CHAPTER ONE
THE BORNHOLM INTERLUDE
1945–1946
One of the most widely quoted statements by Stalin cited in Cold War historiography comes from Milovan Djilas’s Conversations with Stalin, when the Soviet leader reportedly declared in April 1945 that “whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.”1
There is no certainty that Djilas accurately reported Stalin’s views, though it is certainly the case that one can find other similar pronouncements about the nature of postwar occupation by the Soviet dictator. Whether he said it or not, the quotation is frequently used to demonstrate that Stalin understood both that the Soviet system would be extended as far as the Red Army was able to march, and that the Anglo-American powers would impose their own form of democracy on the territories that they liberated from the Nazis.2
Yet the facts of Soviet occupation history at the end of World War II do not conform to the essence of Stalin’s statement. The presence of Red Army forces in various parts of Europe after the war did not assure the development of a Soviet-style system. Austria is a good example, as is the Danish island of Bornholm. Albania and Yugoslavia developed socialist systems independent of Soviet occupation. Soviet troops quickly withdrew from Czechoslovakia, leaving behind a democratic political system, including an influential communist party, which then seized power in a coup d’état in February 1948. At the end of the “Continuation War” in 1944, Soviet troops also withdrew from parts of Finland that they had invaded. Finland developed its own methods of dealing with overwhelming Soviet power and influence in its neighborhood, without losing its sovereignty or democratic system.
2. Interwar Western Baltic
The Soviet occupation of Bornholm from May 9, 1945, to April 5, 1946, is an episode of the postwar history of occupation that is little known outside of Denmark, in good measure because the Red Army contingent was withdrawn after eleven months and the bucolic island returned to Danish control. The long-term effects of the occupation on Denmark and the island were minimal, especially since Denmark joined NATO in 1949 as a founding member and became a part of the Western alliance system.3 Yet the Bornholm interlude between war and peace provides important insights into the Soviet calculus of strategic thinking, occupation, and political intentions, as well as into Danish politics and society.
Why Occupy Bornholm?
The island of Bornholm today is a quiet tourist haven, with picturesque fishing villages and a pastoral landscape, crisscrossed by flat country lanes perfect for recreational bike riding and strolling in the countryside. During World War II, Denmark and Bornholm survived reasonably well under the relatively benign protectorate of Nazi Germany, with the Danish king, Christian X, serving as an important symbol of national unity. Until the summer of 1943, the Allies looked at Denmark as collaborating with the Third Reich. But during that summer, the combination of strikes among Danish workers and the Nazi plenipotentiary’s insistence that the Danish government crack down harder on society led to the ouster of the democratically elected government and the replacement of the recalcitrant Danish police by the German overlords. Resistance groups, represented in a “Freedom Council,” launched a serious campaign of sabotage, linked up to and supplied by the Allies. These at times spectacular acts of sabotage rescued the Danes’ reputation among the Allies and made it possible for them to establish their own government after liberation (on May 5) and to become a founding member of the United Nations. The new Danish government represented a combination of leading members of the Freedom Council and Danish politicians from the dissolved parliament of the summer of 1943, a number of whom had made their way to England.4
Some prominent Danish civil society and resistance figures connived with sympathetic Nazi administrators to evacuate the bulk of the country’s Jews to Sweden, an important story of humanitarianism and survival of the Jews in an otherwise bleak landscape of death and destruction.5 Denmark cannot be said to have suffered terribly much during the war, though the majority of the Danes certainty resented their loss of sovereignty to the Nazi overlords. They also were embarrassed by the “short war” that saw them succumb to the Nazis within a matter of days. As in Denmark proper, the German presence in Bornholm did not oppress the islanders, though there were groups of Danish resisters, who emerged at the end of the war to help the Soviets clear the island of the Wehrmacht soldiers. The German navy used Bornholm’s ports to patrol the western Baltic and make sure the British would not penetrate the strategic waters guarding the Nazi empire. The island was also a convenient “listening post” to intercept communications of enemy ships and submarines.
The island of Bornholm is located some 250 kilometers northeast of Lübeck and centered between the southern tip of Sweden and Kołobrzeg (then Kolberg) on the Polish (at that point Pomeranian German) coastline. Though located considerably to the east, Bornholm could be considered as a stepping-stone to the entrance to the Belts (Great Belt and Little Belt) and Sound of Denmark, the entrance and egress from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea. The island could also be seen as ensuring access to the Kiel Canal, linking the North Sea to the Baltic through German territory. No doubt, the strategic location of the island, described by a number of commentators, both Soviet and Western, as a potential “Gibraltar of the Baltic,” was a serious factor in the Soviet decision to occupy the island. The official reason for the ongoing occupation provided by the Kremlin, and announced to the Danish public, was that Bornholm was essential to resolving issues that had emerged from the defeat and occupation of Germany. German troops and naval units fled from the Soviet armies to the island and, after the capitulation, hoped to surrender to the Western Allies. The Soviets explained to the Danish people that the island would be occupied “until the military question in Germany had been solved.”6 Some historians believe that the goal of the Soviet occupation was to put pressure on the Danes to make concessions about allowing Soviet access to the Belts and Sound rather than military considerations tied to the German occupation.7
There are several reasons that the argument about the control of the Belts and Sound as the paramount cause of the Bornholm occupation is unconvincing. First, the Soviets generally showed much more interest in the Mediterranean than the Baltic at the wartime conferences and in meetings with their Western Allies. During the Moscow meeting between Churchill and Stalin in October 1944, for example, the subject of the Kiel Canal came up, if only to mention the principle of internationalization of the canal. There were no details and no mention of the Belts and Sound.8 At Potsdam, the Soviets showed keen interest in bases in the Mediterranean and control of the Straits, but neither the Baltic nor Bornholm were subjects of discussion.9 Generally, Stalin pursued a decidedly defensive posture when it came to naval matters.10 In this connection the fairly consistent British and American policy of the “internationalization” of the Kiel Canal and the Belts and Sound with ultimate control in the hands of the riparian powers suited the needs both of the Soviets in the Baltic and of the Western Allies.11 British intelligence speculated in addition that the Soviets wanted Bornholm as a way “to control sea routes in the Baltic which would enable her to deny to Germany and Western Europe a large proportion of Swedish iron ore supplies.”12
