The radical right has been a persistent feature of European societies. In power, it has unleashed wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. As a movement, it has promoted violence against minorities and immigrants and has threatened democratic politics. Convinced that understanding this complex and disturbing phenomenon requires new approaches, the editors of Fascism and Neofascism have assembled a diverse group of experts. Uniquely among the many studies of the topic, the volume explores both historical fascism and the contemporary radical right in a wide range of countries, and brings together perspectives rooted in cultural studies, history, and the social sciences. Eric D. Weitz is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts. His primary field is modern German history and he is an expert on the history of radical mass movements of the twentieth century. He has long taught the history of Nazi Germany, and has written most recently A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation.

Praise for Fascism and Neofascism
“Fenner and Weitz have put together an exciting collection of essays on Fascism and Neofascism. The contributions cover the entire spectrum of right-wing European experience in the twentieth century and recast the issue of Fascism with thought-provoking insights. They insist on the distinctive historical contexts of the interwar past and the present, but also highlight the common traits of radical nationalism. They bring out impressively the inventive and aggressive adaptation of old symbols and myths to new circumstances.”–Michael Geyer, University of Chicago

TRACING DANISH BIGOTORY: The Nazis of Denmark supported Hilter before, during and after the war. In fact the king was never removed and even the governement never changed. The sealed Danish archive may hold the Names of Up to 300000 Danish Nazis or Nazi Sympathisers. Dansih Nazi collaboration was so well hidden from the eyes of the world that it was acknowledged only in 2003. Sunday, August 31, 2003, Copenhagen, Denmark — Denmark’s cooperation with its German occupiers during World War II was “morally unjustifiable,” Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said. Friday’s statement was the first time that a head of the government has publicly condemned his nation’s Nazi-era …

For fifty years after World War II, no one in Denmark investigated in detail the fate of the Jewish refugees who sought asylum there in the 1930s and 1940s. Denmark’s status as one of the Allies was a delicate matter, and only the rescue of the Danish Jews to Sweden in October 1943 was widely known. Danish historians averted their gaze from darker aspects of Denmark’s policy, which continued even after the war. Since the 1990s, closed archives have been forced open by a new generation of historians, revealing previously concealed aspects of World War II Denmark. It emerges that from 1935 Denmark rejected Jewish refugees at its borders, and that it expelled twenty-one Jewish refugees to Germany in 1940-1943 most of whom were eventually killed. New findings also show that Danish firms used Jewish slave laborers and that Denmark exported agricultural products that helped feed the German army.

Within Denmark, its approach during the war has gradually come to be called the “cooperation policy” (Samarbejdspolitik) or “negotiations policy” (Forhandlingspolitik). More critically, it has been termed a “collaboration policy” (Kolaborationspolitik). In recent years, however, the negative definition “collaboration policy” has been disappearing from works by Danish historians on the occupation, whereas the cooperation policy has been receiving a status as the “only right solution” for Denmark. Sixty years after the liberation, a new generation of Danish historians is glorifying the cooperation policy with the Nazis as a necessity, and even arguing that other European nations should have adopted the same approach.

As If They Didn’t Exist at All (Som om de slet ikke eksisterede) by Bent Blüdnikow in 1992. 1 It was the first work since 1945 to focus on Jewish refugees in Denmark. The book clarified that most of these refugees were treated harshly, that Jews had not sought asylum in Denmark because of their political views, and that there was more to the story than the rescue in 1943.

At the time Blüdnikow’s book was published, Danish historians already viewed the cooperation policy as an inevitable response to reality. Danish historian Kristian Hvidt said in an interview to the Jerusalem Report:

Bludnikow claims that Denmark has been so busy polishing its halo for having rescued its Jews in 1943 that it has obscured the fact that it turned a deaf ear to the cries of horror of other Jews when the noose was tightening in the 30s…. This point of view is indeed convincing. But it is being offered by someone who didn’t personally experience this period, and who finds it hard to grasp the whole picture. The Danish people, including the Jewish community, were in full agreement to pursue a cautious policy vis-à-vis the regime of horror in Germany

Danish SS Volunteers and Danish War Criminals
Another less-known aspect of Danish World War II history is that about six thousand Danish men joined and fought with the Waffen-SS, partly encouraged by the Danish authorities. Here, too, it took an exceptionally long time for this information to reach the Danish public.

Apart from fighting for their new masters on various war fronts, Danish SS volunteers also participated in the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe and served in concentration- and extermination camps. Information on these volunteers was not accessible until 1999, when three young historians published an excellent study.10Yet, surprisingly, the book did not discuss the issue of possible war crimes by Danes. The volunteers’ motives are described in terms of their being “ordinary men,” even more so than other nationals in the SS. Finally in 2003 the three authors published a few examples of Danish participation in war crimes, but without explicit details.11

Danish SS soldiers were not different from others; they participated in the Holocaust. In July 1941 in Galicia, units from the Waffen-SS division Wiking, which consisted of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and later Icelandic members – the alleged finest of the “Aryan race” – perpetrated together with Ukrainians the horrific massacres of six hundred Jews in Ternopol and of two to three thousand in Zloczow. The latter massacre was stopped by a German Wehrmacht officer who was shocked by the cruelty and the methods of execution used by the Ukrainians and the Scandinavians. According to a message dated 3-4 July 1941 from the chief of the Third Army squadron in the area, members of Wiking blocked the escape routs from Zloczow and some went “hunting for Jews” and plundering.12

In a recent study called Criminals without Punishment: The Nazis Who Got Away,13 journalist Erik Hoegh-Soerensen brings together information about wanted Danish war criminals who have escaped prosecution in Denmark. The book was condemned by a Danish historian who characterized it as sensational and the work of an intolerant fanatic, and who compared Nazi war crimes to Danish resistance fighters’ killing of Nazi collaborators.14

