The Rest Is History - 284: Denmark: The Great Escape

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Denmark: The Great Escape In today's episode, Tom and Dominic look at the story of how the vast majority of Denmark's Jewish population survived the Second World War, with help from Swedish royalty, fishermen, and many more... Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History, and we are ripping our way through the 32 countries that are participating in the World Cup in Qatar. And Dominic, today we are coming to Denmark. And Denmark, of course, has already, we've already had a football tournament inspired episode on Denmark, haven't we? Because last, summer before last, during the Euros, we, England ended up playing against Denmark in, what was it, the semifinals, I think. And so we did an episode on Anglo-Danish relations over the course of the centuries.

But today we're looking at a distinct, and I have to say a very noble moment in Danish history. So what have you chosen to represent Denmark? Well, lots of people would anticipate that when we're doing a podcast on Denmark, we would do something to do with the Vikings. And I've gone to completely the opposite end of the spectrum. We are in the 20th century and we are doing what's almost a first for the rest of history, Tom, because we are doing what is, I think we can say, safely say is an almost entirely good news story because most historical stories end with everybody dying, don't they?

Yeah. And when they're packed with incidents, that basically means there's an awful lot of fighting or something of that ilk. But this is a story in which people actually, and some very surprising people, behave really rather well. So the story is the rescue of the Danish Jews. During the Second World War.

During the Second World War. And we'll start with Denmark right at the beginning of the Second World War. So the Second World War breaks out, as everybody should know, in September 1939. And Denmark is formally neutral. But from the end of that year, Hitler and the German leadership have plans basically to occupy Denmark because they want to occupy Norway. They want Norway for its access to minerals. They think it's very important for resources.

It's uranium. Is that right? Exactly. Things coming in from Sweden and so on to the coast of Norway. But they don't think they can get Norway for strategic reasons without also taking Denmark because they can't allow Denmark to fall into British or French hands. So they draw up these plans to occupy Denmarkmark and they strike very suddenly and very effectively 4 15 9th of april 1940 the germans pile across the border they they just make holstein exactly exactly which of course they fought a war with

the danes about um in the60s, I think it was. They're unloaded. They've got men ready in the troop ships in Copenhagen Harbor. They pile onto the quays. There's a little bit of resistance. 16 Danish soldiers are killed. But after just two hours, so I said the invasion began at 4.15. At about 6.15, the Danish government decides that the game is up and orders a surrender. And by 8.34, exactly in the morning,

the Danes have formally capitulated. So in other words, if you went to bed on the night of the 8th of April, you could plausibly not even have woken up. Turn the news on. i wonder if anything's happened oh my god but we're occupied by the nazis we've been evaded and we've surrendered already now sometimes people say this is very this is very poor performance by the danes but of course denmark is very flat jutland um is very flat they have a land border with germany there is no conceivable way that they can hold out against the Germans. They only have a tiny army. They're facing the might of Hitler's war machine. It kind of makes

sense from their point of view to surrender, to fight on would be absolutely futile. But this is an occupation with a slight twist, because what they do is the Germans say that Denmark will basically be a German protectorate, but they will allow the Danes independence in their own kind of domestic affairs. So why is it that this happens? Well, obviously Denmark and Germany have kind of quite interlinked, intermingled histories. There's a lot of bad blood because of the war about Schleswig-Holstein in the mid-19th century. But to the Germans, the Danes are fellow Aryans. Of Nordic stock. Yeah, Nordic stock.

They think that they can run Denmark as a kind of, as a sort of model, as a model protectorate to show what life will be like for Europeans under Hitler's new order. And they also want to get a lot of food and dairy stuff and all these kinds of things from Denmark. Bacon. Bacon. No, they genuinely want all that stuff, Tom. And they think that they can do it best if the Danes cooperate. So what the Danes are doing with the Germans is they have this sort of policy, which they call kind of cooperation, but not collaboration. In other words, they're not happy about being occupied. And then they're not going to do more

than the bare minimum. But equally, they're not going to sort of willfully provoke the Germans. So kind of assassinating local Nazi leaders and things. Yeah. And so what happens is the Germans allow them to have their own government and to have their parliament and to run their own police and to run their own courts. And indeed, they're the king, King Christian X, to remain in the country. But they will have the country run, first of all, by the German ambassador and secondly, by an SS general called Werner Best, who we will come back to later in the podcast. So people outside Denmark, the most famous aspect of this is what happens to the king, Christian X. He's almost 70.