There had been some thinking in the Soviet foreign ministry during the war about sharing the occupation of all of Denmark itself with the British, and along with that establishing a base in Bornholm, as a way to extend more direct influence over Danish society and politics.13 Denmark’s own strategic position between the Baltic and the North Seas interested the Soviets, and they frequently noted the friendly relations between Russia and Denmark that went back even before the time of Peter the Great. But there were also considerable differences of opinion in the Soviet foreign ministry about how to deal with Denmark and Bornholm after the war. The Danes had broken off relations with Moscow in 1941 and, under pressure from the Germans, joined the anti-Comintern Pact. As a result, the Soviets were in no mood to treat Denmark as an ally, even if the two countries were not in a state of war. Certainly, this generally hostile attitude regarding Danish wartime behavior affected their readiness to occupy the Danish island. In Ivan Maiskii’s memorandum to Foreign Minister Molotov of January 11, 1944, outlining Soviet interests in Europe and the world, Denmark and Scandinavia, with the exception of Finland, played a relatively minor role. It was important, wrote Maiskii, that there be no Scandinavian federation, no way for the countries of the region to balance the Soviets’ overwhelming military preponderance in the Baltic that would emerge after the war. There also should be no “Anglo-American” bases in the region. Although Bornholm was not mentioned in the memorandum itself, Maiskii was clear on the issue of the Belts and Sound: Soviet access to and egress from the Baltic Sea should be guaranteed in the postwar order.14
The commission on the postwar world, chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, wanted to deny the Baltic to any and all military vessels, but was aware that Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries would be opposed, since this would leave the Baltic under effective Soviet military control.15 Already during the summer of 1944, Deputy Foreign Minister Solomon Lozovskii talked about a Soviet presence in Bornholm in connection with his argument that it was critical for the Soviets to have a military base between the Åland Islands, off the Finnish coast, which guarded the entry to the Gulf of Finland, and the Kiel Canal that ran between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, as a crucial defense point against foreign naval vessels. Litvinov responded that the Soviet Union was not at war with Denmark and therefore would have no legal claim to the island. Lozovskii noted that one could claim that Bornholm was necessary for the strategic defense of the Soviet Union against Germany, the argument that was eventually used to justify occupation.16
Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister V. G. Dekanozov and his aides M. S. Vetrov and V. S. Semenov came to the conclusion that Denmark would be an essential object of Soviet postwar security policy, precisely because of the issues of access to the Baltic, as well as the Schleswig problem, and therefore the Soviets should join in the liberation of Denmark in order to protect its postwar interests. Once again, Bornholm was specifically mentioned as a potential Soviet objective, while the foreign ministry officials seemed to agree that the Soviets could leave the liberation of Copenhagen to the Western Allies and what the Soviets called “Fighting Denmark” (the Danish Freedom Council), an alliance of the Danish resistance movements.17
In a memorandum of January 11, 1945, Litvinov suggested to Molotov and Dekanozov that Denmark should be part of a “neutral zone” of influence (along with Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy), with Finland, Sweden, and Norway being in the Soviet sphere of influence and Holland, Belgium, and France in the British. Litvinov did not mention Bornholm, though, in a second memo of January 12, he suggested that the island of Helgoland on the North Sea side of the Belts and Sound be given to England or Denmark and that the island of Rügen (eventually included in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany) be made available for Soviet use.18
Not a great deal is known about the Soviet military’s position on the question of Denmark and Bornholm. There was some speculation in the military press in early 1945 that the Belts and Sound could well be the site of the last big battles of World War II with the Germans. Meanwhile, the foreign ministry officials Semenov, Dekanozov, and Molotov were convinced that the Soviets needed to liberate Bornholm as a way to ensure Soviet interests in the resolution of Danish issues. On March 12, they thus urged Nikolai Bulganin in the People’s Commissariat of Defense to “seize and occupy this small piece of the Kingdom.…” Bulganin replied in the affirmative on April 9, and on April 23 the People’s Commissar of the Navy, N. G. Kuznetsov, suggested to the general staff that Bornholm (and Rügen) be taken by Soviet naval forces. On May 4, the same day that the German Wehrmacht surrendered to Field Marshall Montgomery in Denmark proper, Kuznetsov instructed the commander of the Baltic fleet, V. F Tributs, to seize the islands of Bornholm and Rügen.19
The role of Danish politicians in the Soviet calculations about Bornholm was minimal. A prominent Social Democrat (and later communist), Thomas Døssing, more radical in his critical stance toward the Danish government than either the Soviets or the Danish communists liked, tried to convince Moscow during his repeated visits to Kremlin leaders that cooperation with the prewar political leadership would do harm to Soviet interests. Even the Danish communists found him excessively subservient to Moscow.20 Danish foreign minister Christmas Møller tended to think of Døssing “as more of a representative of the Kremlin in Denmark than as a representative of the Danish government in Moscow.”21
No one in Denmark was quite sure what Døssing was up to in his negotiations and his relations with the Danish Freedom Council were complicated, since many of its members represented to him the “old Denmark.” Still Døssing seemed to have good connections to Moscow, and his views were respected by his interlocutors there. (He became the first postwar Danish ambassador to the Soviet Union.) But, as elsewhere in Europe, Stalin had already decided on a program that emphasized a broad anti-fascist coalition and looked to working with middle-class parties and the Social Democrats, like Vilhelm Buhl, associated with the Danish Freedom Council and “Fighting Denmark,” who became the first prime minister of the postwar government. For the Danes, the main issue was how to make sure that there were firm agreements with the Allies about who would occupy Denmark and for how long, in the case that the Soviets played a major role in driving out the Germans. In this spirit, the Freedom Council used Døssing to establish a concrete arrangement with the Soviets about their intentions in postwar Denmark, but to no avail. The lack of progress in these discussions and the Soviet advance in the German Baltic region prompted the British to speed up their military operations in Jutland and to march into Copenhagen.22