Even Danish historians who have studied Danish SS volunteers have been reluctant to expose Danish war crimes. Other Danish experts have suggested that possible Danish war criminals would not, in the prevailing climate, “risk anything” if their atrocities were to be publicized.15 Danish historians have, for instance, withheld the identity of a Danish SS volunteer who witnessed war crimes and later recounted to the historians: “A Jew in a greasy caftan walks up to beg some bread, a couple of comrades get a hold of him and drag him behind a building and a moment later he comes to an end. There isn’t any room for Jews in the new Europe, they’ve brought too much misery to the European people.”16

White Buses and the Red Cross
The rescue of Jews to Sweden in 1943 was not the sole factor in the positive postwar perception of Denmark; there were also the White Bus relief convoys in 1945. Although Sweden officially credits the Swedish Red Cross and Count Folke Bernadotte for the convoys,46 Norwegian and primarily Danish participation were also crucial to transporting Scandinavian prisoners, and later other groups of prisoners, from German camps through Denmark to Sweden during the last months of the war.

Recently the Danish historian Hans Sode-Madsen, who has fervently extolled the cooperation policy, published a study on the White Buses.47 His book has been criticized by historians as well as surviving Danish resistance fighters as a deficient treatment that very selectively discusses Danish aspects of the White Bus endeavor while mostly ignoring the new international research on the topic.48 One of Sode-Madsen’s main aims was to demonstrate that this relief action was a beneficial consequence of Denmark’s cooperation policy.

(http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-vilhjalmsson-f06.htm)

Although the Danish territory of South Jutland was home to a significant German minority, and the province had been regained from Germany as a result of a plebiscite resulting from the Versailles Treaty, Germany was in no apparent hurry to reclaim it. In a much more vague and longer-term way, some Nazis hoped to incorporate Denmark into a greater “Nordic Union” at some stage, but these plans never materialized. Officially Germany claimed to be protecting Denmark from a British invasion Wikipedia

Frikorps Danmark
On the 29th of June, 1941, days after the invasion of the USSR, Frikorps Danmark (Free Corps Denmark) was founded as a corps of Danish volunteers to fight against the Soviet Union. Frikorps Danmark was set up at the initiative of the SS and DNSAP who approached Lieutenant-Colonel C.P. Kryssing of the Danish army shortly after the invasion of the USSR had begun. The Nazi paper Fædrelandet proclaimed the creation of the corps on 29 June 1941.[24]

A 1998 study showed that the average recruit to Frikorps Danmark was a Nazi, a member of the German minority in Denmark, or both and that recruitment was very broad socially.[27] … Historian Bo Lidegaard gives the following figures for 1941: 6,000 Danish citizens had signed up to German army duty (1,500 of these belonged to the German minority in Denmark).

DEMARKS COLONIALISM: Denmark was a colonial power and established colonies in almost all continents.

They were defeated by other colonial powers and could not maintain many of their colonies.

However Denmark learned its bigotry from the same Kipling that Britian and other Europeans who carried the “White Mans Burden” which wanted to Christianize and civilize the world.

Under the cover of “Liberalism” the current “freedom of speech” neo-colonialistic provocation is based on inherent bgitory that resides in Denmark.

Geert Wilders: Muslims support 10 point plan to Stop Islamizaiton of Europe ”

Geert Wilders Inc. inaugurated new energy efficient ovens for Muslims. Older Nazi models not environmentally friendly. New models have separate compartment for burning books.”

Netherlands: Who is responsible for creating bigotry?”

dutch islamphobia, Geert Widlers, SIOE rooted in crusades, inquisition, colonialism of Indonesia and Neocon support”

Like terrible twos throwing a “hissy fit” and a temper tantrum to attract attention, the Danish cartoonists are trying again to extend their 15 minutes of fame.

 Like good parents, we should ignore them and walk away without making eye contact with them. 

 ”This is very foolish and does not help building the bridges we need. [But] it is the same picture, so it is just a republication of what was published before.” Mostafa Chendid, an imam at the Islamic Faith Community, which organised a delegation to the Middle East to complain about the cartoons in 2005, said:

The response of the Danish newspaper to the arrest of three homocidal maniacs is to insult the prophet, hurt the fillings of millions around the planet, provoke 1.3 Billion Muslims, many of them illiterate and unable to retaliate in any meaningful or intellectual manner exceptt ot come out on the street and make a nuisance of themselves. Their anger is misdirected, and we have an issue.

This has become the standard operating procedure of the gangs of bigots who have taken it upon themselves to provoke the Muslim population.

What is surprising is that it makes perfect sense under the guise of “freedom of speech”. Like clockwork, one of these bigots will pop up with a new scheme every few weeks. We won’t be surprised if something else has been planned before Gert Wilders burns and curses the Quran in public in March.

The Danish have amazing brains. 3 criminals wanted to hurt a human being. The would be “murderers” were indicted. They have not been convicted yet, but in the minds of the “flame throwers and cheerleaders of free speech”, the three have been convicted and therefore all Muslims are guilty.

During the provocation of Geert Wilders, Muslims in America and Europe strategized to respond to Mr. Wilders with silence and a yawn. It probably worked. 

During the time of the prophet, a woman would throw garbage on him every day from the rooftop. He would say nothing, and move forward. One day, he noticed that no garbage landed on his head. He went to find out where she was. He discovered that she was sick. He went to her and took care of her. She converted to Islam.

Geert Wilders and the Danish papers who are “defending the right to free speech” do not realize that the Islamphobia that they percolate affects real lives of people thousands of miles away.  Our kids are teased. Students are berated by teachers for being Muslim. People lose jobs. People are deported. we wish Kurt Westergaard and Geert Wilders well, but they must take responsibility for the raising the temperature of bigotry in Europe and the world. They attract the worst of Europe and Christianity in their camps and then get funded.

