The Freedom Council
In September 1943, the 'Danish Freedom Council' was created to coordinate the fight for liberation. The Council set out to unify the many different groups that made up the Danish resistance movement and consisted of representatives from the Communists, Free Denmark, the Danish Unity Party and the Ring. Key members were Børge Houmann, Mogens Fog, Arne Sørensen, Frode Jakobsen, Erling Foss and Aage Schock. Directives from the British Special Operations Executive helped to unite the different groups.
In December the SOE sent orders that military groups should be organised, ready to attack the Germans in case of invasion. They were first organised by the Communists and the Danish Unity Party, and then increasingly by members of the Ring.
The resistance movement grew to over 20,000 and in the lead-up to D-Day acts of sabotage markedly increased. Though the D-Day landings were to be in Normandy, the SOE encouraged tying up German troops elsewhere in Europe so that the fewer would be present in northern France. If acts of sabotage were increased, more German troops would be tied up in Denmark.
The Danish Resistance used the country's proximity to Sweden to great effect. Stockholm became a base for the Danish Resistance. Here they were far safer than in Denmark — but they could easily get back to their country.
Read more about this topic: Danish Freedom Council
Famous quotes containing the words freedom and/or council:
“It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)