BLITZKRIEG IN THE NORTH; THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF DENMARK 1940-45

By Charles Keller

Countless historians have addressed nearly every aspect of Hitler’s insatiable lust for conquest, but the invasion of Denmark is usually mentioned only as an aside to the invasion of Norway. Having married a Dane and so spent some time in Denmark, I became more and more curious about their time under the Nazi thumb.

Much is already known of Danish collaboration as a whole. There was the ever splintering D.N.S.A.P. (Danish National Socialist Workers Party), the complex personality of pre-war Nazi Party member Christian Frederick von Schalburg, the Frikorps Danmark Division, its later incarnation in the Nordland Division, and their battle cry against Bolshevism, “Kaemp under Dannebrog!” But less is remembered today of the political climate in Denmark throughout the latter half of the 1930's that formed the basis for such a collaboration. There was the outward admiration of the German Nazi Party felt by certain people of influence like writers Morten Korch, Johannes V. Jensen, and popular actor Christian Arhoff.

In retrospect, German intentions seemed all too clear to those in a position to know before that fateful day of 9 April 1940. It seems incredible now how everyone from King Christian X, his Government, to British Prime Minister Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were caught by surprise by the invasion. Aerial reconnaissance had shown German troop and material build up in Baltic ports, as well as increased maritime activities towards Norway. There was even a case of R.A.F. planes strafing German ships in the Skagerrak.

Germany was not invading Denmark and Norway for “Lebensraum” (living space) as was claimed in the eastern lands. These countries were strategic geographic regions useful to either the Axis or the Allies, whoever got there first. Different also were the peoples of these two nations. They were Aryans in the purest sense, and the Nazi propaganda machine churned out some of its most turgid work to differentiate them from the “subhumans” they claimed to be “liberating” the eastern lands from;

Germany has occupied Danish and Norwegian soil in order to protect those countries from the Allies, and will defend their true neutrality until the end of the war. Thus an honored part of Europe has been saved from certain downfall.

The invasion itself was marvelously planned and executed, and initial Danish resistance was minimal. The King, Prime Minister Stauning, and Foreign Minister Edvard Munch had inexplicably ignored Army Commander in Chief General W.W. Pryor’s previous pleas for mobilization. Nevertheless, minor skirmishes were reported in Jutland, and the Royal Guard traded shots with the invaders around the King’s castle Amalienborg in Copenhagen. Thirteen Danish soldiers were killed and two German planes were shot down in the fighting. As it was, the Germans were to have their hands full with the Norwegian defenses, and needed Denmark as a sort of staging area. If there was any thought of continued resistance in Denmark that morning, the appearance of Luftwaffe bombers over the rooftops of Copenhagen quelled it immediately. These bombers had been in route to bomb the capital but were re-ordered to simply fly over by the German Chief of Staff for Denmark General Himer - at very nearly the last minute.

Just what was it like to live in a German “protectorate?” My wife’s grandparents, who were in their early twenties during the occupation remember vividly, so I put a series of questions to them about life during those five years. Farmor and Farfar (Grandmother and Grandfather) were living in Copenhagen. Grandfather Eli called Farmor that morning with news of the invasion. The appeal for non-resistance from King Christian X and Prime Minister Torvald Stauning had appeared on the front page of Denmark’s oldest newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, and once radio stations came on the air, everyone was told to remain calm and there would be no trouble. The family telephoned each other and their friends all morning for simple reassurances.

There was a short firefight in the street outside our Grandparent’s apartment where a Danish citizen was killed. Flowers that Farmor and Farfar left everyday were always removed shortly thereafter by the invaders. Since their apartment was on the ground floor, shots did zing through their flat at times, and resistance members knew their door was open for them to flee through and make their escape in an adjacent street.

Nationwide, a semblance of order was kept outwardly, and life went on as it used to...at first. Then food was rationed with coupons, and eventually became so expensive that the black market was the natural alternative. Clothing was harder to come by certainly, but the family found ways around that by making needed bits like light jackets from disused parachutes.

By 10 April 1940, Stauning had managed to set up a coalition government between the Social Democrats, the Conservative People’s Party, the Single-Tax Party (Danmarks Retsforbund), and the Radical Liberal Party. On the first anniversary of the invasion, the Danish ambassador in Washington D.C., Henrik Kaufmann signed the Atlantic Pact and handed over bases in Greenland to the United States. Stauning died in May 1942 and was replaced by a fellow Social Democrat, Vilhelm Buhl. Erik Scavenius, who was known for his shrewd work in keeping Denmark neutral during the First World War, became Foreign Minister in July 1943, and was Prime Minister by November.