With good reason, Churchill worried that Stalin would be tempted to seize Lübeck and then Denmark from his advanced position in Stettin (Szczecin).23 As late as May 5, 1945, Orme Sargent of the British Foreign Office wrote to General Hastings Ismay, chief of the War Office:
We have the thought that after the capitulation of Denmark, there might be a request that the Russians be given the task to cleanse a part of the country, that they actually were to have a “zone” in this country. It is not at all impossible that the Russians themselves will demand it. It would of course be political desirable that this is hindered at any cost and would like to make sure that Eisenhower knows this.24
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, agreed with Churchill that Denmark should belong to the British sphere of influence. But neither the supreme command nor the British seemed overly concerned about Bornholm itself, though the Foreign Office was clear that it wanted the British forces to accept the German surrender on the island.25 Apparently Montgomery’s deputy, Major-General Richard Henry Dewing, had prepared some troops to move on to Bornholm from Jutland, but the orders never came.26 Because the island was considered east of the so-called bomb line drawn up by the Allies to make sure that neither the Soviets bombed west of the line nor the British and Americans to the east, Bornholm was designated to the Soviet operational sphere.27
There is some argument among statesmen and military leaders from the period whether such a bomb line actually existed. But the argument was mooted, since the Soviets moved more quickly and decisively to take Bornholm before the British could or at least did act. Still, there is a plethora of evidence that British political and military leaders believed that at least an informal agreement existed about spheres of aerial bombing that left Bornholm in the Soviet sphere and therefore the island should be left to them despite the liberation of Denmark by Montgomery.28
There are also questions regarding the possibility of the Danish resistance taking action to seize the island at the beginning of May before the Germans capitulated. Some Bornholmers argued that a Danish resistance battalion in Sweden, disguised as a police unit, could have joined with the resistance on the island to defeat the Germans and accept their surrender. Also, after May 5, when the Nazis in Denmark itself surrendered to the British, some Bornholm islanders thought that a detachment from the mainland could have been outfitted with boats to invade the island and begin its liberation. Certainly, this was the fervent hope of the resistance fighters on Bornholm. But, as the former resistance leader Arne Sørensen pointed out, the Danish Freedom Council, which was formally head of the Danish resistance, had put its forces “at the disposal of the ‘Western alliance’ ” and therefore was under the command of General Eisenhower at SHAEF and General R. H. Dewing, commander of the British forces in Copenhagen.29 There had been some vague plans in early May mentioned by the Admiralty to “send a small British navy” to Copenhagen and then dispatch a naval detachment on to Bornholm, once minesweepers had cleared Danish waters.30 The British also showed some interest in the German submarines that were harbored at Rønne on Bornholm, as no doubt did the Soviets.31
The Germans on Bornholm, the Bornholmers, the British, the Americans, and the Danes would have all preferred in early May 1945 that the Germans on the island surrender to the British. But this did not happen. As General Dewing explained in an interview with Copenhagen’s Berlingske Tindende twenty years later, the situation was “confusing,” and he had arrived in the Danish capital with only one hundred men. “We could have sent a symbolic force to Bornholm,” he explained, but in those days “Bornholm was only a detail,” and, one might add, only a minor one at that. He claimed that there was no talk of Bornholm before he arrived in Denmark and that “my knowledge of the country’s geography was probably not so good that I became aware of the situation on my own.”32 No doubt, a more straightforward assessment of the situation was reported by the resistance member Arne Sørenson when he remembered General Dewing’s words at a dinner for the Danish Freedom Council, “right after his arrival on May 5.”
You will most likely be sad that I say this but it is nevertheless the case that England cannot be as interested in Bornholm as you obviously are. I have instructions not to take over Bornholm and in general not to get close to the island until we have seen what the Russians wanted to do.… It had to be left to the Russians to do as they pleased. And they did.33
If the British had been further along in their occupation of Denmark, they might have tried to take Bornholm. “It was a question of who could reach the island first,” Anthony Eden reported, somewhat disingenuously, to parliament on May 30.34 The fact is that the British were not interested enough in the island to preempt any Soviet moves.
Occupying Bornholm
Originally, there were no more than one thousand German soldiers garrisoning on the island. But this situation quickly changed as the Germans increasingly used Bornholm as a refuge for German soldiers evacuated from the mainland, primarily from Libava (Liepāja), Vindava (Ventspils), and the Hel Peninsula (today in Poland). On January 25, 1945, the German general staff ordered the strengthening of the defense of the island and the construction of defensive fortifications in the ports. In March, new coastal artillery emplacements were brought in from Kurland, and in April the Germans gave the orders to quickly expand the ability of the airport to serve as a base for fighter planes that could protect troop ships in the Baltic.35
By the time the Soviets seized control of Bornholm, there were an additional 19,000 military and civilian refugees, the majority of them hungry and demoralized.36 The Germans on the island made ready to surrender to the British; they were in touch in that connection with the British 21st Army (soon renamed the Army of the Rhein), commanded by Field Marshal Montgomery. Just one British soldier, the German commander pleaded to the Danish leadership on the island, would have been sufficient for the Germans to capitulate.37
Marshall Konstantin Rokossovskii claimed that the German presence on Bornholm presented a serious tactical military problem for the Soviet forces.38 In order to interdict the evacuation of further Wehrmacht soldiers from the German coast to the island, Soviet torpedo boats were launched from Kolberg (Kołobrzeg) on May 5.39 The Soviet command issued an ultimatum for the Germans on Bornholm to surrender at 23:00 on May 7, which was refused by the German commander of the garrison, naval Captain Gerhard von Kamptz, a thoroughgoing Nazi and a deputy to Admiral of the Fleet Karl Dönitz.40 His orders stated that he should surrender only to the British. Also on May 7, the Soviets flew missions over the island, dropping scattered munitions in response to German fire from the ground. That evening Soviet airplanes dropped leaflets around the island demanding that the commander of the garrison come to Soviet headquarters in Kolberg to sign the capitulation. They buzzed the port towns of Rønne and Nexø, with the idea of frightening the citizens to take shelter elsewhere. Radio transmissions starting on May 5 had also warned the Bornholm residents that the ports would be bombed.
