When Germany occupied European nations during World War II, the experience was usually brutal. Occupying forces removed local governments, installed their own leaders, and terrorized populations through agencies such as the Gestapo and the SD.
Citizens who did not fit Nazi racial or religious laws were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. Many others were taken as forced laborers and shipped to other parts of Hitler's empire.
For people in occupied countries, the choices were limited. They could keep their heads down, join an active resistance movement, practice passive resistance, or collaborate. Collaboration was normally the least attractive option.
National leaders faced particular danger. Staying put often meant becoming a political prisoner of the SS, or worse. Many fled into exile, mostly to London, where they formed governments in exile and supported the Allied war effort.
Kings and queens mostly followed the same path and fled. Very few stayed behind. One monarch who did stay was King Christian X of Denmark, and his decision earned him lasting respect from his people.
The king offered a unique form of passive resistance. His continual presence confounded the German occupation authorities and personally annoyed Hitler.
Nazi occupation policies were often crafted on a system of leeway. The Germans treated some occupied nations differently from others. The harsh and homicidal 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 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 via neutral Sweden.
The Germans also wanted to remove British, French, and Polish forces from 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 believed further military resistance was futile and a waste of Danish lives, so it capitulated. Denmark was turned into a German protectorate.
The Germans operated a fairly relaxed policy, allowing the same Danish government to continue in power, 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.
After 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. 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. Earlier in his reign he had made mistakes, primarily in 1920, when he dissolved a democratically elected government he disagreed with. That precipitated a constitutional crisis and widespread protests, and he was forced to become only a symbolic head of state thereafter.
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 age 41.
With the German occupation in 1940, Christian's official speeches basically towed the line of his government. But Danes saw him as a man of quiet 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 and mount one of his horses.
He would ride out of the palace and 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.
Soon the spread and metal badge of the king's arms became a sort of passive resistance icon to the Danes. People who wore the badges did so to show that 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's horse threw him and he fell, 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 and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. As in every liberated city, the people of Copenhagen welcomed the Allied troops.
King Christian presided over the reopening of the Danish Parliament with the democratic constitution. All parties were represented under the leadership of this well-loved monarch.
All through the occupation, he inspired his people. His faith in Allied victory never failed, and his faith was justified.