Danish Cold War Historiography

Home , Aksel Larsen, Bo Lidegaard, Erik Eriksen, Gert Petersen, Hans Hedtoft, Henrik Kauffmann

SURVEY ARTICLE Danish Cold War Historiography

✣ Rasmus Mariager

This article reviews the scholarly debate that has developed since the 1970s on Denmark and the Cold War. Over the past three decades, Danish Cold War historiography has reached a volume and standard that merits international attention. Until the 1970s, almost no archive-based research had been conducted on Denmark and the Cold War. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, historians and political scientists began to assess Danish Cold War history. By the time an encyclopedia on Denmark and the Cold War was published in 2011, it included some 400 entries written by 70 researchers, the majority of them established scholars.1 The expanding body of literature has shown that Danish Cold War policy possessed characteristics that were generally applicable, particularly with regard to alliance policy. As a small frontline state that shared naval borders with East Germany and Poland, Denmark found itself in a difﬁcult situation in relation to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as the Soviet Union. With regard to NATO, Danish policymakers balanced policies of integration and screening. The Danish government had to assure the Soviet Union of Denmark’s and NATO’s peaceful intentions even as Denmark and NATO concurrently rearmed. The balancing act was not easily managed. A review of Danish Cold War historiography also has relevance for contemporary developments within Danish politics and research. Over the past quarter century, Danish Cold War history has been remarkably politicized.2 The end of the Cold War has seen the successive publication of reports and white books on Danish Cold War history commissioned by the Dan- ish government. To a large degree, these reports served political motives and were widely debated after their release. Mainstream historians, though never uncritical, usually defended the reports, whereas politicians and right-wing

1. John T. Lauridsen et al., eds., Den Kolde Krig og Danmark: Gads Leksikon (Copenhagen: Gad, 2011). The present article is a rewritten, updated, and abridged version of an essay originally published under the title “Den Kolde Krig i international og dansk historieforskning,” in Lauridsen et al., eds., Den KoldeKrigogDanmark, pp. 720–746. 2. Thorsten B. Olesen, “Under the National Paradigm: Cold War Studies and Cold War Politics in Post–Cold War Norden,” Cold War History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May 2008), pp. 189–211.

180

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

opinion-makers, backed by a smaller group of historians, strongly criticized the reports. The most telling episode occurred in May 2006 when the Dan- ish parliament decided by a small majority that a four-volume report on Denmark during the Cold War years of 1945–1991 (commissioned by the previous government and published in 2005 by the Danish Institute for Inter- national Studies) was “preliminary.” The parliament went on to commission a new report from the Center for Koldkrigsforskning (Center for Cold War Research) intended to be more acceptable and reliable. The center was subsequently founded in 2007, whereupon a government-selected board appointed a leading neo-orthodox historian as director.3

Phases in Danish Cold War Historiography

Danish Cold War historiography has largely followed general trends in international scholarly debates on the history of the Cold War, although this progress was often delayed. Compared to other Western countries, historical enquiry into Cold War Denmark developed relatively late.4 Among the numerous factors accounting for this state of affairs, the most notable is the fact that, for decades, World War II was the focus of enquiry for the vast majority of contemporary historians. A further explanation is that, until 1968, Danish historians—to an overwhelming degree—were compelled to base all research concerning the period after 1945 on material in the public record. However, the end of the 1970s generated the onset of archive-based publications, and these sorts of studies gathered pace throughout the 1980s. Nonetheless, not until the 1990s and the early twenty-ﬁrst century—that is, after the end of the Cold War—were larger comprehensive analyses of this period in Danish history published. Two important reasons for the inception of detailed archival research include the battle among Nordic politicians over their subsequent political reputations and the approach of the year 1969, when Denmark’s NATO

3. Nikolaj Petersen, “Kampen om den kolde krig i dansk politik og forskning,” Historisk tidsskrift,Vol. 109, No. 1 (2009), pp. 154–204. Full disclosure: I co-authored the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Danmark under den kolde krig: Den sikkerhedspolitiske situation 1945–1991, Vols. 1–4 (Copenhagen: DIIS, 2005), and PET-Kommissionens beretning, Vols. 1–16 (Copenhagen: Ministry of Justice, 2009). 4. Nikolaj Petersen, “Den kolde krig og Danmark,” in Erling Ladewig Petersen, ed., Den kolde krig og de nordiske lande (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1984), pp. 7–23; Thorsten B. Olesen, “Dan- mark og den kolde krig 1945–1969,” Historie, No. 2 (1995), pp. 233–260; and Poul Villaume, “Den- mark during the Cold War, 1945–1989,” in Thorsten B. Olesen, ed., The Cold War—and the Nordic Countries (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), pp. 17–41.

181

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

membership was up for renewal. At the end of the 1940s, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden had conducted negotiations on the establishment of a Nordic defense union. However, no such union ever materialized. All three countries were disappointed by the failure to find a Nordic solution, and over the years the politicians involved blamed one another for the unsuccessful negotiations. In a book published in 1966 Norges vei til NATO, the former foreign minister of Norway Halvard Lange declared that Norway had been interested in forming a Nordic alliance but was deterred by Sweden’s attitude. The former Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander rejected this notion and instead blamed Norway in his memoirs published in 1973. The Danish Prime Min- ister Hans Hedtoft maintained until his death in 1955 that the unsuccessful negotiations were “our generation’s first large defeat.” In 1966, the government of then-Danish Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag commissioned a White Paper on Danish security policy from 1948 to 1966, and around the same time the Norwegian government granted the historian Magne Skodvin access to the Norwegian archives pertaining to the defense negotiations. The results were made available a few years later. In 1968, the Danish Foreign Ministry published the two-volume report Dansk Sikkerhedspolitik 1948–1966,andin 1971 Skodvin published his book Norden eller NATO? In the beginning of the 1970s, interest in Denmark’s position at the start of the Cold War was thus awakened both among politicians and historians. From the outset, it was clear that writing the history of the Cold War would be inextricably linked with politics.5 The opening in 1974–1975 of the U.S. and British official archives re- lating to the early years of the Cold War profoundly influenced the incipient Danish scholarship. At first, the newly opened archives caused Norwegian historians to travel to the United States and the United Kingdom, where they studied Scandinavia’s position in international politics. Danish historians soon followed. Around the same time, Udgiverselskabet for Danmarks Nyeste His- torie (Society for the Publication of Contemporary Danish History, or DNH) launched a research project on Danish foreign policy from liberation in 1945 until Denmark’s accession to the Atlantic Pact in 1949, granting privileged access to material from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Access to U.S. and British materials, Norwegian inspiration, and the DNH research project led, along with the interest generated within the Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Insti- tut (Danish Foreign Policy Institute), to the publication of pioneering studies heralding hope for future Danish Cold War scholarship, as well as publication

5. Thorsten B. Olesen, “Kampen om eftermælet,” in Carsten Due-Nielsen, Ole Feldbæk, Nikolaj Petersen, eds., Danmark i syv sind (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2000), pp. 125–147.

182

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

of yearbooks that included articles on recent developments in Danish foreign policy. Of special note is a series of articles by Nikolaj Petersen on the options available to Denmark in 1948–1949, the question of Nordic defense negotiations, and Denmark’s decision to seek membership in tthe Atlantic Pact in 1949, all of which provided new perspectives and important results.6 Stud- ies by Ib Faurby, Hans Henrik Bruun, Niels Amstrup, and Erik Beukel also provided encouragement to those who were interested in Danish security policy during the Cold War’s infancy.7 The Danish Cold War research milieu was nonetheless modest, containing at this time only about a dozen active scholars—primarily political scientists—albeit some of whom were historians by training. In the 1980s, interest in the Cold War was further stimulated by political conflict over the so-called footnote policy. The controversy stemmed from the intensification of the Cold War in the late 1970s and 1980s. As in most West European countries, this intensification gave rise to a domestic debate in Denmark over NATO policies.8 From 1982 to 1988, the Dan- ish parliamentary majority opposition, led by the Social Democratic Party, imposed “footnotes”—that is, Danish reservations appended to a series of NATO’s communiqués—on the Conservative-Liberal minority governments. Instead of calling for a general election, Conservative-Liberal governments decided to acquiesce in the footnotes so they could stay in office. As Pe- tersen argues, the “result was a domestic strife, allied criticism and a policy which moved Denmark away from NATO’s mainstream.”9 After the end of

6. Nikolaj Petersen, “Optionsproblematikken i dansk sikkerhedspolitik 1948–1949,” in Niels Am- strup and Ib Faurby, eds., Studier i dansk udenrigspolitik tilegnet Erling Bjøl (Aarhus: Politica, 1978); Nikolaj Petersen, “Danish and Norwegian Alliance Policies 1948–1949,” Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 14 (1978), pp. 193–210; and Nikolaj Petersen, “Storbritannien, U.S. og skandinavisk forsvar 1945–1949,” Historie, No. 1 (1981), pp. 37–77. 7. Erik Beukel, Socialdemokratiet og stationeringsproblemet 1952–53 (Odense: Odense Universitetsfor- lag, 1974); Ib Faurby, “Partierne og udenrigspolitikken, 1953–1977,” in Amstrup and Faurby, eds., Studier i dansk udenrigspolitik tilegnet Erling Bjøl, pp. 15–43; Hans Henrik Bruun, “Det udenrigspoli- tiske Nævn 1965–74,” in Amstrup and Faurby, eds., Studier i dansk udenrigspolitik tilegnet Erling Bjøl, pp. 45–74; and Niels Amstrup, “Grønland i det amerikansk-danske forhold 1945–1948,” in Amstrup and Faurby, eds., Studier i dansk udenrigspolitik tilegnet Erling Bjøl, pp. 155–198. 8. On the West European context, see Frédéric Bozo, “Before the Wall: French Diplomacy and the Last Decade of the Cold War, 1979–89,” in Olav Njölstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 288–316; Olav Riste, “NATO’s Northern Frontline in the 1980s,” in Njölstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War, pp. 288–316; and Leopoldo Nuti, “Italy and the Battle of the Euromissiles: The Deployment of the U.S. BGM-109 G ‘Gryphon,’ 1979–83,” in Njölstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War,pp. 332–359. 9. Nikolaj Petersen, “‘Footnoting’ as a Political Instrument: Denmark’s NATO Policy in the 1980s,” Cold War History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2012), pp. 295–318; and Nikolaj Petersen, Europæisk og globalt engagement,Vol.6,Dansk Udenrigspolitiks historie (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2004).