The next day, May 8, with no response from the Germans, the Soviets heavily bombed the harbors of Nexø and Rønne, inflicting considerable damage on housing and public buildings in both towns, and destroying both German and Danish ships and smaller craft. The bombing was imprecise, thus hitting civilian quarters of both cities.41
In Rønne alone, some three thousand islanders were made homeless by the bombing. In Nexø, 111 houses were destroyed, 700 damaged to some extent, and only 147 remained whole.42 Governor Poul Christian von Stemann later assessed the damage of the bombing at approximately one hundred thousand Danish kroner.43 Fortunately, only ten Danes were killed and thirty-five wounded, since most had been evacuated to shelters outside or on the outskirts of the towns before the worst raids hit. Meanwhile hundreds of German ships and boats of all sorts and sizes, loaded down with troops and refugees, were on their way to the island. According to the commander of a Soviet air squadron: “There remained nothing else for us to do but to renew the attack”—one of the last bombing raids of the Second World War in Europe:
[A]t 11:20 [on May 8], under the protection of our jet fighters we carried out a powerful bombing attack against the ships and port facilities of Rønne. Our munitions consisted of two thousand-kilogram bombs on each airplane. Around the central pier some twenty large fires burned, clouds of black smoke enveloped the entire port.
After a brief respite for the aircraft and crew, the attack was renewed at 16:30 on Nexø at “an unusual height for us of 2300 meters we delivered our blow to the port and the ships in its harbor. The anti-aircraft fire of the defenders was very dense, but apparently had little effect, since we departed with no losses.—The explosions were very powerful, and the smoke almost reached to the height of our planes.”44
At 6:15 in the morning on May 9—when “the rest of the world was celebrating the victory over Nazi Germany”—a squadron of six torpedo boats loaded with Soviet soldiers was sent to Bornholm to seize the island. They had to deal with an intercepted German barge and motorboats and were caught in the fog before proceeding. But they finally landed at Rønne at 15:30 without encountering any resistance.45 Only eight or nine Soviet soldiers were killed in the Bornholm action, all of them in the process of eliminating German resistance at various points on the island and at sea, rather than in the taking of the island itself. There was almost no resistance from the thousands of hungry and demoralized Germans, who knew, in any case, that the war was over. The German officers were taken immediately to Kolberg, where they signed the formal surrender of the Bornholm garrison. Even some Russian historians have criticized the May 8 bombing and destruction of Rønne and Nexø as senseless and unnecessary.46
Colonel Pavel Strebkov, head of the three battalions of landing forces, noted, “The local [Danish] authorities politely received the Soviet armed forces, but did not conceal their fear about whether we would be here for a long time.”47 Following the departure of the Germans, and of the clearing of the island by Soviet forces joined by local Danish resistance groups, Major General F. F. Korotkov, accompanied by some eight thousand Red Army soldiers, arrived from the mainland on May 13 to take control of the island. Given his successful experience with military action in northern Norway against the Germans, while demonstrating considerable skill dealing with the locals, he was considered the best person for the job.48
On May 10, the chief of the Soviet general staff Aleksei Antonov answered the inquiries from the SHAEF on May 8 and 9 about the situation on Bornholm. There had been no communications from the Soviets up until that point. Antonov wrote to Eisenhower,
Arriving from Stettin, Danzig, and Kurland, German soldiers gathered on the island of Bornholm, which, as is known, is located 250 km to the east of the sphere of operations of the Soviet forces. As a result of this, Soviet forces seized the island, taking into account the request of the commander of the German garrison on the island to help with food products and to surrender the island to our forces.49
After the end of the war, Maxim Litvinov, working out of the foreign ministry, pushed hard for the control of the Belts and Sound by the countries bordering on the Baltic, excluding Norway, which technically was not a Baltic country. But he also made sure to include Poland, which could be counted on to support Soviet initiatives. The Danes should not have exclusive control of the passage, because it would be too easy for them to fall under the influence of the great powers (meaning, of course, Great Britain and the United States). If Soviet wishes were not respected with regard to the entry to and egress from the Baltic Sea, Litvinov suggested, then Moscow could guarantee its security interests by creating “its own type of Baltic Gibraltar” by fortifying its bases on Rügen and Bornholm.50
Not surprisingly, the British were firmly committed to a policy of the free passage of international shipping, both merchant and military, in the Belts and Sound, to which the United States agreed.51 Eventually, the Soviets went along with this policy as well. In his long telegram of February 22, 1946, George Kennan suggested—like Litvinov—that the Soviet presence on Bornholm was part of larger picture of ensuring Soviet security interests, though Kennan, we know, thought of these as the product of the Soviets’ “neurotic view of world affairs” founded in “the traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.”52
Bornholm under Soviet Occupation
After having accepted the surrender of the German forces on the island, the Soviet detachments returned to Rønne, where they met with the Danish resistance force on the island in the city hall and came to an agreement about sharing responsibility for clearing the island of the remaining Germans. Together they immediately went about the task of disarming and interning more than eleven thousand German soldiers, with the Danes accepting major responsibility of guarding the Germans until they could be transferred to the mainland.53
Members of the resistance also went about the business, typical of occupied Europe, of identifying Danish collaborators and of shaving the heads of Bornholm women who had allegedly consorted with German soldiers. Female islanders who wore kerchiefs all the time were known to be those who were shamed in this way.54 A report from a Danish intelligence office in Rønne from May 14, 1945, emphasized the strong relationship between the Soviet forces and the Danish resistance units.
The Russians have no qualms about handing over arms to the resistance fighters. The weapons that the resistance fighters find on the island are not to be handed in to the Russians but they can dispose of them as they see fit. In all respects, there’s intimate collaboration between the Russians and the resistance forces. For example, there is no Russian on sentry duty without a resistance fighter serving as a sentry as well. The resistance fighters have the right to arrest Russian soldiers.55
The Danish governor of the island under the Germans, Poul Christian von Stemann, was kept in his administrative position by the Soviets, and the governor in turn made every effort to be accommodating to their wishes, while sending desperate private notes to Copenhagen begging his superiors to find a way to get the Soviets to leave. On the surface of things, Soviet soldiers and Bornholm islanders seemed to get along well.56 Von Stemann reportedly had very good relations with Col. Strebkov, the initial Red Army commander.57 A Soviet band played at the funeral of the Danish victims of the bombardment arranged by the resistance committee.58 There were some soccer matches and chess tournaments that involved both Bornholmers and Red Army personnel. Although the Soviets refused Copenhagen’s requests to send Danish soldiers to the island, everyone on the island and in Denmark thought the Soviet soldiers would be gone in a matter of weeks. Von Stemann mobilized the remaining Danish shipping on the island to evacuate the remaining Germans, with the idea that this would speed up the Soviet desire to leave. But the same boats that took German soldiers to the mainland arrived back with more Soviet soldiers and equipment, as well as artillery pieces and livestock, making the Bornholm authorities all the more nervous.59
Positive reports of good relations between the islanders and the Soviet soldiers were balanced by harsh criticism of Soviet behavior, familiar, though not as extreme, as in those parts of eastern and central Europe that had experienced direct Soviet occupation. Governor von Stemann complained in a note to the Danish foreign ministry (May 14, 1945) that the occupation was becoming extremely burdensome for the island’s population. From the locals the Soviets demanded increasing amounts of firewood (for cooking and heating) and gas (for fueling their trucks and jeeps).
