German occupation during World War II was normally a brutal and degrading experience for the nations that fell under it. Occupying forces removed existing governments, installed their own leaders, and often elevated obscure right-wing nationalists over local populations.
The Nazi security apparatus, including the Gestapo and the SD, terrorized occupied countries relentlessly. Large numbers of citizens who did not fit Germany's racial or religious laws were imprisoned or deported to concentration camps, and many others were taken as forced laborers elsewhere in Hitler's empire.
For ordinary citizens in an occupied country, the choices were stark. They could keep their heads down and try to live as before, join an active resistance organization, practice passive resistance without confronting the Germans head-on, or collaborate, which most people found the least attractive option.
National leaders faced an even sharper dilemma. They were natural targets for the Germans, and staying put often meant becoming a political prisoner of the SS or being murdered. Many fled into exile, mostly to London, where they formed governments in exile and supported the Allied war effort. A few chose to collaborate.
Kings and queens generally followed the same path into exile, and very few remained in their own countries. One monarch, however, decided to stay with his people for the duration of the war: King Christian X of Denmark.
By staying, the king earned the lasting respect of his subjects. His relationship with Hitler was difficult at best, and his continual presence confounded the German occupation authorities while personally annoying Hitler.
The Nazi occupation of Denmark was not conducted like the harsh and homicidal occupation of Poland. The Germans viewed the Danes as fellow Aryans and applied a policy of leeway, treating Denmark differently from other occupied nations.
Denmark had its share of Hitler sympathizers, and some Danes felt strongly enough about Soviet communism to take up arms in German uniform on the Eastern Front. Their numbers, however, were small compared with the overall population.
Denmark fell to German forces on April 9, 1940. Although the country was neutral, it was attacked and occupied as part of the wider German plan to conquer Norway, secure access to raw materials vital for armament production coming through neutral Sweden, and eliminate British, French, and Polish forces in Norway.
The outnumbered and poorly equipped Danish forces offered only patchy resistance. With a small population and a disadvantageous geographical position, 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, and it capitulated. Denmark became a German protectorate.
The Germans operated a fairly relaxed policy in Denmark, allowing the same Danish government to continue in power, though under German oversight. Instead of appointing 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 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 Danish 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 gradually became tied to those of Germany. On the positive 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 2,100 men was retained, largely to guard the king's palace. Secretly, many Danish soldiers began gathering intelligence for the British.
A Danish resistance movement was founded, but its operations were very difficult because of the country's small size. During the war, Danish resistance operatives killed around 400 Danish collaborators, Danish Nazis, and informers, and they 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, precipitating a constitutional crisis and widespread protests. He was forced to become only a symbolic head of state thereafter.
Two decades later, the elderly king became a symbol of resistance to the German occupation through 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, Christian's official speeches largely towed the line of his government. But Danes saw him as a man of quiet resistance, and the greatest expression of that resistance was something he did every day during the first two years of the 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, accompanied by no groom and no mounted escort, with 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 and 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 that they were loyal Danes.
Hitler's soft 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 was thrown from one of his horses, sustaining injuries that kept him from riding in public for pretty much the rest 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 the 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 with scenes of joy.
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.