183

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

the Cold War, the footnote policy remained a bone of Danish contention when Conservative-Liberal governments from 2001 to 2009 (led by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who served as NATO’s General Secretary from 2009 to 2014) used it to try to discipline the Social Democratic Party and the Social Liberal Party regarding Denmark’s foreign policy.10 When the conflict reached its heights, the footnote policy was discussed and analyzed in books and other accounts by historians, political scientists, and special- ists on the history of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as by politicians, opinion-makers, and those with military insight.11 In addition, in 1981, Anker Jørgensen’s minority government established Det Sikkerheds- og Nedrustningspolitiske Udvalg (Security and Disarmament Policy Commit- tee), and in 1984 the Danish parliamentary majority forced the Conservative Prime Minister Poul Schlüter’s minority government to establish the Cen- ter for Freds-og Konfliktforskning (Center for Peace and Conflict Research). Both institutions became training grounds for young security policy analysts. Moreover, the gathering interest became evident when the Statens Humanis- tiske Forskningsråd (Danish Research Council for the Humanities) supported a five-year research initiative in 1987 called “Danish Policy under Transfor- mation 1945–1985.” Even though the project was not designed to promote systematic enquiry into the impact of the Cold War on Denmark, Cold War historians for a brief period were afforded the opportunity to seek funding and publish interim results of their scholarship, whether with financing from the research initiative or elsewhere.12 A quantum leap occurred in the 1990s when the first doctoral theses on Denmark during the Cold War were published. They dealt with the history of the Danish Communist Party (DKP) and Danish security policy in the 1940s and 1950s.13 The 1990s was also the decade when Danish politicians began a practice that received even more incentive after the turn of the century. After

10. Petersen, “Kampen om den kolde krig i dansk politik og forskning,” pp. 158–164. 11. See, for instance, Hans Henrik Holm and Nikolaj Petersen, eds., Slaget om missilerne (Copen- hagen: SNU, 1983); Ib Faurby, Hans Henrik Holm, and Nikolaj Petersen, Kampen om sikkerheden (Aarhus: Politica, 1986); Bent Jensen, Tryk og tilpasning (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1987); and Erik Boel, Socialdemokratiets atomvåbenpolitik 1945–88 (Copenhagen: Academic Press, 1988). 12. Carsten Due-Nielsen, Johan Peter Noack, and Nikolaj Petersen, eds., Danmark, Norden og NATO 1948–62 (Charlottenlund: DJØF, 1993); Johs. Nordentoft and Søren H. Rasmussen, Kampagnen mod Atomvåben og Vietnambevægelsen (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1991); Leon Dalgas Jensen, Politisk kamp om Danmarks importpolitik 1945–48 (Roskilde: RUC, 1992); Birgit Nüchel Thomsen, ed., The Odd Man Out? (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1993); Birgit Nüchel Thomsen, ed., Temaer og brændpunkter i dansk politik efter 1945 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1994); and Thorsten B. Olesen, ed., Interdependence Versus Integration (Odense: Odense University Press, 1995). 13. Kurt Jacobsen, Aksel Larsen (Copenhagen: Vindrose, 1993); Poul Villaume, Allieret med forbehold: Danmark, NATO og den kolde krig: En studie i dansk sikkerhedspolitik 1949–1961 (Copenhagen:

184

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

it became known in 1995 that the then-Danish Prime Minister Hans Chris- tian Hansen—contrary to official Danish policies—had secretly allowed the United States to stockpile nuclear weapons in Greenland in the 1950s, the government of Social Democratic Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in 1996 commissioned an enquiry into Greenland’s role during the Cold War. Three years later, the Nyrup Rasmussen minority government appointed a commission of inquiry to describe and analyze the Danish Security and Intel- ligence Service’s surveillance of political activists during the Cold War. Subse- quently, in 2000, the Nyrup Rasmussen minority government called on the Danish Institute for International Studies to prepare a White Book on Den- mark’s security policy situation from 1945 to 1991. Finally, the passing of a new archive law in 1992 and its revision in 1997 boosted research into Danish Cold War history. The 1992 law introduced a 30-year rule, whereas the 1997 revision closed several loopholes in the 1992 law. Although interest in Cold War issues was spurred by the end of the conflict, it also constituted part of the power struggles among the political parties. Politicians possessed an instrumental relationship to history, and some historians were interested not merely in knowledge of the “old days” but also in political engagement.14 The final two volumes of a history of Danish foreign policy in 1973–2003 and 1945–1972 were published in 2004 and 2005 re- spectively.15 Since 2000, studies of the Cold War have been conducted at all

Eirene, 1995); Bo Lidegaard, I kongens navn: Henrik Kauffmann i dansk diplomati 1919–1958 (Copen- hagen: Samleren, 1996); Søren Hein Rasmussen, Sære alliancer: Politiske bevægelser i efterkrigstidens Danmark (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1997); Kristine Midtgaard, Småstat, magt og sikkerhed: Danmark og FN 1949–1965 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2005); Lars Hovbakke Sørensen, Nordenforestillinger i dansk politik 1945–1968 (Aarhus: Historia 2005); Rasmus Mariager, I tillid og varm sympati: Dansk-britiske forbindelser og U.S. i den tidlige kolde krig (Copenhagen: Museum Tus- culanum Press, 2006); Jonathan Søborg Agger, “Ikke-provokation, beroligelse og afspænding: Karak- teren af dansk imødekommende politik over for Sovjetunionen 1949–1969,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 2007; and Frederikke Ingemann Hansen, “Le Danemark et la Guerre froide 1945–1968,” Ph.D., Diss., l’Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, Paris, 2010. An abridged version of Bo Lidegaard’s book was published in English under the title Deﬁant Diplomacy: Henrik Kauffmann, Denmark and the United States in World War II and the Cold War 1939–1958 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). Furthermore, two Ph.D. dissertations were written on East German espionage against Den- mark and U.S. intelligence activity in Denmark during World War II and its immediate aftermath. Both were subsequently published. See Thomas Wegener Friis, Den usynlige front: DDR’s militære spi- onage i Danmark under den kolde krig (Copenhagen: Lindhardt & Ringhof, 2005); and Peer Henrik Hansen, Da Yankee’erne kom til Danmark (Copenhagen: Lindhardt & Ringhof, 2008). The Hansen book also came out in an English translation, Second to None: U.S. Intelligence Activities in Northern Europe 1943–1946 (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2011). 14. Thorsten B. Olesen, “Truth on Demand,” in Nana Hvidt and Hans Mouritzen, eds., Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook 2006 (Copenhagen: DIIS, 2006), pp. 80–113; and Petersen, “Kampen om den kolde krig i dansk politik og forskning,” pp. 155–164, 189–200. 15. Thorsten B. Olesen and Poul Villaume, I blokopdelingens tegn,Vol.5,Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005); and Petersen, Europæisk og globalt engagement.

185

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

Danish universities, particularly those in Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Aalborg, and at the University of Southern Denmark. Government-funded research institutions (such as the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Royal Library) also regularly publish important works on Danish Cold War history.

Schools of Thought in Danish Cold War Scholarship

Danish Cold War historiography appears generally to have followed cur- rents in international (primarily U.S.) Cold War schools of thought and interpretation—albeit with a little time lag.16 The few studies published in the 1950s and 1960s were in line with traditionalist interpretations. Early Danish Cold War historiography generally argued that the conﬂict between East and West was mainly the result of Soviet expansionism and that U.S. and Western policies should be understood mainly as defensive reactions to Soviet domi- nation.17 As far as conditions in Denmark were concerned, this literature emphasized the cooperation with the so-called Atlantic Pact parties—that is, the Social Democrats, the Conservatives, and Venstre (Denmark’s Liberal Party). At the same time, individual politicians, especially the leaders of the Social Democratic Party, were the focus of attention. The traditionalists ultimately attached great importance to Denmark’s accession to NATO, considering it a break with the country’s tradition of neutrality as well as an expression of Denmark’s decision to side with democratic countries in their struggle against the Soviet Union.18 The revisionists who had a strong position in U.S. Cold War scholarship in the 1960s and early 1970s acquired only a few contemporaneous Danish adherents. Not until 1995, when Poul Villaume published his doctoral thesis

16. Carsten Due-Nielsen, “Samtidshistorie og politik,” Historisk tidsskrift, Vol. 95, No. 2 (1995), pp. 467–477; and Petersen, “Kampen om den kolde krig i dansk politik og forskning,” p. 168. 17. On international Cold War historiography, see Silvio Pons and Federico Romero, eds., Reinterpret- ing the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations (New York: Routledge, 2004); Odd Arne Westad, ed., Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory (London: Frank Cass, 2000); Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); and Geir Lundestad, America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War 1945–1949 (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1980). 18. Niels Jørgen Haagerup, De Forenede Nationer og Danmarks sikkerhed (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1956); Erik Reske-Nielsen and Erik Kragh, Atlantpagten og Danmark (Copenhagen: Atlantpagtsam- menslutningen, 1957); Sven Henningsen, “The Foreign Policy of Denmark,” in J. Black and K. Thompson, eds., Foreign Politics in a World of Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 89–111; Erling Bjøl et al., Danmark og NATO (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968); and Mary Dau, Danmark og Sovjetunionen 1944–49 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1969).

186

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

on Danish security policy in the 1950s, did this perspective achieve scholarly resonance on Danish ground. Revisionists argued that U.S. foreign policies in the early Cold War period were assertive and promoted conflict. According to this understanding, the Soviet Union had primarily acted to defend legitimate Soviet interests against U.S. “open door” expansionism. This position was not fully shared by Villaume, who defined himself in a middle position between post-revisionism and moderate revisionism. Yet Villaume stressed—in contrast to the traditionalists—the continuity in Danish security policy before and after the entry into NATO in 1949, documenting over almost 1,000 pages that the self-imposed Danish reservations on Atlantic cooperation were more extensive and more consistent on a wide range of issues than hitherto known. Villaume’s account also differed from the traditionalists in another way. As a result of the inaccessibility of Danish Foreign Ministry archives, the analysis and conclusions of the thesis were based primarily on the study of newly opened (especially U.S. and British) diplomatic and military archival material, whereas Danish traditionalists had been compelled out of necessity to base their research solely on sources available in the public record, such as interviews.19 With the contemporary history research project of the DNH, post- revisionism also made its breakthrough in Denmark. Post-revisionism’s interpretation of the conflict falls between traditionalism and revisionism (though it is closer to the former). In Denmark, post-revisionism got its main impetus from Villaume’s dissertation as well as a subsequent, synthesizing article by Petersen, the pioneer of Danish Cold War scholarship. Petersen emphasized the domestic political struggle to define Danish foreign policy, the policies of neighboring countries toward Denmark, and the actions available to Dan- ish politicians at the time.20 He demonstrates how Denmark’s path to the Atlantic Pact began with isolated neutrality, shifted to collective neutrality within the United Nations (UN), passed through the Nordic defense negotiations, and finally led to joining tNATO in April 1949. From that perspective, membership in the alliance was not the first choice but the only available option remaining after the Nordic defense negotiations proved abortive. Sub- sequent scholarship has both supported Petersen’s analyses and influenced his own later scholarship. Thorsten B. Olesen has emphasized the significance of

19. Villaume, Allieret med forbehold. See also Lars Hedegaard, Den amerikanske fred 1945–62 (Copen- hagen: Gad, 1977); and Hans Erik Avlund Frandsen, Klassesamarbejde og klassekamp (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980). 20. Nikolaj Petersen, “Atlantpagten eller Norden? Den danske alliancebeslutning 1949,” in Due- Nielsen, Noack, and Petersen, eds., Danmark, Norden og NATO 1948–62, pp. 17–42.

