Pictured: The left map of Denmark shows spots where the Axis committed atrocities, and the right map divides Danish municipalities by the percentage of ‘no’ votes on joining the European Economic Community. Comparing the two maps shows a noticeable overlap.
Quoting Lasse Aaskoven’s Foreign Occupation and Support for International Cooperation: Evidence from Denmark:
This article specifically studies the rôle played by the experience of foreign‐inflicted violence and oppression on support for participation in supranational cooperative entities with former oppressor countries by studying the effect of violence during the [Fascist] occupation of Denmark 1940–1945 on support for entering the European Economic Community (EEC, the forerunner for the EU) in the Danish referendum of 1972.
The EEC was framed by the opponents of Danish membership as a German‐dominated entity, and in the campaign against Danish membership, the opponents specifically utilized anti‐German rhetoric to argue against Danish membership of the EEC. This article argues that this campaign would have resonated better with communities where the [Axis] occupation forces inflicted more violence on the civilian population during the [Axis] occupation of Denmark.
In accordance with this argument, analyses of new and detailed data on [Fascist]‐inflicted violence and property destruction against civilians (the so‐called “German Terror”) in Danish municipalities during the [Axis] occupation do indeed suggest that municipalities which experienced more German Terror had lower levels of support for entering the EEC in the 1972 referendum.
One mechanism behind the effect of previous experiences of German Terror on the lack of support for the EEC seems to have been higher electoral support for far‐left parties in areas which saw more violence. The Danish far‐left parties, the Danish Communist Party and its socialist successor parties, were both the main political opponents of Danish EEC membership and were closely associated with the Danish resistance movement during the [Axis] occupation.
A factor which was utilized in the 1972 campaign against Danish EEC membership. The results are robust to controlling for communist electoral support before the [Axis] occupation of Denmark, which suggest that the effects are not merely a function of the German Terror targeting areas with more far‐left supporters before the Terror.
Usually, political legacy studies are not able to track the relative persistence of effects over substantial time periods using the same type of dependent variable.8
However, the frequent Danish EEC/EU referenda after 1972 actually allow for this. An investigation of these EEC/EU referenda after 1972 suggests that the effect of the German Terror on opposition to the EEC/EU was persistent but declined substantially over time, as Danish left‐wing parties changed their organizations and policy stances and became increasingly unable and/or unwilling to use anti‐German rhetoric and allusions to [the Third Reich] and the [Axis] occupation in their agitation against the EU.
These results suggest that the experience of foreign‐inflicted violence can be a substantial brake on public support for international political entities and cooperation with former oppressor countries but also that political parties play a pivotal rôle in translating historical grievances into resistance towards international cooperation. Furthermore, the results show that the effect of occupation violence on opposition to international collaboration with former occupiers can change substantially within just one generation.
Consequently, this article expands the existing literature on the legacies of war, violence and oppression by adding the focus on outcomes directly related to international cooperation and institutions which have so far received less attention in this literature. It also expands this literature by providing more precise estimates of whether and how the political effects of violence and oppression might persist and partly decline over time.
Additionally, the article find[s] evidence, in line with findings from some previous studies on historical grievances and conflicts,9 that political parties play an important rôle in activating historical grievances and might benefit from them in the longer run. The insights from this article thus hold implications for future studies of the legacies of violence, historical grievances and skepticism towards international political integration.
(Emphasis added. Click here for more information.)
On April 9th 1940, Denmark was invaded and occupied by [the Third Reich]. The Danish government initially choose to cooperate with the [Fascist] occupation forces and a coalition government with the support of most Danish parties managed civilian affairs, including policing, in the first three years of the occupation.10
During this period, there were substantial economic relations between Denmark and [the Third Reich],11 and the Danish government even allowed, after the [Axis] invasion of the Soviet Union, for the recruitment of Danish nationals into the Waffen SS.
However, in August 1943, the collaboration between the Danish political system and the [Axis] occupation forces broke down, and [Wehrmacht] and security forces, including the […] Gestapo and the SD (the SS’s intelligence organization), which had previously had a very limited presence in Denmark, now took control of Denmark.
The breakdown of collaboration between the Danish political system and the German occupation forces also caused an intensification of the armed resistance to [Axis] rule and increased the membership and political breadth of the Danish resistance movement12 which had previously been dominated by Danish communists and non‐mainstream nationalist political actors.
The increased resistance towards the [Axis] occupation forces, which included the use of sabotage and the killing of Danish collaborators, eventually made the [Axis] forces intensify their repression of Denmark. Beginning in early 1944, [Axis] security forces with the aid of Danish collaborators began murdering Danish civilians and carrying out sabotage of Danish civilian facilities in retaliation of the resistance movement’s activities.