He is the absolute, if you am asked a casting agency to supply a kind of noble, upstanding Scandinavian king from the early part of the 20th century, Christian X is your man. He looks very austere and very stiff in his uniform, but he's got a tremendous sense of dignity and patriotism and stuff. And he does this famous thing, and they're actually very moving if you watch the clips, the newsreel clips. During the German occupation, every day he mounts his horse, Jubilee,

and he rides unaccompanied by guards through the streets of Copenhagen. And the people stand and watch, and they wear little buttons with the insignia of the king or the Danish flag to symbolize their support for him and they applaud or they bow or whatever. And he rides through the streets as basically a living symbol that Danish sovereignty still endures and that one day they will be free. And I kind of strike in contrast with other European countries that were more brutally invaded and whose royal families fled to London. Exactly. So Christian X is still serving as a focus for national pride and resistance, even though he's still in situ.

Yeah, exactly. So he's remaining there. He's remaining there as the embodiment of Denmark, I suppose. The other thing that a lot of people may know about Denmark in the Second World War is that the king makes it very clear, and Danish politicians make it very clear, that they will not accept any repressive measures against their Jewish population. So the Jewish population in Denmark is very small. So there's about 6,000 people, and then several hundred people more who are sort of associated family members and so on. So you compare that with the Netherlands, nearby country occupied by the Germans, where there are 140,000 Jews, or indeed Poland, where there are more than 3 million.

So the Danish Jewish population is tiny, but it's very, very well assimilated. So there's very little sense of kind of difference and very little anti-Semitism. And the king in particular makes it very clear that he will not accept any persecution of the Jews. So the most famous story that's told about him is that if the Germans make the Danish Jews wear a yellow star to identify themselves, to sort of mark them out, he will wear one too. Is that true? Well, what people often get wrong is they say he did wear one. He definitely didn't. He definitely didn't because the Germans never introduced the measure. But that story of him saying that is true, is it? But the story is absolutely true.

He has a meeting with his prime minister and he tells his prime minister, he writes in his diary afterwards, he says, I told the prime minister that I consider our own Jews to be Danish citizens and the Germans cannot touch them. That is admirable behavior. So the king is absolutely adamant about this. And Denmark has this immensely admirable, I mean, I love Denmark. I'm completely unashamed in my love of Denmark and indeed all Scandinavian countries. But Denmark in the years before the Second World War has a very kind of social democratic, anti-totalitarian political culture. There's a sort of sense that they've developed that we're all Danes together, and we will not allow the occupiers to break us apart.

Now, the Germans obviously find that very annoying. And indeed, Hitler finds King Christian X enormously annoying. And over time, although the Danish resistance is quite small scale, over time, the Germans become crosser and crosser with the Danes. So the most famous example is something called the Telegram Crisis in October 1942. This is a hilarious story. The king turns 72 and Hitler, who's hoping to sort of butter him up in order to, you know, maybe get the Danes to play ball. He sends an effusive telegram to the king to wish him happy birthday.

And the king sends back a message, which is just one line, which is Sprecher meinen besten Dank aus Christian Rex, which basically translates as, thanks a lot, King Christian. Which Hitler is absolutely furious that he has been sort of fobbed off in this way. He actually recalls his ambassador from Copenhagen, and he kicks the Danish ambassador out of Germany because he's so offended by the king's perfunctory telegram. Taciturnity. Taciturnity, exactly. This sort of cold response.

But I mean, that's very kind of royal, Scandinavian royal behaviour, isn't it? I mean, I think they would normally send a more effusive reply, Tom. Do you not think? If I sent a message of congratulations tomorrow to the Danish royal family, I would like to think I'd receive a more effusive message.

No, but not if they were mid-20th century. I would hope for a very stiff and formal reply. I'd be frankly disappointed if I didn't get one. Would you? Yeah. I wouldn't want any kind of emoting or anything like that. I would like to think that their response to this podcast will be more effusive. I look forward to hearing what the Danish royal family

make of this podcast. It was all right. So, yes. Thank you for your podcast. Thank you for your podcast. We haven't listened to it, but we appreciate it. The telegram crisis sets the scene for months of worsening relations. And there are strikes in Denmark, and people are increasingly refusing to cooperate with the Germans. The Germans in August 1943 present the Danes with an ultimatum,

and they basically say, sort it out. You know, cut the strikes, ban on public assembly. We want you to censor your newspapers. Of course, the Germans are jittery at this stage. It's 1943, the war's not going well. They've had the disaster at Stalingrad and so on. So they're just generally on edge. And the Danes say, absolutely no way. So at the end of August 1943, the Germans dissolve the Danish government and they declare martial law. And they say, enough of this sort of pretense, we're running the show now. And obviously at this point, the Germans think now is the time to move against the 6,000 or so Danish Jews and their dependents. This is the moment to strike. And now a genuinely heroic figure enters the story and this is a german a german attache at the embassy

in copenhagen who is called georg ferdinand duck fits great name and hair duck fits has he's got a long history of with the danes he lived in copenhagen years before in the 1920s he'd actually been a nazi since 1932 but he was on the sort of, I know this will sound weird to some listeners, he was on the sort of left wing of the Nazi party. So more socialist than national. Exactly. He had met a guy called Gregor Strasser, who is one of the sort of early figures in the Nazi movement,

but very much on the sort of, had stressed the socialist rather than national socialist. And Duckwitz, this sort of diplomatic figure, he had thought, well, maybe the Nazis will be the sort of German nationalist equivalent of Scandinavian social democracy, you know. And he worked at the German embassy. But over time, he'd become conflicted about what was happening. And he works closely with the SS general who is now in charge of Denmark. He's this guy called Werner Best.

And at the beginning of September 1943, Werner Best says to him, we are planning to round up all the Danish Jews and deport them. We're going to deal with them now. Why does Werner Best tell Doug West this? Well, we'll come back to Werner Best after the break, because that's an interesting story. Doug Fitz thinks this is a terrible idea. He doesn't like it. I think he doesn't like it because he doesn't like it, but he also doesn't like it because he thinks it will really inflame the Danes and make it impossible to administer the country. It will provoke massive resistance. Doug Fitz goes to Berlin and he says, I don't

think we should do this and nobody listens. Then Then interestingly, he goes to Stockholm to have a meeting about German merchant shipping. And during this meeting, he says to the Swedes, if there's a roundup of the Danish Jews, would you receive Danish Jewish refugees? And the Swedes say, yeah, we might. Because Sweden, of course, is neutral. And Sweden and Denmark are only about an hour's boat ride apart. So the Danish Jews could get there. I mean, there is the bridge now, Tom, from the bridge, if you've watched the TV series. There wasn't then, but obviously it's narrow enough for there to be a bridge. Have you been over that bridge? Yeah, I have. To Malmö.

We went over the bridge, and we went over i have to malmo we went over the bridge and we went over the bridge and as we went over the bridge we put on in the car the theme tune from the bridge i love that i dominate i so approve of the fact that you put on music appropriate to where you're going absolutely i absolutely do as well even though people couldn't hear it i detected in the in the sight of of other drivers a sense of weariness when they looked at us in our car, sneaking along to the theme from the bridge. Anyway, we mustn't get distracted by talk of the bridge. No, we mustn't.

So, right. Doug Fitz, he gets back to Copenhagen, and he contacts a leading Danish social democratic politician called Hans Hedtoft. And he says to him, listen, we are planning to round up all the Jews. This is your chance. You have a very small window to do something about it. And Hedtoft does. He has a meeting with the chief rabbi of Denmark, who's a guy called Marcus Melchior. And he says, you've got to tell everybody, tell them all. Because of course, the numbers are quite small. You could do something.

So the next day is the day before the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. And Marcus Melchior goes into the synagogue and he addresses his congregation in Copenhagen. And he says, there will be no service today. This is the moment that the crisis has come. Everybody go home, sort out your affairs, pack your bags, go into hiding. Because of course, a lot of people have already had thought about what they would do in this situation. Tell everybody you know, spread the word, we must do it. Meanwhile, although the parliament has been kicked out and the Danish government is gone,

the country is still being run by civil servants, obviously. Yeah. So the word has spread among Danish civil servants. And they say to one another, listen, contact your friends, tell everybody you know who's Jewish. They even tell some of their friends to go through the telephone books and to try and ring everybody with Jewish sounding names, telling them, go into hiding. This is your moment. And so everything is sort of put into place and Jewish families start to sort of disappear quietly from the streets of Copenhagen. So they go into their friends' houses or they go to summer

houses or they're hidden in cellars and attics and so on and so forth. And meanwhile, just before the break, one other thing happens one of the people who has been warned who escapes very early on is the physicist neil's boar oh right yeah absolutely yeah titanic figures in the atomic research of the 20th century and later on in the manhattan project and who, I think, a colleague of Bernard von Braun, wasn't he? The German rocket guy. Was he?

That I did not know, Tom. There was a play at the National Theatre, which I saw. Is it Copenhagen by Michael Frey? Yes, exactly so. So I know about plays, but I know nothing of science. So this is... Well, yeah, that was a play. But I'll tell you what Niels Bohr does.

He's Jewish. He escapes to sweden gets to sweden and this is an extraordinary fact tom he decides he he thinks he must make sure that the swedes will receive any refugees so he tries to get an audience with king gustav the fifth of sweden this is a story in which kings by the way coming out very well yeah there are three countries involved in this story tom two of them monarchies, and one of them is a republic. And it's the monarchies that emerge very well from this story, and the republic that frankly lets itself down during these years.

Are you calling Germany the republic? Yeah. Well, they are a republic, aren't they? Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. Absolutely. Prove positive, if any were needed, that monarchy is the most natural and benevolent form of government.

Well, I think that's a polemical payoff that perhaps we should take a break, should we? Can I just tell you what happens to me? Oh, yes, of course. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. So he wants to talk to King Gustav V, but King Gustav V doesn't just talk to anybody, Tom.

Well, he's a king. You need somebody to intercede with you, to get an appointment with the king, a telephone appointment. Who would you turn to in that? You need a Swede. You need a big-name Swede from the 20th century uh abba no they're not alive no at this point tom you'd ask you'd ask greta garbo yeah of course you'd ask greta garbo and greta garbo who is already friends with niels bohr i don't know how she's clearly more interested in science than i am uh she

intercedes with the king she gets boar an audience she rings the king and says see this fellow boar the king says yes splendid we'll happily take um danish jews and so on the 2nd of october swedish radio broadcasts a message to say that all danish jews are welcome in sweden and so the stage is set for a tremendous good news story, which Tom, I think we should come to after the break. Yeah. Wonderful setup, Dominic. Thank you. We will see you back, as Dominic said, after the break.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to our Danish- themed rest is history episode um and dominic as you said a good news story um so the danish jews are under threat of being rounded up by the nazi occupiers um but thanks to um what was his name, the German? Drakeford? Drakeford, he's the bloke who's running Wales.

Duck Fitz. Duck Fitz. I knew it had some aquatic bird. Some aquatic bird link. It's great to see that you're paying so much attention, Tom. Well, we should mention to this, we've done four episodes so far. Yeah, today.

So my brain is starting to slightly flag. Yeah, so him and Niels Bohr and Greta Garbo and the kings, respectively, of Denmark and Sweden. And they're all coming out of the story very well. But now we're about to have the whole of the Danish people come out of this. Yes. So there is no network to help these Jewish families that have gone into hiding there was

nothing tom but the goodwill of the danish people so all it's sort of family but there's no organization there's no mass movement there's no there's nothing like that it's on a family by family basis people stay in seaside homes they find people who hide them in churches, in hospitals, in hotels, all of these kinds of things. And we're talking about when you include all their children and sort of family members and so on, it's nearly 8,000 people. And the people who help them are this incredible cross-section of Danish. So basically everybody helps them. It's this incredible cross-section of Danish society. It literally is the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

And they move from village to village, undercover darkness and so on, to the coast, to the coast of Zealand. And when they get there, the fishermen, being canny entrepreneurs, they often charge. So when they think people have got money, they will say, you know, we'll take some payment, thank you. But they are transported on fishing boats, they're transported on rowboats, sometimes even in kayaks, unbelievably. It takes about an hour on this. Very Viking spirit. Very Viking, across the Oresund, which is the channel that divides Denmark and Sweden. And the Germans are oblivious to this, are they? Well, we'll come to the Germans in just a second.

