Denmark's Struggle
Denmark in Nazi Chains. By Paul Palmer. (Drummond. 4.s.)
Model Protectorate or Nazi Chains?—these titles well illustrate the dilemma with which little Denmark, undefended and (under twentieth century conditions) virtually indefensible, was confronted by the blitz invasion of April 9th, 1940, and in which she has made the brave choice here depicted. These books also deal with two other matters of importance, but it is too soon to write the history of the Free Danish movement, to which two major events—the accession of the Danish Minister in London to its ranks and the arrival of Mr. Christmas Moller from Denmark to direct it—gave a wholly new turn while these volumes were in the press. To linger over the narratives of the invasion would be more profitable: Mr. Palmer has some excellent photographs of the German entry into Copenhagen, while Mr. Gudme, who was at his desk in Politiken's office when the " ticker " spelt out the announcement from Korsor: " German troops landed here five o'clock," is in a position to give us the first complete eye-witness account of the fall of Denmark. But narratives of German invasions have lost their novelty. When the deaths of the first Danish victims, three Jutland frontier guards who were struck down from behind in the dark, came to be com- memorated by a gravestone, the Germans forbade the phrase, " They fell by an unknown hand." Two years later such squeamishness would surely have seemed superfluous, even to a German censor.
What the world is chiefly interested in is, not whether the Danes could have killed a few more Germans before they succumbed (Mr. Palmer quotes a minimum figure of 350, which is by no means con- temptible in the circumstances of overwhelming surprise), or even whether prompt action on their part could have gained a respite for Norway and perhaps saved Trondheim until June, but to ascertain by what means Denmark has fought her weaponless war against the rest of the German programme—the economic exploitation, of which a cardinal feature was to have been a customs union ; political assimilation (within nine months pressure was being brought to bear on the King to form a non-Parliamentary Ministry); and social dis- integration, the favourite German game being to play off the farmer against the workless town artisan. How has Denmark preserved her soul alive? It is not a question of dramatic action, though the saboteurs have scuttled at least one crowded German troopship and the Danish railway network, of which the Germans make great use, has suffered some strange calamities. Still less is it a matter of bons mots, though the present authors, as befits patriotic Danish journalists, are nothing loath to exhibit their fellow-countrymen scoring off the bewildered Teutonic " stranger " and turning his own orders to his discomfiture. Does the censorship insist that the only loss inflicted by the British air raid was one cow? Then we must record a strange phenomenon: the cow burned for three days. Three things have saved Denmark. The first is the incompatibility of Nazi control and vigorous native political institutions. Even local elections have been banned - the Rigsdag has time and again been induced to pass in silence the measures it would have wished to challenge ; the Social Democratic Premier, Stauning, whose energy was already failing after ten years in his high office, proved a broken reed; but the King, who could not conveniently be banned or silenced, was never more aware of his representative capacity. Mr. Gudme is able to enumerate three occasions on which King Christian, to the manifest delight of his subjects, has openly shown his oppo tion to the conquerors, and there are treasured stories of more. the second place, the hard-headed Dane sees in the primrose pa of the collaborator a direct threat to his standard of living. short-term result of the occupation was a ready market for agri tural exports (which contrasted favourably with the situation crew for Denmark by British policy in the 'thirties); but the astronomi figures to which Germany's debt in the Clearing Account qui
rose—figures on which the newspapers were forbidden to comment —showed also what the long-term result would be. Imports, on the other hand, quickly shrank; within a few months Denmark was paying German agents 740 kroner a ton for a quality of fodder which Sweden could still import from South America at 25o kroner. But the Danskhed that resists has its roots in something beyond economic or political considerations.
Vilhelm la Cour, the history professor who has twice been sent to prison for incurring the displeasure of the Germans—and who had audience of the King while waiting to serve his sentence—gives us the clue in his confiscated pamphlet, Whether to Say Yes or No. Suppose the native Nazis " or any other instrument of a non-Danish system " were finally installed in power, what then? " In Grundtvig's fatherland free speech in church and school would be gagged—think you without resistance? Nay . . . the fight would be waged by hundreds of thousands in all parts of our homeland." Church and school : Kaj Munk, the clergyman turned publicist, Hal Koch, the professor who heads the nation-wide Youth Federation, and the nameless band of students who rioted in the streets of Copen- .hagen against the signature of the Anti-Comintem Pact last November, represent, not politics, but this Danish culture, the work of Denmark's mid-nineteenth century Renaissance, still permeating the entire population through the high schools and the co-operative tradition. Thus, quite apart from their considerable intrinsic interest, these two little books illustrate a general principle—that the vitality of a small nation is unimpaired by the most formidable physical dis- advantages, provided the national culture is experienced as the
heritage of the whole and not of a part. T. K. DERRY.
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