187

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

domestic policy on Danish foreign policy from 1948–1949 and provides a more nuanced understanding of Petersen’s argument that a direct connection existed between the Easter Crisis of 1948 and Danish entry into the alliance in 1949.21 Others—above all, Bo Lidegaard—have questioned the Danish politicians’ apportioning of top priority to the Nordic defense negotiations. These researchers primarily view the Nordic defense negotiations as a step toward the decision that had the greatest appeal to politicians, civil servants, and military actors: membership in NATO.22 After the Cold War, interpretations of the conflicts during this period varied. However, as in the United States, where a Cold War interpretation that some termed “triumphalism” gained traction, a historical milieu with similar interpretations emerged in Denmark. Carsten Due-Nielsen has defined these interpretations as “critical new traditionalism,” whereas Petersen has charac- terized them as “right-wing revisionism.”23 A more neutral term for this new Danish school of thought is “neo-orthodoxy,” a characteristic feature of which is its strong criticism of Social Democratic security policy in the 1980s, as well as its view of the footnote policy as being disloyal to NATO. The neo- orthodox outlook acquired much support in the media as well as in national politics from 2001 to 2009, culminating in 2006 with a decision by the Dan- ish parliament to approve funding of 10 million Danish kroners—some 1.3 million euros—for research into Danish Cold War history. The most prominent neo-orthodox Cold War historian is Bent Jensen, the first head of the Center for Cold War Research. The most important contribution of the neo- orthodox school has been a focus on previously ignored key themes in Danish Cold War history, such as Denmark’s relationship to the Soviet bloc, the so- called fellow travelers, and Soviet-bloc influence on the formation of public opinion.24 So far, the most noteworthy neo-orthodox publications are two

21. Thorsten B. Olesen, “Brødrefolk, men ikke våbenbrødre,” Den Jyske Historiker, No. 69–70 (December 1994), pp. 151–178; Thorsten B. Olesen, “Jagten på et sikkerhedspolitisk ståsted,” in Thomsen, ed., Temaer og brændpunkter i dansk politik efter 1945, pp. 15–54; Thorsten B. Olesen, “Udenrigsminister i indenrigspolitisk klemme,” Vandkunsten, No. 9–10 (December 1994), pp. 26– 49; and Olesen and Villaume, I blokopdelingens tegn. 22. Lidegaard, I kongens navn; Bo Lidegaard, Den højeste pris: Povl Bang-Jensen og FN 1955–59 (Copenhagen: Samleren, 1998); Bo Lidegaard, Krag (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2001); and Peer Henrik Hansen and Jakob Sørensen, Påskekrisen 1948: Dansk dobbeltspil på randen af den kolde krig (Copen- hagen: Høst & Søn, 2000). 23. Due-Nielsen, “Samtidshistorie og politik,” pp. 469–470; and Petersen, “Kampen om den kolde krig i dansk politik og forskning.” 24. The Danish Institute of Foreign Policy and SNU have published numerous accounts on foreign and security policy issues, including the threat from the Soviet bloc. See, for example, Flådestrategier og nordisk sikkerhedspolitik (Copenhagen: SNU, 1986). Furthermore, during the Cold War, the Foreign

188

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

studies by Jensen. In an early but still important account of Danish-Soviet relations from 1945 to 1965, Bjørnen og haren, Jensen analyzes Soviet security policies toward Denmark.25 More recently, as a result of the work of the Center for Cold War Research, Jensen published an even more substantial and detailed two-volume account of Denmark during the Cold War.26 Both monographs contain thorough documentation of Soviet Cold War policies toward Denmark. Across more than 2,000 pages, the two-volume study analyzes how the Soviet Union operated in Denmark both directly—through the Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Soviet General Staff —and indirectly, through Danish fellow travelers. In the 2014 account, Ulve får og vogtere, Jensen argues that Danish security policy (i.e., the footnote policy) during the Cold War endgame was to a large extent a result of long-standing active Soviet measures.27 However, Danish and Norwegian historians have challenged this conclusion.28 Parallel to the emergence of neo-orthodoxy, other historians have published studies with less-critical accounts of leftwing policies, an approach Petersen describes as “new (left) revisionism.” A case in point is Et land i forvandling by Villaume and Søren Hein Rasmussen, who depict the footnote policy of the 1980s as a constructive attempt to counter a dangerous new round of the East-West nuclear arms buildup. At the same time, they are critical of the leftist movements of the 1970s, arguing that the decade was an era of fruitful and unfruitful experiments as the many extreme leftwing revolu- tionary splinter groups “fundamentally underestimated the Danish political

Policy Society published a series of papers in which Denmark’s relationship to the Soviet Union was delineated at regular intervals. 25. Bent Jensen, Bjørnen og haren: Danmark og Sovjetunionen 1945–1965 (Odense: Syddansk Univer- sitetsforlag, 1999). See also Bent Jensen, Stalinismens fascination og danske ventreintellektuelle (Copen- hagen: Gyldendal, 1984); Bent Jensen, Slet ingen røvere i den grønne danske skov? Om østspioner i Danmark under den kolde krig,Vol.2,Fodnoter (Copenhagen: Center for Koldkrigsforskning, 2009); Martin K. Jensen, En krig på værdier: Mål og midler i det amerikanske kulturdiplomati i Danmark 1945– 1960,Vol.3,Fodnoter (Copenhagen: Center for Koldkrigsforskning, 2010); and Kim Frederichsen, Gennem kendskab til venskab: Sovjetisk propaganda i Danmark under den kolde krig,Vol.5,Fodnoter (Copenhagen: Center for Koldkrigsforskning, 2010). See also Kim Frederichsen, “Kulturens Kolde Krig: Om behovet for nye veje i forskningen,” Historisk tidsskrift, Vol. 110, No. 2 (2010), pp. 525– 545. 26. Bent Jensen, Ulve, får og vogtere: Den kolde krig i Danmark 1945–1991, Vols. 1–2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2014). 27. Jensen, Ulve, får og vogtere, Vol. 1, pp. 370–373. 28. Rasmus Mariager and Thorsten B. Olesen, “Kalla kriget i Danmark,” Scandia,Vol.80,No.2 (2014), pp. 107–116; and Helge Pharo, “Den kolde krig,” Historisk Tidsskrift, Vol. 114, No. 2 (2014), pp. 543–561.

189

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

system and the social liberal welfare state’s historic strength and roots in the people’s parliamentary democratic disposition.”29 The greatest point of contention is the interpretation of Danish security policy in the 1980s. Few research results have been published, and most of the accounts are polemical debates and political writings.30 One important exception is Petersen’s recent article “‘Footnoting’ as a Political Instru- ment,” in which he explores key battles in Danish security discussions in the 1980s. He persuasively demonstrates that Danish Social Democrats at the time were deeply inﬂuenced by discussions with other prominent European Social Democratic politicians in a transnational Social Democratic forum for security discussion, Scandilux.31

Theory, Method, and Genre

The bulk of Cold War scholarship in Denmark is methodologically charac- terized by the attempt to analyze the relationship between domestic and foreign policy. This is achieved through archival studies—primarily of U.S. and British origin, but now also Russian, East European, and Danish—that draw on state and private archives as well as the archives of international organi- zations. Many Danish scholars view the Cold War as non-domestic in origin. From this perspective, Danish policymakers had to decide whether they should merely react to events or should instead take the initiative. Several studies have examined how the domestic political and social situation—such as the development of the welfare state, the trade union movement, political and economic history research, and cultural life—was inﬂuenced by the

29. Søren Hein Rasmussen and Poul Villaume, Et land i forvandling (Copenhagen: Gyldendal / Poli- tiken, 2007), p. 69. 30. For example, Niels Jæger, Det historiske svigt: Socialdemokratiet og venstreﬂøjen i den kolde krig (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1999); Bertel Haarder, ed., Hvem holdt de med? (Nærum, Denmark: Peter la Cours Forlag, 1999); Lasse Budtz, Her stod vi af: Fodnoterne, der skabte historie (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1998); and Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Fodfejl: Da Danmark svigtede under Den Kolde Krig (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2004). 31. Petersen, “‘Footnoting’ as a Political Instrument.” On Scandilux, see also Nikolaj Petersen, “The Scandilux Experiment: Towards a Transnational Social Democratic Security Perspective?” Cooper- ation and Conﬂict, Vol. 20 (1985), pp. 1–22; Nikolaj Petersen, “L’expérience du Scandilux,” in Hugues Portelli and David Handley, eds. Social-Démocratie et Défense en Europe (Nanterre: IPIE, 1985), pp. 277–311; Nikolaj Petersen, “Das Scandilux Experiment: Auf dem Wege zu einer transna- tionalen sozialdemokratische Sicherheitsperspektive,” Europa-Archiv, No. 16 (1984), pp. 493–500; and Nikolaj Petersen, “Het Scandilux Experiment,” Socialisme en Democratie, No. 2 (1985), pp. 65– 69.

190

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

East-West conflict.32 Finally, the Cold War has been the focus of certain areas of security policy scholarship in Denmark.33 From a theoretical perspective, Danish Cold War scholarship is not overly ambitious.34 One of the theoretical approaches that have nonetheless enjoyed some success (especially among political scientists) is James Rosenau’s adaptation theory, moderated now by Peter Hansen, Petersen, and Hans Mour- tizen. The theory deals with two main dimensions of security strategy in the state/environment interplay: influence capability and stress sensitivity.35 An- other theoretical insight that has been applied in Danish scholarship is Glenn H. Snyder’s understanding of the alliance dilemma; that is, dealing with the dilemma of finding a balance between strategies of loyalty and independence in the “international” alliance game and strategies of deterrence and détente in the “external” adversary game. Snyder’s understanding of the alliance dilemma was first applied to Danish alliance policy by Petersen in 1987.36