Many of the indicted terrorists in America were issues of an over zealous police. Take for example of  the pizaa delivery guys who mistakenly took the picture of a lake (which turned out to be reservoir). He was arrested. They could not find anything to suggest that the pizza delivery person had any motives. So they checked his record. It runs out that 5 years before the arrest, he had cosigned an apartment lease of a Pakistani couple. It so happened that the wife of the Pakistani who wanted to rent the apartment has overstayed her visa.

The Pizaa delivery guy was indicted for aiding an abetting an “illegal alien” which is a felony and promptly deported. Congressmen and Senators and activists could do nothing for him….and so it goes…. 

Denmark paper reprints Muhammad drawings after cartoonist murder plot thwarted Leslie Schulman at 8:32 AM ET

Danish newspaper Jyllands-Poste reprinted a cartoon Wednesday drawn by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard one day after Danish police arrested three people suspected in a plot to murder Westergaard for his characterization of Muhammad.

Westergaard was one of 12 cartoonists who published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in 2005 that sparked widespread protests across the Islamic world. Several other Danish newspapers also reprinted Westergaard’s depiction Wednesday, accompanied by statements defending freedom of speech and the public’s right to see the cause of the backlash.

The Muhammad cartoon controversy  led to a number of international lawsuits and arrests alleging defamation of character and disruption of the peace. A French court in March 2007 dismissed charges against Charlie-Hebdo magazine and its director after the court found that the defendants had not purposely meant to offend Muslims. In September, Bangladeshi authorities arrested  cartoonist Arifur Rahman and suspended the publication of weekly satire magazine Alpin after it reprinted the cartoon. Last month, a former newspaper editor in Belarus was sentenced to three years in prison  for reprinting the cartoons in the Zhoda newspaper.

Today Denmark poses itself as the paragon of liberalism and open-mindedness. From the flag of Denmark to the churches and the society, Denmark remains steeped in fundamentaltist thought and racist deed.

Denmark’s hedonism and their liberal attitudes towards sex sould not be taken as a measure of their liberal attitudes. That sort of liberalism is restricted towards their acceptance of pornography and drugs.

Danish colonialism was as brutal towards the indiginous populations as the other European colonialists. Denmark tried colonialism in many parts of the world. Here is a descriptive list of Danish brutality in the world.

Danish colonialism, like Dutch or Portuguese colonialism was to civilize and Christianize the populations.

The Danish colonies in India were founded by the Danish East India Company, which was active from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The Danish colony’s capital was Fort Dansborg at Tranquebar, established in 1620, on the Coromandel coast.

The Danish also established several commercial outposts, governed from Tranquebar:

1696 – 1722 Oddeway Torre on the Malabar coast
1698 – 1714 Dannemarksnagore at Gondalpara, southeast of Chandernagore
1752 – 1791 Calicut
October 1755 Frederiksnagore at Serampore, in present-day West Bengal.
1754/1756 the Nicobar Islands -under the name Frederiksøerne.
1763 Balasore (already occupied 1636-1643).
In 1779 it was turned over to the government by the chartered company and became a Danish crown colony.

In 1789 the Andaman Islands become a British possession. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British attacked Danish shipping, and devastated the Danish East India Company’s India trade; in May 1801 – August 1802 and 1808 – 20 September 1815 the British even occupied Dansborg and Frederiksnagore.

The Danish colonies went into decline, and the British ultimately took possession of them, making them part of British India: Serampore was sold to the British in 1839, and Tranquebar and most minor settlements in 1845 (11 October 1845 Frederiksnagore sold; 7 November 1845 other continental Danish India settlements sold); on 16 October 1869 all Danish rights to the Nicobar Islands, which since 1848 had been gradually abandoned, were sold to Britain.

APPENDIX A

References on Nazi collaboration

Notes
1. Bent Blüdnikow, Som om de slet ikke eksisterede (Copenhagen: Samlerens Forlag, 1991) [in Danish]; Bent Blüdnikow, “Goering’s Jewish Friend,” Commentary, Vol. 94, No. 3 (1992).

2. Kristian Hvidt in an interview to Reuben Loewy, “Denmark’s Other Record,” Jerusalem Report, 30 May 1996, p. 32.

3. Leni Yahil, “Hatsalat ha-yehudim be-danya: Demoqratya she-’amda be-mivhan” (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Yad Vashem Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1966) [in Hebrew]; Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy, trans. Morris Gradel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969).

4. See Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside: Joediske flygtningeskaebner i Danmark 1933-1945 (Copenhagen: Forlaget Vandkunsten, 2005), 8-13. [in Danish]

5. Lief Larsen and Thomas Clausen, De forraadte. Tyske Hitler-flygtninge i Danmark (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1997). [in Danish]

6. Peder Wiben, “Komitéen af 4. maj 1933,” in H. Dethlefsen and H. Lundbak, eds., Fra mellemkrigstid til efterkrigstid, Festskrift til Hans Kirchhoff og Henrik S. Nissen på 65-aarsdagen oktober 1998 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 1998). [in Danish]

7. Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 313, endnote IV, 76; Lars Lillelund and Joern Mikkelsen, “Historikerne strides om 21 udviste jøder,” Jyllands-Posten,10 February 2000. [in Danish]

8. Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside.

9. Ibid., 203-15.

10. Claus Bundgaard Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen, and Peter Scharff Smith, Under hagekors og Dannebrog : Danskere i Waffen SS. (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 1998). [in Danish]

11. Claus Bundgaard Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen, and Peter Scharff Smith, “The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS,” in Mette Bastholm Jensen and Steven B. Jensen, eds., Denmark and the Holocaust (Copenhagen: Institute for International Studies, Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2003).

