Today is the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, but it’s also the 68th anniversary of the fall of Copenhagen to the Nazis. The King and the government decided early in the morning of April 9th, 1940 not to resist the Germans, and the capital was occupied in a matter of hours.However, there was an active and organized underground resistance to the Nazis from 1940 to 1945, and more than 7,000 Jews were smuggled across the Øresund to Sweden.
The full story is told (in English) in today’s Copenhagen Post.
Last year when I was in Copenhagen Steen and Kepiblanc took me around Copenhagen harbor and told me further details of that fateful April 9th. As German warships entered the harbor, an artillery commander on one of the fortified islands prepared to resist. He either ignored or failed to hear the orders to let the Germans pass without a fight, and tried to fire his gun.
But the weapon jammed, the Germans entered the harbor unimpeded, and Copenhagen was spared the savage destruction that awaited so many other cities across Europe during those years.
Update: Kepiblanc left a link to a Nazi propaganda newsreel (posted at Hodjas Blog) about the invasion of Denmark. It’s very interesting, so I’ve embedded it below the jump.
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I think it’s telling that the Germans invaded and occupied Denmark in order to “defend its neutrality”. It reminds me of the efforts by the UN and the EU to suppress free speech in order to “protect the human rights” of Muslims.
Hat tip for the Copenhagen Post story: TB.
4 comments:
There is a contemporary German propaganda video over here.
Off topic
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from Brussels Journal:
"It was a victory for the Red-Green Party's Asmaa Abdol-Hamid and a bitter defeat for the Danish People's Party on Tuesday when parliament's board of governors ruled that MPs may dress as they wish in parliament, so long as they can be recognised by their colleagues. The decision was specific taken up in response to the issue of women wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf. […]
Abdol-Hamid was happy with the ruling. 'It's the decision I expected. Anything else would have been a blow against democracy and in conflict with the constitution,' she said. […] The board's decision parallels a ruling earlier in the week by the Board of Justices, which stated that judges may also wear the Muslim headscarf."
Why don't "the Nazis" go naked with shorts depicting Mohamed with his 12 who...es?
It would at least be amusing and it could get some votes from those who are "caseless rebels".
I remember a story from three decades ago when the Danish Progress Party first gained seats in the legislature, and the party leader stated that his defense strategy was to pay for a single answering machine saying in Russian that Denmark surrenders.
And here it is, on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogens_Glistrup
According to _Danish Made Nice & Easy _ "Although Denmark remained neutral during the First World War, its rapid occupation by Nazi Germany in 1940 persuaded most Danes that neutrality was no longer a reliable guarantee of Danish security,"
(yes, Grandfather, I am learning the language and history of the "Old Country" - because I do worry about her) You were a new immigrant yet, you joined the US army to fight during WWI. I wonder who has your Purple Heart?
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