Stockholm was among the most romantic places to be in Europe during World War II, according to Pat DiGeorge.
It’s where her parents, Herman Allen and Hedvig Johnson Allen, met in 1944, she said in an interview with Newsweek.
Their story is one of the great romances of World War II. Between the uncertainty and global conflict, many soldiers, like her father, made lifelong connections during their time abroad. DiGeorge chronicled their love story in her book Liberty Lady: A True Story of Love and Espionage in WWII Sweden and spoke with Newsweek about how the war brought her parents together in the Swedish capital.
Before her venture to Sweden, Hedvig Johnson Allen had recently graduated from secretarial school and was working in Washington, D.C. After a brief stint at IRS, which she found to be boring, she found work at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She was sent to London in early 1944 and remained there until August, when she was sent to Sweden, DiGeorge said.
Herman Allen, meanwhile, served as an airman in the war. His B-17 bomber landed off the coast of Sweden on the island of Gotland. He and other airmen were taken to Sweden to be “interned,” DiGeorge said. They were treated well but were not permitted to leave the country, she said.
At first, Herman Allen was sent to be interned in the northern part of the country. But after about a month, his typing skills landed him a job as a typist at the American legation in Stockholm, DiGeorge said.
Inside ‘Romantic and Exciting’ Stockholm
Sweden stayed neutral during the war, making Stockholm an “exciting place to be,” DiGeorge said.
It was a city where Americans, Britons and Germans all lived as their countries were involved in the conflict.
In the nightclubs, everybody would be “talking and trying to see what they could find out,” DiGeorge said, adding there were also “lots of spices” and “lots of intrigue.”
“When my mother went into Stockholm, she wrote that the lights were on,” DiGeorge said. “She had come from London where they weren’t allowed to have lights on at night. There had been no bombs. Everything was beautiful. People were out on the streets.”
Herman and Hedvig Allen Meet
DiGeorge said her parents met on her father’s first day of work at the American legation.
“They took him to the American legation—today it would be the embassy—and in the back of it was the intelligence service,” she said. “And that was the day he met my mother. He always told us that he took one look at her and he said, ‘You’re for me.’”
The couple had a quick but lovely courtship, she said. They met in August and got married in January.
As their romance blossomed, Herman Allen continued work at the American legation, where he would debrief internees to try to identify spies, she said.
During that time, he met the head of American counterespionage in Sweden, a man named Bill Carlson. Carlson asked him to befriend a Swede suspected of selling secrets to Germany. He did just that and gathered enough information to secure his arrest.
But the U.S. government decided it was best to have Herman Allen return to the United States for his protection—meaning the couple would need to separate.
A Whirlwind Romance and Wedding
Facing a return to the U.S., the couple decided to bring forward their wedding, originally planned for February 1949, to January—with some help from Swedish royalty.
Count Folke Bernadotte, the nephew of Sweden’s King Gustav V and a colleague of Herman Allen, helped arrange a ceremony for the couple before he had to depart, at the city’s historic Gustav Adolf Church.
They wed on January 18, 1945, DiGeorge said.
“It was, I’m sure, the event of the season,” she said. “It hit the newspapers the next day, the Swedish newspapers, with a picture of Count Bernadotte. I’ve been to the church twice. It’s really lovely.”
Her father then returned to the U.S. because his role in the spy case could serve as a “distraction,” as nobody was supposed to know the American legation was engaged in intelligence efforts, she said.
“No one was supposed be a spy in neutral Sweden, so everything had to be done underground,” she said. “It was never supposed to be talked about, but of course everyone knew.”
Hedvig Allen Remains in Sweden
Her father returned to the U.S., but Hedvig Allen stayed in Sweden for work for several months. The couple communicated by “beautiful letters,” DiGeorge said. She stayed in Europe through Victory in Europe Day—May 8, 1945.
However, Hedvig Allen would soon return to the U.S. herself—because she was pregnant with DiGeorge.
The Allens Settle in Florida
After the war, the couple settled in Bartow, Florida, where her father remained in charge of cadets at the local air base, DiGeorge said, recounting how her mother described the transition as a shock—going from the cold, northern city of Stockholm to the warmer, humid U.S. state.
“They made a good life,” she said. “They had five children and then moved to Columbia, South Carolina, in the late ’60s and were there until they retired and passed on.”
DiGeorge said that researching her parents’ story was the “most fun” she’s ever had. It took her to Sweden twice as well as the National Archives and the Air University Library in Montgomery, Alabama.
“It was a beautiful love story with a big family they left behind,” she said. “I wish I could tell my mother about everything that’s happened since their story came out. She would be so surprised.”
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