The bitterness among the Bornholmians hasn’t decreased. I heard remarks like: “If we had known this it would have been better not to have shot Printzenskiöld!!” [the Swedish commander in 1658, the year Bornholm became part of Denmark60].… The tragedy is endlessly major, especially taking into account the partying mood in the rest of the country. [The Russian guards] at our house were thoroughly drunk.… You would have not believed how it looked. They had taken everything from my wine cellar: brandy, champagne, liquor, burgundy, schnapps, all had been finished.… Everywhere there are complaints that the Soviets are stealing like ravens. Now they are also taking horses and bikes.… They have plundered widely in all the gardens around here.61
1.1 Two Soviet officers, Col. Petr Strebkov and Capt. E. Osetskii (?) with Danish governor P. Chr. Von Stemann, on the right, and his daughter Regitze and his wife Helga on the far left. THE ROYAL LIBRARY, DENMARK.
In a telephone conversation with the Danish foreign minister Møller the following day, May 15, von Stemann described the mood of the islanders as “apocalyptic.” The Soviets showed no signs of withdrawing as a result of the capitulation. Just the opposite; it was starting to look like they were staying for a good long while. The talk of permanent Soviet bases on Bornholm became all the more realistic given the import of building materials from the mainland for constructing barracks on the island for Soviet troops, who had been housed up to that point mostly in tents. The construction accelerated in the late fall of 1945 in preparation for the winter.62 The reason the Soviets gave the Bornholmers for staying for the time being was that the Germans were preparing a new war and Bornholm was of “great strategic importance” in countering those plans.”63
Soviet officers on Bornholm gave the locals mixed signals about whether they were staying, and for how long. It became increasingly obvious that they themselves did not know. They also could not have been aware of the secret directive, signed by Stalin on May 15, that indicated that Bornholm was unquestionably part of Denmark and that Soviet troops were there only because of its proximity to the Soviet occupied zone of Germany and because there were still “many German agents” there. The Soviets would remain in Bornholm, the order stated, “until the military situation in Germany was resolved,” and this should be explained to the Danes.64 The promise to leave the island combined with an open-ended formula about precisely when this would happen was of little solace to the islanders or to their governor, who constantly inveighed on the Copenhagen government to find out when the Soviets intended to leave.
The premier historian of the occupation criticizes the Danish government (press and political parties) for hushing up, even ignoring, the difficult fate of the Bornholm islanders.65 Not wishing to offend the Soviets, the authorities in Copenhagen kept everything about the life of the island under occupation quiet and out of view of the average Danish citizen. Little mention was made of the bombing of Bornholm on May 7 and May 8 in order not to disturb the festivities in Copenhagen celebrating the end of the war.66
The prime minister of Denmark, Vilhelm Buhl, inveighed upon Governor von Stemann to prevent any form of demonstrations on the part of the islanders against the Soviet presence.67 The Danish government also claimed the right to censor all press articles about Bornholm, as a way to ensure that the Soviets would not be offended and thus be tempted to extend their stay on the island.68 Still, the Danish daily newspapers carried “factual stories” about the bombing of Bornholm, the destruction of property, the presence of the Russians on the island, and the need for relief.69 There was also little discussion in the press or in public of the fact that the Danes had agreed to pay for the substantial occupation costs of the unwanted “guests.” Both the amount and nature of the payments were unknown to all but a few government insiders.70 At the same time, the Danes’ claims for compensation for their property in the Baltic states, which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union, were rejected by Molotov.71
Despite Danish efforts to keep negative publicity about Bornholm out of the newspapers and parliamentary debates, the Soviets constantly complained about their press coverage in Denmark, which they found intemperate and insufficiently appreciative of the role the Soviet Union played in the war. The TASS correspondent—and Soviet intelligence agent—in Copenhagen, Mikhail Kosov, told the Danish press attaché that “Danish suspicion with regards to the question of Bornholm was unfounded and that he very much hoped that the newspapers would make sure that the public was informed in the right way.…”72
When von Stemann was finally allowed to travel to Copenhagen and meet with the Danish ministers about Bornholm on May 18, he expressed the islanders’ frustration and disappointment that none of the Danish officials had even mentioned Bornholm in their speeches to the parliament. The ministers responded that there was a statement about Bornholm but that it was too “delicate” to publish.73 No doubt, the Danes acted like they were walking on eggshells dealing with the Soviets on the Bornholm issue. They were hesitant to send their foreign minister to Bornholm in fear of having the Soviets think the island would be a subject of bilateral negotiations.74 They urged the Americans to develop a model for establishing bases on Iceland that would involve the United Nations, so that the Soviets would be discouraged from setting up bases in Bornholm, or, at the least, be persuaded to involve the United Nations as well.75 The Danish Foreign Office was “horrified” at hearing about a “potential” American request for bases in Greenland on Danish territory, fearing that this would be “immediately followed by Soviet demand for bases on Bornholm.”76
Von Stemann convinced the Danish authorities that conditions for the islanders might improve if a delegation of Soviet officers and men from Bornholm could be received in Copenhagen. The invitation was extended to General Korotkov on behalf of the Danish government, and the Soviets accepted. The visit was scheduled for July 1, 1945, and for two days beforehand the leading political officers trained the participants in the delegation on how to conduct themselves at the table using proper etiquette. The soldiers were given enough kroner to buy what they needed, and after an hour’s plane ride the delegation landed in Copenhagen. They were met by a high-ranking Danish and Allied delegation; even a small group of Danish communists greeted them on the street. The highlight of the visit was the reception of General Korotkov and Colonel Strebkov by the Danish king, Christian X, and the queen. A Soviet political officer, Lieutenant G. F. Khromushina, described the meeting as follows: “The king carried himself very simply, was attentive, and did not ask any political questions at all. He asked that we pass on greetings to Comrade Stalin.” There was a grand reception afterward, attended by leading Danish and Allied officials. All in all, the Soviets were deeply impressed by the friendliness and warmth of their Danish hosts. The visit was a great “triumph,” Khromushina wrote, and relations between the Danes and the Russians notably improved thereafter.77
The Danish foreign minister, Christmas Møller, was also pleased with the visit. His basic tactic in dealing with the Soviets was to flatter them, to sugarcoat any differences of opinion, to praise their wartime contributions to the Allied cause, and to build confidence in Moscow that the Danes would remain in the future on friendly terms with the Soviets and neutral between East and West. The payoff, he reckoned, would be Moscow’s voluntary evacuation of the island. Though a member of the conservative party, Møller genuinely believed that the Soviet Union, given its sacrifices and victories in the war, had earned the right to play a major role in European and Danish affairs.78
In this connection, Møller was convinced that if the British evacuated their troops from Denmark, the Soviets would do the same in Bornholm. The British were ready to go along with Møller’s efforts and began the process of reducing their contingent in the Faroe Islands (at the meteorological station there) and in Denmark proper. But they resented Møller’s public statements that seemed to equate the unwanted Soviet presence in Bornholm with the requested help of the British military in defusing bombs, sweeping mines in Danish waters, and training Danish troops.79 At the same time, the small American contingent withdrew from Denmark without any problems.
