Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark began with Operation Weserübung on 9 April 1940, and lasted until German forces withdrew at the end of World War II following their surrender to the Allies on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1943. Both the Danish government and king remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic and a totalitarian system until German authorities dissolved the government following a wave of strikes and sabotage.
Just over 3,000 Danes died as a direct result of the occupation. (A further 4,000 Danish volunteers died fighting in the German army on the Eastern front). Overall this represents a very low mortality rate (ca. 0.08% of population) when compared to other occupied countries and most belligerent countries. (See: World War II casualties).
An effective resistance movement developed by the end of the war, and most Danish Jews were rescued in 1943 when German authorities ordered their internment as part of the Holocaust.
In 2003, in a speech for the 60th anniversary of the end of the 1940–43 collaborationist government, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Denmark's cooperation with Nazis was "morally unjustifiable", which was the first public condemnation of the World War II era Danish leadership by a Danish leader.
Read more about Occupation Of Denmark: Invasion, Protectorate Government 1940–43, Increasing Resistance, Economy, Hardship and The End of The War, German Refugees
Famous quotes containing the words occupation of and/or occupation:
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)