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An Official History - SOE in Denmark: The Special Operations Executives Danish Section in WW2

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An Official History SOE in Denmark: The Special Operations Executives Danish Section in WW2
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SOE in Denmark: The Special Operations Executives Danish Section in WW2: summary, description and annotation

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From a small number of clandestine activities against the German occupation of Denmark in 1940, a sophisticated resistance movement developed which by 1944, with the support of Special Operations Executive, had become a highly effective intelligence gathering and sabotage organisation.
Denmark is composed of a mainland and more than 500 islands, a fifth of which are inhabited, and the countryside is devoid of any inaccessible or mountainous region. Together this made communication between resistance cells difficult and meant that there were no natural bases from which guerrilla operations could be mounted. Nevertheless, thanks to supply drops of explosives, weapons and ammunition arranged by SOE, the Danes harassed the Germans and raised the moral of the Danish people in the latter, and most brutal, stages of the war.
This largely forgotten story of SOE and its agents in Denmark, the latter facing extremely hazardous conditions, was written immediately after the war by a SOE staff member and read and validated by the Director of SOE, Major General Colin Gubbins. A very large number of documents were burned at SOEs London headquarters in Baker Street when the organisation was wound down in 1946 making this history of the Danish Section an invaluable and irreplaceable study.
SOE in Denmark was written at a time when SOE was still largely unknown to the general public and its operations a closely guarded secret. It was expected that its activities would never be officially acknowledged and the study of its actions in Denmark was compiled with the aim of provide a lasting record of its achievement. Within its pages we read of the dangers the agents faced, the logistical mountains they had to overcome, and the successes achieved in the face of a ruthless enemy. Completed with unique photographs from the Danish archives, SOE in Denmark is an essential addition to the SOE literature.

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SOE in Denmark
SOE in Denmark
Special Operations Executives Danish Section in WW2
An Official History
SOE in Denmark The Special Operations Executives Danish Section in WW2 - image 1
Picture 2
SOE IN DENMARK
The Special Operations Executives Danish Section in WW2
This edition published in 2021 by Frontline Books,
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS.
Up to and including Appendix X, this book is based on file reference HS 7/109, from a series of SOE records held at The National Archives, Kew, and is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Appendices XI, XII and XIII are based on file reference HS 7/110, which is also which is held at The National Archives, Kew, and which is also licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Text alterations and additions Frontline Books
ISBN: 978-3-9901-504-2
ePUB ISBN 978-1-39901-505-9
Mobi ISBN 978-1-39901-506-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. CIP data records for this title are available from the British Library.
Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Air World Books, Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Social History, Transport, True Crime, Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Praetorian Press, Seaforth Publishing and White Owl.
For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact:
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LTD
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, UK.
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PEN AND SWORD BOOKS,
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CONTENTS
PUBLISHERS NOTE
This official history and its various appendices are reproduced in the form that they were originally written. Aside from correcting obvious spelling mistakes or typographical errors, we have strived to keep the edits and alterations to the absolute minimum.
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
In order to gain a true perspective in appreciating the operations carried out by S.O.E. in Denmark, a brief study of Danish conditions is necessary. Experience has shown that the direction of S.O.E. work in Denmark calls not only for an intimate knowledge of the country and its people, but also the ability to appreciate these factors in terms of subversive and paramilitary warfare. The succeeding chapters will mention where mistakes occurred due to both lack of experience and failure to appreciate these elementary principles.
Denmark is composed of a mainland, Jutland, and some five hundred islands of which one hundred are inhabited. The larger of these, Fyn and Zealand, are separated from Jutland by the Belts stretches of water half a mile and fifteen miles wide respectively. The country is, for the most part, undulating, well-cultivated agricultural land, somewhat similar to East Anglia and, where the ground is more broken in Jutland, similar to East Fife. Of the population of 3,800,000, 890,000 live in Greater Copenhagen, some 2,000,000 form the agricultural population and the remainder are distributed among the provincial towns. With the exception of the border districts of South Jutland, where the German Government did everything possible to encourage the expansion of Pan-Germanism among the small German minority, the Danes are quite racially distinct from their southern neighbours.
It will, therefore, be readily appreciated that in undertaking subversive operations in Denmark, there are a large number of inherent difficulties which must be overcome before successful results can be achieved. The existence of the Belts makes internal communication in the face of enemy controls a hazardous business, and the highly populated countryside together with the absence of any inaccessible or mountainous region which might act as a base for guerilla operations presents a similar problem to conditions which exist in Holland. In addition to these difficulties the long sea passage across the North Sea, and the unsuitable nature of the West Jutland coast, make clandestine communications by sea between the United Kingdom and Denmark virtually impossible.
The Danes had not been involved in war between 1864 and April, 1940. During this period their energies had been devoted to an intensive development of agriculture and industrial production, of which the most important are ship-building, the production of cement and engineering. A steadily increasing national prosperity resulted in an improvement of social conditions, so that at the outbreak of war Denmark was among the most advanced nations in Europe in the field of social development.
The concentration of all their energies on social and industrial improvements, coupled with the belief that they would be able to preserve their neutrality through a new world war as successfully as they had done during 1914-1918, plus the contention that whatever preparation Denmark might make to defend herself against an act of treachery from her southern neighbour would in any case be hopelessly inadequate and might be construed as provocative, led the Danes sadly to neglect all defence measures.
History has shown that the respective Ministries were incredulous of reports which they received in March 1940, that Germany was concentrating troops with the obvious intention of undertaking operations in Scandinavia. On the fateful day of 9th April 1940, when German troops crossed the frontier into Denmark, it was not surprising that, after a brief and ineffective opposition, the Danes bowed before this display of overwhelming force and were obliged to accept the German occupation.
Government reaction to these events was to maintain as correct an attitude as possible towards the Occupying Power and to persuade the population to avoid any provocation of the Germans. M. Christmas Mller alone took an independent line, which was later to lead to his enforced resignation as Minister of Commerce. He was the first member of the Government to call the Germans the enemy. Among members of the armed forces there was, somewhat naturally, a feeling of extreme mortification at their inability to act at the decisive moment, and it was at this period that the seed was sown in the minds of senior officers in the services that they should prepare for the day when they might justify themselves in the eyes of the population. As far as the general political position was concerned the Cabinet, Rigsdag [the name of the national legislature of Denmark from 1849 to 1953] and the Administration continued to function, while the Army was obliged to withdraw its garrisons from Jutland and to affect a considerable reduction in its peacetime strength of two divisions. It is worthy of note that the strength of the initial forces of occupation amounted to little more than two divisions.
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