Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9436708:


Hurry hurry hurry 22 12, 11:17pm

I've seen you make this claim before, but this is not historically accurate.
Denmark was invaded by Nazi-Germany on the 9th of April 1940, the same day they attacked Norway. This came as a complete surprise to everybody. Sweden, Norway and Denmark all declared themselves neutral when the war broke out the year before - just as they had during the first world war - and they all expected to weather this storm just as they had that one, by just staying neutral. That Germany would invade Norway and Denmark was totally unexpected and the same fate later in the year befell The Netherlands, who also had remained neutral during the first world war. So there was no evacuation of Jews or anyone else before the Nazi invasion, simple because no one expected it to come.
When it did the Danish Jews were however left in peace by the Nazis who wanted to keep Denmark as a model protectorate for other countries to emulate - "Look how good we treat you if you cooperate". The Danes kept their own government and parliament and they made it quite clear to the Nazis that they would not accept any action against Danish Jews, so the Nazis dropped the subject for the time being.
But as the war went more and more badly for the Nazis they continued exterminating the Jews (a top priority of Hitler of course) and in 1943 (after Stalingrad, with relations deteriorating between the Nazis and Denmark) they began preparing to round up and deport all of Denmarks Jews in one major action.
Cooperation between the Nazis and Denmark however meant that the Danish civil authorities was still functioning as a separate entity. They where following the Nazis orders and there were of course collaborators and anti semites among them as well, but for the most part the men and women working in them were not OK with seeing their countrymen being deported and killed (by this time everybody of course knew what happened with the Jews who where "resettled").
So the secret that the round-up was about to happen leaked out and the Danish Jews where warned to go into hiding and then helped to flee to Sweden.
This was a joint effort by Danish civil servicemen (police especially), the resistance movement and regular Danes helping to hide and transport the Jews to Sweden - and also some Swedish fishermen (Swedish authorities couldn't intervene as we officially where neutral but individual Swedes could). Some German military men were also less then interested in hunting down fleeing civilians and preferred to see them just slip away rather then enrage the Danish population by mistreating their countrymen.
So yes, the story above is basically correct in it's humorous take on what happened - but it didn't take place before the Nazi invasion but several years later.

More details can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews