Danes did not "roll over and accept occupation happily" - what utter crap.
The Danish army was completely outdated and had virtually no fighting men - no armor *at all* and only a handful of antiquated anti tank guns.
Denmark was threatened into compliance, and cooperated with the Germans - as most would with a gun to their head. There was widespread danish resistance in the later years of the war (sabotage, weapon drops, etc) and even before then, lots of "passive" resistance was going on. Espionage, workers forced to work for the germans doing very ineffective or faulty work, and so forth.
Denmark did not "fight" the Germans at the occupation (except for a few border skirmishes), but to say Denmark "rolled over happily" is an insult. The King and government were forced to cooperate - the alternative would have been far worse - as they had just been invaded by a force that might as well have come from outer space, technology and military superiority-wise.
Yes, the winner gets to write the history books, and indeed a small group of danish officers chose to serve in the Wehrmacht - at the time not a bad career choice - but there were hardly ticker-tape parades to welcome the Germans as they rolled over the border (technically, they paradropped over Aalborg first, but who's counting :)
It's easy to judge someone after the fact, but if someone gets jumped by 10 armed guys in an alley, and runs like hell, you don't call him a coward for not taking them on with his bare hands. Unless you've watched a few too many Rambo-movies as an impressionable youth.
Denmark is not proud of what happened during the early years of the war, but there were quite a few noteworthy efforts against the Germans - for example the widespread "underground" smuggling of persecuted Jews to neutral Sweden. Having your country occupied by hostile forces is not "easy" for anyone - men, women or children. I'm pretty sure most Germans aren't proud of what happened in the war, but to say that they were all "too happy to join the nazis and kill millions" might also be just a bit cheeky.
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robborak
14 years ago
The Germans saved Denmark and the rest of Western Europe from Stalin and the Red Army.
Ask yourself this question, why did France and England only declare war on Germany and not the Russians when Poland was attacked by both?
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acr267
14 years ago
JFC, all of you are right and all of you know that the victor's history mirror gives a distorted image, it's only a matter of how much.
'Quisling' isn't in the dictionary just to have more entries for 'Q'!
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johnphillip
14 years ago
Robborak - Clearly you are either a Neo Nazi, Nazi Sympathiser, Historical revisionist or some other form of lowlife who wishes to portray the Nazis in a positive light, something which is not there in any way, shape or form. So please do the world a favour and crawl back under whatever rock you crawled out from.
The reason Germany had war declared upon was that Germany was a threat to Western Europe as a whole, also there was historical precedent for German aggression ie WW1.
Russia at that point in time was a technological backwater and therefore posed little or no threat, to the extent that Germany almost conquered Russia, which was only stopped by the use of slash and burn retreats, help from the western allies in terms of supplies and technical advisors and the severe Russian winter, which has prevented several armies from invading Russia in the past.
Also why did Britain not declare war on Romania? They chose to side with the Germans also as did other Eastern European nations. Mainly as Germany was the main threat, rightly taking out Germany led to the fall other Nazi supporting nations.
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robborak
14 years ago
Resorting to name-calling? Was that necessary to get your point across? So just because someone has a different opinion then yourself on recent world history they are automatically a low life?
The Russians were not a threat? I guess that Cold War didn't really happen at all.
Go up to any Eastern European and tell them how great Communism is and how they should be greatful that the Allies fought for 'democracy'. Only that they didn't give a damn that half of Europe was enslaved by the USSR, and that paved the way for Communism to establish itself in China and North Korea, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions over the decades.
You are not aware of it, but judging by the hostility displayed towards my post which has absolutely nothing in it praising Germany, shows clearly to everyone reading that your hold a heavy bias. The facts made you uncomfortable, but that's good, I hope that you are not too far removed from reality that you can not research further and maybe see a bit deeper, that the real truths of the War are not all what they seem, rather then just venting off at the slightest percieved provocation.
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calzone77
14 years ago
I know I won't get a response as this is such an old thread but:
The Nazis saved Denmark? I imagine robborak has not watched "Flame & Citron"...
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tegelane_5
14 years ago
Ofcourse that was not their intention, but look at the facts: everything that Soviet Union liberated remained under Soviet Union as their satelites.
At the very beginning of Soviet Union, Trotsky fantaziced of world wide SU with it's capitol in Paris. To realize that plan only Poland was in the way, Germany was very veak after WW1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
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robborak
12 years ago
If you base your historical perceptions on movies and cinema as factual then there's not much to discuss.
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