by Bo Lidegaard
The occupation force’s two leading officials in Denmark, Wehrmacht general Hermann von Hanneken (left) and Reich plenipotentiary Werner Best, giving a military salute during a parade at the German soldiers’ cemetery in Copenhagen in November 1943, one year after both had arrived in the occupied country.
Hanneken was deployed as commander of Wehrmacht troops in Denmark in October 1942, shortly before Best arrived. While Best seems to have had the backing of the Nazi leadership to continue the peaceful occupation of “Model Protectorate” Denmark, Hanneken had orders from Hitler to fortify the west coast of Jutland against the feared Allied invasion. The lack of coordination between these widely divergent instructions fostered a continuing power struggle between the two rivals.
The action against the Danish Jews was part of this complicated maneuvering, and each man tried to put the blame on the other. Best won in the sense that Hanneken failed to keep the Wehrmacht out of the action, which took place while the general was still enforcing martial law, giving him executive powers. But the Wehrmacht engaged without enthusiasm in what the general considered to be an unpopular police task.
General Hanneken was a veteran of World War I and an expert in strategic planning. Denmark was his first military assignment during the war.
von Hanneken family
Best fully realized that only a trusting cooperation with the Danish authorities could ensure the status quo sought by Berlin and thus his own position. It was therefore not without foundation that many leading Danes saw in Best a bulwark against what was worse.17
Holding On, 1942–43
Through the short year from Werner Best’s arrival in Copenhagen in November 1942 until the end of August 1943, Erik Scavenius and he fine-tuned the cooperation between the occupying power and the occupied country. It reflects Best’s diplomatic ingenuity that in the first half of 1943 both Ribbentrop and Himmler praised his performance in Denmark—and that they and Hitler all accepted Best’s first two decisive moves after his arrival in Denmark despite the fact that both appeared to be in direct contradiction of his instructions to solve the Jewish question and impose a more German-friendly government upon Denmark.
Best’s predecessor, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, had tirelessly warned Berlin that any move on the Jewish issue would be deeply disturbing to continued cooperation with the Danes. Accordingly, no move had been made, except to employ Lorenz Christensen, a devoted Nazi and anti-Semite from the German minority in South Jutland, to work on “a research project” on the Danish Jews, including the compilation of a list of names and addresses of individuals within the community. With the increasing tension in September 1942 and the extraordinary displeasure with which Hitler reacted to developments in Denmark, both Ribbentrop and the Reich Security Head Office, responsible for overseeing the final solution, began to move.
But real action had to await the arrival of the new Reich plenipotentiary in November, and upon his arrival Best immediately realized that a continuation of a relatively elastic policy in Denmark, which he saw as his overriding mandate, was irreconcilable with a demand for the hand-over of the Jews living in the country. He also successfully negotiated a restructuring of the Danish government, not (as instructed) to become “apolitical”—that is, Nazi oriented—but with the significant adjustment that Scavenius, in addition to his key function as foreign minister, now also took over the prime ministerial responsibilities.18
Those moves helped construct the image of Werner Best as a man to be trusted. Twice, in January and again in April 1943, in telegrams to Berlin that continued Renthe-Fink’s argument, he advised against action against the Danish Jews because it would poison the cooperation and thereby terminate the peaceful occupation. In June 1943 he traveled to Berlin, where he procured Ribbentrop’s and Himmler’s personal agreement to a further postponement of a resolution of the Jewish issue in Denmark.19
Norway was not equally fortunate. Maybe as a sort of compensation for the stalemate in Denmark after September 1942, Berlin pushed for the persecution of the Norwegian Jews, which was rushed through in the following months. Under Nazi rule, preparations for the exclusion of the some 2,100 citizens of Jewish origin were initiated shortly after the occupation, following patterns familiar from other occupied countries. More than 1,500 individuals had their personal papers stamped with a J and were also subjected to other discriminatory measures, such as removal from public service and confiscation of property. Discrimination was increased gradually and without provoking major protests from the Norwegian public. Throughout 1942 Quisling’s ruling Norwegian Nazi Party stepped up its anti-Semitic propaganda, and in October the Reich Security Head Office decided to go ahead with the action. On October 23 Norwegian police received the order to prepare for the detention of the Jews. Three days later the arrest of all Jewish men between the ages of fifteen and fifty-four began, and 532 were deported directly to Auschwitz; on November 25 arrests of women and children followed. Further deportations occurred in November, in February 1943, and in 1944, bringing the total number of deportees to 772. Only 34 survived the German death camps.
Immediately after the action the Quisling regime passed a law confiscating Jewish property, and the regime actively cooperated with the German security police to secure the gold, silver, and jewelry of both the deportees and the refugees. In the ensuing period Quisling and his people followed up along German lines with tougher measures against “half and quarter Jews,” which sparked a new wave of flight to Sweden.