12. Bernd Boll, “Zloczow, Juli 1941: Die Wehrmacht und der Beginn des Holocaust in Galizien,” ZfG (Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft) 50, Jahrgang, Heft 10, 906-07, 910-11, 913. [in German]

13. Erik Hoegh-Soerensen, Forbrydere uden straf: Nazisterne der slap fri (Copenhagen: Forlaget Dokumentas, 2004). [in Danish]

14. Book review by Kristian Hvidt, Berlingske Tidende, 24 July 2004. [in Danish]

15. Jyllands-Posten, 16 January 2000, section 1, 5 (Danish professor of history Claus Bryld is quoted for this view).

16. Christensen, Poulsen, and Smith, “Danish Volunteers.”

17. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “En dansk krigsforbryder,” Weekendavisen, 28 January-3 February 2005. [in Danish]

18. René Rasmussen, “En tysker,” letter to the editor of Weekendavisen, 4-10 February 2005 [in Danish]; René Rasmussen, “Vores sindelag bestemmer vi selv,” Weekendavisen, 18-24 February 2005 [in Danish]; Stig Woermer, “Hjemmetysk,” Weekendavisen, 18-24 February 2005 [in Danish]; René Rasmussen, “Sindelag,” Weekendavisen, 11-17 March 2005 [in Danish]; Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “Vi er langt fra sindelagsfrihed,” Weekendavisen, 18-23 March 2005 [in Danish].

19. Hans Davidsen-Nielsen, Niels Hoeiby, Niels-Birger Danielsen, and Jakob Rubin, Vaernet: En Dansk SS-laege i Buchenwald (Copenhagen: Munksgaard Bogklubber, 2002) [in Danish]. The book is also available in German: Davidsen-Nielsen et al., Carl Vaernet: Der dänische SS-Arzt im KZ Buchenwald; aus dem Dänischen von Kurt Krickler; mit einem Vorwort von Günter Grau und einem ergänzenden Kapitel über Eugen Steinach von Florian Mildenberger (Wien: Regenbogen, 2005). [in German]

20. Vilhjálmsson, “En dansk krigsforbryder,” 11; letter from the Danish Justice Ministry to V. Ö. Vilhjálmsson, 16 October 2001.

21. See Joachim Lund, Hitlers Spisekammer: Danmark og den europaeiske nyordning 1940-43 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005) [in Danish]; Steen Andersen, De Gjorde Danmark Stoerre…: Danske entreprenoerer i krise og krig 1919-1947 (Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2005). [in Danish]

22. Ibid.

23. See: www.flschmidt.com; www.kampsax.com; www.mthojgaard.dk.

24. Lund, Hitlers Spisekammer, 250.

25. Ibid., 225-26.

26. Expert opinion, written by Christopher R. Browning, Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington, on Instructions of Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya, Solicitors, for the Purposes of Assisting the Queen’s Bench Division in the High Court in London in the Case between David John Cawdell Irving, Plaintiff, and Penguin Books Limited and Deborah E. Lipstadt, Defendants. Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington; letter by SS-Gruppenführer Harald Turner to SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, head of the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS (RFSS) [head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler], dated 11 April 1942, StA Muenchen II, Az.10a Js 39/60, bill of indictment/accusation (ZSL, Az. Sammelakte 137, Bl.164-167). [in German]

27. Statement of the Kunda Kursachsen Fund/FLS Industries A/S Corporate Public Relations of 7 January 1999. See: www.flsmidth.com/FLSmidth/english/investor/Announcement.asp?id=974923&folder=199901. [in English]

28. Lund, Hitlers Spisekammer, 227.

29. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “Vi har ikke brug for 70.000 joeder,” Rambam 7, Tidsskrift for joedisk kultur og forskning, Udgivet af Selskabet for Dansk Joedisk Historie, 1998, 41-56, 47. [in Danish]

30. Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 318 ff.

31. Bent Blüdnikow and Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “Skeletter efter 1945,” Weekendavisen, 19-25 September 1997. [in Danish]

32. Vilhjálmsson, “Vi har ikke brug,” 52; Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 320. 33. See Blüdnikow and Vilhjálmsson, “Skeletter efter 1945″; Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 317 ff.

34. Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 336-37; “Danes Consider Offer of Haven,” Palestine Post, 27 August 1947.

35. “Joeder i noed,” Jyllands-Posten, 27 August 1947 [in Danish]. The same page in Jyllands-Posten reports about a Danish physician in the town of Skive who obviously had the editors’ full sympathy. The authorities only allowed him to buy a European car though he preferred an American one. In his distress he had received two tires and three tubes for his dilapidated German car, while the local sheriff was buying a brand-new American Ford from the local car dealer.

36. Vilhjálmsson, ibid., 135-36, 318-29.

37. Ibid., 302-09.

38. Vilhjálmsson “Vi har ikke brug”; Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “Danmark foraadte ogsaa joederne,” Berlingske Tidende, 26 December 1998. [in Danish]

39. Ibid., 358-59.

40. Michael Mogensen, “Antisemitisme i den danske flygtningesamfund i Sverige 1943-45,” in Michael Mogensen, ed., Antisemitisme i Danmark? Arbejdsrapporter fra DCHF 5, Dansk Center for Holocaust- og Folkedrabsstudier, 2001. [in Danish]

41. “Maerkedag: Auschwitz-dag moedt af kritik,” Jyllands-Posten, 25 January 2003. [in Danish]

42. “Vi mangler graatonerne”, interview with Hans Kirchhoff, Weekendavisen, 14 December 2001. [in Danish]

43. Udgiverselskabet for Nyere Tids Historie.

44. Knud J. V. Jespersen and Thomas Pedersen, eds., Besaettelsen i perspektiv: Bidrag til konference om besaettelsen 1940-1945 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1995) [in Danish]. The quotation is from an article by Prof. Aage Trommer, “Hvad har vi naaet og hvad mangler vi?”

45. Miriam Katz, “Forskere vil bevilge penge til sig selv,” 15 February 2000, “Holocaustcenter er gaaet i taenkeboks,”16 February 2000, Berlingske Tidende. [in Danish]

46. See www.sweden.se/templates/cs/BasicFactsheet____4198.aspx#1.

47. Hans Sode-Madsen, Reddet fra Hitlers helvede: Danmark og de Hvide Busser 1941-45 (Copenhagen: Aschehoug, 2005). [in Danish].