Curfews also became a way of life; no one was to be out after eight in the evening, and there were to be no groups of more than five in the streets. After Germany turned on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist Party was banned in Denmark, and its 246 party members were sent to Concentration Camps.

Grandfather had worked on the streetcars during the first few years of the occupation, and then began driving ambulances for the emergency services company, Falck, in 1943. Farmor, who was pregnant with their first son in 1940, worked in a delicatessen. They were required to make “Danish Red Cross Food Parcels” which they later found out were for German troops instead. No one was the least bit surprised.

Denmark was known as “a model protectorate” for its advanced, civilized, and good-natured citizenry, but the seeming conciliatory mood of the Danes towards the occupying Germans was not without its other side. In an unprecedented move in any occupied European country, Germany allowed Denmark to hold free elections in April 1943. The result was tremendously embarrassing for the Nazis when Stauning’s coalition government was returned by 94% to the Danish National Socialist Party’s (D.S.N.A.P.) 2.1% (just three seats).

Farmor remembers the invaders as friendly and respectful, but all the time aware the Danes were not very thrilled by their presence. When Denmark was pressured by Berlin to enact Anti-Jewish laws, King Christian’s taut reply was a work of art. He said Denmark had no need for Anti-Jewish laws since they did not ‘share Germany’s fear of the Jews.’ Ultimately 492 Jews were arrested and sent to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia, but an admirable national effort sent 6000 of Denmark’s Jews safely across the sound to neutral Sweden in October 1943.

King Christian is also famous for his daily horseback rides through the streets of Copenhagen. As a show of solidarity with his people, he took no bodyguard with him, and when asked why he replied that “the hearts (of all Danes) are guarding the King of Denmark.” He further managed to irritate the invaders by sending a telegram of sympathy to Danish Police who were injured during a riot of 300 local Nazis. Traditionally, Danish royalty are buried inside Roskilde Kirke. Flowers are kept by his ornate white marble sarcophagus to this day. He is still guarded by the hearts of his people...

As the war dragged on and the tide turned against Germany, the Danish Resistance increased their activities, and sabotage became one of their most effective weapons. One resistance group known as Holger Danske even boasted Uncle Harry. Their name was inspired by the fictional warrior whose statue sits resolute in the casemates of Kronborg Castle (also the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet) in Helsingoer. Beneath the castle he dozes in his cold vaults, waking and emerging to defend his beloved Denmark from invaders...

Often Danish resistance was both intellectual and psychological. Theaters that ran films or plays with anti-German sentiments were closed. Students would wear the colors of the R.A.F. in open defiance. One newspaper ran an article about how important it was for all Danes to learn English “before our friends, the British arrive.” German authorities were outraged at the implication and ordered a retraction. The paper agreed to right the wrong and the next day encouraged all Danes to learn German “before our friends, the Germans, leave.”

Christian Moeller had fled to London in 1942 and founded The Free Danes organization. His BBC broadcasts encouraged resistance, and Berlin ordered reprisals by a ratio of 5:1, five murdered Danes for every dead German soldier. In Denmark they were called “clearing murders” and took the place of public firing squads. In a twist of fate, the much loved priest and playwright Kaj Munk, himself an early sympathizer with the Danish conservative youth (who openly admired the German Nazi Party), was savagely murdered. His body was mounted on a fence post with a sign “Swine, you worked for Germany just the same.” In August 1943 Berlin sent an ultimatum to the Danish Government which they refused, and resigned in protest. The Danish Navy scuttled a large part of its fleet, and Civil servants took control of their Departments.

When Denmark is Free Again was the title of a pamphlet published by the country’s four largest resistance groups in 1943. It called for legal action against collaborators, and for free democratic elections. Farmor and Farfar remember how the execution of eight Hvidsten group resistance fighters ignited a national strike, and that in September 1944, 2000 members of the Danish Police Force were arrested and deported to Concentration Camps.

By the time Germany capitulated in May 1945, and British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery made his triumphant entry into Copenhagen, Denmark had lost nearly 400 of her sons and daughters. Happily, the end of Hitler’s thousand year Reich meant that Denmark, the diadem of Scandinavia, was spared the total destruction heaped on other European countries.

HE WHO GUARDS THE TOMB SHALL NEVER SLEEP BUT BE WATCHFUL...

The religion of the Holy Lands, before the birth of Christianity, was prolific in the creation of deities who possessed the bodies of humans and the heads of animals. This anthromorphic blend of animal and human has been seen as the mystic blending of the perfection of the human body with the personification of various divine attributes. It, as a religious institute, was not limited to the Egyptians: evidence exists to show that the ancient Sumerians, the Caldeans, the Babylonians and even the Doric Greeks utilized this unique wedding of species to create god figures who could be identified with cults or attributes of a divine nature. To think that the Egyptians codified and created their gods and goddesses in a cultural vacuum would be the height of foolishness.

What the Egyptians did was to uniquely craft a pantheon of gods and goddesses into a functional hybrid state where they interacted with all levels of society, from the Pharoah to the poorest dweller in the Nile Valley.

For the Egyptians, life as we know it, was only a quick passing, an antechamber to the Eternal where they would live forever or be destroyed in a world governed by gods who were not capricious: indeed these divine figures could be approached and offered libations, household goods and precious perfumes, metals, for divine benedictions.

The key to understanding the Afterlife lay in the relationship between the Ka, Ba and Ren. These tripartite parts of the human soul were all welded into one physical body in life: in death they were equal yet separate—part staying with the body, one part being a magical name and the other a spirit element that could leave the body.

One of the most important gods in ancient Egypt was Anubis, god of the Dead. He was always depicted as a male: in tomb reliefs he is shown as a standing, well developed athletic male with a loin cloth and sometimes a partial Uraeus crown on his head, denoting his divine attributes. He is most often shown as a Jackel and indeed in his Hierogylphic word he is simply shown as the head of a jackel with a divine Ankh, a symbol that is represented as a cross with a loop top. This Ankh was the symbol of eternal life.

Anubis, descended from Osiris, Lord of all the Gods, was worshipped as a Protector of the Dead. When he is shown in a three dimensional format, he is invariably depicted as a crouched jackel with gold filled ears and eyes, wearing a pharonic necklace signifying his divine attributes.

In many of the royal tombs of the Middle Dynasties he appears resting on a sledge or sled with flat wooden runners. In fact, this was how his statue was taken to the tomb—dragged across the sand by attendants on flat runners and then literally carried into the tomb to rest beside the sarcophagus of the dead where he could look over them until the end of Eternity.

The sledge is always decorated with a funeral inscription giving the history of Anubis among the gods; it also lists the names of the dead he will protect and is often though not always, filled with curses for those who will dare to break into the tomb.

A statue of Anubis might be 11" long and stands at the head, 4" tall. It would show a miniature copy of the funeral sledge which would have accompanied the deceased into the tomb. It is also heavily incised with hieroglyphic inscriptions that refer to the protective nature of the god. Many lesser people could not afford full sized, 9’ long statues of the god in black obsidian and precious metals and thus representations of Anubis were purchasable for lesser figures if made of wood and painted.

Not surprising, Anubis is probably one of the most recognized of the ancient Egyptian gods: the fact that the god is always shown as a handsome jackel may be part of it; also his association with the Cult or the dead may be another part of it. He plays a prominent part in the Book of the Dead, the Egyptian spirit guide to the other world. In it he always accompanies the blessed dead and protects them from the demons that may threaten them after they have been judged Just by Thoth, Scribe of the gods.

Funeral statues of this quality can command prices of well over $12,000 but it is not unusual to find them sometimes at flea markets where they are being offered as curious by those who have failed to learn the lesson of the collector—know before you buy and sell after you know!

GATHERING THE EAGLES, MARCHING TO GLORY

By Charles Keller

Nothing stirs the emotions more effectively than a rousing piece of music, and every military in the world employs some type of patriotic march music for its troops. In the United States John Phillip Sousa has the final word regarding American patriotic music, but no one can deny that Germany is just as well known for its patriotic marching music.

When Prussia began collecting military marches in 1817, they drew from Russian and Austrian sources as well as themselves. Austria never collected her marches comprehensively, and it was not until 1905 that she supplied her regiments with “march past” music through the order “Procedure for the Imperial and Royal Army.” In Prussia it was Frederick III, father of Wilhelm II, who decreed in 1817: “In order to assist the regiments of the Army in the choice of good military music, I have commanded a collection of proven musical pieces to be prepared, and a set of them is to be supplied to each regiment.”

Differences between Austrian and Prussian marches can be striking. Prussian marches tend to be very structured with a patriotic discipline, whilst the Austrian marches tend to be almost light and more poetic. No where is this more apparent than between the Austrian Unter dem Doppeladler (Under the Double Eagle) and my personal favorite, the Prussian Hohenfriedburger Marsch. Unter dem Doppeladler was written by Josef Franz Wagner and assigned to the Federal Austrian Army’s 1st Artillery Regiment No. 2; Hohenfriedburger Marsch is thought to have been written around 1750 and is widely attributed to Frederick the Great himself as composer although there is no real proof of this.

