German occupation of a defeated European nation in World War II was normally a brutal and humiliating experience. Occupying forces removed local governments, installed their own leaders, and often elevated obscure right-wing nationalists over their own people.
The Nazi security apparatus, including the Gestapo and the SD, terrorized occupied populations relentlessly. Large numbers of citizens who did not fit Germany's racial or religious laws were imprisoned or deported to concentration camps or worse.
Citizens were also seized as forced laborers and sent to other parts of Hitler's empire. For the average person in an occupied country, the choices were stark: keep your head down, join an active resistance movement, practice passive resistance, or collaborate.
National leaders faced an even sharper dilemma. They were natural targets for the Germans, and staying in place often meant becoming a political prisoner of the SS or being murdered outright.
Many fled their nations and formed governments in exile, mostly in London, where they helped the Allied war effort. Some chose to collaborate. Very few monarchs stayed put.
One who did was King Christian X of Denmark, the monarch of a tiny European country. By remaining in his own country with his own people for the duration of the war, he earned the everlasting respect of his subjects.
His relationship with Hitler was difficult to say the least. The king offered a unique form of passive resistance, and his continual presence confounded the German occupation authorities and personally annoyed Hitler.
Nazi occupation policies were often crafted on a system of leeway, with some nations treated differently from others. The harsh and homicidal German occupation of Poland was not practiced in Denmark, because the Germans viewed the Danes as fellow Aryans.
Even little Denmark had its share of Hitler sympathizers. Some Danes felt strongly enough about Soviet communism to take up arms in German uniform and fight on the Eastern Front, but their numbers were quite small compared with the overall population.
Denmark fell to German forces on April 9, 1940. Although it was a neutral nation, it was attacked and occupied as part of the wider German plan to conquer Norway and secure access to raw materials vital for armament production coming through neutral Sweden.
The Germans also wanted to eliminate British, French, and Polish forces in Norway. The outnumbered and poorly equipped Danish forces offered patchy resistance.
Given their disadvantageous geographical position and small population, the Danes could not hope to prevent the Wehrmacht from occupying their country. The Danish government, believing further military resistance was futile and a waste of Danish lives, capitulated.
Denmark was turned into a German protectorate, and the Germans operated a fairly relaxed policy, allowing the same Danish government to continue in power as before, though under German oversight. Instead of a Nazi governor-general, Hitler appointed a Reich plenipotentiary, a diplomatic post, to deal with Danish affairs.
The Danish police and judicial system remained under Danish control. Under German pressure, however, the Danish government had to accommodate Nazi wishes, and newspaper articles critical of the Germans were outlawed.
Following the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the government announced the arrest of Danish Communists. Denmark joined the Anti-Comintern Pact alongside Finland, becoming a German ally against the Soviet Union.
Danish economic interests became gradually tied to those of Germany. On the plus side, the Danish government rejected Berlin's push to begin persecuting Danish Jews, and the German military was not given judicial powers over Danish citizens.
A much-reduced Danish Army of 2,200 men was retained, largely to guard the king's palace. Secretly, many Danish soldiers began to gather intelligence for the British.
A Danish resistance movement was founded, but due to the small size of the country its operations were very difficult. During World War II, Danish resistance operatives killed around 400 Danish collaborators, Danish Nazis, and informers, and helped Allied intelligence activities tremendously.
The king had stayed put when the country surrendered. He had made mistakes earlier in his reign, primarily in 1920, when he dissolved a democratically elected government he disagreed with, precipitating a constitutional crisis and widespread protests.
After that crisis, he had been forced to become only a symbolic head of state. Twenty years later, the elderly king became a symbol of resistance to German occupation by a very unique method.
Born in 1870, he was the eldest son of Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark, later King Frederick VIII. His mother was Princess Louise of Sweden, and his wife was a German-Russian royal princess, Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
Christian came to the throne of Denmark in 1912 at the age of 41. With the German occupation in 1940, his official speeches basically towed the line of his government, but Danes saw him as a man of many talents and resistance.
The greatest expression of the king's resistance was something Christian did every day during the first two years of German occupation. He would dress in full Danish army uniform, mount one of his horses, and ride out of the palace alone through the streets of Copenhagen.
He was not accompanied by a groom or any mounted escort, and had absolutely no security whatsoever, only the sword he wore as part of his uniform. In this defiant manner, the king would trot along the city's streets, acknowledging his people with endless salutes.
He was followed by flocks of boys on bicycles. Every day, come rain or shine, he showed his people that their king was still there and that Denmark still had its own identity.
The people loved the spectacle and the defiant message of the lonely king resplendent atop his charger. The spread and metal badge of the king's arms soon became a sort of passive resistance icon to the Danes, and those who wore the badges did so to show they were loyal Danes.
Sadly, Hitler's softly-softly approach to the Danes did not last. In 1942, Hitler sent Christian a long telegram congratulating him on his 72nd birthday.
The king's reply was terse and short, one sentence: "Giving my best wishes, King Christian." Hitler took the reply to mean something else, involving having carnal relations with oneself, and the telegram crisis was born.
Hitler recalled his ambassador to Denmark and threw out the Danish ambassador to Berlin. The Germans then removed the Danish government and replaced it with people they thought would be more friendly to them.
On October 19, 1942, King Christian fell from one of his horses, sustaining injuries that kept him from riding in public pretty much to the end of his life. On August 29, 1943, after several incidents, the Germans dissolved the Danish Parliament and declared martial law, taking over the administration of the country entirely.
One of the main actions was the roundup of Copenhagen's Jewish population. When the SS and security police raided Jewish homes, almost everyone was gone.
Incredibly, 8,000 Jews had been smuggled to neutral Sweden by non-Jewish Danes who disagreed with Nazi policy. The king had also played his part in this escape, providing funds for the effort.
As a result, 95 percent of Denmark's Jews survived the Holocaust. In May 1945, Denmark was liberated by British troops under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
As in every liberated city, the people of Copenhagen welcomed the Allied troops. The world had seen such scenes of joy in France, Belgium, and Holland, and now it was the turn of the people of Denmark.
King Christian presided over the reopening of the Danish Parliament under the democratic constitution, with all parties represented under the leadership of the well-loved monarch. All through the occupation, he had inspired his people, and his faith in Allied victory never failed.