If the Soviets were interested in setting up bases in Bornholm, as von Stemann and his fellow islanders feared, the occupiers made little effort to impose their system on the civilian residents. There were some modest attempts to support the political interests of the small resistance movement that had formed on the island during the later stages of the German occupation, but there were no efforts made to “Sovietize” the island or interfere excessively with its governance beyond what was necessary to support the military’s needs. Here and there von Stemann complained that his prerogatives were violated by the Soviets, but on the whole he ran the administration of the island as he saw fit. There was some encouragement of local communists by Soviet political officers who could speak a bit of Danish or find another common language with the locals. But nothing really came of this. (In percentage terms, there were fewer votes for communists in Bornholm in the October 1945 elections than in the rest of Denmark.)80
Initially, there was quite a bit of contact between the Soviet soldiers and the locals, and everything seemed to go well. There were even dances and merrymaking. The Copenhagen communist newspaper wrote on May 26, 1945, “The Russian military band plays and people are dancing on the square at Ronne. Danish girls are dancing with Russian soldiers and female Russian soldiers are dancing with young Danish men.”81 But the inevitable drunken brawls and instances of thievery and mayhem prompted von Stemann to ask Korotkov for remedial measures, which he took.82 Korotkov himself had a severe drinking problem, and was replaced by General A. V. Iakushev, who instituted a non-fraternization order.83 Officers and soldiers were forbidden to have any social contacts with the local population, except at controlled formal occasions, when concerts and cultural performances provided entertainment for both the troops and civilians on the island.84 There were even a number of reports from Bornholmers that they missed the contacts with their Russian friends.
Crown Prince Frederick and his wife, Ingrid, came to Bornholm on June 18, 1945, to bolster the islanders’ spirits. General Korotkov, who had been demoted to colonel because of excessive drinking, was again promoted to general for the occasion; the rank of colonel was not enough for the commander of the garrison to greet members of the royal family.85 Korotkov remembered later that he worried at the time about the appropriateness of his dress and manners and was enormously impressed by the young Danish couple, who were friendly and open to the Russians.86 The visit went well by all reports, and the Bornholmers, who generally felt ignored by Copenhagen, were encouraged by the royal couple’s stay. Governor von Stemann made a point of encouraging a raft of visitors to come to Bornholm from the Danish mainland. Journalists, schoolchildren, military representatives, parliamentary delegations—all were invited and feted by von Stemann (and sometimes the Soviets)—for the purposes of demonstrating that Bornholm was an integral part of Denmark.
1.2 Soviet soldiers and Bornholm civilians at a dance, 1945. BORNHOLM MUSEUM, RøNNE, DENMARK.
The Soviets Leave Bornholm
The question arises, why did the Soviets stay on Bornholm as long as they did, especially given the initial promises to evacuate once the Germans had been cleared off the island? (A similar promise regarding the Soviet evacuation of the Finnmark in northern Norway was honored in September 1945.) Along with this question comes the follow-up question: why did they leave when they did, eleven months after they arrived? Clearly, once the Red Army had seized control of the island, some Soviet officials thought that Moscow could gain some leverage over the Danish government if their military stayed. For example, T. Zhdanova in the Soviet foreign ministry wrote a note to M. S. Vetrov, head of the 5th European Department (June 27, 1945), suggesting that a permanent Soviet base (or bases) on Bornholm would bolster Soviet influence in the Belts and Sound and Kiel Canal. Bornholm and Rügen could also serve as the two major strategic military installations that would protect the Soviet Union against potential German revanchism. “This will be all the more just,” wrote Zhdanova, “since England will demand control over the island of Helgoland in the North Sea.”87
In another internal foreign ministry memorandum addressed to Molotov, dated July 9, 1945, the author suggested taking up Danish Foreign Minister Christmas Møller’s suggestion of closer Soviet-Danish cooperation by putting on the table joint Soviet-Danish naval and air force bases on Bornholm to ensure common security in the region. This kind of military cooperation would “serve as an important factor in our influence on Danish foreign policy,” and, implicitly, reduce that of the British. In order to make the Danes more cooperative in this venture, the author suggested that the joint bases be agreed upon before Red Army troops were evacuated from the island.88 Moscow looked to the occupation of Bornholm to make the Danes even more compliant than they already were, even perhaps to have them loosen their ties with the West and join the ranks of the “new democracies.”
