Re: A MODEST PROPOSAL

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

On Wed Mar 20 1996 Sandy Sandfort wrote:

: Having said that, I am totally put off by the gradiose and
: devisive ravings of this commentator.  During the Second World
: War the Nazis required Jews in the occupied countries to wear a
: yellow star of David to identify themselves.  In Denmark, the
: king so identified himself, and soon so did most of his subjects.

Ohh pleeez!!, give YOUR ravings a rest
Next you'll be raving about soap and lampshades made out of Jews.

The story about the Danish King and the Yellow star is a famous wartime
lie by the US.  When Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, the king of
Norway fled to London to continue resistance.  The king of Denmark
surrendered.  Many in the US thought the Danish king was a coward.
During the war the story  about the yellow star was made up to make the
king look better.

For more details try out IHRs web site on http://www.kaiwan.com/~ihrgreg.


A recent article from a British on-line newspaper:-

The Electronic Telegraph Tuesday 29 August 1995

Denmark's resistance to Nazis 'is a myth'

By John Keegan, Defence Editor

DANISH resistance to German occupation during the Second World War is largely
a myth, according to a leading historian.

The civilian population was not involved in resistance and the celebrated
rescue of Denmark's Jews from Nazi deportation was facilitated by the German
occupiers themselves. Those caught assisting the Jews' escape were either not
punished or else given nominal prison sentences.

These astonishing claims were made by Prof Henning Poulsen, of Aarhus
University, at a conference on "The Second World War as Myth and History"
held in the Swedish Houses of Parliament. The conference was opened by the
Swedish foreign minister, Lena Hjelm-Wallen, and closed by the speaker of
the Swedish parliament, Birgitta Dahl.

Prof Poulsen insisted that his views were not controversial, a view supported
by another Danish professor. The official story of the resistance was, he
said, no longer accepted by most young Danes, who found it exaggerated and
boring. He reminded his audience of fellow historians from Norway, Sweden,
Finland, Iceland, Russia, Canada and Germany that Denmark capitulated on the
day of the German invasion, May 9, 1940, and was not treated by Germany as a
conquered nation.

The elected government remained in office and German officials belonging to the
administration in Copenhagen made visits to Danish ministers, not vice versa.

Danish political parties were allowed to function normally and to maintain
democratic debate. The only limitation on their activities was that criticism
of Germany was not permitted.

The occupation remained a benign one.

Werner Best, the SS officer representing the German foreign office, did not
wear his black uniform and was not allowed by Himmler to use his high SS rank
title. The foreign office was the agency chosen by Hitler to represent German
power in Denmark during the occupation.

After August 1943, when there were riots in Copenhagen following misbehaviour
by German troops, conditions worsened, said Prof Poulsen.

The Germans dissolved the elected government and imposed direct administration.
Nevertheless, he said, the occupation remained a benign one.

Danish civilian rations were more generous than those in Germany and when
German police were called on to put down demonstrations in Danish cities they
did so under the regulations governing police response to civil disorder in
Germany.

In his most sensational revelation, he said that the only concentration camp
set up by the Germans on Danish soil, at Froesley, never held more than 4,000
inmates, 2,000 fewer than it was designed to contain.

Denmark "won a war in which it had not taken part"

It was administered by the Danish prison service and was the only concentration
camp in the Nazi system where the German guards asked for the same food as the
prisoners. It was ironic, Prof Poulsen said, that Denmark was included among
the victor nations in 1945 by Britain, America and the Soviet Union. It had
thus "won a war in which it had not taken part".

Prof Poulsen conceded that there had been resistance in Denmark, but of a
military, not civilian, character.

By that he appeared to mean that sabotage operations against the Germans were
the acts of unrepresentative groups, working in co-operation with the British
Special Operations Executive, and did not represent the attitude of the
majority of the population.

Prof Poulsen's paper is likely to provoke argument, particularly in Britain,
America and Israel, where the Danish success in arranging the escape of 95 per
cent of the country's 7,000 Jews to neutral Sweden in September, 1943, is
hailed as an example of what might have been achieved elsewhere had domestic
populations shown the same determination.

He suggested that the escape succeeded because the Germans did not try to
prevent it and because the worst penalty visited on those fishermen who were
caught after smuggling Jews abroad was three months' imprisonment.