Unter dem Doppeladler has a distinct bounce and an almost carnival or dance-like appeal. Hohenfriedburger Marsch is all patriotic business - stirring the blood and soul from the first trumpet fanfare. In a word, indomitable; Napoleon III never stood a chance.

Manion’s Auction through the years has offered a series of superb albums of German and Austrian march music. The star of these is Prussian and Austrian Marches as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by the legendary Herbert von Karajan. There could be no better combination.

It is a two record set issued in 1974 by Germany’s premier classical music label Deutsche Grammophon, and comes in a full color gate-fold sleeve with a fourteen page booklet. Deutsche Grammophon, or “DG” to some, is well known for their attention to detail and for including fascinating and historically accurate liner notes in each of their releases. This booklet’s liner notes, translated into German, English and French, is one of the finest I’ve seen. Not only does it give historical insight into each of the marches included, but contains 30 full color paintings and pictures of Beethoven, Wagner, Frederick the Great, a stately portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Kaiser Franz Josef, Austrian flags and standards, Tirolean Imperial Marksmen, bandsmen from the Hungarian and German Infantry, a battle scene of Alexander Ritter von Bensa, a Prussian Garde-Uhlan, General Duke Pappenheim, a late 19th century parade through the Brandenburg Gate, and so much more.

Of the thirty marches presented we find several pieces composed by some of the greatest names in classical music. The greatest of the great, Ludwig van Beethoven starts things off with Yorck March, originally written for the Archduke Anton in 1809, and which came under its current title in the Prussian March Collection of 1817.

St. Petersburg March is attributed to a Finnish military bandmaster who, legend has it, was awarded a gold clock by the Russian Czar for composing it. But the fact remains that its melody was already widely known in Germany and had long been played by all the regiments in Berlin.

The Pappenheim March was written as a reminder of the Thirty Years’ War, and commemorates the service of General Heinrich Duke of Pappenheim who died in the Battle of Luetzen, 1632. The piece is usually attributed to Michael Hayden, the younger brother of Mozart’s mentor Joseph Hayden. Joseph was the composer of the String Quartet in C Major, ‘Emperor,’ the second movement of which was adopted as the German national anthem, Deutschland ueber Alles.

The great Austrian composer and conductor to the First Viennese Citizen’s Regiment Johann Strauss, father of “the waltz king” Johann Strauss Jr., gives us March from The Gipsy Baron. It also epitomizes the lightness and free spirit of the Austrian march style.

The great Richard Wagner encouraged the arrangement of military marches from themes in his operas. He belonged to the class of composers known historically as ‘nationalist.’ This movement included other luminaries like Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Mussorgsky. Wagner’s Nibelungen March presented here is taken from his famous opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, and was arranged by Gottfried Sonntag, bandmaster of the 7th Bavarian Infantry Regiment at Bayreuth.

The Great Elector’s Cavalry was written by Cuno Count von Moltke who dedicated it to Kaiser Wilhelm II. It became the official march for the Breslau 1st Regiment of Life Guards Grosser Kurfürst, which Moltke himself commanded until 1899.

This is but a cross section of the marches included on this fantastic double Lp, as well as the other Lps of similar march music available in most auctions. Considering the power and timelessness of this music it is no wonder the Nazis co-opted most of these marches into their repertoire. Apart from their desire to connect themselves with the glory days of Prussia and the early German confederation, their obvious inability to create lasting music of their own made it rather imperative.

BLOOD AND IRON, UNDER THE RUNES

By Charles Keller

From the military school of life. - What does not kill me makes me stronger. - Friedrich W. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize With a Hammer, 1889; maxim eight.

Nietzsche. Perhaps the most celebrated and reviled name in the history of philosophy, yet certainly one of the least understood. His thoughts and ideas are still quoted by a cross section people as vast as those of Machiavelli’s, and most of the time taken completely out of context. His influence on history is unmistakable in both world politics and art.

He was born in 1844 in Prussian Saxony. His father and grand fathers were all Lutheran pastors, and young Friedrich grew up a devout believer himself. He lost his faith while studying Theology in Bonn from 1864-9, but continued studying Philology there until he was 24 when he was awarded the chair of classical philology at Basel university – even before being awarded his doctorate. This he would later receive at Leipzig without examination. The bulk of his influential writings occurred during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and culminated in 1888 with Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Early in the following year he would lapse into madness until his death in 1900.