Soviet plans in this connection were frustrated by the fact that the Danes were decidedly uninterested in a pro-Soviet government. Especially when the anti-socialist liberals from the Venstre party made significant gains in the October 30, 1945, elections, Deputy Foreign Minister Dekanozov complained, “We didn’t expect this [the election of so many ‘right-wing parties’ to power] of Denmark.”89 Although the Communist Party notably gained eighteen seats in the parliament, the Social Democrats continued to dominate the voting habits of Danish citizens and refused any blandishments to join in a bloc with the communists. Instead, the elections demonstrated remarkable continuity between those of 1939, 1943, and 1945. Danish political leaders were ready to grant Moscow an important role in constructing the postwar European order, but they were unwilling to alter the form and content of their government and monarchy.90
The British made no serious efforts to convince the Soviets to leave the island. In fact, from the beginning of the occupation, they told the Danes repeatedly that they thought it was best that the withdrawal of Soviet forces be negotiated directly between Copenhagen and Moscow.91 The United States government made even less effort to pressure the Soviets to leave.92 The signaling of American intentions to turn temporary bases on Greenland and the Faroe Islands into permanent ones may have encouraged the Soviets to withdraw, not wishing to give the Americans the excuse to remain in Danish territories. One specialist on the history of Soviet security policy writes, “The delay in the otherwise smooth return of Bornholm to Denmark was revealing of what was foremost on Stalin’s mind—the network of U.S. military bases around the world that he could not possibly hope to match. By giving up on seeking such bases for himself in the Baltic, he was inviting American reciprocity there and also elsewhere, particularly Iceland and Greenland.”93
The Svalbard (Spitsbergen) archipelago and Bear Island in the Norwegian far north, both of which had been ceded to the Soviets, may have provided Moscow with security support points in Scandinavia that made Bornholm seem less important.94 Moscow also gained crucial territorial concessions from the Finns as a result of the Armistice of September 19, 1944, concluding the “Continuation War” between the Soviet Union and Finland. Moscow received Petsamo in the north of Finland on the Arctic Sea, which gave Moscow a common border with Norway. The Finns also turned over to the Soviets a major naval installation at Porkkala on the Gulf of Finland that not only guaranteed the defense of Leningrad but was close enough to Helsinki to insure a compliant Finland. Soviet security in the eastern Baltic was also guaranteed by the incorporation of the Baltic states and of the northern part of East Prussia (Kaliningrad oblast) after the war. Along with the generally acceptable internationalization of the Kiel Canal and the Belts and Sound, as well as the establishment of Soviet naval strongholds in Rostock in eastern Germany and Świnoujście (Swinemünde) in Poland, the Soviet presence in the center of the Baltic Sea was guaranteed without Bornholm. Besides, as British intelligence noted after the withdrawal from Bornholm, the Soviets “primary consideration in the Baltic has, in fact, been the defence of Leningrad rather than access to open seas.”95 The argument that the Soviets needed Bornholm for security purposes was mooted by the combination of these territorial and strategic gains and guarantees. There was considerable goodwill in Denmark toward the Soviets; Moscow did not want to fritter it away on overstaying its welcome in Bornholm.
The issue of putting pressure on Denmark remained important to Moscow. The Americans and British made signs of building a western alliance; keeping Denmark neutral in these circumstances was, no doubt, an important Soviet objective. But in this question, the skill of Danish diplomats and the restraint of Danish society in face of the Soviet occupation of Bornholm served the Danes well.96 The criticism of Danish passivity and indifference in face of the Soviet occupation of the island is misplaced; the Danes gave Moscow every reason to believe that they could be relied on not to seek advantages from the Soviets, denounce their actions once they had evacuated, or to engage in any kind of reprisals. On the contrary, Copenhagen strongly intimated that the Soviet evacuation of the island would have positive ramifications for Soviet-Danish relations. The Danes engaged in what the Manchester Guardian called “tactical silence” regarding the Bornholm question, fearful of offending the Soviets and prolonging the occupation.97
As mentioned earlier, despite considerable worry among Danish officials about the fate of Bornholm, the Copenhagen government convinced the Danish press to curtail critical articles about the Soviet occupation and not to raise publicly issues of the duration of the occupation.98 There were sufficient reasons that Moscow might wish to establish a long-term position on Bornholm, given the proximity of the Western approaches to the Baltic Sea and the likelihood that they would have to be satisfied with less than control of the entrance to the Baltic Sea and the Kiel Canal because of their internationalization. Pressure on the Danes might yield some concessions in this regard.
In February and early March 1946, the Danish government, led by Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen and Ambassador Døssing, made a concerted diplomatic effort to convince the Soviets that their original promise to withdraw from Bornholm once the military situation in Germany was settled and German troops were no longer on the island should be honored. Rasmussen had gained British assent to withdraw the small contingent of British troops that remained in Denmark and the Faroe Islands. The Danes remained profoundly frightened of the Russian presence and worried that they would stay; thus, the Danish government would do anything it could, short of making concessions on the maintenance of their parliamentary system, to get the Soviets to withdraw.99 They promised that the place of the Soviet troops would be taken by Danish military units, now ready to protect the island and contribute to Baltic security. The Danish military itself proved to be an active force for getting the Copenhagen government to approach the Soviets about leaving. Foreign Minister Rasmussen was convinced the deal would work, though American intelligence expressed some skepticism, noting—like the islanders—that the Soviets continued to construct an airfield and strengthen Bornholm’s coastal defenses.100
The Danish legation in Moscow received positive signals from the Soviet Foreign Ministry that a deal for withdrawal was fully possible. But along with this, on March 5, Molotov raised the predictable question with the Danes of how long British troops would remain in Denmark. (There were a little more than a thousand British troops, mostly in training functions with the Danish army.) With this “obstacle” in mind, Molotov nevertheless stated,
If Denmark’s forces are now capable of taking possession of Bornholm and create its administration there without any participation from foreign troops or foreign administrators, then the Soviet government would withdraw its troops from Bornholm and release the island to the Danish government.101
On March 16, Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen announced, “On March 7, the Russian Minister in Copenhagen, Mr. Plakhin, called upon me to state that if the Danish government was able to send Danish troops to Bornholm immediately to take over its administration without any foreign participation, the Soviet government would immediately withdraw its troops from Bornholm and leave the island to the Danish government.” Needless to say, the Danish government agreed to the terms; the result, added Rasmussen on March 16, “was that the evacuation has now begun.”102 Part of the deal was a substantial payment in exchange for the Soviet barracks and the costs of transfer. The Danes did not bargain; in fact, in the end the total cost of the Soviet occupation reached close to twenty million kroner.103
The Soviets immediately began the process of organizing the departure of their military forces, some 6,600 officers and troops, plus their military hardware and a good part of their infrastructure. On April 5, 1946, some five thousand Bornholm islanders turned out at the harbor in Rønne, waving paper Danish and Soviet flags, to send off the occupiers from the island. The Soviet national anthem was played and Governor von Stemann and General Iakushev exchanged greetings, praising Soviet-Danish friendship.104 The last Soviet officers and men left Bornholm on board the minesweeper Vladimir Polukhin, closing out the relatively uneventful occupation that lasted nearly a full year.
What the Soviets pointedly asked for from the Danes was an agreement that once they removed their troops from Bornholm the Danes would not allow the presence of foreign troops—and here they had in mind specifically the Americans and the British—on Danish soil, including Greenland and the Faroes.105 By their actions in Denmark, the Soviets hoped to keep this pivotal country from falling under the direct influence of the Western powers.106 In particular, Moscow was interested in denying the Americans and British forward positions, like Bornholm, for basing their troops and aircraft in western and central Europe.107 The Soviet strategy succeeded only in part. The Danes originally hoped to pursue a traditional neutralist policy by joining the proposed Scandinavian Defense Union. But when Finland signed the Treaty of Mutual Friendship with the Soviet Union in April 1948, Norway demonstrated increasing interest in the prospect of an Atlantic alliance, and Sweden’s commitment to neutrality did not include alliances with Scandinavian neighbors, the pro-NATO voices in the Denmark, recalling the humiliation of the Nazi occupation, won the day.108
The occupation of Bornholm cut both ways in the NATO issue: some Danes used the experience as an argument for joining; others worried that the Soviets might return to the island if the Danes joined the Western alliance. In the end, the Danes became founding members of NATO in 1949 and continued to participate fully in the alliance during the Cold War. Yet Danish restraint on the question of NATO bases and on other Western security issues vis-à-vis the Soviet Union can be dated, in some measure, from the time of the Soviet evacuation.109
Behind the positive Danish diplomatic efforts to encourage the Soviets to leave Bornholm was Soviet interest in healthy trading relations with the Danes. Foreign Ministers Møller and Rasmussen periodically dangled in front of the Soviets the possibilities of trade in Danish agricultural products, something that deeply interested Moscow. However, the Danes were unable to send a trade delegation to Moscow as long as Bornholm remained a potential bone of contention between Moscow and Copenhagen. (A low-level Soviet delegation did come to Copenhagen in December 1945 to negotiate about obtaining Danish bacon and butter; the Danes were interested in particular in feed grains from the Soviets.) The British demand for agricultural products prompted some protests in London about these negotiations, but the Danes stood by their need to deal on an equal basis with the Soviets.110
As soon as the Bornholm issue was settled, the Danes sent a high-level delegation to Moscow, which was received by Stalin himself. Stalin and Molotov’s discussions with the Head of the Danish Trade Delegation Crown Prince Axel and Foreign Minister Rasmussen in early June 1946, after the evacuation had been completed, indicated that the Danes were ready to fulfill the promise of positive economic relations. Stalin opened the trade discussions with the observation that he had been in Copenhagen in 1906 and found it a “beautiful and fine city.” Rasmussen urged him to visit again, but Stalin demurred, saying it was not possible given all he had to do. The trade talks focused on Danish bacon, described by Stalin as “pure gold,” and Soviet grain and seed oil, which the Danes badly needed. Stalin tried to interest his Danish interlocutors in apatite, a mineral found in plentiful quantities in the North of Russia that can be used for fertilizers, but the Danes appeared to have little interest.
Much of the discussion between Stalin and the Danish trade delegation focused on the Danish desire to rid themselves of a large population of interned Germans, some two to three hundred thousand altogether. The Danes complained that the costs of their internment and feeding took up a substantial part of the Danish budget. Stalin sympathized, offering to take half of this population in the Soviet zone of Germany, if the Western Allies would take the rest in theirs. In any case, Stalin insisted, the Germans should pay, not the Danes. Even if the Germans were poor now they would quickly recover, he predicted. He even hinted, not too subtly, that the Germans stayed in camps in Denmark because they were so well taken care of by the Danes. “In Poland and Czechoslovakia … the Germans were left in such a position that the Germans were ready to scatter from these countries in various directions because of hunger.”111
Long after the Soviets evacuated the island, the Danes continued to give Moscow reasons for satisfaction, especially in connection with Bornholm. The islanders erected a typical Soviet-style obelisk monument dedicated to “[t]he eternal glory of the Russian heroes who died in the battle with the German occupiers!” with a nearby granite grave marker with the names of the thirty Soviet soldiers and officers who died or “disappeared” during the liberation of the island.112 According to the Russian ambassador in Copenhagen (1999) the Danes and Soviets had made a gentlemen’s agreement that there would be no “foreign troops” on Bornholm’s soil after the evacuation. Although there is no evidence that any such agreement was reached, the Danes seemed to have accepted the Soviets interpretation of events. Thus, while welcoming Soviet and today Russian representatives to the island on “Victory Day,” for the laying of a wreath at the Soviet war memorial, Copenhagen did not allow NATO troops, other than Danish soldiers, to use Bornholm for military purposes. The few random, sometimes unintended, violations of this policy routinely aroused the protests of Moscow.113
The issue came up during a major NATO operation, “Main Brace,” in 1952, which demonstrated Denmark’s vulnerability to Soviet pressure about Bornholm. On Copenhagen’s insistence, the NATO alliance imposed geographical limitations on its plans for military exercises on or east of Bornholm. The Danes abandoned any military activities involving Bornholm convinced that “such activities were not of sufficient strategic importance to counter-balance the politico-military consequences of challenging the Soviet Union over Bornholm.”114 Bornholm and its waters were off-limits to NATO exercises and NATO presence. The Danes did not want to give the Soviets any excuses to return.
Stalin’s readiness to compromise his strategic military advantages had a crucial impact on the outcome of the Bornholm question. His policies in Bornholm also demonstrated his desire to create a “neutral” zone of nonaligned countries in western Europe. At the same time, the Danes demonstrated an ability to employ diplomacy in effective ways to achieve their ends of Soviet evacuation. In the case of Bornholm, Soviet occupation did not mean Sovietization. Despite the many constraints and hardships forced on the Bornholm islanders by the occupation, they were able to resume their lives and occupations as full members of a free Danish polity.