The majority of these killings and sabotage were carried out by a hit squad with both German and Danish members, which was nick‐named ”Petergruppen”,13 and which was under the command of the leader of the [Axis] security forces in Denmark, Otto Bovensiepen.14
In general, the [Axis] security forces and their Danish collaborators seem to have targeted respected citizens and pillars of local communities, such as doctors, lawyers and local employers but also to some extent ordinary citizens,15 and carried out sabotage against facilities and institutions such as local businesses, newspapers, public places of entertainment16 and even private homes,17 in a process which became known in Denmark as the ”German Terror”.18
In total, over Danish 100 civilians were murdered or otherwise killed by [Axis] authorities and Danish collaborators in the German Terror during the occupation, at least 19 people were the subject of attempted murder, while at least 64 people were wounded in bombings and other types of sabotage which also destroyed property amounting to over 84 million current Danish Kroner and caused significant damages to notable local buildings and entertainment facilities, some of which were never rebuilt.19
These figures do not include Danish soldiers killed by [Axis] forces, the execution or deportation of members of the Danish resistance movement or the Danish police officers and the other Danish security personnel who were deported to [Axis] concentration camps in 1944, since these actors cannot reasonable be counted as civilian casualties.20
These terror figures thus only consist of one‐sided [Axis] violence and property destruction carried out against the Danish civilian population during the occupation. In figure 1, the geographical distribution of [Axis]‐inflicted terror incidents can be seen.
[…]
While the [Axis] atrocities against civilians in Denmark were relatively light compared to both the Western and Eastern European countries and territories under [Axis] rule during the war, the Terror nonetheless became one of the defining aspects of the collective memory of the [Axis] occupation in Denmark. A memory which was very much kept alive after the war.27 However, as can be seen in figure 1, the Terror was very unevenly distributed across and within Danish regions.
Whereas some localities, and consequently the people living there, experienced terror incidents on a fairly regular basis in the last years of the occupation, other localities were not touched by the German Terror at all. The question then naturally arises of whether this difference between localities with regards the level of violence experienced during the [Axis] occupation had any political implications after the war.
[…]
[F]or Denmark to join the EEC a referendum on ”yes” or ”no” to Danish EEC membership was held in October 1972. Consequently, during most of the year of 1972, Denmark was the object of a lively debate and campaign both for and against Danish membership by various political actors. Denmark eventually voted in favor of joining the EEC with 63.3 percent for ”yes”. However, there was substantial geographical variation in the share of ”no” votes in the referendum, see figure 2.
[…]
Most of the main Danish parties both on the center‐left and the center‐right were in favor of EEC membership in 1972 or held smaller marginalized sceptics fractions. Consequently, the unconditional opposition to Danish EEC membership came primarily from the parties and organizations of the far‐left, including the Danish Communist Party and its two ”successor” parties the Socialist People’s Party and the Left Socialists.30 The Socialist People’s Party having split from the Communist Party in 1958, while the Left Socialists was formed as a splinter from the Socialist People’s Party in 1967.
However, smaller organizations on the nationalist right also opposed EEC membership, including the Danish nationalist organization (and then inactive party) Dansk Samling. Both the Communist Party, and to some degree its successor parties, as well as the nationalist Dansk Samling had members which had been very active in the Danish armed resistance to the [Axis] occupation, which was an important part of these parties’ identities.31
Ignoring their political differences, both the far‐left Communist Party, the Socialist People’s Party and the nationalist Dansk Samling became founding members of the inter‐party anti‐EEC organization, the People’s Movement against the EEC in the spring of 1972.
In the campaign against Danish membership of EEC, anti‐German rhetoric featured prominently in the agitation of the parties of the far‐left and the People’s Movement against the EEC. Among the opponents of EEC membership, especially on the far‐left, the EEC was seen as dominated by Germany,32 the EEC likened to the [Fascist] vision of “Neuropa”, and the threat of German dominance and control of Denmark after Danish entry into the EEC was part of the campaign against Danish membership both before and during 197233.
However, it has to be stated that these were not the main themes in the 1972 campaign which centered around economic issues. [Nevertheless], opinion research does show that issues related to national sovereignty and even cultural–ethnic issues, which included anti‐German attitudes, were non‐trivial stated arguments against the EEC stated by Danish opponents of EEC membership.34
Parts of this campaign more or less explicitly utilized anti‐German sentiments and invoked images of [Fascism] and the [Axis] occupation of Denmark 1940–1945.35 A prime example is an anti‐EEC propaganda poster from the Danish Communist Party which showed a black eagle with a swastika in its eye coming to swallow a helpless small Danish bird,36 see figure 3a.
Other examples include a poster from the People’s Movement against the EEC which showed a caricature of a thinly moustached man (clearly German) with an EEC lapel pin (in lieu of a swastika) coming from the South to grab Denmark, see figure 3b. In a similar tone, a widely read Danish leftwing tabloid ran a headline stating that “The Germans will sell Denmark in one day using informatics” less than one week before the referendum.37
Click here for events that happened today (June 13).
1918: Helmut Lent, Axis night‐fighter ace, existed.
1944: Axis tank ace Michael Wittmann ambushed elements of the British 7th Armoured Division, destroying up to fourteen tanks, fifteen personnel carriers and two antitank guns in a Tiger I tank. Additionally, Axis combat elements, reinforced by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, launched a counterattack on Yankee forces near Carentan, and the Axis launched the first V1 Flying Bomb attack on England. Only four of the eleven bombs struck their targets.
1972: Reich spy and ‘honourary Aryan’, Stephanie von Hohenlohe, ceased to live.