DENMARK: The Facade Cracks

A German officer was stamped to death by Danish boots in Oldense. A German troop train exploded on its way north to Aalborg. The powerhouse at Aarhus went out, forcing shutdowns through East Jutland. Night fires broke out in Copenhagen’s port and three locomotives were wrecked at Varde.

After 40 months’ service as Hitler’s “model protectorate,” Denmark was coming of age; resistance was losing its spotty, amateur character, sabotage was turning professional. Fifteen thousand Danish guards proved unable to catch more than a handful of saboteurs.

Said the Nazi-controlled Kalundborg radio: “The patience so long exerted by the occupying authority has been exhausted as from today.”

Germans machine-gunned Danes in Copenhagen’s Raadhusplads to teach them hot to congregate. In Svendborg Germans fired on Danish troops. The Danes returned the fire and there were deaths.

Gathering Storm. Angry Danes seized girls who continued to walk out with German soldiers, stripped them, slapped swastikas on them, drove them screeching through the streets of Copenhagen, Helsingør and Oldense, where Hans Christian Andersen was born 138 years ago.

At Esbjerg on the Jutland coast, which is a forbidden zone and heavily mined against invasion, the Germans ordered curfew after 10. Organized workers struck, shopkeepers followed their lead, the banks closed and the baking ovens were allowed to cool. Allied flags appeared, waved, vanished and appeared again farther down the street. The Danes kept impassive faces, continued to stare through approaching Germans. After three days the baffled Kommandantur withdrew the curfew.

The violence spread. In Copenhagen men slipped into the Knudsen radio-parts factory at night, did half a million dollars’ worth of damage. Bombs exploded in a big aluminum plant. Swedish reports spoke of 60 factories sabotaged.

At the Forum, Copenhagen’s largest auditorium, where troops were quartered, helpful Danes trundled a large consignment of beer cases into the hall. Minutes later the glass cupola blew off and the walls were punctured in several places.

First Drops. As resistance grew and repression stiffened, the parachutes kept Danish spirits up. Air-raid sirens wailed on many August nights, but no bombs fell. In the morning Danes would find abandoned parachutes in the fields. Word spread rapidly that the British were repatriating the young men who had fled to learn the saboteur’s trade. One such young man was found crumpled in a Copenhagen garden, false papers, ration cards and 30,000 kroner in his pockets. His parachute had failed.

Downpour. Sunday morning Copenhagen woke before dawn to the sound of firing from the port. Denmark’s tiny Navy was committing suicide. Some were trying to escape to Sweden, some were scuttled by their crews where they lay. German planes caught and sank at least one that fled, but nine reached Sweden. There was a skirmish at the Royal Barracks. Danes and Germans fell in a clash at the Amalienborg, where some of the royal family watched and waited. The battle was heard in Sweden, 20 miles across the Ore Sund.

On their radios the Danes soon learned the reason: martial law was on; the time of German forbearance with Danish “stubbornness” was over; German military courts would deal summarily with offenders. General Hermann von Hanneken, Commander in Chief of German troops in Denmark, made the rules. He announced: 1) gatherings of more than five were prohibited; 2) curfew would begin at sundown; 3) use of telephones, telegraphs and mails were prohibited; 4) strikes were prohibited; 5) troops would fire on offenders without further warning.

After that the fog closed in, obscuring events. German sentries paced outside Sorgenfri Castle, Christian X’s summer residence, near Copenhagen. Within, the Danes were told, sat an old man with time to think of the last three years and wonder. The King had said he would step down if the Cabinet yielded to German demands. The members stood firm, were now, like their King, in “protective custody.” The military was in full command. Denmark, like the rest of the Festung, was occupied territory.