Over time more than half the Norwegian Jews managed to escape to Sweden with the help of friends, relatives, and public institutions such as hospitals. In total some 1,100 Jewish refugees arrived from Norway, including 170 who were not Norwegian citizens.20
The developments in Norway caused the director of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nils Svenningsen, who in many respects operated as Scavenius’s deputy, to confer with the Jewish community on the possibility of a “mild discrimination” against the Danish Jews, implying that they would no longer be appointed to top positions within the administration or appear in public, for example on national radio. The idea was to make the Jews as little visible as possible so as not to “provoke” the occupying power. The “problem” also came to the fore when in the spring of 1943 it became known that the security police in some cases were seeking information on citizens’ racial background. As internal criticism was raised about this practice, Svenningsen warned that people were to proceed cautiously and not rock the boat: “In the interest of society as a whole and that of the Jewish community we have to accept some minor annoyances. This is consistent with our approach in the press office when we seek to prevent publicity in regard to various events and conditions in other countries in connection with the Jewish question.”21
Like his boss, Scavenius, the forty-nine-year-old director believed that continued negotiations with the Germans and cautious concessions constituted the only way forward for Denmark, and indeed the only possibility to protect the Jews. In his younger days Svenningsen had been a legation secretary in Berlin, and he was, like most of his contemporaries among Danish diplomats, convinced that the balance of power in Europe meant that in any conceivable outcome of the war, Denmark would in the long run remain economically, politically, and strategically dependent on Germany. Given this perspective it did not serve Denmark to attempt daring plays in the arena of the ongoing war. No matter how much Denmark hoped for the defeat of Nazism, it could not risk joining forces with Germany’s enemies. For Svenningsen and men of like mind, the Danish-German relationship was a strategic fact because at the end of the day no other great power would or could come to Denmark’s rescue if it were to face Germany’s fury.
The End of Political Cooperation
King Christian’s confinement at Sorgenfri was the culmination of a difficult year. As the crisis caused by his disdainful telegram to Hitler culminated, on October 19, 1942, the king fell from his horse while riding alone through the streets of Copenhagen. Severely injure
d, he was forced to transfer executive powers to Crown Prince Frederick, and though the prince had handled affairs well under the guidance of the Scavenius government, Christian realized both that he alone commanded the authority to rally support behind the unpopular policy of cooperation, and probably also that it would be the worst of circumstances for the crown prince to take over full responsibilities. In a constitutional monarchy the transfer of power from one generation to the next is never trivial, and for the king there were good reasons to take upon himself whatever responsibilities the cooperation might ascribe to the head of state. Christian was therefore eager to resume his full executive powers, which he did in May 1943.
In January 1943, a secret meeting between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill with the Allied chiefs of staff was held in Casa- blanca. Here, the Allies agreed to insist on Germany’s unconditional surrender. No partial or conditional peace settlement would be accepted. In February the Wehrmacht suffered disastrous defeats at Stalingrad, and a few days later President Roosevelt declared that those responsible for the war and for genocide would be held responsible. It was not good news for leading Nazis, such as an SS veteran like Werner Best. In early July, U.S. troops landed in Sicily and then began to advance through Italy after the fall of Mussolini later the same month.
The cooperation with the Danish government implied that even Best as Germany’s top political representative in Denmark could not simply impose his demands, but had to negotiate terms with Prime/Foreign Minister Scavenius, seeking the appropriate mix of persuasion, threats, and direct pressure. This meant that Scavenius could also raise demands, as he did when in the spring of 1943 the constitutional deadline for general elections was coming up. Best and Scavenius managed to negotiate terms for the holding of the elections in March 1943. Notwithstanding the limitations arising from the occupation, the result was seen as a manifest confirmation of democracy, with record numbers of voters massively supporting the parties behind the policy of cooperation, and equally strongly turning their back on the Danish Nazis, who obtained a disastrous less than 2 percent of the vote. (The Communists, outlawed and hunted, were banned from running as well as from participating in the campaign leading up to the elections.)
Best’s pragmatic line, and particularly his good interpersonal relations with Scavenius and Svenningsen, helped to keep the cooperation alive, although the Wehrmacht commander, General Hanneken, more and more insistently wanted direct military rule in order to curtail growing sabotage and reinforce fortifications along the west coast of Jutland.
During the summer of 1943 news from the war fronts encouraged optimism in occupied Denmark, where a wave of strikes and sabotage actions took hold in August, especially in major provincial cities. The spike in sabotage, strikes, and civil riots caused the occupying power to make nonnegotiable demands the government could not and would not accept, including the introduction of martial law and the death penalty. As the politicians met to consider the German ultimatums, Thorvald Stauning’s successor, former prime minister Vilhelm Buhl, urged the government to reject the German requests outright. The possible consequences of a Danish refusal to continue cooperation under the new conditions were unclear. But the elected politicians felt they were already walking a thin line, and that their constituents would not understand if they conceded to requests that made yet another deep gash in the democratic foundations of Danish society. Maybe they also hoped that Germany was on the verge of giving up and that the war would soon be over. In any event, disregarding the risk of a violent and destructive German reaction, the government agreed to draw a line in the sand and to refuse the ultimatum with a simple no.