48. Bent Blüdnikow, “Theresienstadt-delegationen stod paa taersklen til helvedet,” Berlingske Tidende, 10 September 2005 [in Danish]; Joergen H. Barfod, “Boganmeldelser: Beretningen om de danske KZ-fanger,” FV: Frihedskampens Veteraner, No. 183, December 2005, 30-31. [in Danish]

49. Letter to the editor by Hans Sode-Madsen, Berlingske Tidende, 27 September 2005. [in Danish

50. Ingrid Lomfors, Blind fläck: Minne och glömska kring svenska röda korsets hjälpinsats i nazityskland 1945 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005), 51-97. [in Swedish] 51. Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 282-84.

52. Ibid., 220-55.

53. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “The King and the Star,” in Jensen and. Jensen, Denmark and the Holocaust, 114. See also: www.diis.dk/graphics/CVer/Personlige_CVer/Holocaust_and_Genocide/Publikationer/holocaust_DK _kap_5.pdf].

54. Ibid., 111-13.

55. Danish State Archive, Copenhagen: Eigil Juel Henningsen’s private archive (No. 6880): Letter from journalist Erik A. Larsen to E. J. Henningsen, 8 March 1979, E. J. Henningsen’s response, 11 March 1979. [in Danish]

56. Per Ulrich, De roede enker (n.p.: Tiden, 1982 ), 48-49. [in Danish]

57. Danish State Archive, Copenhagen: Eigil Juel Henningsen’s private archive (No. 6880): Frants Hvass’s report of 11 July 1944, 5. [in Danish]

58. Danish State Archive, Copenhagen: Eigil Juel Henningsen’s private archive (No. 6880), ibid.; E. J. Henningsen’s unpublished memoirs, 20. [in Danish]

59. Ulrich, De roede enker, 49.

60. See Blüdnikow, “Theresienstadt-delegationen.”

61. Sode-Madsen, Reddet fra Hitlers helvede, 164.

62. See Davidsen-Nielsen, Hoeiby, Danielsen, and Rubin, Vaernet; Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina, rev. ed. (London: Granta, 2002).

63. Davidsen-Nielsen, Hoeiby, Danielsen, and Rubin, ibid.; see also: www.users.cybercity.dk/~dko12530/hunt_for_danish_kz.htm.

64. Blüdnikow and Vilhjálmsson, “Skeletter efter 1945.”

65. David Cesarani, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (London: William Heinemann, 2004), 137.

66. The entire speech was published in Berlingske Tidende, 5 May 2005. [in Danish]

67. Interview to Berlingske Tidende, 1 May 2005. [in Danish]

68. Uffe Oestergaard, “Denmark and the New International Politics of Morality and Remembrance,” Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook 2005 [English], 67; see www.diis.dk/sw13006.asp. Oestergaard has not been willing to explain his opinion that the official apology was given after revelations made by Danish historians.

69. Oestergaard, “Denmark and the New International Politics.”

70.”Amerikansk ros til Fogh,” Berlingske Tidende, 6 May 2005. [in Danish]

71. “Undsyldning er vroevl”, Berlingske Tidende, 6 May 2005. [in Danish]

72. Ibid.

73 Many articles in the Danish daily Politiken (8 May 2005) presented the apology to Jews as an apology for the participation of Danish forces in Iraq. Historian Bo Lidegaard also draws that conclusion in a press release published in Politiken, 10 April 2005. [in Danish]

74. See the highlights of the report, Denmark during the Cold War, on: www.diis.dk/graphics/Publications/Books2005/Koldkrig/KK_highlights2.pdf.

75. Politiken, 30 June 2005, article on its website titled “Venstrefloejen kraever undskyldning af statsministeren” [in Danish]; “Den Kolde Krig: Politisk opgoer om kold krig,” Politiken, 1 July 2005. [in Danish]

76. See Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, “‘Ich weis was ich zu tun habe’: En kildekritisk belysning af Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz’ rolle i redningen af joederne i 1943,” Rambam, No. 14, forthcoming [in Danish]; Bo Lidegaard, Overleveren 1914-1945, Dansk Udenrigspolitisk Historie 4 (Copenhagen: Danmarks Nationalleksikon, 2003), 540. [in Danish]

77. Gunnar S. Paulsson,”Danmarks besaettelse set med fremmede oejne,” Berlingske Tidende, 30 April 2005.

78. Bo Lidegaard, Kampen om Danmark (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005), 115-16. [in Danish]

79. Bo Lidegaard, Overleveren 1914-1945.

80. Ibid., 546.

81. Hans Kirchhoff, “Forsvar for historikerne,” Politiken, 18 May 2005.

82. Claus Bryld, “Occupied Denmark as Mirror: Danish Attitudes to War and Occupation 55 Years after the Event,” lecture presented at the seminar on European Research on Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust: State of Research and New Perspectives, Stockholm, 14-16 March 2002 (manuscript dated June 2000), 15. The article, which was originally presented at the seminar, was kindly provided by Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie in Amsterdam.

83. Ibid.,16.

84. See Vilhjálmsson, Medaljens Bagside, 355; Arthur Arnheim, “Anti-Semitism after the Holocaust-Also in Denmark,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 15, Nos. 3-4 (Fall 2003); Bent Blüdnikow, “Venstrefloej og antisemitisme,” in Michael Mogensen, ed., Antisemitisme i Danmark? Arbejdsrapporter fra DCHF 5, Dansk Center for Holocaust- og Folkedrabsstudier, 2001, 199-36. [in Danish]

* * *
BENT BLÜDNIKOW worked at the Danish National Archives from 1983 to 1993. He then became opinion editor of the weekly Weekendavisen. From 1998 he was opinion editor, and since 2002 journalist, at the conservative daily Berlingske Tidende. He has published several books on Danish Jewish history and eighteenth-century Danish history. Among them are Immigranter: Østeuropæiske jøder i København 1904-1920 (Copenhagen, 1986) and Som om de slet ikke eksisterede: Hugo Rothenberg og kampen for de tyske jøder (Copenhagen, 1991).