32. Lidegaard, Krag; Bo Lidegaard and Thomas Højrup, “Suverænitetsarbejde og velfærdsudvikling i Danmark,” in Thomas Højrup and Klavs Bolvig, eds., Velfærdssamfundet (Copenhagen: MTP, 2007), pp. 209–246; Jørn Henrik Petersen, Klaus Petersen, and Niels Finn Christiansen, eds., Velfærdsstaten i støbeskeen 1933–1956: Dansk velfærdshistorie (Odense: University Press, 2012); Niels Jul Nielsen, Mellem storpolitik og værkstedsgulv: Den danske arbejder—før, under og efter den kolde krig (Copen- hagen: MTP, 2004); Iben Bjørnsson, AIC: Arbejderbevægelsens Informations Central: Socialdemokratiets kamp mod kommunismen 1944–1973 (Copenhagen: SFAH, 2012); Dino Knudsen, Amerikaniseringen af den danske fagbevægelse: Marshallhjælp, kold krig og transatlantiske forbindelser 1945–1956 (Copen- hagen: MTP, 2012); Sissel Bjerrum Fossat, Den lille pige med iskagen: Marshallplan, produktivitet og amerikanisering (Odense: Universitypress, 2015); Jensen, Politisk kamp om Danmarks importpolitik; Per Boje, Marianne Rostgaard, and Mogens Rüdiger, Handelspolitikken som kampplads under den kolde krig: Østhandel og opinionsdannelse 1945–1960 (Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 2012); and Klaus Petersen and Nils Arne Sørensen, “Kommunister, Jan-bøger og drømmekøkkener,” Historie,No.1 (2007), pp. 27–48. 33. See, for instance, Olesen, “Brødrefolk, men ikke våbenbrødre.” 34. Petersen, Europæisk og globalt engagement, p. 665. 35. James Rosenau, The Adaptation of National Societies: A Theory of Political Systems Behavior and Transformation (New York: McCaleb-Seiler, 1970); Peter Hansen, “Adaptive Behavior of Small States: The Case of Denmark and the European Community,” Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Pol- icy Studies, Vol. 2 (1974), pp. 143–174; Nikolaj Petersen, “Adaptation as a Framework for the Analysis of Foreign Policy Behavior,” Cooperation and Conﬂict, Vol. 12 (1977), pp. 221–250; and Hans Mouritzen, Finlandization: Towards a General Theory of Adaptive Politics (Aldershot: Avebury, 1988). 36. Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (1984), pp. 461–495; Nikolaj Petersen, Denmark and NATO 1949–1987 (Oslo: Forsvarshistorisk forskningssenter, 1987); Villaume, Allieret med forbehold; Jonathan Søborg Agger and Lasse Wolsgård, “Den størst mulige ﬂeksibilitet: Dansk atomvåbenpolitik 1956–60,” Historisk tidsskrift, Vol. 101, No. 1 (2001), pp. 76–108; Jonathan Søborg Agger and Lasse Wolsgård, “Pro Memoria: Atombomben er vor ven: Den danske regerings stillingtagen til og reaktioner på atomvåbnenes integration i NATOs forsvarsstrategi 1949–1956,” Historisk tidsskrift, Vol. 101, No. 2 (2001), pp. 393–433; and DIIS, Danmark under den kolde krig.

191

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

Classical Themes and New Interpretations

Thematically, security policy—understood as Denmark’s attempts to protect itself and maintain its territorial integrity against outward threats—has at- tracted the most interest among Cold War scholars.37 In recent decades, however, the themes have varied as new methodologi- cal approaches have increasingly been invoked. Thus, in the 1990s and 2000s, studies describing aspects of trade policy as instruments in Danish foreign policy were published.38 Studies of Danish foreign intelligence also have bur- geoned, and “softer” themes such as “Americanization,” public diplomacy, and the “struggle over hearts and minds” have generated increasing interest.39 The question of “political culture” has been stressed primarily by studies dealing with the New Left, studies that are partly the outgrowth of wider international literature on the political Left and history of 1968.40 Recently, a collective research project on “Denmark and 1968” was completed at Roskilde University: “Det bevæger sig når vi går . . .” In contrast to most of the earlier research on “Denmark and 1968,” which dealt mainly with social and political movements, this more recent project engaged with the conceptualization

37. Petersen, “Den kolde krig og Danmark,” pp. 7–23; Olesen, “Danmark og den kolde krig 1945– 1969,” pp. 233–260; and Villaume, “Denmark during the Cold War,” pp. 17–41. 38. Bengt Nilson, “Bacon, Butter and Coal: Anglo-Danish Commercial Relations, 1947–51,” Scandi- navian Journal of History, Vol. 13, No. 2–3 (1988), pp. 257–277; Vibeke Sørensen, Denmark’s Social Democratic Government and the Marshall Plan 1948–50 (Copenhagen: MTP, 2001); and Mariager, I tillid og varm sympati. 39. On Americanization, see Nils Arne Sørensen and Klaus Petersen, “Corporate Capitalism or Coca- Colonisation? Economic Interests, Cultural Concerns, Tax Policies and Coca-Cola in Denmark from 1945 to the Early 1960s,” Contemporary European History, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2012), pp. 597–617; Dorthe Gert Simonsen and Iben Vyff, ed., Amerika og det gode liv (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsfor- lag, 2011); Nils Arne Sørensen, ed., Det amerikanske forbillede? (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2011); Morten Bendix Andersen, “Kampen mod den amerikanske forbrugskapitalisme,” Arbejderhis- torie, No. 2 (2011), pp. 46–68; Sissel Bjerrum Fossat, “‘We Have a Lot to Learn!’ American Inﬂuences on Danish Social Democracy and Organized Labour in the Early 1950s: Transnational Perspectives,” Labour History Review, Vol. 75, No. 1 (April, 2010), pp. 44–59; Sissel B. Fossat et al., eds., Transna- tionale historier (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2009); Klaus Petersen and Nils Arne Sørensen, “Ameri-Danes and Pro-American Anti-Americans,” in Alexander Stephen, ed., The Americanization of Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005); Hans Hertel, “Den amerikanske lyd,” Spring,Vol.21 (2004), pp. 94–106; and Peter Knoop Christensen et al., Amerikaniseringen af det danske kulturliv (Aal- borg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 1983). On public diplomacy and “hearts and minds,” see Marianne Rostgaard, “Dansk kulturdiplomati overfor Østblokken, 1960–1972,” Historisk Tidsskrift, Vol. 111, No. 2 (2011), pp. 479–508; Hans Hertel, “Kulturens kolde krig,” Kritik, Vol. 35 (2002), pp. 9–23; Ingeborg Philipsen, “Out of Tune,” in Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, eds., The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 237–253; and Marianne Rostgaard, “Opinionsdiplomati og amerikanisering: Den kulturelle side af den kolde krig,” Arbejderhistorie,No. 4 (2004), pp. 104–118. 40. Anette Warring, “Around 1968,” Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2008), pp. 353– 365.

192

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

of 1968 and the politics of memory.41 The history of the Danish Left is further described in the multivolume report prepared by the so-called PET Commis- sion, which the Danish Ministry of Justice appointed in 1999 to review the role of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service during the Cold War.42 Another new theme is the history of Danish development policy, which is analyzed under the rubric Idealer og realiteter. This theme does not deal ex- clusively with the Cold War, but it does incorporate aspects of Danish Cold War history. Among other subjects, it details how development policy formed part of security policy and, in turn, part of the East-West conﬂict.43 In 2013, a volume on Nordic development aid from an international and comparative perspective was published by Thorsten B. Olesen, Helge Pharo, and Kris- tian Ravn Paaskesen.44 In addition, the relationship between politics and law has been studied by Kristine Midtgaard. Several of her articles deal with the Scandinavian-Dutch complaint made against Greece at the European Com- mission of Human Rights in 1967–1970.45 These new themes have compelled historians to rethink their method- ological approaches. Cold War scholarship is no longer the province of classical foreign policy history alone but is history understood on the basis of approaches other than theoretical political, ideological, diplomatic, military, and systemic relations.

41. The main results of the project are summarized in Anette Warring, “Det bevæger sig når vi går . . .” Arbejderhistorie, No. 3 (2010), pp. 1–15; Anne Stadager, “Det ‘åndelige’ 1968,” Arbejderhistorie,No. 3 (2010), pp. 16–33; Karen S. Bjerregaard, “Den væbnede kamps betydning,” Arbejderhistorie,No.3 (2010), pp. 34–50; Laura Pérez Skardhamar, “Politisk samvær i 1970’ernes ø-lejre,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 3 (2010), pp. 51–69; and Anne Brædder, “Femø kvindelejr 1971–2010,” Arbejderhistorie,No.3 (2010), pp. 70–86. 42. Especially Regin Schmidt, PET’s overvågning af Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Justice, 2009); Regin Schmidt, PET’s overvågning af politiske partier (Copen- hagen: Danish Ministry of Justice, 2009); Regin Schmidt, PET’s overvågning af arbejdsmarkedet (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Justice, 2009); Rasmus Mariager and Mogens Pelt, eds., PET’s overvågning af den antiimperialistiske venstreﬂøj (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Justice, 2009); Ras- mus Mariager and Regin Schmidt, PET’s overvågning af protestbevægelser (Copenhagen: Danish Min- istry of Justice, 2009); Johnny Laursen, Operation Zeus (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Justice, 2009); and Morten Heiberg, KGB’s kontakt og agentnet i Danmark (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Justice, 2009). 43. Christian Friis Bach et al., Idealer og realiteter: Dansk udviklingspolitiks historie 1945–2005 (Copen- hagen: Gyldendal, 2008). See also Gorm Rye Olsen, “Danish Development Policy,” in Carsten Due- Nielsen and Nikolaj Petersen, eds., Adaptation and Activism: The Foreign Policy of Denmark 1967–93 (Copenhagen: DUPI, 1995), pp. 243–268. 44. Thorsten B. Olesen, Helge Ø. Pharo, and Kristian Paaskesen, eds., Saints and Sinners: Ofﬁcial Development Aid and Its Dynamics in a Historical and Comparative Perspective (Oslo: Akademika forlag, 2013). 45. For example, Kristine Midtgaard, “En slags uafvendelig vanskæbne: Grækenlandssagen og dansk udenrigspolitik mellem politik og ret, 1967–1970,” in Carsten Due-Nielsen, Rasmus Mariager, and Regin Schmidt, eds., Nye fronter i den kolde krig (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2010), pp. 294–317.

193

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

Reports and White Books

One genre that has been highly significant to Danish Cold War scholarship is the officially commissioned report or White Book. In Denmark, commis- sions have often produced the first accounts of a period or the first histories of an issue, usually with the benefit of privileged archival access. The commission reports have been of crucial significance to subsequent scholarship. White Books are, in most cases, written without the specific authors or editors being clearly identified (an exception is the report of the PET Commis- sion), thereby underscoring their official or authoritative character. The most influential reviews commissioned during the Cold War were Dansk Sikker- hedspolitik 1948–1966, published by the Foreign Ministry in 1968; Problemer omkring dansk sikkerhedspolitik, published by the Foreign Ministry in 1970; and Dansk sikkerhedspolitik og forslagene om Norden som kernevåbenfri zone, published by the Security and Disarmament Policy Committee in 1982. After the end of the Cold War, more reviews were commissioned, many focusing on questions of security and defense policy. The most important are Grønland under den kolde krig, published by the Danish Foreign Policy Institute in 1997; Danmark under den kolde krig, published by the Danish Institute for International Studies in 2005; and PET-Kommissionens beretning, published by the Danish Ministry of Justice in 2009.46 Overall, the reports have been notable for a high level of professionalism, resulting in part from favorable work conditions (privileged access to source materials, administrative and research support, adequate financial remunera- tion for researchers, etc.) and for their scrupulously objective tone. To achieve as balanced and accurate an account as possible, the authors of these reports had to achieve consensus and elucidate problems from multiple perspectives. Because the White Books deal with topics that are of political interest, their findings are often criticized by politicians and others. One weakness of the White Books is what they exclude. All reports start with a mandate that defines the authoring commission’s duties. Although this mandate must be fulfilled, there is typically nothing required of the report

46. Danish Foreign Ministry, Dansk sikkerhedspolitik 1948–1966, Vols. 1–2 (Copenhagen: Uden- rigsministeriet, 1968); Danish Foreign Ministry, Problemer omkring dansk sikkerhedspolitik,Vols.1– 2 (Copenhagen: Udenrigsministeriet, 1970); Security and Disarmament Policy Committee, Dansk sikkerhedspolitik og forslagene om Norden som kernevåbenfri zone (Copenhagen: SNU, 1982); Dan- ish Foreign Policy Institute, Grønland under den kolde krig: Dansk og amerikansk sikkerhedspolitik 1945–1968, Vols. 1–2 (Copenhagen: DUPI, 1997); DIIS, Danmark under den kolde krig; and Dan- ish Ministry of Justice, PET-Kommissionens beretning, Vols. 1–16 (Copenhagen: Justitsministeriet, 2009).