The Germans start to get... Because they must have, I mean, they must be keeping an eye on the... Yes. On the shipping channels. Very, well, ah, well, this is a very important point, Tom. That's very astute of you to raise it. And we should come back to this in a little while, in five minutes or so, but just before this.

The Germans absolutely are sort of on their on their case because when the germans launched the roundup in cobenhagen they're like where is everybody they've all vanished so there's a slight sort of it's amazing to me that this is not being made into a huge budget kind of hollywood movie because it is such a good story and some of the aspects of it are almost sort of mind-bogglingly cinematic, just the sort of almost like an Ealing comedy. So to focus in on three elements. So you can imagine the Germans are sort of pursuing them to the coast, trying to find them. And there are three particular stories that I want to just hone in on very briefly. So all these little groups that help the Jews often have very entertaining names.

So one of them, for example, is something called the Elsinore Sewing Club. And the Elsinore Sewing Club is a group of four people in Elsinore, or Helsingor on the Danish coast, famous, of course, from Hamlet. They're the local bookbinder, who's called Erling Kjær, the police officer, Thermod Larsson, the police clerk, Ove Brun, and the local newspaper editor, Börger Rønne. And they basically go around among all their friends. They say, we need gasoline, we need fishing boats, we need this, we need that.

And they help people to cross from Helsingor into Sweden. And it's actually one of their boats that you can see to this day in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Do you know, Dominic, that Holocaust Museum was the first Holocaust Museum I went to. And you just end up, you just feel kind of stunned as you go around it. And I remember going into the room where the boat was. And it was the first kind of glimpse of compassion and hope, almost, that that entire museum had offered. And I remember breaking into tears shamelessly. And I was not the only person. I know exactly what you mean, Tom. Because reading this story, there's a nice account of it called Countryman by Bo Lidegaard, a Danish newspaper editor, published in English.

And some of the stories in that are so moving, I think it's hard to read them, actually, without sort of tears springing to your eyes. Because amid the darkness and the horror and the immolation of all kindness and charity, looking at that boat and reading the account, I've never forgotten it. Never forgotten it. Oh, good. I'm glad you agree with me because i think there's something about the small scaleness of it and the sort of ordinariness and the that makes it so moving so another example of the three examples i was going to give is a group called the friends of the sound and the sound being the the straight between denmark and Sweden. And they meet in a – this is basically organized by some innkeepers in a village called Snekersten.

So they meet at the inn in Snekersten. They put up a lot of Jewish families in the inn, and they put them up in nearby homes. And the fishermen and the sort of the local people, the local villagers there, they alone transported almost 1,000 people across the strait to Sweden. And there's actually a sad element to this story. people the local villagers there they alone transported almost a thousand people um across the strait to sweden and there's actually a sad element to this story which is that the innkeeper who was a guy called henry kristen he was arrested by the gestapo then they released him and then

later on because of his resistance activities they arrested him again a year later and he ended up in a concentration camp where he died before the end of the war. So that's, that's, well, that's a reminder of, of the fact. Yeah.

I mean, it's not just an alien comedy. Yeah, no, it's not. Yeah. And the final thing I want to hone in on is that is a particular village called Gila layer,

which is on the coast. I'm sure I pronounced that wrong. So Danish listeners, I'm, I'm very sorry. So there, there is a, there is a bit of of, again, a bit of darkness. There are about 80 Jews hidden in the church, in the church loft.

And supposedly the girlfriend, a girl who is going out with a German soldier or whatever, lets slip that they're there. And they are all captured except for a boy who hides behind a gravestone in the cemetery. But many hundreds more Jews and their families are hidden in Galileo and the Germans don't find them. And the Germans associate, it's a wonderful story that they see the grave digger. But the grave digger says to the gestapo the poor jews and the german gestapo guy says it's written in the bible that this shall be their fate and the grave digger says but it's not written that it has to happen in gilalea and that kind of determination of the local people that it won't you know we're going to make sure it doesn't

happen here it's so moving there's's one quotation, there's an engineering student called Wilhelm Lind who is determined to, he's one of the people who's helping them. And he describes how on the 6th of October, they basically get the signal the Germans have gone, it's time, they can come out, it's time for them to cross. And he says, he recalls afterwards, he says, the once so peaceful seaside resort, now sitting there quietly in autumn, with almost empty streets, was suddenly full of life. In a moment, all the doors sprang open and Jews flowed out of almost every house.