Although Scavenius was more inclined to attempt once again to ride out the crisis with some concessions, the king supported the politicians. On August 28, according to his diary, he received “party representatives at 2 p.m. and expressed my thanks for the unanimous consent that the parliament had given the answer to the German note. It is a serious step that we have taken, whose consequences cannot be overlooked. We have made these years bearable, and the longest period is perhaps over, but the main thing for me is that we stand united. With God’s help we will also manage whatever is in store for the coming days.”22
Finance Minister K. H. Kofoed, who attended the meeting, described in his diary how Christian, with tears streaming down his cheeks, thanked the ministers for having held out so long: “It has been a heavy duty loaded with responsibility. Thank you, everybody, and especially you, Prime Minister Scavenius, for the work you have done for your king and for your country.”
With this the policy of cooperation came to an end as far as the elected politicians were concerned. The question was, What would replace it?
Early in the morning of August 29, 1943, the Wehrmacht responded by imposing martial law in Denmark and disarming the Danish forces, who until this point were still serving. Brief fighting erupted with Danish troops in several garrisons. Also, under the command of Vice Admiral Aage H. Vedel, navy crews succeeded in scuttling the vast majority of vessels of the substantial Danish war fleet, preventing it from falling into German hands—a strong symbolic gesture in a country proud of its navy. Within hours conditions in occupied Denmark changed and tension grew, with no direct contact points between civilian society and the Wehrmacht command. For many the developments seemed troubling—but also in their own way refreshing: Suddenly things seemed clearer and the air more transparent—Danes on one side of the line, Germans on the other.
It quickly turned out, however, that martial law was difficult for the Germans to manage. The occupiers were eager for the Danish politicians to take back responsibility for the workings of society. But the zeal of elected Danish politicians to hold on to power was now suddenly transformed into a stubborn rejection of any responsibility at all. The government was uncooperative to the point of not even executing its own resignation to clear the way for a caretaker government installed by the Germans. Formally the government had submitted its resignation, but in accordance with a prior understanding, the king refused to accept it. Hence the appointment of a new government with even a mere tinge of constitutional legitimacy was effectively blocked. The Germans could not find one single Dane with a mandate from the electorate to head a new government, and the king, confined under martial law at Sorgenfri Castle, claimed not to be in a position to provide any new government as his executive powers had been seized by General Hanneken. Scavenius, the Germans’ last hope, refused to reenter the scene without the backing of the politicians, and disappeared into oblivion for the rest of the occupation.
Now it became a problem that Denmark was not formally at war with Germany and thus not, under international law, considered to be a country under enemy occupation. The Germans had to respect the country’s laws—and General Hanneken could not simply proceed with martial law without taking the full step of liquidating the remains of Denmark’s continued “sovereignty”—which would do away with this token of Hitler’s vision of the new Europe. The general had little appetite for such a move, even less as it would require more troops to keep the occupied country under control. By simply refusing any cooperation Denmark managed to work itself into a not entirely impossible negotiating position. The occupiers could of course choose to do what they wanted. But they could not impose direct military rule in Denmark while maintaining the image of a peaceful occupation. Soon the Germans were desperately looking for a soft landing, also regarding martial law. They tried with the creation of an “administrative council,” an idea favored by both Scavenius and the president of the Supreme Court, but the king in consultation with the elected politicians flatly rejected the idea of such a “nonpolitical” government. To his refusal King Christian acidly added that as General Hanneken had taken over executive power in Denmark, the intervention of the king was unnecessary.23
The Germans were caught in their own net. As long as the Danes stood together, the occupiers had to choose between assuming full responsibility or handing a
form of government authority back to the Danish side. While imposing martial law had at first seemed to be a major victory for Hanneken in his ongoing power struggle with Best’s civil authority, the civil envoy now stepped back onto the scene in order to find a way out of the impasse. Though some in Berlin, including Goebbels, had lost confidence in Best and thought he treated the Danes too well, Best still enjoyed sufficient support in the Nazi leadership. He got the Führer’s mandate to seek a political solution, and was more eager than ever to strengthen his own power resources in the form of German police units that could counterbalance Hanneken’s Wehrmacht soldiers.24
The result was an evolving arrangement by which the nonpolitical permanent secretaries of the Danish ministries formed an informal council led by the Foreign Ministry’s director, Nils Svenningsen. The outgoing cabinet ministers stayed in the wings and covered the permanent secretaries politically, the exception being Scavenius, who withdrew completely from politics. In this untested design Svenningsen was a sort of informal head of government, whose practical powers were shrouded in uncertainty. He was first among equals in the circle of state secretaries, and he thus replaced Scavenius as Best’s direct counterpart. On issues of particular delicacy Svenningsen would consult discreetly with former prime minister Buhl, who in turn had contact with the Social Democrats’ elected leader, Hans Hedtoft, and other party leaders. The trick was to maintain the advantage of Danish administration without drifting into a real governing council with executive powers and exposure to German demands.