194

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

that falls outside the scope of the mandate. Consequently, the authors often refrain from asking questions and following leads that they might have pursued in their own research. Furthermore, the reports are not always based on explicit hypotheses. To be sure, the absence of a hypothesis can in some re- spects be advantageous, allowing for an open interpretation of the past. For example, the researchers preparing the report on Greenland during the Cold War (1945–1968) expanded their narrow remit to include all relevant aspects of Greenland’s security role.

Security Policy

Danish Cold War security policy is the best-documented aspect of Danish Cold War history. The period from World War Ii to membership in NATO is most thoroughly dealt with in articles by Petersen and Olesen; in an analysis by Hans Branner of the signiﬁcance of historical experiences for security policy decisions; in Lidegaard’s doctoral thesis on Henrik Kauffmann (who served as Danish ambassador to the United States); and in two articles by Villaume and Rasmus Mariager on the signiﬁcance of the German occupation of Den- mark on Danish security policy and the Danish brigade in occupied Germany at the end of World War II.47 The discussions primarily address the concep- tual pair of continuity and break: In comparison with previous decades, did Danish security policy undergo a radical shift after the end of World War II in 1945? Were Danish attitudes closer to those of the Swedes than to those of the Norwegians? How serious were the Danish negotiations? What role did actors such as Ambassador Kauffmann and diplomat Povl Bang-Jensen play? Finally, what domestic interest groups and political parties shaped the attitudes of foreign policy decision-makers? Security policy in the 1950s and 1960s is analyzed in Villaume’s doctoral thesis from 1995, in volume 5 of The History of Danish Foreign Policy,and,in similarly detailed fashion, in Danmark under den kolde krig, a study conducted by the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). Villaume in his

47. In addition to the works of Petersen and Olesen cited above, see Nikolaj Petersen, “Påskekrisen 1948,” in Bertel Heurlin and Christian Thune, eds., Danmark og det international system (Aarhus: Politiske Studier, 1989), pp. 223–243; Lidegaard, I kongens navn; Lidegaard, Den højeste pris;Hans Branner, “Vi vil fred her til lands,” Vandkunsten, Vol. 3 (1990), pp. 47–90; Poul Villaume, “Fra hypno- tiseret kanin’ til ‘pinsvinestilling,’” in Henrik Dethlefsen and Henrik Lundbak, eds., Fra mellemkrigstid til efterkrigstid (Copenhagen: MTP,1998), pp. 693–712; and Rasmus Mariager, “Danmark som besæt- telsesmagt? Dansk-britiske forhandlinger om dansk deltagelse i besættelsen af Tyskland,” Historisk tidsskrift, Vol. 98, No. 1 (1998), pp. 78–98.

195

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

analysis of security policy in relation to NATO—the alliance game—addresses the relationship to the Soviet Union, the adversarial game, and threat percep- tion that the DIIS Report covers.48 Jensen has similarly analyzed Danish security policy in relation to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in the period 1945–1965.49 Villaume, Jensen, and the DIIS Report construe Danish policy in different ways. Jensen depicted the self-imposed restrictions on Danish security policy as unnecessary appeasement of the Soviet Union—appeasement that was an attempt on the part of the Danes not to provoke the large neighbor to the east. The title of Jensen’s study, Bjørnen og haren (The Bear and the Hare) conveys this idea, implying that Denmark leapt away and hid like a hare when the bear displayed its teeth. Villaume, on the other hand, perceives Danish policy in the 1950s in this way: “Denmark’s formal break with neutrality policy by joining the Atlantic Pact was only to a certain extent a genuine break in continuity with previously pursued Danish defense and foreign policies.” The title of his thesis, Allieret med forbehold (Allied with Reservations), emphasizes the Janus-like nature of Denmark’s alliance policy in the 1950s. As Villaume sees it, Denmark, despite being a loyal member of NATO, harbored significant reservations about certain aspects of allied policies. The DIIS, in its Danmark under den kolde krig, suggests another perspective, one that deals with the entirety of the Cold War period. The report’s coverage is similar to Jensen’s research, but the DIIS report documents how membership in NATO shaped the formulation of Danish security policy. Thus, the interpretation presented in the DIIS report differs markedly from Jensen’s analysis. The DIIS report further demonstrates that Denmark was increasingly integrated within NATO both politically and militarily throughout the Cold War. Denmark’s duties within NATO carried far more weight than the self-imposed constraints adopted in the 1950s. Furthermore, the DIIS Re- port constitutes the first and hitherto only archive-based analysis of the security policy debate in Denmark during the Cold War. The report also contains an archive-based description and analysis of the Warsaw Pact’s military capa- bilities and intentions vis-à-vis the West, including Denmark. On the basis of research in Polish, East German, and Russian archives, the report does not find conclusive evidence that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact planned

48. Villaume, Allieret med forbehold; Poul Villaume, “Neither Appeasement nor Servility: Denmark and the Atlantic Alliance, 1949–1955,” Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1989), pp. 155–179; DIIS, Danmark under den kolde krig; and Villaume and Olesen, I blokopdelingens tegn. 49. Jensen, Bjørnen og haren; and Jensen, Ulve, får og vogtere.

196

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

to launch an unprovoked attack on the West. Nor does it regard as plausible that the East had such plans.50 Three leading experts on Denmark during the Cold War reviewed the DIIS Report positively: Petersen, Villaume, and Olesen. In addition, a prominent Norwegian historian and co-author of the parallel Norwegian study, Knut Einar Eriksen, published a favorable review. Although not uncritical, all the reviewers deemed the report of lasting value.51 However, subsequent scholarly research has been less favorable toward the report. One critic is Brigadier General Michael H. Clemmesen, who has argued that the DIIS Report underestimates the military threat from the Warsaw Pact. Clemmesen has produced an alternative report analyzing Soviet-bloc military strategies.52 His evaluation has been contested in more recent research published by Vo- jtech Mastny, Sven Holtsmark, and Andreas Wenger that generally supports the DIIS’s basic findings regarding Soviet-bloc military threats, but debate on the matter is bound to continue.53 Another critic is former intelligence officer Jens Gregersen, who has argued that the DIIS Report overestimates the effects in Moscow of the November 1983 “Able Archer” military exercise.54 Gregersen’s position on this matter has been corroborated by recent studies based on declassified Soviet Politburo records.55 Other criticisms have been raised by scholars who feel that the DIIS Report misinterprets questions re- lated to Swedish foreign policy in the 1980s, the role and history of Danish

50. DIIS, Danmark under den kolde krig; and Agger, “Ikke-provokation, beroligelse og afspænd- ing.” An important pioneering work that deals with military exercises and operational plans of the East is Carl-Axel Gemzell, “Warszawapakten, DDR och Danmark: Kampen för en mar- itime operationsplan,” Historisk tidsskrift, Vol. 96, No. 1 (1996), pp. 32–84. See also Carl-Axel Gemzell, “Doorkeeper—Kontinentalmagten och Danmark,” in Dethlefsen and Lundbak, eds., Fra mellemkrigstid til efterkrigstid, pp. 765–808. 51. Nikolaj Petersen, “Koldkrigskrigen,” Politiken, 10 January 2006, p. 7; Poul Villaume, “Danmark under den kolde krig—et dansk perspektiv,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 1 (2006), pp. 86–93; Knut Einar Eriksen, “Danmark under den kolde krig—et norsk perspektiv,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 1 (2006), pp. 77–85; and Olesen, “Truth on Demand,” pp. 80–113. 52. Michael H. Clemmesen, “Koldkrigsudredningen og Danmark i den kolde krig,” Forum for forsvarsstudier (December 2005), pp. 1–123. 53. Vojtech Mastny, Sven Holstmark, and Andreas Wenger, eds., War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in the East and West (London: Routledge, 2006). 54. Jens Gregersen, “Frygtede Kreml et atomraketangreb under NATO-øvelsen Able Archer i november 1983?” Arbejderhistorie, No. 1 (2007), pp. 99–108. 55. See esp. the forthcoming article by Mark Kramer, “The Myth of the Able Archer 83 ‘Crisis’: Did Soviet Leaders Really Fear an Imminent Nuclear Attack in November 1983?” which signiﬁcantly expands on his earlier “Die Nicht-Krise um ‘Able Archer 1983’: Fürchtete die sowjetische Führung tatsächlich einen atomaren Großangriff im Herbst 1983?,” in Oliver Bange and Bernd Lemke, eds., Wege zur Wiedervereinigung: Die beiden deutschen Staaten in ihren Bündnissen 1970 bis 1990 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), pp. 129–149.

197

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

Communist youth movements in the 1960s, and other topics.56 The DIIS Report was also subject to comprehensive, if polemical, debates in the daily press, which led to little if any further clarification.57 Danish security policy in the 1970s has been analyzed only in outline. Of importance are the interpretations of Danish policy toward the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) analyzed by Villaume in volume 5oftheHistory of Danish Foreign Policy, by Petersen in volume 6 of the same work, in the report Danmark under den kolde krig byDIIS,andinaseries of pamphlets by Skjold G. Mellbin, Denmark’s chief diplomat at the CSCE negotiations in the 1970s.58 In comparison to the relatively limited attention paid to Danish security policy in the 1970s, the so-called footnote policy of the 1980s and nuclear weapons policy have been extensively researched. Two archive-based accounts are volume 6 of the History of Danish Foreign Policy by Petersen, which describes security policy, nuclear weapons policy, and the footnote policy; and volume 3 of the DIIS report on Denmark during the Cold War.59 The two studies have different strong points. Petersen’s account is first and foremost a solid account of the domestic conflicts in Denmark (the politicization and polarization of security policy), whereas the DIIS Report analyzes developments on the international scene from the end of the 1970s to the end of the Cold War (increased internal conflicts within NATO over strategies toward the Soviet bloc, as well as explanations for the end of the Cold War).60 Substantial accounts of aspects of Danish and European security in the “long 1970s” have been published as a result of a collective research

56. Simon Valentin Mortensen, “Danmark under den kolde krig,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 2–3 (2006), pp. 95–104; and Knud Holt Nielsen, “Danmark under den kolde krig: Fagligt sjusk om venstreﬂøj og protestbevægelser,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 2–3 (2006), pp. 87–94. From DIIS, see Frede P. Jensen, “Danmark under den kolde krig: De svenske ubådsincidenter og DIIS’s udredning om den kolde krig,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 4 (2006), pp. 76–81; and Rasmus Mariager, “Danmark under den kolde krig,” Arbejderhistorie, No. 4 (2006), pp. 82–88. 57. See, for instance, Bent Blüdnikow, “Er der fejet noget ind under gulvtæppet,” Berlingske Tidende (Copenhagen), 30 June 2005, p. 8; Kjeld Hillingsøe, “Øst havde kun angrebsplaner,” Weekendavisen (Copenhagen), 19–25 August 2005, p. 8; and Bent Jensen, “Tungen lige i munden–eller ud ad vin- duet,” Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten (Viby J), 16 September 2005, p. 12. 58. Skjold G. Mellbin, Konferencen om Sikkerhed og Samarbejde i Europa (Copenhagen: FOV, 1977); Skjold G. Mellbin, Beograd-mødet 1977–78 (Copenhagen: FOV, 1978); Skjold Mellbin, Stockholm- konferencen (Copenhagen: SNU, 1987); and Skjold G. Mellbin, CSCE (Copenhagen: SNU, 1993). See also Poul Villaume and Orne Arne Westad, “Introduction,” in Poul Villaume and Orne Arne Westad, eds., Perforating the Iron Curtain (Copenhagen: MTP, 2010). 59. Petersen, Europæisk og globalt engagement; and DIIS, Danmark under den kolde krig. 60. The two accounts are discussed in Thorsten B. Olesen, “Noter og fodnoter,” in Due-Nielsen, Mariager, and Schmidt, eds., Nye fronter i den kolde krig.