In an instant, the whole main street was full of people, women and men from the youngest toddlers to grey-haired old men, poor and rich, all on the run from the barbarians. And he helps a little girl. As you say, I mean, incredibly cinematic. Yeah, he helps this little girl. I mean, this very Spielberg detail,

a little girl gets separated from her family. She's wearing a red coat. Exactly. And Wilhelm sees her. He puts her on the handlebars of his bike and he cycles to the quay and she gets on the boat and off they go. And he says, I swallowed and swallowed and found it hard to hold back the tears, whether it was the joy that everything seemed to go so well or the bitterness of having to witness that kind of thing in a Nordic country in the year 1943, or maybe because of both. So in total, Tom, 7,743 people crossed the Orison to Sweden, and only about 580 Danish Jews failed to escape. So I say only, but of course, each one of these

people, I mean, it must have been absolutely awful. Some of them stay hidden in Denmark to the end of the war, but most of them who remain, 464, they're captured and they're sent to Theresienstadt, the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. But even then, actually, there is kind of, I mean, it sounds weird to say an upside to the story, but the Danish are outraged at this. The Danish say to the Germans, we'll never cooperate with you unless you allow us to send food parcels, medicine parcels, and so on to these people. And as you promise us, you will not deport them to extermination camps. And unbelievably, the Germans don't. How many survived the war then? So the vast majority of those survived. So in total, more than 99% of Denmark's Jewish population

survived the war, which is a truly extraordinary thing. What is it about Denmark? Is it that it's possible to save them, whereas in other countries it's not? Is the tradition of antisemitism less toxic? I mean, what's going on? So historians, political scientists have spent oceans of ink on this question. Why is it that, for example, in Denmark, 99% of the Jewish population survived, whereas in, let us say, the Netherlands, so many thousands of people are killed? What one answer would be is that there isn't a neutral country within ready access across the beach. I mean, yeah. So there are multiple explanations.

One very popular one, which Beau Lidegard gives in his book countrymen he says denmark had created something almost unique before the war which is this incredibly patriotic democratic civic culture in which danish jews were seen as danes like anybody else there's no virtually no anti-Semitism. And people genuinely thought it was their – they had a solidaristic civic culture in which people thought it was their duty to come together as Danes. You know, the king symbolizes this, all of this stuff. And there's a kind of tremendous sense of democratic citizenship. Hannah Arendt, in her book Eichmann and Jerusalem, she said, you know, that it's the sort of power of the human spirit. She says, Denmark is the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native resistance.

And the results seem to be that those exposed to it changed their minds. They had met resistance based on principle and their toughness melted like butter and that in a way is that what you might call the sort of school assembly you know you can stand up to horrible evil all you need to do is but of course as you rightly say there is a bit more to it so first of all um there is the fact that sweden is so close and you it can be done in a way that it can't be done from the Netherlands or from France or something. Secondly, is the fact that Sweden has already, so the Swedes come out of this very well because they have publicly signaled that they will accept Jewish refugees in a way they didn't necessarily need to do.

But it reflects very well on them. And did they suffer for that from the Nazis? No, they didn't. No, they didn't. And then the third thing, of course, is the Jewish population is just so small. It can be done in Denmark in a way that would have been very hard to do in, let's say, France or indeed in Holland. Is it also a fact that, well, Denmark, until martial law gets introduced, is treated with, relatively speaking, by Nazi standards, kid gloves. perhaps uh the the german occupiers are kind of less attuned to the idea that they can just shoot people willingly yes you're absolutely right tom and i think this is the other element in the story which is the i said that there were going to be surprising people who come out well and this is the other and most ambiguous element which is that

the factor that perhaps is not discussed so much is that it's also a question of the Germans. So I said that the guy running Denmark was an SS general called Werner Best. And Werner Best, the thing that really is important to him is to, when Germany, it's embattled, it's short, it's got tremendously strict rationing it is short of all kinds of supplies the war is going badly his absolute priority is to maintain the flow of agricultural produce from denmark and he needs danish cooperation to do that so denmark is called during the war it's called germany's pantry or people talk about it as the whipped cream front because basically you made that joke about bacon but but that's absolutely right.

