AFTER the Normany landings, when the Allied eastward push began, the Germans began withdrawing their best troops from Scandinavia toward the Western Front. From Denmark alone, a German infantry division, an armoured division, and part of a division of Russian volunteers were transferred from occupation duty to oppose the Americans and British. These troops, intelligence reports from Norway and Denmark suggested, would be followed in the beginning of November by more than a dozen first-rate divisions that had until then been hopelessly trying to fight down the Norwegian Resistance. The Germans would come by ship to Frederikshavn in North Jutland, and then be sent by train down to the Western Front. Soon, for the first time, the work of the Danish Resistance might have a strong, direct bearing on the entire war in Western Europe.
Small teams of young Danish saboteurs in Jutland had already been damaging German troopships, as well as military railways and mustering points. From now on their operations would have to become more frequent, and much more system atized—and in the autumn, as the Allies fought toward the Ardennes, the Jutlanders set to work. About three hundred young saboteurs would try to bottle up all the Wehrmacht troops that were then in Scandinavia. A very tall order.
Toldstrup, the North Jutland Resistance leader, had his men set about to establish contact with every loyal Dane employed by the state railway in that part of Denmark. Soon there was someone on every station who could be counted on to help the Resistance. Toldstrup’s men now kept the port area of Frederikshavn under close watch—and word would be sent to the Resistance headquarters in Aalborg as soon as German troopships entered the harbour. As soon as the troops began to board their trains, a telephone call would be made to a railway station somewhere south of Frederikshavn. The tele phones, of course, were likely to be tapped by the Germans—but Toldstrup had not overlooked this.
‘Ferdinand will send you a packet of cigarettes in three days,’ a Resistance man would telephone, and the loyal Dane on the station who received the call would know that it meant that a German troop train was due to pass in three hours. The railway employee would rush to notify the nearest sabotage group, and on bicycles or on foot, the young Danes would then move out, usually carrying their bulky explosives in rucksacks, to blow out a section of railway line and stop the train. Later, when the track had been repaired and the train moved on, the saboteurs would telephone to a contact farther along the line, again announcing that ‘Ferdinand’ would be doing something in a certain number of days, and another sabotage group would be alerted into action. ‘Ferdinand’ always got results, and no German trains moved undamaged through North Jutland.
The German High Command, watching the slow progress of their troops through Denmark, ordered that the most strict measures be taken. Captured saboteurs, the Wehrmacht ordered, would be made to ride as hostages in German troop trains passing through Jutland. As soon as a train was halted by a sabotage action, the young patriots would be hauled out and executed then and there. This, the Resistance soon realized, was no idle threat; one of the captured saboteurs managed to escape from a derailed train in Jutland, and he told Toldstrup’s men why he had been travelling with the Germans. And at least one Danish public figure was also made to ride as hostage in the troop trains.
Now, the Resistance men decided, if they set up fuzed charges which would not detonate until the trains passed over them, it would be possible for the saboteurs to be far away when the explosions took place. Capture then would be less likely. This also would destroy more German rolling stock, too, as well as lengths of track. Then, as they became more experienced and watched the repair crew at work, the Jutlanders began sabotaging trains as they passed through gorges or other places where repairs were hardest to make. Pulling a derailed locomotive out of a narrow gorge could take days.
The saboteurs then began destroying water towers along the lines, thus slowing down those trains that did get through. And they blew up so many switching points that the Germans had to begin a system of cannibalization, moving railway equipment from branch lines to main lines—sometimes having even to transfer long sections of track—to get their trains through. ‘Ferdinand’ was a very busy fellow indeed.
The Germans, following frantic orders, tried everything to keep the railway lines open. Road blocks all over North Jutland made movement difficult for the small bands of saboteurs. Motor-cars, the Germans ordered, now must not be used between three o’clock in the afternoon and eight in the morning, and many cars were halted on the roads and confiscated. German patrols lurked everywhere, but fortunately, the young Danes knew their own secondary roads well and usually they were able to cycle around the German road blocks, trudging across the fields and through woods when all other routes were cut. But it was never very easy.
The north Jutland blacksmith who stored explosives openly in his shop cycled along a country road one night toward a railway sabotage operation, his large knapsack full of explosives and detonators. Ahead he saw German troops barring the road. If he turned and tried to go the other way now, they would shoot at him. But if he were stopped and searched, he would also probably be shot. And even if he tried shooting his way through the road block, his chances of escape would be slim. So the blacksmith decided to keep on going, and as he neared the Germans, he began shouting and burbling at the top of his lungs—the bawdiest song he knew. Then, unsteadily, he veered his bicycle from one side of the road to the other. When the Germans shone their torches in his face, he grinned foolishly, drooling a little. ‘Drunk as a lord!’ one of the military policemen laughed, waving the Dane past.
Many other Resistance men, less quick thinking, were caught and searched. Several saboteurs, making their way along a road late one night, were halted by a Wehrmacht patrol. One of the Danes carried under his arm a large, neatly tied, white-paper parcel full of explosives. ‘Raise your hands!’ the German soldiers ordered before the saboteur could throw away his parcel.
Without hesitating, the Dane reached up both arms, balancing the parcel of explosives over his head. Cautiously the Germans moved toward the man to begin patting his pockets, and then his arms and legs, searching for concealed weapons. The Dane, very nervous, shivered but said nothing. Finally he was told to move along—without even being asked what was in his parcel!
