PART VI

Denmark

JUST BEFORE DAWN on April 9, 1940, numerous German ships docked in several Danish harbors. German soldiers quietly disembarked from these ships and spread throughout Denmark. German troops were also dropped via plane to various locations, and the invasion was on. Although the commander-in-chief of the Danish armed forces wanted to defend Denmark, it was obvious that the tiny country would be quickly overwhelmed in a fight with the Germans. When the German ambassador to Denmark handed the government in the capital city of Copenhagen a demand for Danish surrender, Luftwaffe (German air force) airplanes circled overhead as a visible warning. The surrender was granted, and the fighting was stopped just a few hours after it had begun.

Hitler planned to use Denmark as a geographical buffer between Great Britain and Germany, but the German occupiers

took pains to tell the Danish people something quite the opposite: that the point of the invasion was to “protect” Denmark from a possible British invasion. The German occupiers were unusually polite to the Danes—whom they considered to be perfect Aryans—and allowed the Danish government to remain in place and make many independent decisions. One of these was the insistence that Jews living in Denmark be free from any German harassment. Not a single law was passed against the Jews of Denmark.

From the start, there was a large difference in Danish opinion regarding the German presence. Some thought that since the German occupiers were polite, were not interfering with the government, and were not harming the Jews in Denmark as they were in other countries, that Danes should cooperate with the Germans as much as possible.

Other Danes argued that polite or not, the Germans were still occupying Denmark and that Danes should fight back in any way they could. Some became involved with printing illegal underground newspapers. Others were in communication with the British Resistance organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE); some Danes gathered information for the SOE regarding German military activities in Denmark. The SOE provided sabotage-oriented Danes with explosives and weapons to fight the German occupiers. Other Danes were able to secretly manufacture their own guns at great risk—the Germans had ordered that all firearms be relinquished.

In November 1941, the Danish foreign minster was forced by the Germans to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact. Although the Danish government had already been forced to imprison some leading Danish Communists a few months before, signing the pact took this one step further: it meant that Denmark was being forced to declare war on international communism.

This obvious loss of political independence sparked angry protests—not only against the Germans but against the too-cooperative Danish government. These protests turned violent when Danish police attacked and arrested the protesters.

Inline-Image THE JEWS OF DENMARK Inline-Image

At the time of the German occupation, there were slightly more than 7,000 Jews living in Denmark. Approximately 1,600 came from families who had been there for centuries. Nearly 3,400 were Jews who had fled to Denmark during the turn of the century or after World War I to escape persecution in Russian and other Eastern European countries. Others were recent immigrants from Nazi Germany, and several hundred were in Denmark specifically to learn agriculture before they went to live and work in Israel. Nearly 200 more were German Jewish orphans. But no matter how long they had lived in Germany or what their future plans, all the Jews living in Denmark were fiercely protected by the Danes. When a Danish Nazi (a very small political party during the occupation) tried to set fire to a synagogue, Danish officials sentenced him to three years in prison.

Acts of sabotage steadily increased until the occupiers finally had had enough. On August 28, 1943, the Germans delivered an ultimatum to the Danish government: if the Danish government would not make an effort to control its people, then the Germans would. The Danish government resigned rather than cooperate with the Germans any longer.

The following day, the Germans issued an edict that severely limited the Danish government’s powers and installed martial law on the population. The edict enforced a strict sundown curfew, a ban on public gatherings, and death for anyone caught in any act remotely related to sabotage.

The majority of Danes were finally united against their German occupiers. And not a moment too soon, for the Danes were informed by a German civil servant that the Germans were secretly planning a roundup of Denmark’s Jews on October 1 and 2.

Danes responded immediately. Jews were warned and hidden in private homes and hospitals until arrangements could be made for their escape by boat to neutral Sweden. All other resistance activity halted temporarily while Denmark’s Resistance organizations worked together with the rest of the population to rescue Denmark’s Jews and send them to Sweden.

Most of the rescue operations took place in the first two weeks of October, and by the month’s end, nearly all of Denmark’s Jews were safe in Sweden. Only 481 were caught and sent to the There-sienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, but these Jews were more fortunate than most other prisoners at that camp. The Danish government was allowed to send the Danish Jews in There-sienstadt food packages and vitamins. The Danes also convinced the Nazis to allow the Danish Jews to remain in Czechoslovakia instead of being transferred to harsher camps in Poland or Germany. Because of this intervention, nearly all of them survived.

After the Jews were rescued, Danish sabotage against the German occupiers continued, with harsh German reprisals, sometimes ending in the saboteur’s death and other times in a trip to a German concentration camp. Approximately 6,000 Danes—mostly Resistance workers—were in German concentration camps during the last year of the war, and many of them died.

On May 4, 1945, the BBC announced over the radio that Germans had surrendered in Denmark and the Netherlands and that the surrender would become official on the following day. Some Germans and Danish Nazis continued to fight, but officially the Danes were free as of that date.