Well, it wasn't a joke. Because I know that before the war, Denmark was London's larder. Yeah, absolutely. And Best is absolutely, he thinks, we cannot risk sabotage and strikes and all this kind of thing. So when he actually organizes,

I mean, he's in charge of the Germans. When he organizes the roundup of the Jews, he tells the soldiers, you have to knock on the door first. You can't smash down any doors. You can't smash down windows. So there's actually a story of one family that actually, Jewish family, that are just asleep and sleep through the so-called rounding up. And they're never rounded up because they just didn't answer the door. You also asked about boats, and I said I would get to that, about why the Germans don't monitor shipping.

Best orders all German patrol boats into harbour during this period, these crucial few days at the beginning of October 1943. He says it's very important to repaint all our patrols right right um yeah he also i mean this is a very famous story he has this he has a jewish tailor in copenhagen called rafael bodin and best goes to get a suit measured just before the round up and he says to his tailor as he's leaving oh oh, by the way, you might want to go into hiding pretty soon and tell your friends. So in a weird way, the SS general who's in charge of the whole thing, and this is quite an Ealing comedy-ish element.

You can imagine a 1950s British film director enjoying casting the noble German or whatever. Well, okay, so what happens to him at the end of the war? He's a witness at the Nuremberg trials. He's sentenced to death by a Danish court because of his, obviously his role as the sort of plenipotentiary, the man running Denmark, but his sentence is reduced to 12 years on appeal.

There are various sort of talk of war crimes, but he's never really, you know, he never suffers tremendous punishment um he joins and i mean best is that most people would say best is a sort of opportunist he's not an idealist by any means um he did this because he basically wanted the bacon i mean that's the sort of the the bizarre irony of the whole thing but the man who is the regarded as the a lot of people as the real hero is that bloke georg duck fits because him not drakeford duck fits not drake duck fits because

him giving the the nod to the danish but he knew exactly what he was doing he gave the nod to the danish politicians who then told the chief rabbi who then told all the um his jewish congregation doug witt's after the war he after the war, his life is actually, it's quite a sort of, it's a happy ending. He becomes the West German ambassador to Denmark and then later to India. He becomes Secretary of State in the Foreign Office under Willy Brandt.

And in 1971, he is named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government.'s his name is in the yad vashem holocaust memorial in israel and today tom if you go to yad vashem there is a tree which commemorates king christian the 10th and the danish resistance movement and there is a fishing boat from the village of it'slaia. It's such a – I went to – I think I mentioned this in the bonus episode we did. I went to Roskilde, just outside Copenhagen, where all the Danish –

The Viking ships. Yes, but it also has a cathedral where the – so it's the Westminster Abbey of Denmark where the kings and queens are buried. And I saw Christian's grave. And I didn't know the story in the detail that you've told me today, but I was very much aware of it as being, yeah, I mean, an incredibly moving and powerful story. And one that, as you say, so much of history is, I think, gives you a slanted sense of of human nature

because that is what tends to get into the history books but this is one that reminds you that people can do good and be brave absolutely and yeah it's a so it's a lovely story i think because the there are lots of occasions where there are heroes in history, but not many where you can genuinely say pretty much an entire country did the right thing, behaved well. So it's possible that Denmark will come out best then of our 32 episodes. Yes. So I think Denmark and Costa Rica, Tom, they're my tips. For World Cup glory.

If we have a public vote on World Cup glory. Yeah, if there's a World Cup of good behaviour, I think they... Well, maybe when we finish all these, we could... Yeah, we can look back over it. Do some post-tournament analysis. That final between King Christian X and Don Pepe Figueres. It's the clash they're all talking about. OK, well, Dominic, that was great.

Dare I say a tour de force. A very powerful and moving episode. And I hope everyone listening enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you very much for that. I can't remember what we're coming back with next. Normal cynical form will be resumed next time, sadly. Yes. So thanks very much for listening bye

bye bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

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