History
The current name and basic organization dates from October 1, 1967, when Forsvarsstabens Efterretningsafdeling, the Intelligence Section or the Intelligence Department of the General Staff, was detached from Forsvarsstaben by decree of the Ministry of Defence, as a separate authority of its own, located directly under the Ministry of Defence.
The origin can be traced back to Generalstabens Efterretningssektion (created 1911) and Marinestabens Efterretningssektion (created 1920s). During the reconstruction of the Danish military following Denmark’s joining of NATO, these two intelligence services were merged October 1, 1950 as Forsvarsstabens Efterretningsafdeling as a department under the newly erected combined military staff, the Forsvarsstab.
The origins of the Danish military intelligence is uncertain. The year 1911 appears in one of the few histories of the Danish military intelligence: William Christmas-Møller's Obersten og Kommandøren: Efterretningstjeneste, sikkerhedspolitik og socialdemokrati 1945-55. Gyldendal, 1995 p. 25. and p. 29.
However in Underbilag A. til bilag 247 in: Dokumentfortegnelse og særlige Bilag. Kommissionen til Undersøgelse og Overvejelse af Hæren og Flaadens fremtidige Ordning / the report from the Danish Defence Commission of 1922. Copenhagen, . J. H. Schultz, 1922. - 306 pp. ; p. 299 suggests the year of the establishing the military intelligence to be 1903.
During the cold war the military intelligence as well as the intelligence section of the police spied against and recorded the activities of the Danish left wing, communists and pacifists, among the later organisations and personalieties in the Danish chapter of the War Resisters' International / Aldrig mere Krig, the Danish Campaign against Nuclear Weapons / Kampagnen mod Atomvåben and the Conscientious Objecters' Union / Militærnægterforeningen. This is documented in: Forsvarets Auditørkorks / The Danish Judge Advocate General's Corps: Rapport i anledning af undersøgelsen ved auditør af visse forhold vedrørende Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste og Militærnægterforeningen mv. i perioden 1970-1978, 1999.
Read more about this topic: Danish Defence Intelligence Service
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)