's-her-name, etc., etc., and there's no end to it. Those parts of the book dealing with music and the other arts are much more interesting. Some of the people mentioned are Schumann, Clara Wieck, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Beethoven, Joachim, Richard Wagner, Hans von Bulow, Anton Rubinstein, Frederic Chopin, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Hiller, Hummel, Czerny, Rossini, Cherubini, Paganini, Mendels- sohn, etc., etc.
Liszt appears to have been a decent man, very generous and modest, though exceptionally vain. He helped others, put art above all else, was extremely fond of cognac and women, couldn't bear the sight of tears, was a gentleman, couldn't refuse anyone a favor, wasn't interested in money and cared about religious freedom and the world.
Yours, Anne M. Frank
314 ANNE FRANK
TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1944
Dearest Kit,
Another birthday has gone by, so I'm now fifteen. I received quite a few gifts: Springer's five-volume art history book, a set of underwear, two belts, a handkerchief, two jars of yogurt, a jar of jam, two honey cookies (small), a botany book from Father and Mother, a gold bracelet from Margot, a sticker album from the van Daans, Biomalt and sweet peas from Dussel, candy from Miep, candy and notebooks from Bep, and the high point: the book Maria Theresa and three slices of full-cream cheese from Mr. Kugler. Peter gave me a lovely bouquet of peonies; the poor boy had put a lot of effort into finding a present, but nothing quite worked out.
The invasion is still going splendidly, in spite of the miserable weather-pouring rains, gale winds and high seas.
Yesterday Churchill, Smuts, Eisenhower and Arnold visited the French villages that the British have captured and liberated. Churchill was on a torpedo boat that shelled the coast. Uke many men, he doesn't seem to know what fear is-an enviable trait!
From our position here in Fort Annex, it's difficult to gauge the mood of the Dutch. No doubt many people are glad the idle (!) British have finally rolled up their sleeves and gotten down to work. Those who keep claim- ing they don't want to be occupied by the British don't realize how unfair they're being. Their line of reasoning boils down to this: England must fight, struggle and sacri- fice its sons to liberate Holland and the other occupied countries. After that the British shouldn't remain in Hol- land: they should offer their most abject apologies to all the occupied countries, restore the Dutch East Indies to its rightful owner and then return, weakened and impoverished, to England. What a bunch of idiots. And yet, as I've already said, many Dutch people can be counted among their ranks. What would have become of Holland and its neighbors if England had signed a peace treaty with Germany, as it's had ample opportunity to do? Holland would have become German, and that would have been the end of that!
All those Dutch people who still look down on the British, scoff at England and its government of old fogies, call the English cowards, yet hate the Germans, should be given a good shaking, the way you'd plump up a pillow. Maybe that would straighten out their jumbled brains!
Wishes, thoughts, accusations and reproaches are swirling around in my head. I'm not really as conceited as many people think; I know my various faults and shortcomings better than anyone else, but there's one difference: I also know that I want to change, will change and already have changed greatly! Why is it, I often ask myself, that everyone still thinks I'm so pushy and such a know-it-all? Am I really so arrogant? Am I the one who's so arrogant, or are they? It sounds crazy, I know, but I'm not going to cross out that last sentence, because it's not as crazy as it seems. Mrs. van Daan and Dussel, my two chief accusers, are known to be totally unintelligent and, not to put too fine a point on it, just plain 'stupid'! Stupid people usually can't bear it when others do something better than they do; the best examples of this are those two dummies, Mrs. van Daan and Dussel. Mrs. van D. thinks I'm stupid because I don't suffer so much from this ailment as she does, she thinks I'm pushy because she's even pushier, she thinks my dresses are too short because hers are even shorter, and she thinks I'm such a know-it-all because she talks twice as much as I do about topics she knows nothing about. The same goes for Dussel. But one of my favorite sayings is 'Where there's smoke there's fire,' and I readily admit I'm a know-it-all.
What's so difficult about my personality is that I scold and curse myself much more than anyone else does; if Mother adds her advice, the pile of sermons becomes so thick that I despair of ever getting through them. Then I talk back and start contradicting everyone until the old famthar Anne refrain inevitably crops up again: 'No one understands me!'
This phrase is part of me, and as unlikely as it may seem, there's a kernel of truth in it. Sometimes I'm so deeply buried under self-reproaches that I long for a word of comfort to help me dig myself out again. If only I had someone who took my feelings seriously. Alas, I haven't yet found that person, so the search must go on.
I know you're wondering about Peter, aren't you, Kit? It's true, Peter loves me, not as a girlfriend, but as a friend. His affection grows day by day, but some mysterious force is holding us back, and I don't know what it is. Sometimes I think my terrible longing for him was overexaggerated. But that's not true, because if I'm unable to go to his room for a day or two, I long for him as desperately as I ever did. Peter is kind and good, and yet I can't deny that he's disappointed me in many ways. I especially don't care for his dislike of religion, his table conversations and various things of that nature. Still, I'm firmly convinced that we'll stick to our agreement never to quarrel. Peter is peace-loving, tolerant and extremely easygoing. He lets me say a lot of things to him that he'd never accept from his mother. He's making a determined effort to remove the blots from his copybook and keep his affairs in order. Yet why does he hide his innermost self and never allow me access? Of