DR. VILHJÁLMUR ÖRN VILHJÁLMSSON was an archeologist and curator at the National Museum of Iceland (1993-1997) and senior researcher at the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2000-2002). He is the author of Medaljens Bagside (Copenhagen, 2005), which reveals the Danish expulsion of Jewish refugees to Germany during 1940-1943. Currently he is completing a book about Stefan Glücksman, a Warsaw historian who was expelled from Denmark in 1941. Both authors are both board members of the Danish Jewish Historical Society.

APPENDIX B 

References on Dansih Colonialism

Europe
Faeroe (1380/1536/1814 to 1948, largely autonomous since then
Iceland (1380/1536/1814 to 1918, after that fully sovereign state united with Denmark under a common king and since 1944 autonomous parliamentary democratic republic)

Danish Estonia (1206-1645)

The most important aspect was fishing and whaling. Since the Faeroe are largely autonomous today, they are not regarded to be a colony any more. The group of islands strives to become a fully independent sovereign state. Unaccessed oil reserves play a decisive role and have already turned Norway into a rich country.

Arctic
Greenland (1921 to 1979, since then largely autonomous)
From 1380/1397/1721 to 1814 Greenland was part of Norway, which was united with Denmark under a common king.

After the Viking-era settlements of the Norsemen had perished because of worsening climate in the 15th century, Greenland was re-discovered in the 18th century. 1721 Hans Egede began a protestantic mission. Economically Greenland was an important base for Denmark with respect to fishing and whaling. In 1921 Greenland declared its independency which was confirmed by the international court in Den Haag.

The actual colonization of Greenland started only in 1945 because at that point in time Greenland became a geostrategic base due to the US-Air base Thule and also because it had the technical possibilities of aircraft and icebreakers at its disposition, which gave it a supply situation similar to European conditions.

The inhabitants of Greenland are citizens of Denmark, and so are the inhabitants of Faeroe.

America
Danish West Indies (1666 to 1917)
The Danish West Indies in the Caribbean were very important to Schleswig-Holsteinish farmers. They had black slaves and primarily cultivated sugar cane which was refined in Flensburg and Copenhagen. Today’s traces of these activities in the Danish West Indies are the well preserved buildings of that time and intense Danish tourism.

Asia
Danish India
The Danish colonies in Asia were called Danish East India [1], because they were all situated in the historic India. They included:

Nicobar (Ny Danmark – Neu-Dänemark 1756-1848/1868)
Serampore (also Frederiksnagore in Bengal, 1755-1845)
Tranquebar (Danish: Trankebar, sea port in India, 1620-1845)

The most important economic aspect was spice trade and access to the east asian area, including Imperial China situated farther to the east. At first, Denmark kept no colonies in China itself, only trade bases attended to by the Danish East India Company.

Africa
Main article: Danish Gold Coast
Denmark established several short term bases and fortresses at the gold coast in West Africa, today the coast of Ghana, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Fort Fredensborg (Ningo: 1734-March 1850)
Fort Christiansborg (Accra/Osu: 1658-April 1659,1661-Dec 1680, February 1683-1693,1694-1850)
Fort Augustaborg (Tshe: 1787-March 1850)
Fort Prinsenstein (Keta: 1780-12 March 1850)
Fort Kongensten (Ada: 1784-March 1850)
Carlsborg (February 1658-16 April 1659, 22 April 1663 – 3 May 1664)
Cong (Cong Height: 1659-24 April 1661)
Fort Frederiksborg (Amanful or Amanfro: 1659-16 April 1685)
Fort Witsten in Takoradi (1657)
Cape Coast Castle in Cape Coast (1659)
Fort William (Ghana) in Anomabu (1657)
near Ningo a Danish base existed from 1784 to 1850

APPENDIX C

Danish Nazi collaboration

FASCISM AND NEOFASCISM
Critical Writings on the Radical Right in Europe
Edited by Angelica Fenner and Eric D. Weitz
Studies in European Culture and History

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Pub date: Nov 2004
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Description
The radical right has been a persistent feature of European societies. In power, it has unleashed wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. As a movement, it has promoted violence against minorities and immigrants and has threatened democratic politics. Convinced that understanding this complex and disturbing phenomenon requires new approaches, the editors of Fascism and Neofascism have assembled a diverse group of experts. Uniquely among the many studies of the topic, the volume explores both historical fascism and the contemporary radical right in a wide range of countries, and brings together perspectives rooted in cultural studies, history, and the social sciences.

Author Bio
Angelica Fenner is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Toronto. She has published essays on the discourses of migration and globalization in contemporary European film in various edited anthologies and scholarly journals, including Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly, and the German Studies Review.

Eric D. Weitz is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts. His primary field is modern German history and he is an expert on the history of radical mass movements of the twentieth century. He has long taught the history of Nazi Germany, and has written most recently A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation.

Praise for Fascism and Neofascism
“Fenner and Weitz have put together an exciting collection of essays on Fascism and Neofascism. The contributions cover the entire spectrum of right-wing European experience in the twentieth century and recast the issue of Fascism with thought-provoking insights. They insist on the distinctive historical contexts of the interwar past and the present, but also highlight the common traits of radical nationalism. They bring out impressively the inventive and aggressive adaptation of old symbols and myths to new circumstances.”–Michael Geyer, University of Chicago

Table of contents
Introduction–Angelica Fenner and Eric D. Weitz * Ideological Positions in the Fascism Debate–Andrew Hewitt * “Windows 33/45″: Nazi Politics and the Cult of Stardom–Lutz Koepnick * Fascist Politics of History and the Posthistoric(al) Imaginary–Claudio Fogu * The Danish Right, 1930-1945, and Recruitment of Danish Volunteers for the Waffen SS–Claus Bundgård Christensen, Neils Bo Poulsen & Peter Scharff Smith * Sex and Secularization in Nazi Germany–Dagmar Herzog * The Fascist Phantom and Anti-Immigrant Violence: The Power of False Equation–Diethelm Prowe * Fascism, Colonialism, and “Race”: The Reality of a Fiction–David Carroll * Fascism and the New Radical Movements in Romania–Maria Bucur * The Right Wing Network and the Role of Extremist Youth Groupings in Unified Germany–Joachim Kersten * Football, Hooligans, and War in Ex-Yugoslavia–Ivan Colovic * Justifying Violence: Extreme Nationalist and Racist Discourses in Scandinavia–Tor Bjørgo * Racism, the Extreme Right, and Ideology in Contemporary France: Continuum or Innovation?–Michel Wieviorka * Immigration, Insecurity, and the French Far Right–Franklin Hugh Adler * From Communism to Nazism to Vichy: Le Livre noir du communisme and the Wages of Comparison–Richard J. Golsan * Repetition Trauma and the Tyrannies of Genre: Freidrich Schlaich’s Otomo–Angelica Fenner * Notes * Index

Amazon.com Customer Reviews
‘Collection of high-class papers’
Reviewed on 2006-11-05
Angelica Fenner’s and Eric D. Weitz’s collection consists of fifteen largely high-quality papers on a broad variety of subjects linked to comparative fascist studies including conceptual issues, Nazi cultural and gender politics, Fascist style, Danish fascism, anti-immigrant violence today, the contemporary Romanian radical right, extremist youth in Germany, football hooligans in Yugoslavia, racist discourse in Scandinavia, the French extreme right, the Black Book of Communism, and the movie Otomo. While most of the papers are, by themselves, worth-reading, the editors’ claim, in their introduction, that the question “to what extent [...] the contemporary right [is] linked to classical fascism” has been guiding the composition of the volume appears as an overstatement. Only some of the papers, such as Diethelm Prowe’s, contribute to answering this question. The foci of the other contributions are too multifarious to provide more than a few separated pieces to a large puzzle; they make an assessment of the compilation difficult. The volume will be of interest to the highly specialized, and make good additional reading in seminars that provide much introductory literature with definitions of the central concepts and outlines of the historical context. On its own, however, the collection appears somewhat accidental.
‘Danish-Nazi Collaboration Versus Common Holocaust Myths’
Reviewed on 2005-03-29
This book contains numerous articles, some of which present rarely-discussed information. For instance, modern treatments of Nazism focus on the Holocaust to the neglect (if not virtual forgetting) of their other victims. But clearly, this is a relatively recent development. In their article, Fenner and Weitz (p. 4) show that, during the first 20 or so years after WWII (1945-1965), German crimes against numerous peoples were considered (including, for example, the 2-3 million Poles murdered by the Germans, including the transparently genocidal destruction of nearly half of all educated Poles), with no inordinate attention given to the 5-6 million Jews. Now, according to Fenner and Weitz, Jewish sufferings have assumed a central element of public and popular culture in the West.

Attempts are sometimes made to link moral traditionalists in the West with Nazi attitudes towards sex. In a surprising article, Herzog demolishes this myth. He shows that, contrary to common perception, the Nazi movement was not repressive towards sex. In fact, it sneered at Christian morality much the same way that modern libertines and leftists do, and favored both premarital and extramarital sex. Attempts were made to discredit the Catholic Church by accusing priests in general of being homosexuals (sound familiar?). Much as modern feminists and other humanists, the Nazis accused Christianity of having a dislike for the human body and for showing disrespect towards women. This was supposed to be a carryover of “the Oriental attitude towards women.”

In popular Holocaust materials, Danes are frequently honored for having saved their Jewish population by sending them across a strait to Sweden. The late columnist Ann Landers called the Danes “an amazing people”. While there is no doubt that the heroism was real, pertinent details are not generally being told. Although they do not discuss this rescue itself, Christenson, Poulsen, and Smith show the astonishing degree of Danish freedom that made it all possible. After being invaded by Germany, Denmark set up a collaborationist government, as did Norway (whence the name Quisling, which has since become synonymous with collaboration). This admittedly shielded the population from brutal German rule (p. 85) and gave the Danes considerable freedom for action. Not mentioned is the fact that this freedom also made it possible for organized Danish assistance to their tiny Jewish population. Nor is it mentioned that Danes, being Teutons, were not subject to the German racist hatred of the Slavic untermenschen (subhumans). Nor is it mentioned that the rescue of Jews remained successful only because Hitler persisted in his recognition of Swedish neutrality. (Parenthetically, this undercuts the claim to preeminent Jewish suffering. Were the death of every last possible Jew actually the highest Nazi priority as is frequently argued, Hitler would undoubtedly have ordered Sweden to return the fugitive Danish Jews under threat of attack).

In stark contrast to the Danes, Poles, who rescued many more Jews than any other nationality (see Yad Vashem), and did so under vastly more difficult conditions than the Danes (refusal to set up a collaborationist government, no neutral country nearby, a huge Jewish population unassimilated and sealed off in urban ghettos, unspeakably brutal German conquest and rule, automatic death penalty for the slightest assistance to Jews, etc.) get virtually no recognition in popular and educational Holocaust materials for their heroic efforts and actions. Instead, every tiny act of individual Polish collaboration, no matter how relatively trivial (200-400, not 1,600, Jews killed at Jedwabne) is magnified way out of proportion, which ignores the fact that Poland had no organized collaboration forces (no Polish SS, etc.), nor collaborationist government, while Denmark had both, as did many other German-conquered nations.

