THIS book is about a strange and little-known part of the Second World War; it concerns Denmark’s resistance to five years of German occupation. It does not pretend to be either a formal history of that occupation or a complete catalogue of Resistance activity, organized or individual. Its subject has contemporary interest, for these stories—all of them true—point to the conclusion that even the smallest and least prepared country is not beaten simply because foreign troops overwhelm it—not, at least, while there are private places in which to scheme and people to do the scheming.
Without resistance, Denmark would have had an easier war, but from the beginning individual Danes felt they must do something to preserve their national self-respect. Slow in starting, they eventually produced Europe’s prototype Resistance organization, good enough to earn Field-Marshal Mont -gomery’s praise; he called it ‘second to none’. It alone placed Denmark on the list of Allied nations that defeated Hitler. Much of its success stemmed from the fact that, although the Germans never learned to understand the Danish mentality, from the beginning the Danes understood the Germans.
The Wehrmacht claimed to be moving into Denmark to protect it against British invasion. In the process, the Germans said, two friendly Aryan neighbours would be united. According to a story still popular in Copenhagen, King Christian told Hitler, ‘Really, I’m much too old to take on the added responsibility of ruling Germany, too.’
The Nazis permitted the Danish Government to remain in office, and at first neither Denmark’s police nor military were en tirely disbanded. Disappointed when they later allowed the Danes a free election and no Quisling emerged victorious, the Nazis more realistically arranged to benefit from the little country’s high farm output, and from the fact that its shipyards and precision engineering factories were unlikely to be bombed.
Denmark, alone of all the occupied countries, could not boast of a government-in-exile. It had no distinctively uniformed ‘free forces’ fighting alongside the Allies. In the beginning the West had had to abandon the Danes, and the Danish Resistance was unique in that it grew at first with no outside encouragement.
The most effective Resistance acts in Denmark were often apparent only to their protagonists—and, of course, very painfully, to the victims, the Germans. When former members of the Wehrmacht forces in Denmark today deny knowing at the time that they were members of an occupation army—and many of them make this incredible claim—they are lying. But, these days, when many young Danes state that they believe that their country played little part in the war, it is usually because they are unaware of how much happened. Like most casualty figures, those of Denmark’s Resistance give no true idea how effective its fighting organizations were.
In any case, not all Danish resistance was organized. Danish labourers who dumped pounds of sugar into the cement they mixed for German gun emplacements, making them crumble the first time the gun fired, were not organized. Neither was the Copenhagen postman who scrutinized all letters he was sup posed to deliver to the capital’s Gestapo headquarters—and tore up those he suspected were from informers. Royal Air Force roundels were worn by many thousands of Danes to taunt the Germans, and nobody organized this. It was not organization that made Danish factory managers accept German production orders, either to forward the blueprints to Britain or to produce goods on assembly lines on which the final stage was invariably sabotage.
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To write this book I needed considerable help. Ebbe Munck, whose liaison office in Stockholm was one of the most vital parts of the Danish Resistance, probably knows more about the subject personally than any other single individual, and he directed me to many of the people I interviewed. Then, as my manuscript took form, he made many constructive sugges tions.
Mogens Staffeldt, at first an important contact man between the various Copenhagen resistance cells, and later Ebbe Munck’s aide, was also particularly helpful to me from the beginning.
Among the others who assisted me were Poul Andersen and his family, Jørgen Benzon, Ingolf Boisen, Allan Blanner, Dr. Fritz Buchthal, Leo Buschardt, the Bunch-Christensen family, Dr. Thøger Busk, Commander Hassager Christiansen, Arne Duus-Hansen, the Fiil family, Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins, Werner Gyberg, Colonel Volmer Gyth, Police Chief Johannes Hansen, Leif Hendil, Dr. Jørgen Hæstrup, Stig Jensen, Flemming Juncker, H. H. Koch, Henrik Kraft, Dr. K. H. Køster, Captain Erik Larsen, Jens Lillelund, Ole Lippmann, Niels Frederik Madsen, Julius Margolinsky, Chief Rabbi Marcus Melchior, Carl Næsh-Hendriksen, Dr. H. Christian Olsen, Detective Inspector Roland Olsen, Børge Outze, Captain Keld Petersen, Ruth Philipsen, Frank Pinnock, Professor Brandt Rehberg, Dr. Stefan Rozental, Pastor Harald Sand -bæk, Helga von Seck, Svenn Seehusen, Arne Sejr, Squadron-Leader Ted Sismore, Thomas Sneum, Commander Erik Stærmose, Criminal Commissioner Pehr Synnerman, Colonel Sørensen of the Copenhagen Military Hospital, Hans Edvard Teglers, Captain Børge Thing, Anton Toldstrup, Svend Truelsen, Jørgen Turin, and the officers of the Bornholm Steamship Company, the Danish-French Steamship Company, the Danish State Railways, Minerva Films A/S, the E. M. Svitzer Salvage Company, the Freedom Museum in Copen hagen, and the Danish State Archives.
At various times documents were translated for me by Dorte Askegaard, Hanne Larsen, Bengt Petersen, John Thompson, and Inge Vestergaard.
John Sundell of Cassell & Co Ltd. was a remarkably patient and helpful editor.
DAVID LAMPE
1957