198

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

project headed by Villaume and funded by the Danish Council for Indepen- dent Research.61 A parallel track to Danish policy on NATO is Danish policy toward the United Nations (UN). For many years, this was a neglected theme in scholarly research. An overview of Danish policy toward the UN was published in 1999, but the first archive-based account of Danish UN policy from 1949 to 1965, Midtgaard’s Småstat, magt og sikkerhed, was not published until 2005.62 Midtgaard identifies the Danish UN vision as furthering “a legalistic, norm and value-based world order” that he characterizes as both idealistic and realistic.63 Finally, Greenland has been a central theme in Danish Cold War historiography. In 1941, the Danish envoy to the United States, Kauffmann, signed an agreement with the U.S. administration giving the United States a relatively free hand in Greenland for as long as Nazi Germany threatened Denmark and the United States. Following the end of World War II, Danish politicians urged the United States to withdraw from Greenland, whereas U.S. officials during the early Cold Warpushed to buy the island. No such sale took place, but in 1951 Denmark and the United States signed a defense agreement in which Denmark accepted the permanent stationing of U.S. troops in Greenland. From 1958 to 1965, the United States stored nuclear weapons there thanks to a green light from Danish Prime Minister Hansen—and despite official Danish policy against accepting nuclear weapons on Danish soil in peacetime.64 The issue of Greenland in Danish and U.S. security policy has been studied as an element in Danish national security policy and an element in the defense of NATO. Two studies of particular importance were presented to an

61. Poul Villaume, Rasmus Mariager, and Helle Porsdam, eds., The “Long 1970s”: Human Rights, East-West Détente and Transnational Relations (New York: Routledge, 2016); and Poul Villaume, Ann- Marie Ekengren, and Rasmus Mariager, eds., Northern Europe in the Cold War, 1965–1990: East-West Interactions of Trade, Culture, and Security (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, 2016). 62. DUPI, FN, Danmark og Verden (Copenhagen: DUPI, 1991). 63. Midtgaard, Småstat, magt og sikkerhed; and Kristine Midtgaard, Jutlandia-ekspeditionen: Tilblivelse og virke 1950–53 (Copenhagen: DUPI, 2001). See also Kristine Midtgaard, “National Security and the Choice of International Humanitarian Aid: Denmark and the Korean War, 1950–53: A Small State in a Military Context with a Civilian Orientation,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2011), pp. 148–174. 64. The most recent studies are Thorsten B. Olesen, “Tango for Thule: The Dilemmas and Limits of the ‘Neither Conﬁrm nor Deny’ Doctrine in Danish-American Relations 1956–1968,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 116–147; and Nikolaj Petersen, “SAC at Thule: Greenland in the U.S. Polar Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 90–115.

199

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

international readership by Erik D. Weiss in 2001 and by Petersen in 2008. In “Cold War under the Ice” and “The Iceman That Never Came,” Weiss and Petersen show how the U.S. Army around 1960 designed “Project Iceworm” for the mobile deployment of 600 medium-range ballistic missiles under the Greenland ice cap. Although the project ultimately failed on technical and organizational grounds, Petersen argues that it was “presented as a candidate for a NATO nuclear force” before then.65

Bilateral Relations

During the Cold War, a fundamental condition imposed on Danish security policy was the country’s position as both a small state and a frontline state. Most Danish decision-makers believed that Denmark ought to pursue a balanced foreign policy vis-à-vis the global and regional great powers and to foster close relations with the other Scandinavian countries. No monograph has yet appeared specifically on Denmark’s relationship with the United States during the Cold War, but important aspects are fea- tured in works that analyze security policy.66 Important accounts of Danish- U.S. relations in the 1950s and 1960s include Villaume’s doctoral thesis and his contribution to volume 5 of The History of Danish Foreign Policy.Inthe latter, he analyzes the dual relationship of integration and screening. Despite “significant principal agreement” on the Danish side concerning “the overall policy of the United States,” bilateral conflicts still arose. Villaume demonstrates a persistent Danish skepticism over what he terms a U.S. tendency to exaggerate the Soviet military threat. Lidegaard perceives the U.S.-Danish disagreements as being of lesser concern, insofar as practical solutions had to be found within the framework of the overall close relationship based on common anti-Communism.67 Petersen presents the most in-depth analysis of U.S.-Danish relations from the 1970s onward in his volume The History

65. Erik D. Weiss, “Cold War under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 31–58; and Nikolaj Petersen, “The Iceman That Never Came: ‘Project Iceworm,’ the Search for a NATO Deterrent, and Denmark, 1960–62,” Scan- dinavian Journal of History, Vol. 33, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 75–98. The story was ﬁrst analyzed in Grønland under den kolde krig. 66. The most important work on relations between the United States and the Nordic countries during the Cold War remains Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Scandinavia and the United States: An Insecure Friendship (New York: Twayne, 1997). 67. Villaume, Allieret med forbehold; Olesen and Villaume, I blokopdelingens tegn; and Lidegaard, I kongens navn.

200

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

of Danish Foreign Policy, where he describes how the relationship reached its nadir shortly after Social Democrat Anker Jørgensen became prime minister in 1972. Petersen traces the analysis past the end of the Cold War, when the bilateral relationship reached an intimate and positive level hitherto unseen.68 The question of Greenland in U.S. and Danish security policy through 1968 is surveyed both in a report by the Danish Foreign Policy Institute (DUPI) and in Lidegaard’s doctoral thesis on Kauffmann.69 Danish-Soviet relations are analyzed in three monographs by Jensen, as well as in the DIIS Report and Jonathan Søborg Agger’s Ph.D. dissertation “Ikke-provokation, beroligelse og afspænding.”70 Moreover, Jacob Horne- mann published a collection of source material on the Soviet occupation of Bornholm (1945–1946). Jensen’s three works discuss Bornholm and Danish- Soviet relations in 1945–1965, as well as the 1970s and 1980s.71 Jensen main- tains that Danish foreign and security policies were heavily inﬂuenced by the Soviet Union. Furthermore, according to Jensen, the footnote policy in the 1980s was, to a considerable extent, the result of Soviet-bloc manipulation of the Social Democratic parliamentary majority and of Danish public opinion Neither the DIIS Report nor the works by Petersen and Agger share this interpretation.72 Denmark’s relations with Norway and Sweden have been analyzed by Frantz Wendt, Petersen, Olesen, and Johnny Laursen, who have examined the historical, political, and geostrategic dimensions of Denmark’s ties with Norway, and Sweden and their relations with both superpowers as well as their role in West European cooperation within the framework of the Euro- pean Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community (EEC).73 Danish relations with the United Kingdom and the two Germanys

68. Petersen, Europæisk og globalt engagement; and Nikolaj Petersen, “Hinsides den kolde krig,” in Due-Nielsen, Mariager, and Schmidt, eds., Nye fronter i den kolde krig. 69. DUPI, Grønland under den kolde krig; and Lidegaard, I kongens navn. 70. Agger, “Ikke-provokation, beroligelse og afspænding.” 71. Bent Jensen, Den lange befrielse: Bornholm besat og befriet 1945–1946 (Odense: Odense Univer- sitetsforlag, 1996); Jensen, Bjørnen og haren; Bent Jensen, Tryk og tilpasning: Danmark og Sovjetunionen siden 2: Verdenskrig (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1987); and Jacob Hornemann, Bornholm mellem Øst og Vest (Bornholm: Bornholms Tidende, 1996). 72. DIIS, Danmark under den kolde krig; and Agger, “Ikke-provokation, beroligelse og afspænding.” 73. In addition to relevant works of Petersen and Olesen; cited above, see Franz Wendt, Nordisk Råd 1952–1978 (Stockholm: Nordisk Råd, 1979); Johnny Laursen, “Fra nordisk fællesmarked til Helsing- fors,” Den jyske historiker, No. 69 (1994), pp. 179–200; Thorsten B. Olesen, “Choosing or Refuting Europe?” Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 25, No. 1–2 (2000), pp. 147–168; and Thorsten B. Olesen, “EFTA,” in Norbert Görtz and Heidi Haggrén, eds., Regional Cooperation and International Organization (London, New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 133–151.

201

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

were equally important. Jørgen Sevaldsen and Mariager have documented Denmark’s exceptionally close ties to the UK, including on economic matters. Danish leaders initially focused on relations with the Nordic countries, Great Britain, and the United States and later increasingly emphasized ties with EEC partners. U.S. representatives in Scandinavia in the 1950s supported the strong British inﬂuence there, even though London and Washington were not always in agreement on how to deal with Scandinavia. The rationale for U.S. support was that the British contributed to keeping Denmark, Norway, and Sweden within the West during a period when Sweden remained neutral and Denmark and Norway were being integrated into NATO’s military structures.74 Danish relations with the two Germanys have been analyzed in depth by Karl Christian Lammers. The history of Danish–West German relations is one of a former enemy and occupier becoming an ally and friendly partner in NATO and the EEC as a result of the Cold War. Also relevant are Den- mark’s relations to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the path to diplomatic recognition in 1973, as well as Denmark’s attitude to German reuniﬁcation before and after the end of the Cold War.75 On the basis of East German military archives, Swedish historian Carl-Axel Gemzell has analyzed Denmark’s position in the war plans of the Warsaw Pact.76 Thomas Wegener Friis’s Ph.D. dissertation on East German military intelligence activities targeting Denmark was published in 2005. He relied mainly on East German archival materials to assess the methods used by the GDR military

