My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

where they took X rays and confirmed the fracture. For almost six
weeks his arm was in a cast, but he never complained; he just went
on working.
By this time Hitler had already set the date for an attack on the
West. Of course, we did not know it then. We only felt the mounting
tension. On April 9, 1940, Hitler invaded Norway, and on the
same day German troops marched into Denmark without finding
any resistance. The English wanted to help with air attacks on
Norway; they started on April 15, much too late to be of any help.
"Too little and too late," was Churchill's judgment later.
The tension in Geneva was growing. The Haberlers had left for
the United States, and Professor Kelsen had made plans to go
there, too. Professor Potter, an American citizen, had just lost his
wife (a great friend of mine) and had accepted a new position at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
When Hitler invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, I really
became frightened. I had to talk to Lu. He did not want to leave.
He never had been so happy as he was in Geneva, and he did not
feel any fear. I reminded him of the night the Nazis came to
Vienna. I told him the Nazis would never take him off their black
list. I begged him, I implored him to leave, to think of me, if he
would not think of himself. But it took the breakdown of the Maginot
Line, the occupation of Paris on June 14, and the raising of the
German swastika on the highest point of the Eiffel Tower to make.
Lu aware of the danger. Finally, he gave in and promised to make
the necessary preparations for us to leave for the United States.
In his heart, of course, Lu was reluctant to leave not only because
of his love for the work at the institute, but because he feared
how America, the home of young people, the paradise of youth,
would receive him, a man of almost sixty. He was also afraid of the
language difference. At that time he was more at ease with French
than with English. He had studied French for at least six years in
the Academic Gymnasium, and he spoke it fluently with almost no
accent. English he had first learned by reading, and that, he always
insisted, was the wrong method. Often he said, jokingly, "If you
don't learn a foreign language as a child, you later have to learn it
with a sleeping dictionary."
The change of languages meant more to him than it would to an
average citizen. Language was his most important tool, his essential
device for communicating his ideas, his means of earning his
living. I was not frightened of anything. My belief in him was
unshakable and so was my confidence that a man of his stature
could neither be suppressed nor overlooked.
From the moment German troops moved into France every line
of communication between Switzerland and that country was
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