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Thomas Christian Sneum | |
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Born | Sønderho, Fanø, Denmark | 21 May 1917
Died | 3 February 2007 89) Roskilde, Denmark | (aged
Buried | |
Service/ | ![]() SIS Free Norwegian Air Force |
Years of service | 1937-1945 |
Rank | Flight lieutenant |
Awards | King's Medal for Courage |
Thomas Christian Sneum (21 May 1917 Fanø - 3 February 2007 Roskilde) was a Danish flight officer who was among the first British agents in Denmark during World War II. His most spectacular achievement was when, in 1941, he photographed two German Freya radar stations on Fanø. In the night of 21–22 June 1941 he and pilot Kjeld Pedersen made a spectacular escape from Denmark to Great Britain in a D.H. Hornet Moth. [2] This would later inspire Ken Follett to write his novel Hornet Flight . [3]
Sneum stated he had planned to assassinate Heinrich Himmler in February 1941 with a longbow from a room in Hotel d'Angleterre, but the plan was cancelled when Himmler failed to appear publicly. [4] [5]
Copenhagen is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of around 650,000 in the municipality and 1.4 million in the urban area, The city is on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the Øresund strait. The Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by rail and road.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, primarily known for being a main architect of the Holocaust.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
Fanø is a Danish island in the North Sea off the coast of southwestern Denmark, and is the very northernmost of the Danish Wadden Sea Islands. Fanø municipality is the municipality that covers the island and its seat is the town of Nordby.
The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, also known as Kurier to the Allies, is a German all-metal four-engined monoplane originally developed by Focke-Wulf as a long-range airliner. A Japanese request for a long-range maritime patrol aircraft led to military versions that saw service with the Luftwaffe as long-range reconnaissance and anti-shipping/maritime patrol bomber aircraft. The Luftwaffe also made extensive use of the Fw 200 as a transport aircraft.
Prince Henrik of Denmark was the husband of Margrethe II of Denmark. He served as her royal consort from Margrethe's accession on 14 January 1972 until his death on 13 February 2018.
At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral. For most of the war, the country was a protectorate and then an occupied territory of Germany. 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 in a de facto protectorate over the country 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.
Walter Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He rose through the ranks of the SS, becoming one of the highest ranking men in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and eventually assumed the position as head of foreign intelligence for Nazi Germany following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.
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.
Obergruppenführer was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and adopted by the Schutzstaffel (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank after only Reichsführer-SS. Translated as "senior group leader", the rank of Obergruppenführer was senior to Gruppenführer. A similarly named rank of Untergruppenführer existed in the SA from 1929 to 1930 and as a title until 1933. In April 1942, the new rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer was created which was above Obergruppenführer and below Reichsführer-SS.
Hornet Flight is a Second World War-based spy thriller written by British author Ken Follett. It was published in 2002 by Macmillan in the UK and Dutton in the US.
The Boeing F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornet are supersonic twin-engine, carrier-capable, multirole fighter aircraft variants derived from the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet series. The F/A-18E single-seat and F/A-18F tandem-seat variants are larger and more advanced versions of the F/A-18C and D Hornet.
Freya was an early warning radar deployed by Germany during World War II; it was named after the Norse goddess Freyja. During the war, over a thousand stations were built. A naval version operating on a slightly different wavelength was also developed as the Seetakt.
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.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust, the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.
Søren Kam was a Danish junior officer in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was wanted for murder in Denmark and listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals.
Christian Peder Kryssing, commonly known as C.P. Kryssing, was a Danish collaborator with Nazi Germany during World War II. An artillery officer and an ardent anti-communist, he commanded the Free Corps Denmark from 1941 to 1942. He was not a member of the Danish Nazi party, the National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark.
Esbjerg is a seaport town and seat of Esbjerg Municipality on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark. By road, it is 71 kilometres (44 mi) west of Kolding and 164 kilometres (102 mi) southwest of Aarhus. With an urban population of 71,921 it is the fifth-largest city in Denmark, and the largest in West Jutland.
Events from the year 1892 in Denmark.
Operation Safari was a German military operation during World War II aimed at disarming the Danish military. It led to the scuttling of the Royal Danish Navy and the internment of all Danish soldiers. Danish forces suffered 23–26 dead, around 40–50 injured, and 4,600 captured. Of the roughly 9,000 Germans involved, one was killed and eight wounded, although the number may have been 11 killed and 59 wounded.