24/02/2026
I was today years old when I learned the story behind, the how/why of one of my Favourite childhood stories: P**i Longstocking.
Going strong 80 years later, inspiring generations to be the antidote.
Sharing it with the next... Did you know the backstory? Are you a P**i fan?
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"While children worldwide laughed at Pippi Longstocking's adventures, almost no one knew the truth: her creator was secretly reading N**i letters and inventing the world's most independent child as an antidote to Hi**er.
Sweden, 1940. The world was at war, but Sweden remained neutral—a precarious position that required knowing exactly what was happening on both sides.
Astrid Lindgren, a 33-year-old mother and aspiring writer, took what she called her ""dirty job.""
She worked at Sweden's postal control center, part of the country's intelligence operation. Her assignment: steam open private and military letters crossing Sweden's borders. Read them. Record sensitive information. Seal them back up.
It was tedious, invasive work. Letters from soldiers to their families. Love letters. Business correspondence. All violated, all read by strangers.
But some letters contained something far darker than secrets.
They contained the truth about what was happening in N**i-occupied Europe.
In May 1941—years before most civilians knew about the death camps—Lindgren wrote in her diary about what she'd discovered in one of those intercepted letters:
""1,000 Jews a day are being forcibly transported to Poland in the most shocking conditions... it is apparently Hi**er's intention to make Poland into one big ghetto where the poor Jews are to perish from hunger and squalor.""
She understood immediately what this meant. And she understood something else: ""As long as you're only reading about it in the paper you can sort of avoid believing it. But when you read it in a letter... it suddenly brings it home, quite terrifyingly.""
She was reading personal accounts of genocide in progress. Day after day. Letter after letter.
Lindgren filled 17 volumes with diary entries and newspaper clippings documenting the war. She couldn't stop the N**i machine. She couldn't save the people being murdered.
But she could do one thing.
At home, her seven-year-old daughter Karin was frequently ill—wartime shortages meant poor nutrition, and childhood sickness was common. To distract Karin during long days in bed, Lindgren began inventing stories about a little girl unlike any child in real life.
A girl who lived alone, with no parents to tell her what to do.
A girl who was stronger than any man, who could lift her horse with one hand.
A girl who had a suitcase full of gold coins and didn't have to work for anyone.
A girl who didn't follow rules just because adults said so—but who was genuinely, fundamentally kind.
A girl who stood up to bullies. Who helped people weaker than herself. Who refused to bow to authority unless that authority earned her respect.
Karin loved these stories so much she named the character herself: Pippi LĂĄngstrump. In English: Pippi Longstocking.
The stories were an escape—a bright spot of imagination in a world drowning in darkness.
Then in 1944, Lindgren fell and injured herself badly. She was bedridden for three weeks—the same position her daughter had been in when Pippi was born.
During those three weeks, unable to move, still processing the horrors she read daily in confiscated letters, Lindgren began writing the Pippi stories down in earnest.
She was creating the opposite of everything the N**is represented.
Hi**er demanded obedience. Pippi questioned authority.
The N**is worshipped strength used for domination. Pippi was the strongest person in her world—and used that strength to protect the weak.
Fascism required conformity. Pippi was defiantly, joyfully herself.
The Third Reich was built on cruelty. Pippi was kind to everyone—unless they were bullies, and then she humiliated them with humor, not violence.
As Wilfried Hauke, director of the new documentary ""A World Gone Mad: The War Diaries of Astrid Lindgren,"" explains: Lindgren believed deeply that how children are raised shapes the kind of adults—and leaders—they become. She wanted kids brought up ""not to be psychopaths like Hi**er or authoritarians, dictators and so on.""
Pippi Longstocking was her answer.
In 1945—the same year the war ended and the full scope of the Holocaust became public—the first Pippi book was published.
Lindgren's great-grandson Johan Palmberg observed that the character arrived at exactly the right moment: ""The world had been in this terrible situation for many years and she comes as this fresh breath of air. She's the antidote to the authoritarian regimes of Germany and the Soviets. She has all these characteristics of independence, free-thinking and kindness which is the antithesis to the N**i ideology.""
Children across Europe, traumatized by years of war, found Pippi irresistible. Here was a child who feared nothing, who couldn't be controlled, who made her own rules—but who was never cruel. Who was powerful but gentle. Who was wild but kind.
The books spread worldwide. Pippi became one of the most beloved children's characters in history—translated into more than 70 languages, adapted into films and TV shows, adored by generations of children who had no idea their favorite rebel was born from her creator's secret war work.
Most readers never knew that while Lindgren invented stories about a little girl who feared no one, she was reading letters describing people being murdered by a regime that demanded absolute fear.
Most never knew that Pippi's famous independence and refusal to submit to bullies was a deliberate counter-message to fascist obedience.
Most never knew that the character's fundamental kindness—her insistence on protecting the weak and standing up to the strong—was Lindgren's response to the cruelty she documented daily.
They just knew they loved this strange, wonderful, impossible girl.
Eighty years later, Pippi Longstocking is still here.
And as Johan Palmberg reflected at her 80th anniversary: ""Her independence, kindness and generosity are needed more than ever.""
Because Astrid Lindgren understood something important: you fight authoritarianism not just with politics or armies, but with the stories you tell children. With the values you embed in their imaginations. With the heroes you give them to admire.
She gave the world a hero who was strong but kind. Independent but generous. Rule-breaking but moral. Fearless but never cruel.
She gave the world a little girl who could never be bullied, controlled, or broken—because she knew exactly who she was and refused to be anyone else.
While Astrid Lindgren spent her days reading about the worst of humanity, she spent her nights creating the best of it.
And millions of children grew up believing they could be like Pippi: brave, kind, free, and unstoppable.
That's not just a children's book. That's resistance built into the next generation's imagination."
