WHEN Aage Nielsen, a young Danish communist, ducked into the trench at Casa de Campo outside Madrid in 1936 to avoid being hit by bullets from fascist rifles, he thought this was just the beginning of something much bigger than the fight for barren land and the right of Spaniards to defend democracy.

For Aage, an construction worker in Copenhagen, this was part of a larger conflict and he was deeply aware that fascism could threaten not only Spain, but all of Europe.

He feared that if the fascists succeeded in crushing Spanish democracy, it was only a matter of time before Denmark was next.

But half of the 500 Danes who fought on the side of the Republic died there, and the fight against fascism would reach Denmark the following year.

Jews and German communists not allowed in
Aage Nielsen’s party, the Communist Party of Denmark (DKP) — which had 6,000 members and three seats in the Danish parliament at the time — was already engaged in the anti-fascist struggle and had been for a long time. For example, they had helped the more than 100 German communist refugees who had come to Denmark from 1933-1939.

Jews had also received help. But Aage was outraged that Denmark had already closed its borders to non-Danes in 1938, and that Jews and communists were in some cases handed over by Danish police at the border with Germany.

In 1938, the government agreed to accept 25 of the 1,000 Jewish children who applied for entry.

It would get much worse.

Denmark occupied
Denmark was overrun by Hitler-Nazi forces on April 9 1940. It happened at 4 o’clock in the morning.

Over the next few years, 20 Jewish refugees were handed over by Danish police to the Gestapo. Fifteen of these were extradited on Danish initiative. Six of them had entered the country illegally during the occupation — a woman, her three young children and two older sisters. All six lost their lives in a German concentration camp.

Within hours, the Social Democratic-led government decided that the country would surrender by the morning of April 9. The Danish prime minister, Thorvald Stauning, addressed the Danes on the radio the same day. He emphasised to listeners across the country the seriousness of the situation and explained why the government had chosen cooperation instead of fighting.

“We chose this path to spare the country and the people from the consequences of a state of war — but we must deeply regret the loss of good Danish sons in the first hours of this morning,” he said.

A willing pawn
While the government sought co-operation with the occupying forces, the communists understood that a system built on fear and oppression could not be negotiated out of existence: Nazism could not be tamed — it had to be crushed.
But the government apparently saw it differently. They were convinced that co-operation with Nazi Germany would ensure their own survival.

On July 8 1940, Foreign Minister Erik Scavenius, who stood outside the parties, astonished many adult Danes by stating:

“With the great German victories, which have struck the world with astonishment and admiration, a new era has dawned in Europe, which will lead to a new political and economic organisation under German leadership. It will be Denmark’s task to find its place in a necessary and mutually active co-operation with Greater Germany.”

The United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain then saw Denmark as a willing pawn in the Nazis’ great game.

Communists were arrested
When Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union early in the morning of June 22 1941, Danish communists realised that their time as legal actors had expired. 
But many of them were caught off guard by Danish police officers knocking on their door with an arrest warrant in hand.
In the first wave of arrests, hundreds were detained, even though the German security police, Gestapo, only demanded 66 named communists arrested.

But the police leadership decided to take five times as many as the Gestapo demanded. Between June 22 and August 22, the police arrested a total of 339 communists.

The only comment Social Democratic Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning had was that the German demands should be implemented.

The Communist Party was banned
On August 22 1941, a unanimous Rigsdag, as the parliament “Folketing” was then called, decided to retroactively ban the DKP. This legalised the arrest of communists by the police and was endorsed by all parties, from the Social Democrats to the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Denmark also signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1941, the only non-fascist country to do so.

Two weeks later, on July 8, the government decided to create a military formation of Danish volunteers called Frikorps Danmark, which, as a unit of the Waffen-SS, would be deployed on the Eastern Front in the fight against Bolshevism.

On August 29 1943, the 243 prisoners in Horserod camp were abandoned by Danish politicians and, against previous promises, handed over to the Germans, who moved into the camp.

Ninety-three of the prisoners managed to escape over the fence, while the remaining 150, 143 men and seven women, were deported to Stutthof concentration camp in October 1943, where 21 of them died.

Initiating a wave of sabotage
The now illegal DKP decided to launch an armed struggle from February 1942. After several weeks of discussion in the illegal party’s branches, the DKP’s district leaders and central committee decided that members could now initiate sabotage.