74. Jørgen Sevaldsen, “Culture and Diplomacy: Anglo-Danish Relations, 1945–1949,” in Jørgen Erik Nielsen, ed., The Twain Shall Meet: Danish Approaches to English Studies (Copenhagen: Department of English, 1992), pp. 9–46; Jørgen Sevaldsen, “Trade Fairs and Cultural Promotion,” in Jørgen Se- valdsen, ed., Britain and Denmark: Political, Economic and Cultural Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Copenhagen: MTP,2003), pp. 73–108; Jørgen Sevaldsen, Winston Churchill (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 2004); Jørgen Sevaldsen, Thatcher (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2010); Mariager, I tillid og varm sympati; and Rasmus Mariager, “Political Ambitions and Economic Realities,” in Jørgen Sevald- sen, ed., Britain and Denmark, pp. 535–573. 75. Karl-Christian Lammers, Hvad skal vi gøre ved tyskerne bagefter? (Copenhagen: Schønberg, 2005); Karl-Christian Lammers, “Nachbarschaft und Nicht-Anerkennung,” in Ulrick Pfeil, ed., Die DDR und der Westen (Berlin: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag, 2001), pp. 273–289; and Karl-Christian Lam- mers, “Living Next Door to Germany,” Contemporary European History, Vol. 15, No. 4 (November 2006), pp. 453–472. See also Hans Jochen Meyer-Höper, “The Signiﬁcance of the Baltic Sea in the Security and Defence Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1950–1989,” in Gunnar Artéus and Bertel Heurlin, eds., German and Danish Security Policies towards the Baltic Sea Area 1945 until Present (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolans acta, 1998), pp. 35–51. 76. Gemzell, “Warszawapakten, DDR och Danmark,” pp. 32–83; Gemzell, “Doorkeeper,” pp. 765– 808; and Carl-Axel Gemzell, “Die DDR, der Warschauer Pakt und Dänemark im kalten Krieg,” in Robert Bohn, Jürgen Elvert, and Karl Christian Lammers, eds., Deutsch-Skandinavische Beziehungen nach 1945 (Stuttgart: Historische Mitteilungen, Beiheft 31, 2000), pp. 44–56.

202

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

intelligence services.77 Friis has also studied East German attempts to recruit Danish citizens as spies.78 Finally, the relations of both Germanys with the Nordic countries have been portrayed in the anthologies DDR & Norden and Ostsee-Kriegsschauplatz und Handelsregion.79

Studies on Danish Intelligence Activities

Interest in the Danish intelligence services has its roots in the Cold War, when leftwing activists published pamphlets and leaflets on the Security and Intelli- gence Service (PET), the Defense Intelligence Service (FE), and the question of the registration of political activists. The pamphlets stemmed from political partisanship without documentation and were often—as has subsequently been shown—based on false premises. For instance, at the end of the 1960s, leftwing activists claimed that 400,000 Danish citizens were registered by the PET. The figure seemed implausibly high considering that Denmark’s total population was less than 5 million, and indeed subsequent research has put the actual figure of registrations at only 40,000. In 1995, Wilhelm Christmas- Møller, a former member of the FE, published an insightful book on the history of the military intelligence service in the early days of the Cold War.80 The book’s discussion of the connections between the Social Democrats and the FE triggered a public debate about the history and significance of the intelligence services. Journalists, historians, and others went in search of sensational revelations, and the hunt for “red spies” had begun.81 In 1999, after a lengthy series of major political events, the Social Demo- cratic government of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen appointed a Commission of

77. Thomas Wegener Friis, Den usynlige front; and Thomas Wegener Friis, “East German Espionage in Denmark,” in Kristie Macrakis et al., eds., East German Foreign Intelligence: Myth, Reality and Controversy (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 146–161. 78. Thomas Wegener Friis, Den nye nabo: DDRs forhold til Danmark 1949–1960 (Copenhagen: SFAH, 2001). 79. Thomas Wegener Friis and Andreas Linderoth, eds., DDR og Norden (Odense: Syddansk Univer- sitetsforlag, 2005); and Thomas Wegener Friis and Michael F. Scholz, eds., Ostsee—Kriegsschauplatz und Handelsregion: Festschrift für Robert Bohn (Visby, Denmark: Gotland University Press, 2013). 80. Wilhelm Christmas-Møller, Obersten og Kommandøren: Efterretningstjeneste, sikkerhedspolitik og so- cialdemokrati 1945–55 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1995). 81. Mette Herborg and Per Michaelsen, Stasi og Danmark (Kongens Lyngby, Denmark: Holkenfeldt, 1996); and Mette Herborg and Per Michaelsen, Ugræs (Kongens Lyngby, Denmark: Holkenﬂedt, 1999). The same perspective is presented in Jakob Andersen and Oleg Gordijevskij, De røde spioner: KGB’s operationer i Danmark fra Stalin til Jeltsin, fra Stauning til Nyrup (Copenhagen: Høst & Søn, 2002).

203

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

Enquiry into the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (the PET Commis- sion) to examine “the work of the Danish Security and Intelligence service in the period 1945–1989 in connection with political parties, trade union conflicts, and political-ideologically inspired groupings and movements in Den- mark” and “the nature of the activities of the political parties and others that in the period in question were the subject of the security services’ scrutiny in this area.” Furthermore, the commission was asked to evaluate the work of the security and intelligence services in the period 1968–1989 and to “determine whether this work was performed in compliance with existing rules and direc- tives that had been stipulated by the Danish Parliament or the government.” The commission published its findings in 2009 in sixteen volumes to- taling more than 4,600 pages. The volumes recount the history of the PET (its establishment, institutional structure, and work culture; its relationship to the Ministry of Justice and the FE; its registration of possible fellow travelers and its supervision of Danish society; its international partners; etc.). The commission also presented a legal assessment of the PET’s work. When com- piling the volumes, the commission enjoyed unrestricted access to all relevant archival materials from the PET and other state institutions, The commission supplemented these materials with extensive records from the U.S. and East German (Stasi) archives and the archives of Danish political parties and smaller politically active groups and movements. Debriefings of double agent Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer based at the Soviet embassy in Denmark and later the Soviet embassy in London, and the KGB documents he took out were made available to the commission. The volumes indicate that the PET registered broader circles than was implied to the Danish parliament and that over the years it built up a parallel archive in which, contrary to declared Danish policy, information on individ- uals was gathered merely on the basis of legitimate political activities. Senior PET officials apparently failed on several occasions to conduct appropriate supervision. Nonetheless, the report concludes that, with only a few exceptions, the service operated legitimately within pertinent laws and guidelines.82 Following publication, the report was publicly criticized by politicians, historians, and others. The critique resembled the earlier criticism of the DIIS report (i.e., that the study was state research and thus limited in what it could say) but resulted in no further clarification. The PET Commission study was supplemented by several unofficial analyses of Danish intelligence services. In 2005, the DIIS published its white

82. Ministry of Justice, PET-Kommissionens beretning, Vols. 1–16.

204

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

book on Danish national security policy and the status of Denmark during the Cold War, 1945–1991, including intelligence appraisals of threats to Denmark. In 2005, a book was published on the private organization co- denamed “The Firm,” which eavesdropped on the apartment of a leading Communist member of Parliament (MP), Alfred Jensen, in the 1950s and early 1960s. This story had been known for several years, but the book placed it in a broader context.83 In addition, the journalist Hans Davidsen-Nielsen published two popular books on the PET (in 2007) and the FE (in 2009).84 Finally, in 2007, the journalist Peter Øvig-Knudsen published a two-volume book on a Danish ultra-leftist criminal gang that committed politically mo- tivated robberies in the 1980s. A Danish police recruit was killed during one of these robberies. A (conspiracy-inspired) hypothesis presented in the book is that the PET refrained in the 1980s from sharing information with the police and thereby impeded efforts to uncover the criminal activities of the gang.85 However, this is refuted by the PET Commission report.86 Beyond these works, our knowledge of the history of the FE remains limited.87

Memoirs, Biographies, and Hagiographies

Danish historians began in the 1990s to describe the Cold War through biographical portraits. In this respect, Danish Cold War historiography differs from British and U.S. Cold War historiography; which had begun much earlier to explore wider issues about the Cold War in biographical studies. One of the earliest Danish biographies to have a Cold War focus was on the great physicist Niels Bohr and his proposals for international control of the nuclear bomb.88 Another early biography was a study of Aksel Larsen, the long-term leader of the DKP who in 1959 founded the Socialist People’s Party (SF). The book ostensibly was a “biography,” but it also served as a history of the Danish

83. Peer Henrik Hansen, Firmaets største bedrift (Copenhagen: Høst & Søn, 2005). 84. Hans Davidsen-Nielsen, I en højere sags tjeneste: PET under den kolde krig (Copenhagen: Poli- tiken, 2007); and Hans Davidsen-Nielsen, Spionernes krig: Historien om Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (Copenhagen: Politiken 2009). 85. Peter Øvrig Knudsen, Blekingegadebanden, Vols. 1–2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2007). 86. Mariager and Pelt, eds., PET’s overvågning af den antiimperialistiske venstreﬂøj. 87. See also Wladyslaw Bulhak and Thomas Wegener Friis, eds., Need to Know: Intelligence and Politics: Eastern and Western Perspectives (Odense: University Press, 2014). 88. Wilhelm Christmas-Møller, Niels Bohr og atomvåbnet (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1985).

205

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

Communist Party or at least a history of its development and significance for Denmark until the end of the 1950s.89 Another significant biography is the portrait of the Danish diplomat Kauffmann, who in 1941 signed the so-called Greenland Agreement with the United States and worked actively after 1945 to bind Denmark closer to U.S. military power.90 Beyond these works, the attention of historians has primarily focused on Social Democratic politicians. MP Hartvig Frisch is portrayed in a biography with insightful analyses of the party’s and, especially, the protagonist’s foreign policy position at the end of the 1940s.91 A biography of Prime Minister Hedtoft (1947–1950, 1953– 1955) is less insightful but includes information on the party’s security policy prior to the decision to join NATO.92 A large two-volume biography of Prime Minister Krag (1962–1968, 1971–1972) presents significant new evidence on Danish security policy even though it ascribes more political influence to Krag than he actually had.93 An unpublished Ph.D. thesis on Krag’s younger years presents equally important new information in its portrayal of the Social Democratic Party’s views on foreign and security policy until 1950.94 Biogra- phies of other prominent Social Democratic politicians include Per Hækkerup (foreign minister, 1962–1966), Prime Minister Hansen (1955–1960), Prime Minister Jørgensen (1972–1973, 1975–1982), and Minister Bodil Koch.95 Few Conservative or Liberal politicians have been examined by historians. Exceptions are Liberal Prime Minister Erik Eriksen (1947–1950), Liberal For- eign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen (1982–1993), and Liberal MP Per Feder- spiel. Taken together, these works contain insights into the Cold War foreign and security policy of Venstre (the Liberal Party of Denmark).96 Furthermore,

89. Jakobsen, Aksel Larsen. 90. Lidegaard, I kongens navn; and Lidegaard, Den højeste pris. 91. Niels Finn Christiansen, Hartvig Frisch (Copenhagen: Hans Ejler’s Forlag, 1993). 92. Leif Thorsen, Hans Hedtoft (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1998). See also Poul Villaume, “I kan frelse verden og styrte den i ulykke . . . ,” Vandkunsten, No. 9–10 (1994), pp. 84–101; and Poul Villaume, “At gøre en dyd af nødvendigheden,” in Henning Grelle and Helle Leilund, eds., Otte socialdemokratiske statsministre (Copenhagen: Arbejdermuseet & Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv, 2009), pp. 52–73. 93. Lidegaard, Krag. 94. Niels Wium Olesen, “Krag,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Southern Denmark, Odense, 2002. 95. Nikolaj Bøgh, Hækkerup (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 2002); Claus Bjørn, H.C. Hansen (Copen- hagen: Fremad, 2004); A. F. Larsen, Anker (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1999); and Birgitte Possing, Uden omsvøb (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2007). 96. Erik Hartling, Erik Eriksen (Copenhagen: Christian Eilers Forlag, 1990); Mogens Rüdiger, På kant (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1992); and Ditlev Tamm, Federspiel (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005). Furthermore, several concise biographies of Danish foreign policy actors can be found in Vandkunsten, No. 9–10 (1994); and Søren Mørch, 24 statsministre (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2000).