After sabotage on the railway lines from Frederikshavn had made the movement of almost any troop trains impossible, the Germans began landing their transports farther south, at Aarhus, and other groups of saboteurs quickly set to work on the railway lines there. Instead of using Toldstrup’s ‘Ferdinand’ system, however, these men radioed coded messages to England. Then, on the B.B.C. Danish Service, instructions were given to the saboteurs south of Aarhus, telling them where to strike. This system was used because there were not enough contacts on the railway stations in that part of Jutland to rely on telephones—but it was a slow and imperfect system. After an entire German division managed to land at Aarhus and then get down through Jutland in only four days, London scolded the Danes, and the saboteurs in Aarhus set to work tightening their communications system.
Soon, however, sufficient railway lines were repaired in the north, and the Germans resumed the use of Frederikshavn as a disembarkation port. ‘Ferdinand’ went back to work, and the movement through Denmark of the divisions from Norway remained dreadfully slow.
That winter, snow began falling early in Jutland, but if the Germans thought it would be easier to locate Danish saboteurs in the white countryside, they were wrong. By late autumn the situation had become so desperate for the Germans that they had guards, usually in pairs, stationed at fifty- and one-hundred-yard intervals along every railway line they used in Jutland. Many of the Danish saboteurs began fashioning snow capes from parachutes that had been attached to containers dropped into the country by the Allies. Now, often on skis, the young Danes moved silently to place their explosives, often within whispering distance of the tense German guards. At least once the silent, white-caped saboteurs were noticed by old ladies who afterwards swore they had seen ghosts. For the young Jutlanders the dangerous work became a sort of game—as much fun as the winter sports they had enjoyed before the war.
There were times, however, when the snow did hinder the saboteurs. One group went out and found that they could not locate the railway line they had been ordered to mine. The tracks were completely covered in snow, so the saboteurs decided to go to the nearest farm to borrow shovels. They then trudged toward the railway line in broad daylight, and in full sight of a patrol of armed Germans. Pretending to be a railway repair crew, several of the young Danes busily shovelled away snow from the tracks. Several more of the men then crawled forward and, using the banked snow to conceal themselves from the Germans, placed plastic explosives on the tracks. When this was done and the men had crawled away, the saboteurs with the shovels put enough snow over the mines to keep the German patrol from seeing the booby traps when they walked past. The next train to come through was blown up according to plan.
In other ways the snow could be a help. It was impossible for such relatively small numbers of saboteurs to be everywhere at once, but they wanted to make the Germans think they were even more effective than they appeared to be. So Toldstrup’s headquarters sent a radio request to England at the beginning of February 1945. Soon the B.B.C. Danish Service began to broadcast warnings. Danish saboteurs, the B.B.C. said, were worried because a recent snowfall had covered all the mines on the railway lines between the port of Aalborg and the Randers terminus, some distance away. Now, the radio warning stated, the Danes could find none of their own charges. Before any more German trams dared move along the Aalborg–Randers route, German sappers on foot had laboriously to check the entire line, and for some days troop movements were completely held up.
By January 1945 the attacks were so impeding the Germans that no Danes were allowed to approach a water tower or pumping installation near the railways unless accompanied by German guards. Nevertheless, the towers continued to be blown up. That month even the German commanders in Denmark were reported to have admitted among themselves that the railway sabotage in Jutland might finally lose the war for the Reich. That month, also, the Danes did not confine rail way sabotage to these small actions along the lines. A group of Resistance men one night fought their way into one Jutland aerodrome where the Germans were building hangers. A night exercise was then being held on the field, and the Germans there were using searchlight batteries. But the Danes moved swiftly, and soon they had blown up several locomotives attached to trains that had taken ballast to the Germans at work on the aerodrome. For good measure, before they retreated, the saboteurs also blew up six excavating machines in use on the airfield.
At the end of January, a group of about twenty saboteurs entered the Randers railway station, pistols drawn, and gathered together all the railway employees and the German guards in the station. While these men were being held prisoner, ex plosions began to occur all over the Randers goods yard—fifteen explosions altogether—and several troop trains, most of which were carrying Wehrmacht soldiers returning from leave, could not pass through for twenty-four hours.
The Russian push west, as well as Allied bombardment, caused the Germans a serious coal shortage which was soon felt on the Danish railways. Coal supplies were requisitioned by the Germans from Holland and from civilian sources in Denmark, some of which would be used on the Jutland railways, others in Norway where trains were also moving too slowly to satisfy the Germans. But little of this coal ever got through, for the Danes soon systematically sabotaged coal ships and the trains that were to bring the coal into Jutland.
By February 1945 there was complete chaos on the Jutland railways. Everywhere the Germans were trying to trap the saboteurs. When they had to move great distances, the young Danes had to ride on the trains themselves, and now the Germans were holding up the civilian railways to check passengers’ credentials. Many saboteurs were caught this way—but in spite of this the sabotage went on.
German patience in Jutland was at an end. When, toward the end of February, the saboteurs learned that the train of General Lindemann, then the commanding officer of all German forces in Denmark, was to come through Jutland, they decided to destroy his train. They set to work carefully, and two carriages and a sleeping car were entirely demolished. One of these was for Lindemann’s personal use, but unfortunately he was not in it when the charges detonated. Stepping off the train, the general excitedly screamed an order to his soldiers—which they carried out at once. They set fire to the nearest farm, and the home of a quite innocent Dane was destroyed.
Many saboteurs were killed, and many more were captured, but the Jutland railway sabotage operations—which numbered thousands—may have been Denmark’s strongest direct contribution to the victory in Europe. Certainly, the Danes did nothing that had a greater strategic effect on the war.
General Montgomery, asked about the sabotage when he visited Denmark shortly after the liberation, said it had changed the entire tide of the Battle of the Ardennes. During the worst two weeks of that campaign, when Allied troops seemed likely to be pushed far back if the Germans could get reinforcements to their front, the Jutland saboteurs worked so efficiently that, for a fortnight, every train was stopped.