Aksel Larsen - After The War

After The War

Aksel Larsen survived the concentration camp and was saved by Sweden in April 1945 by count Folke Bernadotte's White Buses. On 5 May he returned to Denmark and was hailed as a hero of the resistance. The war had turned the public image of the communist movement upside down with the Soviet Union being credited for its efforts in the war and the Communist Party of Denmark being credited for its involvement in the resistance movement.

In the months after the liberation Aksel Larsen who was marked by his stay in the concentration camp did not play a great political role. The communists were given seats in the liberation cabinet and Larsen got a cabinet seat although without portfolio. While he recovered from his stay in Sachsenhausen he let Alfred Jensen lead the party.

The election of 1945 on 15 September was the best ever for the communists. They got 12.5% of the vote and 18 seats in parliament. With 27,497 votes Larsen himself was the candidate who received most personal votes.

The friendly relations between Social Democrats and communists that had existed right after the liberation soon disappeared and the old fronts from before the war started to re-emerge.

The Danish communists became the target of public disdain once more with the onset of the Cold War and the communist coup in Prague in 1948 combined with new purges and trials in Moscow and Eastern Europe. Larsen once more showed himself to be a defender of the Soviet Union.

Although the Comintern had been disbanded in 1943 he frequently sought the advice of the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen and the CPSU. His loyalty to Moscow was without conditions and he gained a reputation for being “one of Scandinavia’s most reliable and trusted Stalinists” after he helped to purge Norwegian communist leader Peter Furobotn.

Although he had abandoned his idea of a Danish variant of communism he still managed to translate the Soviet party line to Danish realities. His skills as an orator and public debater helped slow down the decline in voter support but was not able to stop it. However as the Cold War worsened the Communist Party of Denmark became increasingly isolated.

Controversy arose in March 1949 when Gestapo protocols from the interrogations of him during the war was printed by the conservative newspaper “Nationaltidende”. He was accused of having given the Germans too much information and for having betrayed his comrades in the resistance. He was defended by his party and by veterans of the resistance but the interrogation protocols was used against him by his political opponents for many years after.

During a 1951 stay in Moscow Larsen learned that Arne Munch-Pedersen had died in 1940. Although the case continued to emerge in the media and in parliament Larsen kept silent and denied any knowledge of Arne Munch-Pedersen’s fate.

Although the Cold War was a stressful period to Larsen he kept to his communist creed. The first traces of doubt came shortly after Stalin’s death when all defendants of the Doctors’ Plot trials were rehabilitated because their confessions had been made under torture. Larsen’s doubt was however short-lived and he was only strengthened in his views by Nikita Khrushchev’s thaw both inside the Soviet Union and internationally. A strike at a Philips plant and an increase in party membership combined with a stronger communist presence in the trade unions convinced Larsen that the party had a bright future.