206

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

ta biography has appeared of he Liberal economist Thorkil Kristensen (minister of ﬁnance, 1945–1947 and 1950–1953).97 Signiﬁcant biographies of leftwing politicians and other actors include portraits of (former) Communists Børge Houmann, Peter P. Rohde, and Mogens Fog. These works describe the DKP’s policies during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War, the split of the party in the late 1950s, and the personal costs for those involved. These biographies also illustrate the beginnings of the Danish New Left in the 1960s.98 In parallel to the biographical studies, Danes who played a role in the Cold War have increasingly chosen to publish their memoirs. This autobio- graphical genre was employed during the Cold War as well, albeit in a slightly different form. Historically, the Social Democratic Party has been skillful in presenting itself as the creator of the welfare state and as the party primarily responsible for Denmark’s conduct during the Cold War. This was done in a calculated manner through the party’s own publishing house. Funding was also provided to maintain the archives of the labor movement, and top- ical books on Social Democratic policy and biographies of politicians were published. Books from the Social Democratic press Fremad published in the 1950s and 1960s contributed to shaping Danish historians’ views of the Cold War. These books were tributes, edited by powerful men of the party. One, celebrating Prime Minister Hedtoft’s 50th birthday in 1953, explicitly depicts Hedtoft as the metaphorical slayer of Communists. In another, a book of re- membrance on Prime Minister Hansen published in 1960, Prime Minister Krag portrays his newly deceased party leader as a visionary and staunch foreign policymaker with a rare sense of sound judgment.99 Political memoirs that touch on Cold War matters have been written by Lasse Budtz, the leading Social Democratic advocate of the footnote policy; by Ellemann-Jensen, the Liberal foreign minister and critic of the footnote policy; by Conservative Hans Engell, who was minister of defense and justice in the 1980s; by the member of parliament Gert Petersen, who was co-founder

97. P. N. Andersen, Thorkil Kristensen (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1994). 98. Niels Barfoed, Iunåde(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2001); Morten Møller, Hvem er Nielsen? (Copen- hagen: Gyldendal, 2012); and Morten Møller, Mogens Fog, Vols. 1–2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2009). 99. Jul. Bomholt, ed., Idé og arbejde (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1953); Viggo Kampmann and Jul. Bomholt, eds., BogenomH.C.Hansen(Copenhagen: Fremad, 1960). See also Viggo Kampmann, Seks socialdemokratiske statsministre (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1973); and Robert Pedersen, Fra neutralitet til engagement (Copenhagen: Chr. Erichsens Forlag, 1981).

207

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

and long-term leader of the Socialist People’s Party (SF); and by Conservative leader Ole Bjørn Kraft (foreign minister, 1950–1953).100 Finally, several academics, civil servants, cultural figures, and leftwing political activists have published memoirs. Among them are Erling Bjøl, a journalist and professor of international relations, on his time as a commentator and security policy analyst from the 1950s to the 1970s; diplomatic consul- tant Henning Gottleib, the former chairman of the Security and Disarma- ment Committee (SNU) on his contacts with representatives from the Soviet bloc; journalist Bettina Heltberg, who presents a close-up view of the footnote policy and of her marriage to prominent Social Democratic politician Svend Auken; Henning Kjeldgaard, a Social Democrat and diplomat who was active in international youth work from the 1950s onward; civil servant Helge Hjortdal, who worked for Prime Ministers Hansen, Viggo Kampmann, and Krag; the intelligence officer Ib Norgaard, who for many years during the Cold War was a technical expert in the PET; the leftist author and early anti-Vietnam war activist Ebbe Kløvedal Reich, who was a leading figure of the youth rebellion; the Social Democratic journalist Jørgen Schleimann (re- counted to Sune Aagaard), who was active in U.S. propaganda in Denmark; the diplomat and Social Democratic Foreign Minister Hans Tabor; the prominent leftwing member of parliament Preben Wilhjelm; and the journalist Tine Eiby on her life as a university student and a young leftwing activist in the 1970s.101 Finally, Soviet double agent Gordievsky has published memoirs about his time as a KGB agent in the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen. His work, however, should be supplemented with a reading of volumes six, seven, ten, and thirteen of the PET Commission report.102

100. Lasse Budtz, Her stod vi af (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1998); Ellemann-Jensen, Fodfejl;HansEn- gell, På Slotsholmen (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 1997); Gert Petersen, Indenfor systemet—og uden for (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 1998); Ole Bjørn Kraft, Frem mod nye tider (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1974); and Ole Bjørn Kraft, Danmark skifter kurs (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1975). 101. Erling Bjøl, Fra magtens korridorer (Copenhagen: Politikens forlag, 1994); Henning Gottlieb, I Kronens tjeneste (Copenhagen: Forum, 2001); Bettina Heltberg, Hvor der handles (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1997); Kjeld Kjeldgaard, I skyggen af den kolde krig (Gedved, Denmark: Eigil Holms For- lag, 2002); Helge Hjortdal, Tre røde konger (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1999); Ib Norgaard, Spionjæger iDanmark(Copenhagen: Borgen, 2003); Ebbe Reich, Efter krigen—før freden (Copenhagen: Vartov, 2004); Sune Aagaard, Jørgen Schleimann (Copenhagen: Lindhardt & Ringhof, 2003); Hans Tabor, Diplomat blandt politikere (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1995); Preben Wilhjelm, Fra min tid (Copen- hagen: Gyldendal, 2005); and Tine Eiby, Til tjeneste (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2006). 102. Oleg Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution (London: Macmillan, 1995).

208

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

Shortcomings and Future Research

Research on Denmark and the Cold War has been markedly increasing over the last two decades. Even so, Danish Cold War scholarship is in its infancy. Security policy issues have been the primary subjects of comprehensive analysis, but even in this area numerous lacunae in our knowledge remain. In addition, the relationship between domestic and foreign policy, and the re- lated question of how the two large narratives in postwar Danish history (i.e., the welfare state and the Cold War) can be systematically linked have yet to be addressed in any thorough way. The rise of the welfare state and the Cold War were intertwined contemporary phenomena, but neither historians of the Cold War nor those of the welfare state have done more than take the first steps toward covering this mutual relationship. Defense history and specific military dimensions are also poorly researched, even though both topics are crucial for understanding Denmark’s role in the Cold War.103 Similarly, Denmark’s ties with Third World countries, both bilaterally and multilaterally, have yet to be explored in any depth. Large parts of the history of daily life still need to be told as well: the periphery of the circle of decision-makers is the closest historians have come to presenting the individual citizen’s encounter with the Cold War.104 Denmark’s macroeconomic situation and the role of trade policy within the framework of the Cold War are just as sparsely described, especially in the early period. How, then, can the relationship between the Cold War and Denmark’s policies on the development of the single European market and integration policies be studied and analyzed? The establishment of the EEC may, on the one hand, be considered part of the political-economic history that deals with trade, welfare, national states, and economic relations. On the other hand, the EEC, in its economic integration of numerous European countries the that were in conflict with the Soviet bloc, can be regarded as an economic-political counterpart to NATO. To press further, how did cultural life develop, and what role did it play? How and in what context did public opinion develop? Similar questions can be asked about political culture and its shifts. At the outset of the Cold War, foreign and security policy was the purview of the Danish Foreign Ministry. However, during the final two decades of the Cold War foreign and security

103. See also Michael H. Clemmesen, “Udviklingen i Danmarks forsvarsdoktrin,” in Due-Nielsen and Petersen, eds., Adaptation and Activism, pp. 7–82. 104. Important exceptions are Søren Hein Rasmussen, Den kolde krigs billeder (Copenhagen: Gylden- dal, 2009); and Klaus Petersen and Nils Arne Sørensen, eds., Den kolde krig på hjemmefronten (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2004).

209

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Mariager

policies came to be discussed in broader circles. What was the background for this development, and what was the significance of the changed political culture? Finally, additional comparative studies need to be undertaken, as there is a general tendency (hardly unique to Denmark) that a country’s Cold War history is written in splendid isolation.105 Why is this so? Historical research communities often focus on themes of national concern. U.S. scholars for years focused mainly on the role of the United States in the Cold War.106 Likewise, British Cold War scholars for a long time dealt primarily with the history of Great Britain and the role of the British Empire.107 The history of small states has often been neglected by historians from larger countries for a variety of reasons (linguistic barriers, lack of background knowledge, lack of interest, etc.). If historians and political scientists from small countries do not study the history of their own countries, nobody is likely to do so. That the history of small countries is often disconnected from international research is, however, a situation of great concern. National research has a tendency to become inward-looking and parochial. What can be done in Denmark to avert this risk? Olesen has suggested that historians from small countries ought to focus more on the international content, conducting comparative studies and studying bilateral relations.108 Moreover, Danish researchers should be encouraged to take part in international Cold War discussions. Lastly, Danish Cold War historians ought to publish their results in English in order to make their results known to an international audience and also in the hope that foreign research communities will comment on the work. The Cold War began as a political and ideological conflict between two opposing social systems, and it subsequently developed into a power-political confrontation with an arms race of immense scale. To the extent that new tendencies and interpretations are accommodated within Cold War historiography, scholars must provide an argument for why these new themes should be analyzed within the framework of the Cold War. This term is not merely a periodic classification but a designation of a political and ideological conflict

105. See Olesen, “Under the National Paradigm,” pp. 189–211. 106. See D. C. Watt, “Rethinking the Cold War: A Letter to a British Historian,” Political Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 3 (October-December 1978), pp. 446–456. 107. See David Reynold, review of The Impossible Peace by Anne Deighton, in The Historical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1992), pp. 501–503. 108. Olesen, “Under the National Paradigm,” pp. 189–211.

210

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021 Survey Article

between, on the one side, the democratic capitalist countries of the West and, on the other side, the Communist dictatorships of the East.109

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Thorsten B. Olesen and Nikolaj Petersen of Aarhus University and Regin Schmidt and Poul Villaume of the University of Copenhagen, for valuable comments on previous drafts of this essay. I also thank the editors of the Journal of Cold War Studies for their feedback.

109. Carsten Due-Nielsen, “Nye fronter i studiet af den kolde krig,” in Due-Nielsen, Mariager, and Schmidt, eds., Nye fronter i den kolde krig, pp. 11–32.

211

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00825 by guest on 28 September 2021