Sydney, Dublin and Oslo · 1942–1969
AA crossed the oceans by letter, by magazine and with members who went home to help, and its first members abroad wondered whether it would work for them at all.
“Maybe A.A. was just a Yankee gadget that would be no good for Ireland, England, Holland, Scandinavia, Australia, and the Pacific.”
AA’s first letters from Australia came late in 1942, Bill W. wrote: from Dr. Sylvester Minogue, a psychiatrist at Rydalmere Mental Hospital in Sydney, and from a priest there, Father Thomas Dunlea. AA’s office sent them the Big Book. For more than two years the doctor’s letters reported no results at all. Late in 1944, as Bill told it, two patients, Ben and Rex, got sober, and in March 1945 Rex wrote to New York that a group had formed in Sydney. As Bill gave the substance of the letter, they were “‘netting’ new recruits every day.”
After the war it more often went with an alcoholic. In 1946 Conor F., an Irishman who had sobered up in Philadelphia, went home on vacation with his wife. “Never mind the vacation,” Bill remembered them saying; “let’s start a group here.” A Dublin doctor, Norman Moore, sent them one of his patients, Richard P., and in November 1946 Ireland had its first meeting, the first in Europe by Ireland’s own count. In Johannesburg, a broker who had read about AA in the Reader’s Digest sent to New York for a pamphlet, and South Africa had a group by October 1946.
Bill called Norway’s beginning “a classic.” A Norwegian who ran a coffee shop in Greenwich, Connecticut, sober in the Greenwich group, wrote home for the first time in twenty years. His family wrote back about his brother, a typesetter on an Oslo newspaper who was, they said, maybe not long for this world. He and his wife sold the shop, all they had, and flew to Oslo. The brother wouldn’t listen until they were about to give up and go home. Then he sobered up, and put a small notice in his own paper, “one every day for a month.” On the last day, a florist’s wife wrote asking help for her husband.
In 1950 Bill and Lois W. toured the groups in Europe. At the Oslo airport a large delegation met them; Norway already had hundreds of members. The trip, Bill wrote, was “like turning the clock back to early times at home,” and he came home sure “that nothing could stop their progress.”
In October 1969 delegates from abroad met in New York with AA’s trustees and staff, at the first World Service Meeting. It was already AA’s stated principle, Bill wrote, that the New York office should one day become the “senior service center” among offices around the globe. That idea, he wrote that month, had “banished all possible suspicion that GSO in New York is going to run the whole world of AA.”
It’s 1947, in Greenwich, Connecticut. A Norwegian who runs a coffee shop has been sober a while in AA, and he writes home for the first time in twenty years. The answer is a plea. His brother, a typesetter in Oslo, is drinking himself to death.
So he and his wife sell the shop and fly to Norway. The brother won’t listen, until they’re about to give up and go home. Then he sobers up, and puts a small notice in his own newspaper, every day for a month. On the last day, a florist’s wife writes for help.
When Bill W. and Lois land in Oslo three years later, Norway has hundreds of members. All over the world it went that way: a letter, a book, or one drunk who went home to find another.
One country at a time
Six beginnings abroad, and what carried AA to each: a letter, a magazine, a vacation, a hotel room, a brother, an army.
Mostly from Bill W.’s account in AA Comes of Age (1957), with each country’s own AA history where it tells it differently. Members are named as the sources name them, by first name and initial.
1942–1945 · Sydney
A psychiatrist’s letter reached New York, and the office sent the book. AA Australia says his first letter, of December 7, 1942, went to an American psychiatric journal. With a priest and a hospital attendant, Archie McKinnon, he worked for two years with no results.
A group in Sydney, 1945
AA Comes of Age; AA Australia
1946 · Johannesburg
A broker read the Reader’s Digest and sent for a pamphlet. He offered drunks “rehabilitation” money and was swamped by men who wanted handouts. Another drinker, Val D., sobered up on the Big Book and put it right.
Saved by the book
AA Comes of Age; Bob P., 1985
1946 · Dublin
Conor F. gave the Evening Mail an interview with a box number. It brought one letter, from a man asking help for his brother. Ireland’s AA dates its first meeting, in a house in Rathmines, to November 18, 1946.
Europe’s first, by Ireland’s count
AA Ireland; AA Comes of Age
1947 · London
An American member, Grace O., held a meeting in her room at the Dorchester. National papers turned down AA’s advertisement, afraid it was a fraud. Bill told it another way (see Go deeper).
One paper took the ad
AA Great Britain; Bob P., 1985
1947 · Oslo
A Norwegian sober in Greenwich sold his coffee shop to go help his brother, who then ran a notice in his own paper for a month. Across the country in Bergen, a returning emigrant started another group with an AA book.
Hundreds by 1950
AA Comes of Age
1947–1948 · Tokyo
It began among Americans with the occupation; the first group registered with New York in January 1948. Bill heard it had spread “to the Japanese.” AA Japan dates its Japanese-language meetings from March 1975.
The accounts differ
AA Comes of Age; Bob P., 1985; AA Japan
For a closer look
Two tellings of how AA began in England; how long Bill and Lois were away in 1950; and how many countries came to the first World Service Meeting.
AA in Great Britain dates its first meeting to March 30, 1947, in an American member’s suite at the Dorchester Hotel: Grace O., “a writer and contemporary of F Scott Fitzgerald,” with eight alcoholics. The history written for AA’s office in 1985 says March 31, with five present.
Bill W., writing in 1957, doesn’t mention her in his account of England. He credits “Bob B., a Canadian mining engineer,” and a London greengrocer, Bill H., with the first active group. British AA remembers the engineer too, as “Canadian Bob.”
On the advertisement they almost agree. Fifteen national papers refused it, the 1985 history says, “thinking it a fraud!” Only the Financial Times would run it; British AA dates the ad June 10, 1947. Bill remembered the paper as the Financial Chronicle.
Bill remembered “our six weeks’ journey abroad in 1950.” Lois remembered a “ten-week plan” the office laid out, through eight countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, England, Ireland and Scotland.
In Norway, Lois wrote, the members sat at tables “drinking coffee and munching snacks” through three-hour meetings, with songs from their own songbook. Bill remembered Swedes arguing over whether AA should have “Seven Steps” or twelve, and English meetings with “a definite parliamentary atmosphere, including a gavel.” In Dublin three hundred came, Lois wrote, among them a Scot who got drunk and heckled; he turned up sober in Belfast.
In Holland they stayed with Henk Krauweel, a social worker and not an alcoholic, who had translated the Twelve Steps into Dutch for the drunks of Amsterdam. Bill also pledged 1,500 copies of the Big Book to the British groups, by their account.
Before the first World Service Meeting, Bill wrote that it would bring “twenty-six delegates from twelve countries overseas, the zone of Central America, and the North American Conference.”
The history written for AA’s office in 1985 says 27 delegates came from 16 countries, and lists them: Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, England, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Holland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, and the U.S. and Canada, which make 16 only if counted as two. A chronology in later printings of AA Comes of Age says 14 countries. AA’s office today says 16.
They met October 9 to 11, 1969, in the East Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.