Hitler's Savage Canary

Adolf Hitler stated that after occupation Denmark would turn into a ‘model protectorate’. Winston Churchill, meanwhile, maintained that the small country of (then) four million people would become ‘the sadistic murderer’s canary’. In the end, neither was right.

Though their resistance organisation was slower to develop effective tactics on a wide scale than in some other occupied countries, with initially no help from the Allies the Danes set up a resistance movement that proved to be a constant irritation to the Axis forces. In time the Danish Resistance, the Modstandsbevægelsen, was not a meek canary, but a dangerous and courageous bird of prey that refused to be caged.

The scale of the resistance to the Nazis in Denmark is without equal: twenty-six million issues of illegal newspapers had been published by 1945; radio guides for Allied aircraft had been set up on the coasts; boat services ran between Sweden, Denmark and Britain; a news bureau provided a stream of inside information to the Allies; German ships were unable to move out of the ports; and troops were frustrated by the sabotage of railways and air bases. Incredibly, almost the entire Jewish population, some 7,000 people, was shipped to safety in Sweden. The selfless courage shown by the Danes, when collaboration would have been an easy option, is astonishing.

This story of heroism and daring by a small country is a thrilling read, and provides a real insight to the mindset of a people under occupation.