The titles of his works are among the most recognizable in all philosophy and literature; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Will to Power, Ecco Homo, The Gay Science, The Revaluation of All Values, A Genealogy of Morals, and more. His literary coherence runs the gamut from lucid to self-aggrandizing to megalomanic. Though most philosophers think and write for the benefit of generations to come, Nietzsche’s time was already at hand during his life.

The loose confederation of German states that existed during the mid nineteenth century was coalescing into a more unified Germany with Prussia and its ruling Hohenzollern dynasty at the head. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 brought the previously excluded German States of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Hesse together and helped heal the fresh war wounds of the Austrians and Prussians. By September 1, 1870, the army of Napoleon III was defeated and capitulated at Sedan. France declared itself a republic on September 4, and roused herself to fight more, but was beaten in Metz by January 1871 and sued for peace. Napoleon III would take refuge in England and die the following year...

In full pomp and ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the King of Prussia was declared German Emperor. This was the age of Bismarck administered by the sword of the Hohenzollern, through blood and iron...

Much Philosophy concerns art, and Nietzsche was also keenly interested in implications and reflections of art on culture; German culture most especially. Though disliking religion in general, Nietzsche was fervently anti-Christian and thought that Christians (and Jews for that matter) were responsible for a “slave morality” that repressed art, and life in general; and this latter prejudice brought him together with the composer Richard Wagner.

Wagner had written rather extensively on anti-Semitism, and with his clearly superior and ennobling musical abilities Nietzsche saw in him a savior of German art, and the two shared a rich friendship for quite some time. But by the inauguration of the Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival in 1876, Nietzsche had become disillusioned with Wagner’s vision which made concessions to Christianity. This, combined with the opening years of the Second Reich lead Nietzsche to a rebellion against a perceived mounting philistine-ism in Germany with his decry in Twilight of the Idols as the chapter called “What the Germans Lack.”

This dissatisfaction with the new order might be explained further by the succession to the throne of Emperor William II, and the ensuing quarrel he provoked with the old Chancellor Bismarck, one which led to his dismissal in 1890. The anti-Christian Nietzsche was clearly bothered by the rising tide of piety in Germany, evident even in military circles where “Gott Mit Uns” (God is With Us) found itself emblazoned on equipment as simple as belt buckles. Ironically, the motto was to persist even into the Third Reich when an eagle and swastika had replaced the Kaiser’s crown.

Also partly responsible for Nietzsche’s perceived decline in German culture and character, was beer:

Where does one not find that bland degeneration which beer produces in the spirit!

He also bemoaned that German youth were not being taught to think anymore, rather they were trained, “that thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned, as a form of dancing...”

Rites of Darkness, Reap of Evil

Ye shall love peace as a means to new war, and the short peace more than the long. You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace but to victory... Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity.
- Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nietzsche has been called “a philosopher for non-philosophers. ” This is due mainly to an openness in his writing; that his prose was less of a building process and more of a honeycomb assembly of ideas. His philosophy took on a poetic air; shorter sentences that are instantly memorable, and phrases that lend themselves readily to the twentieth century’s ‘sound-bite’ culture.

Like Treitschke and Hegel, Nietzsche held war in high esteem; it was both inevitable and the highest calling for the State, as well as the individual. Going further, Nietzsche hatched the notion of a race of Supermen to fight these wars; men who had thrown off the shackles of modernity, the superstitions of religion which extolled as virtues things he considered vices; humility, nonresistance, mortification of the flesh, and pity for the weak. His Supermen draw their “will to power” from Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest” interpretation of Charles Darwin’s “natural selection.” To rule is their destiny; conquering the ages through courage, endurance, and strength of character.

Through the 1920's and more especially during the worldwide Depression of the 1930's, a defeated and fragmented Germany was grasping for something to rekindle German pride and greatness. And then a portentous statement appeared in a 1924 tome called Mein Kampf, written as the author sat in Landsberg Prison.

“One man must step forward who with apodictic force will form granite principals from the wavering idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for their sole correctness, until from the shifting waves of a free thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in faith and will.”

Adolf Hitler was the author and that “one man.”He emerged from prison just before Christmas armed especially with Nietzsche’s “Supermen,” Hegel’s “Heroes,” and the French Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau’s 1855 “Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,” which taught, “history shows that all civilization flows from the white race, that no civilization can exist without the co-operation of this race.” Though at the time his Nazi Party was in disarray and many counted him a failure consigned to the blackness of obscurity, he had other plans. The powder keg was primed for the bloodiest explosion in the history of mankind...