During World War II, the Danish government chose to cooperate with the Nazi occupation authorities. Even though this applied to the Danish police as well, many were reluctant to cooperate. As a result, a large number of members of the Danish police force were deported to Nazi concentration camps in Germany. The Gestapo established the collaborationist HIPO Corps to replace them.
Nazi Germany occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940, and the Danish cabinet decided on a policy of collaboration. This applied to all civil servants, including the entire Danish police force, which began cooperation with its German counterparts. [1]
On 12 May 1944, Dr. Werner Best demanded that the Danish police should protect 57 specific enterprises against sabotage from the Danish resistance movement, which was growing in strength. Should the Danish civil service not accept this, the Danish police force would be reduced from 10,000 to 3,000 men.[ citation needed ] The head of the Danish administration, Nils Svenningsen, was inclined to accept this demand, but the organizations of the Danish police were opposed to the idea. The German request was ultimately turned down, and this was reported to Best on 6 June 1944. This reduced the Gestapo's already limited trust in the Danish police even further.
The German army began arresting members of the Danish police in Denmark's main cities on 19 September 1944. The force numbered 10,000 men in that year. [2] 1,960 personnel were arrested and later deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp. [3] Policemen deported to Buchenwald were in two groups, the first group was sent on 29 September, the second was transferred on 5 October 1944. On 16 December, following pressure from the Danish administration, 1604 men were transferred from Buchenwald to Mühlberg (Stammlager or Stalag IV-B), a camp for prisoners of war POWs. That meant an improvement in the situation for the Danish policemen; POWs had some kind of protection due to international conventions, while inmates in concentration camps did not. [4] [5]
Subsequently the policemen were scattered somewhat on various work details.
The Danish ministry of foreign affairs headed by Nils Svenningsen negotiated with the German authorities in Denmark over the release of Danish concentration camp inmates. [6] From late September 1944, transport with Red Cross packs was organized. An agreement was reached on 8 December 1944, for the release (and transport back to Denmark) of 200 sick policemen.
Simultaneously with the Danish negotiations, the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte intended to get all Scandinavian concentration camp prisoners to Sweden. The efforts to get prisoners from Scandinavia out of the German camps continued in the following months. In March and April 1945, 10,000 Danish and Norwegian captives were brought home from Germany in White Buses. The majority of the deported policemen travelled with these vehicles. Some of the returning captives arrived at Frøslev Prison Camp just north of the border between Germany and Denmark.
The number of Danish policemen who died during their incarceration in the German camps varies between 81 and 90, depending on the source. [7] Several died afterwards due to camp-related illnesses. This group is a little more difficult to delimit. According to a calculation in 1968, 131 policemen died. [8]
The mortality rate among the Danish policemen was reduced after they left Buchenwald and were transferred to Mühlberg in December 1944. 62 men died in Buchenwald.
Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
Trygve Martin Bratteli was a Norwegian newspaper editor, a politician with the Norwegian Labour Party, and Nazi concentration camp survivor. He served as the prime minister of Norway from 1971 to 1972 and again from 1973 to 1976. He was president of the Nordic Council in 1978.
At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral, but that neutrality did not prevent Nazi Germany from occupying the country almost immediately after the outbreak of war; the occupation lasted until Germany's defeat. The decision to occupy Denmark was taken in Berlin on 17 December 1939. On 9 April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark in Operation Weserübung. The Danish government and king functioned in a relatively normal manner until 29 August 1943, when Germany placed Denmark under direct military occupation, which lasted until the Allied victory on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1945. Both the Danish government and king remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic and a totalitarian system until 1943 when the Danish government stepped down in protest against German demands that included instituting the death penalty for sabotage.
The Danish resistance movements were an underground insurgency to resist the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Due to the initially lenient arrangements, in which the Nazi occupation authority allowed the democratic government to stay in power, the resistance movement was slower to develop effective tactics on a wide scale than in some other countries.
Frøslev Camp was an internment camp in German-occupied Denmark during World War II.
Karl Rudolf Werner Best was a German jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer, Nazi Party leader, and theoretician from Darmstadt. He was the first chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, and initiated a registry of all Jews in Germany. As a deputy of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, he organized the World War II SS-Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary death squads that carried out mass-murder in Nazi-occupied territories.
