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During much of World War II, Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. The occupation began with Operation Weserübung on 9 April 1940, and lasted until German forces withdrew at the end of World War II following their surrender to the Allies on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1943. Both the Danish government and king remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic and a totalitarian system until the Danish government stepped down in a protest of the German demands to institute the death penalty for sabotage. Just over 3,000 Danes died as a direct result of the occupation.〔Gert Laursen, (The Occupation in Numbers ), 1997, Danish Military History. Accessed 14 December 2012.〕 (A further 4,000 Danish volunteers died fighting in the German army on the Eastern Front while 1,072 merchant sailors died in Allied service〔http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/samfund/2014-03-20-oprejsning-til-danske-krigssejlere〕). Overall this represents a very low mortality rate (approximately 0.08% of population) when compared to other occupied countries and most belligerent countries. (See: World War II casualties). An effective resistance movement developed by the end of the war, and most Danish Jews were rescued in 1943 when German authorities ordered their internment as part of the Holocaust. In 2003, in a speech for the 60th anniversary of the end of the 1940–43 collaborationist government, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Denmark's cooperation with Nazis was "morally unjustifiable", which was the first public condemnation of the World War II era Danish leadership by a Danish leader.〔(Denmark: Apology For Cooperation With Nazis ), 30 August 2003, ''The New York Times.''〕 == Invasion == (詳細はoccupation of Denmark was initially not an important objective for the German government. The decision to occupy its small northern neighbor was taken to facilitate a planned invasion of the strategically more important Norway, and as a precaution against the expected British response. German military planners believed that a base in the northern part of Jutland, specifically the airfield of Aalborg, would be essential to operations in Norway, and they began planning the occupation of parts of Denmark. However, as late as February 1940 no firm decision to occupy Denmark had been made.〔Henrik Dethlefsen, "Denmark and the German Occupation: Cooperation, Negotiation, or Collaboration," ''Scandinavian Journal of History''. 15:3 (1990), pp. 193, 201-2.〕 The issue was finally settled when Adolf Hitler personally crossed out the words ''die Nordspitze Jütlands (the Northern tip of Jutland)'' and replaced them with ''Dä'', a German abbreviation for Denmark. 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.〔Jørgen Hæstrup, ''Secret Alliance: A Study of the Danish Resistance Movement 1940–45''. Odense, 1976. p. 9.〕 At 4:15 on the morning of 9 April 1940, German forces crossed the border into neutral Denmark, in direct violation of a German–Danish treaty of non-aggression signed the previous year. In a coordinated operation, German ships began disembarking troops at the docks in Copenhagen. Although outnumbered and poorly equipped, soldiers in several parts of the country offered resistance; most notably the Royal Guard in Copenhagen and units in South Jutland. At the same time as the border crossing, German planes dropped the notorious OPROP! leaflets over Copenhagen calling for Danes to accept the German occupation peacefully, and claiming that Germany had occupied Denmark in order to protect it against Great Britain and France. Colonel Lunding from the Danish army's intelligence office later confirmed that Danish intelligence knew the attack would be coming on either 8 or 9 April and had warned the government accordingly. The Danish ambassador to Germany, Herluf Zahle, issued a similar warning which was also ignored. As a result of the rapid turn of events, the Danish government did not have enough time to officially declare war on Germany. Denmark was in an untenable position in any event, however. Its territory and population were too small to hold out against Germany for any sustained period. Its flat land would have resulted in it being easily overrun by German panzers; Jutland, for instance, was immediately adjacent to Schleswig-Holstein to the south and was thus wide open to a panzer attack from there. Unlike Norway, Denmark had no mountain ranges from which a drawn-out resistance could be mounted.〔William Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 663.〕 Sixteen Danish soldiers died in the invasion, but after two hours the Danish government surrendered, believing that resistance was useless and hoping to work out an advantageous agreement with Germany. The flat territory of Jutland was a perfect area for the German army to operate in, and the surprise attack on Copenhagen had made any attempt to defend Zealand impossible. The Germans had also been quick to establish control over the bridge across the Little Belt, thus gaining access to the island of Funen. Believing that further resistance would only result in the futile loss of still more Danish lives, the Danish cabinet ultimately decided to bow to the German pressure "under protest".〔 The German forces were technologically sophisticated and numerous; the Danish forces comparatively tiny and used obsolete equipment; partially a result of a pre-war policy of trying to avoid antagonizing Germany by supplying the army with modern equipment. Even stiff resistance from the Danes would not have lasted long. Questions have been raised around the apparent fact that the German forces did not seem to expect any resistance, invading with unarmored ships and vehicles.〔Flemming Østergaard, "(Dan Hilfling Petersen: 9. april 1940 - hele historien. Hvad der virkelig skete )" ("The whole history; what really happened"), 19 March 2010, ''Jyllands-Posten'' (now behind paywall)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Denmark in World War II」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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