From April 9 1942, it was not just a few acts of sabotage, but a systematic sabotage campaign in major cities across the country.

The first sabotage groups were small, often consisting of five or six people — but their importance could not be underestimated. They were pioneers. Like stars, they generated sparks that quickly developed into a sea of flames across the country. Aage Nielsen was among them.

The saboteurs initially called themselves KOPA, Communist Partisans.

Prime Minister called for stabbing saboteurs
The many acts of sabotage did not go unnoticed by the Prime Minister’s Office. On September 2 1942, the newly elected Danish Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl — who had replaced Thorvald Stauning — took to the microphone in a radio studio to address the population. In a sober tone, the Social Democrat urged caution in relation to sabotage.

“Anyone who commits sabotage or assists in it, or withholds knowledge of sabotage plans from the authorities or fails to assist in the detection of sabotage, is acting against the interests of his country,” he said.

The speech, which was broadcast to the whole country through the state radio station, was then called the “Snitch Speech.”

Expanding the resistance
But the Danish police arrested more and more communists, so in April 1943 the organisation changed completely. The name changed from KOPA to BOPA. From counting only communists, the sabotage group now alsoo included members of other ideological alignement as well as non-party political youth who all wanted to fight for Denmark’s freedom and independence.

BOPA stood for Civic Partisans and the saboteurs hoped that the name change would mean more weapons and explosives sent in parachutes from British aircraft. In order to receive the supplies, it was necessary to call themselves “civic” as it harmonised better with the British government’s ideological starting point. KOPA received no supplies.

As a result, BOPA flourished as an action unit consisting of communists, left-wing apprentices and anti-Nazi students who were more bourgeois orientated.
The communists in the top leadership determined the overall line, but in the field the results counted.

Only 15 per cent of the saboteurs in BOPA were members of the Communist Party or its youth union, DKU.

BOPA numbered around 350 people in 1944, but only 179 were still there at the liberation in 1945. One in five died — 43 lost their lives, either during actions, killed in concentration camps or in prisons. Others had to flee to Sweden. On average, a saboteur could be in action for four months.

The group’s tasks ranged from destroying vital supply lines and wiping out German-producing factories to liquidating snitches. In total, BOPA carried out over 3,000 sabotage actions and liquidated 20 informers who had helped the Nazis.

BOPA hit the Riffelsyndikatet in 1943 — a factory that pumped out weapons to the German army. The explosion was like an earthquake in the enemy supply lines and was one of the largest single acts of sabotage during the occupation.

Government forced to resign
On August 29 1943, the Danish government was forced to resign. They were hard pressed by huge strikes in the Danish provinces. 
There were street battles in Odense. German defeats in Africa and on the Eastern Front raised hopes of Nazi defeat in the war, and the yoke of occupation on Denmark became unbearable for hundreds of thousands of workers.

The Social Democratic Party maintained that the policy of co-operation had been right.
But the occupying forces took over in Denmark and introduced the death penalty for sabotage.

The Jews are taken
In October 1943, the occupying forces decided to arrest as many Danish Jews as possible. But something unexpected happened. Instead of co-operating with the German authorities, as Denmark had done in the early years of the occupation, many Danes, both in resistance groups and among ordinary citizens, chose to react. In an act of great resistance and solidarity, they helped Danish Jews escape to nearby Sweden where they could find protection.

Over the following days, more than 7,200 Danish Jews and their families were rescued and sent to safety across the Oresund. The Danish resistance movement, including both communists and other groups, played a central role in this dramatic escape.

Creating a nationwide popular front
The experience of working to create a broad unity in the resistance led the chairman of the Communists, Aksel Larsen, to approach the former conservative trade minister John Christmas Moller, who was against co-operation with Nazi Germany.
The DKP wanted to create a national popular front.

Social Democrat Frode Jacobsen — who disagreed with his party — also joined the initiative to form a central organisation for the resistance movement, regardless of their different political views.

The Danish Freedom Council was established in September 1943. The Council acted as a unifying voice for the resistance and was recognised both nationally and internationally as Denmark’s real political leadership in the shadow of the occupation.

An estimated 150 communists died during the occupation — 35-50 of them in German concentration camps and just around 100 during sabotage, illegal leafleting, liquidations or during the reception of arms containers.

They all knew exactly what they were prepared to give for their ideals. They paid the highest price.