White Buses was a Swedish humanitarian operation with the objective of freeing Scandinavians in German concentration camps in Nazi Germany during the final stages of World War II. Although the White Buses operation was envisioned to rescue Scandinavians, one-half of those taken from the camps to Sweden were of other nationalities. The buses used to transport the prisoners were painted white with red crosses painted on the roof, side, front and back, so that the buses would not be mistaken for military targets by Allied air forces. Those allowed by the Germans to be freed from the concentration camps were transported by the white buses and trucks to the port city of Lübeck, Germany. Swedish ships took them onward to Malmö, Sweden. Danes continued on by land on the white buses to Denmark.
Numerous internment camps and concentration camps were located in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic (1871–1940) opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Following the prohibition of the French Communist Party (PCF) by the government of Édouard Daladier, they were used to detain communist political prisoners. The Third Republic also interned German anti-Nazis.
The number of deaths in the Buchenwald concentration camp is estimated to have been 56,545, a mortality rate of 20% averaged over all prisoners transferred to the camp between its founding in 1937 and its liberation in 1945. Deaths were due both to the harsh conditions of life in the camp and also to the executions carried out by camp overseers.
Holger Danske was a Danish resistance group during World War II. It was among the largest Danish resistance groups and consisted of around 350 volunteers towards the end of the war. The group carried out sabotage operations, including blowing up railway lines strategically important to the Germans. Among their largest sabotage actions was the blowing up of the Forum Copenhagen in 1943. Holger Danske was responsible for around 200 killings of informers who had revealed the identity and/or the whereabouts of members of the resistance. The group was named after the legendary Danish hero Holger Danske.
The German occupation of Norway began on 9 April 1940. In 1942, there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. At least 775 of them were arrested, detained and/or deported. More than half of the Norwegians who died in camps in Germany were Jews. 742 Jews were murdered in the camps and 23 Jews died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder and suicide during the war, bringing the total of Jewish Norwegian dead to at least 765, comprising 230 complete households.
Prior to the deportation of individuals of Jewish background to the concentration camps there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. During the Nazi occupation of Norway 772 of these were arrested, detained, and/or deported, most of them sent to Auschwitz or other extermination camps where 742 were murdered. 23 died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder, and suicide during the war. Between 28 and 34 of those deported survived their continued imprisonment. The Norwegian police and German authorities kept records of these victims, and so, researchers were able to compile information about the deportees.
Kristian Ottosen was a Norwegian non-fiction writer and public servant.
Milly Elise "Lise" Børsum was a Norwegian resistance member during World War II, survivor from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and known for her writings and organizing work after the war.
Horserød Camp is an open state prison at Horserød, Denmark located in North Zealand, approximately seven kilometers from Helsingør. Built in 1917, Horserød was originally a prison camp, and in local parlance the site is still referred to as Horserødlejren.
Borghild Hammerich was a Norwegian activist most known for her humanitarian efforts during World War II.
The NKVD Special Camp No. 1 was a special camp operated by the NKVD from 1945 to 1948, during the Soviet occupation of parts of Germany. It was located 4 km to the east of Mühlberg, Brandenburg using the shacks of the former German run prisoners-of-war camp Stalag IV-B. The prisoners mainly consisted of members of the lower and medium ranks of the Nazi Party, German military personnel, youth wrongly accused of belonging to the German Werwolf resistance, and other persons who were regarded by the Soviets as being potentially dangerous like journalists, teachers, policemen, farmers, factory owners and politicians in addition to several arbitrarily accused people. Conditions in the camp were characterized by bad sanitary conditions, malnutrition and lack of basic medical service. The camp had over 21,800 prisoners during its existence, including 1,490 women and over 1,300 teenagers. At most, it held 12,000 prisoners at a time.
Erik Seidenfaden was a Danish journalist and editor. He was a co-founder of the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information.
"Pløjeren" is one of the early short stories by the Danish author Karen Blixen. Published in the journal Gads danske Magasin in October 1907 under the pen name Osceola, it followed the publication of "Eneboerne" two months earlier although it was the first of the two to be written.
Frants Hvass was a Danish diplomat.
