DANISH DANISH OR FIVE YEARS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, Denmark was TO REACTIONS F occupied by Germany. While the Danish reaction to this period of its history has been extensively discussed in Danish-language publications, it has not until now received a thorough treatment in English. Set in the context of modern Danish foreign relations, and tracing the country’s responses to successive crises and wars in the region, Danish Reactions to German Occupation brings a full overview of the occupation to an English-speaking audience. Holbraad carefully dissects the motivations and ideologies driving conduct during the occupation, and his authoritative coverage of the preceding century provides a crucial link to understanding the forces behind Danish GE foreign policy divisions. Analysing the conduct of a traumatized and strategically exposed R small state bordering on an aggressive great power, the book traces a MAN development from reluctant cooperation to active resistance. Holbraad CARSTEN CARSTEN goes on to survey and examine the subsequent, and not yet quite HOLBRAAD HOLBRAAD finished, debate among historians about this contested period. That O debate is between those still siding with the resistance and a majority CCUPATION more inclined to justify limited cooperation with the occupiers – and DANISH sometimes even condone various acts of collaboration. CARSTEN HOLBRAAD studied at the LSE with a Leverhulme undergraduate scholarship, and gained a DPhil at the University of Sussex in the field of European history of ideas. He has held REACTIONS research and teaching positions at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the ANU in Canberra, Carleton University and Queen’s University in Canada, El Collegio de Mexico and at LSE and UCL. HOLBRAAD CARSTEN His previous books include Internationalism and Nationalism TO GERMAN in European Political Thought (2003) and Danish Neutrality (1991). OCCUPATION COVER DESIGN: Rawshock design £35.00 i Danish Reactions to German Occupation ii iii Danish Reactions to German Occupation History and Historiography Carsten Holbraad iv First published in 2017 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press Text © Carsten Holbraad, 2017 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Common 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Carsten Holbraad, Danish Reactions to German Occupation. London, UCL Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14324/111. 9781911307495 Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ Front cover image: Headquarters of the Schalburg Corps, a Danish SS unit, after 1943. The occupied building is the lodge of the Danish Order of Freemasons located on Blegdamsvej, Copenhagen. Courtesy of Nationalmuseet, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 51– 8 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 50– 1 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 49– 5 (PDF) ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 52– 5 (epub) ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 53– 2 (mobi) ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 54– 9 (html) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/ 111.9781911307495 v To the memory of Jørgen Hæstrup – who started it all. vi Preface In Danish Neutrality: A Study in the Foreign Policy of a Small State (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991), I identified and analysed certain ideas and attitudes behind Danish foreign policy in modern and contemporary history. Focusing on situations of crisis or war in the region, I detected two opposing tendencies in Danish reactions, namely towards engage- ment in and withdrawal from international conflict. At one stage, I considered the idea of following up with a briefer work which would explore a similar duality of attitudes to foreign affairs to be found in some modern Danish fictional literature. Instead, I decided to narrow the historical focus, and examine Danish reactions to the country’s most traumatic experience in recent history: the five years of German occupation during the Second World War. There were two reasons for this choice. In a conversation with my son and his friend Morten A. Pedersen – both members of the small and exclusive group of Danish anthropol- ogists with a PhD from King’s College, now known as the Cambridge Danes – Morten pointed out that there was a need for someone to get on top of the ongoing debate among historians and others about Danish conduct during the German occupation. On a more personal level, a topic focusing on that relatively brief period had the attraction of taking me back to the subject matter of my initial introduction to historical research. As a high- school student at Sct. Knuds Gymnasium in Odense who had mastered the skills of ste- nography and typing, I spent most of my spare time in 1947– 48 working as a secretary to Jørgen Hæstrup, a young and dynamic history mas- ter who recently had started collecting material about the resistance movement for the Danish Public Record Office. Destined to become the leading historian of Danish resistance and its links with Britain, he was in the process of locating secret archives and securing written verbal reports from key resistance figures. vi vii Taking down reports and typing out archival material, I met quite a few members of the resistance and gained some knowledge of its activ- ities. I also formed a good working relationship with Hæstrup. Though I was unable to accept repeated invitations in later decades to join his group of young occupation historians, my friendship with him lasted till his death in 1998. Thus, it is appropriate to dedicate this work to the memory of Jørgen Hæstrup. It offers a spectral analysis of Danish reactions to the German occupation and presents a critical overview of subsequent and recent historiographical debate about a crucial national experience not yet fully digested. The first part of the book presents Danish conduct in the Second World War in a historical context by sketching out the foreign relations of the country in modern times and tracing its reactions to successive crises and wars in the region. For its earlier sections, I draw on my first book about the history of Danish foreign policy, mentioned above. The second part lays out the historically attested and widely known reactions to German occupation from the invasion on 9 April 1940 to the liberation on 5 May 1945. However, for analytical reasons, the order of presentation is logical rather than chronological, ranging from willing cooperation at one end to armed resistance at the other. Yet, that order happens to correspond fairly well with the actual chronological develop- ment over the five years. The third part of the book deals with the historiography about the occupation period, from the first post- war decades till well into the pres- ent century. Three waves of writings have been distinguished. The post- war works, mostly written by historians and other writers who identified with the resistance movement, tended to present a picture of growing resistance backed by increasing public support. Subsequently a revision- ist wave of scholarship took a more critical view of resistance, perhaps at the same time adopting a more sympathetic attitude to cooperation. More recently, a second wave of revisionism, less interested in the his- tory of resistance, took up the cases of various groups of individuals who had engaged in some form of collaboration with the occupiers. That part closes with a tentative overview of recent trends in scholarly debate and a brief presentation of recurrent public discourse about Danish reactions to the occupation. Though Norway occasionally has been brought into the picture, no attempt has been made in this book to make comparisons and draw par- allels with other countries under German occupation. Each such coun- try was in a geopolitical situation of its own in relation to the European PREFACE vii viii conflict, and had its own history of interacting with rivalling great pow- ers and its own tradition of dealing with a preponderant and threaten- ing power. Moreover, the policy and conduct of the occupying power varied from country to country. Thus, as for both its situation and its conduct during the Second World War, Denmark was a special case, which should be examined separately rather than fitted into some quasi- comparative framework. Much of the book was researched and written while I was Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at UCL. As such, I much enjoyed the use of the UCL Library’s excellent collection of books about the history, politics and culture of Denmark and other Nordic countries. I am grateful to Knud J.V. Jespersen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, for generous and useful comments on an early draft. The constructive criticism and good advice of the anonymous reviewers are also much appreciated. In particular, I am indebted to the expert on Danish occupation historiography for help- ing me find a way through recent literature. London C. H. viii PREFACE ix newgenprepdf Contents Introduction 1 1 Traumas and trends 4 1.1 1814 6 1.2 1864 12 1.3 1914 17 1.4 1940 21 2 1940– 45: From cooperation to resistance 42 2.1 Support 42 2.2 Cooperation 51 2.3 Opposition 75 3 Since 1945: From resistance to collaboration 131 3.1 Concord 132 3.2 Conflict 156 3.3 Discord 173 3.4 Debate 189 3.5 Discourse 207 Conclusion 214 Notes 221 Works cited 226 Index 229 ix x 1 Introduction For Denmark, the most momentous experience of the twentieth century was the five years of German occupation during the Second World War.