Christenson, Poulsen, and Smith break new ground by discussing just one aspect of this organized Danish collaboration with the Nazis during WWII which likewise is seldom if ever even mentioned in popular and educational Holocaust materials. They elaborate on the 12,000 Danes who volunteered for service in the Waffen SS, and debunk the claim that these voluntary servants of Hitler were criminals or other marginal elements of Danish society. They cite the “fight against Communism” as the stated motive, but fail to mention the fact that Denmark was not even a close neighbor of the Soviet Union, whereas Poland had firsthand experience with Soviet Communist aggression (in 1920, 1939-1941, and from 1944 onwards), yet never fielded any pro-Nazi collaborationist army. They cite the propaganda coup scored by the Nazis when Christian Peter Kryssing, “a high ranking and respected officer of the Danish army”, served the Germans. In contrast, no Pole of any significant prewar status ever collaborated with the Nazis.

Although the Waffen SS was technically a military formation, Christenson, Poulsen, and Smith recognize the fact that there was no dichotomy between the genocidal actions of differing Nazi and Nazi-collaborating forces: “As numerous studies of the German occupational regime in the Soviet Union have revealed, the German war at the Eastern front was a criminal undertaking. It involved plans for total destruction of the Jews and other `undesirables’, deliberate starvation of civilians and POWs, mass killing of civilians under the pretext of anti-partisan combat, looting and destruction of infrastructure, industry and housing as part of the scorched earth policy, and forced recruitment for labor duty in Germany…even men in allegedly nonpolitical units such as the Frikorps Danmark were subject to Nazi indoctrination during their training (p. 93).” The collaborationist Danish SS was part of Hitler’s genocidal machine. It is high time that popular and educational Holocaust materials present the Danes, Poles, and others in a much more complete and objective manner.

APPENDIX D

“In the Friendliest Manner”: German-Danish Economic Cooperation During the Nazi Occupation of 1940-45

Pamela E Swett
“In the Friendliest Manner”: German-Danish Economic Cooperation During the Nazi Occupation of 1940-45, by Philip Giltner. New York, Peter Lang, 1998. xii, 258 pp. $49.50 U.S. (cloth).

Of all the European countries that experienced invasion and occupation under the German Wehrmacht, Denmark received the “friendliest” treatment. Philip Giltner’s goal in this project is to explain why this was so. Anyone interested in the construction and implementation of economic policy, the unique Danish situation, or any of the men involved in carrying out German-Danish co-operation, such as SS man and Reich plenipotentiary in Denmark, Werner Best, will find this accessible treatment of economic co-operation a worthwhile read.

The book is structured around three chronological periods. The first chapter discusses the beliefs held by the German military and foreign ministry about the state of the Danish economy before the invasion of April 9, 1940. The middle sections cover the years of collaboration, 1941-43. The last chapter focuses on the period from the “withdrawal” of the Danish government in August 1943 to the end of the war. As the title implies, Giltner claims that both sides supported the cooperative economic arrangement as the most practical and beneficial course.

Giltner begins by arguing that in the months prior to invasion, the German High Command overestimated the fragility of the Danish economy and concluded that too much German intervention would likely result in economic collapse, forcing the Nazi regime to focus men and resources on pacifying a discontented population. They determined, therefore, that a system of “occupied neutrality” should be offered to the Danes. The plan protected Danish sovereignty, while the Germans received controlled access to Danish manufacturing and military access to Norway.

This package was also offered to other northern European countries, but only the Danes accepted. The economic instability after World War One and the tradition of placating their much more powerful neighbour led the King and his ministers to believe that co-operation was their best chance for maintaining stability throughout the military crisis. Members of the Danish government also reasoned that by staying in their ministerial posts, the Nazi occupiers would not have the chance to bring in personnel more willing to introduce broader political and social change in Denmark.

Chapter Three investigates the economic co-operation between the two nations in greater detail. The limited extent of the purchases made by the German government appears to support Giltner’s claims that the Nazi regime’s priority was to maintain economic and social stability rather than exploit Denmark’s economy for the war effort. This argument presents an interesting sideline for the longrunning debate on Blitzkrieg economic theory. Giltner believes that the strains of total mobilization on Germany motivated Hitler to seek Danish suppliers in the early stage of the war. Readers may wonder, then, why the Germans didn’t make greater use of their occupied neighbour’s production potential once they realized that the Danish economy could handle German orders. Giltner explains this in part in Chapter Four, where he argues that the Germans were loathe to interfere with the stable Danish control system set up to monitor and disseminate German orders among manufacturers. However, for this reader, German contentment with this limited involvement in the Danish economy seems to raise further questions about the role of racial ideology in Nazi decision-making.

Though official co-operation ended in August, 1943, Giltner argues that the economic structures remained largely unaltered. Even when victory was looking doubtful, the Germans were unwilling to risk the possible consequences of abandoning their policy of self-restraint in order to increase demands on Danish manufacturers. Readers receive a detailed account of the polycratic nature of German decision-making and ,as such, may be surprised by the consistency of policy toward Denmark. Giltner’s emphasis on consistency is significant, however, because it contrasts existing Danish literature that puts forth August 29, 1943 as a caesura in occupation policy, which thereafter focused more aggressively on meeting the Wehrmacht’s needs.

Throughout the book, Giltner downplays the importance of political ideology as a factor in either side’s willingness to work together. Though historians have feared the implications of Danish collaboration, Giltner maintains that this response is unnecessary: “Danish co-operation with the Germans was not a blot on the Danish record. This co-operation was neither ideologically motivated nor was it opportunistic. The decision to co-operate was simply a pragmatic one” (p. 64). Though this book focuses on the development and implementation of German policy, Giltner’s argument that the Danes’ pragmatic response to occupation was entirely neutral is an interpretation that should also provoke interest and discussion beyond the realm of economics.

McMaster University

Pamela E. Swett

Copyright Canadian Journal of History Dec 2000
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