Talk:History of Denmark
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[edit] German children after WWII
I'm moving the following two links here from the main page.
- Danish Study Says German Children Abused 10,000 German children who fled unaccompanied to Denmark as World War II drew to a close in the spring of 1945 were subjected to inhumane treatment.
- A Legacy of Dead German Children Ten thousand German children under five died in Danish camps
Yes, it is completely true that Danish doctors etc didn't treat German refugees in Denmark cordially, but during the last months of 1944 and the first months of 45, Germany had placed 250,000 German refugees in Denmark which at the time had a population of 4 million. So one in 16-17 was a German refugee, and this number doesn't include the German soldiers in Denmark. The soldiers left in 1945, but the British occupation zone in NW Germany rejected a Danish request to have the 250,000 German refugees transferred to the British zone. These people were hated because they'd been placed in Denmark by Nazi authorities and because they occupied a very large number of Danish public buildings, most importantly schools and community halls. Were these people treated like they would have wished? No, they weren't, but much of the story is that Danish doctors were afraid of being labelled as Nazis or pro-Germans should they treat the war refugees. In addition, many Danish doctors held a great grudge against all Germans since the Germans and the Schalburg Corps had raided Odense Hospital during the war and gunned down a number of innocent young doctors. Whenever I asked my grandparents about what had been the worst incidents during the war, they always mentioned these murders. A third aspect of the story is that the Danish government deliberately isolated the refugees from the general public in order to avoid young German women fraternising with Danish males since any Danish-German marriage would have given both persons the right to stay in Denmark according to contemporary Danish law. A fourth aspect was that some German doctors didn't wish help from Danish doctors. A fifth, that the calorie rations awarded to the Germans was taken from the tables used by the Germans during the war, and that this ration was met. This was done despite that if one had given the average man on the street the choice between giving food to German refugees or giving it to starving Dutchmen, French, Norwegians or Finns, he would have chosen anyone but the Germans. Denmark sent food to all four countries. In any case, Danes don't normally consider the German refugees an important event in national history. Rather, a Danish POV would have been that the refugees should have been glad they weren't simply expelled in 1945. The death rate among the German refugees was high, but it is hardly surprising given that these people were in very poor shape when they arrived in Denmark; women, children and old men, without adequate food and physically exhausted from the flight from East Prussia. This rate also needs to be compared to similar rates in Poland and Germany among people in similar conditions. This material really belongs under the occupation of Denmark article, but it can't simply be reduced to two external links making every reader passing by conclude that the Danish government and people committed genocide. Valentinian T / C 21:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- I follow your reasonable arguments. This will need some work in future, and not mere external links without any explanation.--Kresspahl 07:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- If anybody perceived my post above as rude, that was not my intention, however Danish-German relations right after the war are incredibly complicated and a very sensitive issue. As I see it, at least three problems are all connected; #1: the German refugees in Denmark, #2: the German minority in South Jutland and why its membership rate suddenly dropped sharply in 1945, #3: The sharp rise in the membership rate of the Danish minority in Sourthern Schleswig, combined with a very heated Danish debate in 1945-47/48 about whether Denmark should be reunited with Southern Schleswig or not, and if so, on what conditions. Many Schleswigers saw reunification with Denmark as a means to get the East Prussian refugees removed from Southern Schleswig as well. As I understood my grandparents; people back then held a great fear that the refugees would stay permanently (the last left around 1947/48). In addition, everybody expected that WWIII would start around 1965 and that it - again - would involve a German occupation of Denmark. Even more problematic: the time was a time of shortage. When this story broke, I remember seeing an interview on the TV with a Danish doctor that had treated German refugees, who simply stated that he could have done more, but he couldn't get penicillin and other medical supplies. And if he had two sick children, both in equally poor condition and only one dose of penicillin, he wouldn't split the dose in two, since such a treatment wouldn't have worked for either child; in that case, he would give it to one child, if one of the two children was Danish, he would give it to that child in order not to cause problems for himself. What I'm trying to say is that each of these issues is sensitive enough on its own, but the problem is that these issues are connected. Valentinian T / C 08:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- This has already been debated over at Allied war crimes during World War II. I proposed a balanced section on Denmark that of course never made it into the (rather horrible) article but it ended the discussion. Those articles linked to are not exactly good examples of objective journalism and the only reliable sources aside from reactions from the red cross and the medical society would be the thesis in question. MartinDK 08:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
- Denmark's Historical Journal (Historisk Tidsskrift) contained a commentary to this PhD dissertation where the commentator notes that the author of the dissertation forgets that the German forces in Denmark had been murdering Danish doctors for c. 1 year before the Germans requested medical assistance for the German refugees. This included several murders committed or thwarted in the very same days as the negotiations with the Danish Medical Association took place, and the order to these murders generally came from the same Otto Bovensiepen as the Danish Medical Association was negotiating with (the first such murder happened the same day Bovensiepen arrived in Denmark, but he is believed to have given the order to the 15 other murders). The total in Denmark is that 10 MDs were murdered, an additional three attempted murders failed and an additional three were never carried out. The commentary is in Danish only but worth a read. [1] Another commentator notes that - although it is often ignored - sources indicate that the Germans also ran their own medical service. Valentinian T / C 14:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
- This has already been debated over at Allied war crimes during World War II. I proposed a balanced section on Denmark that of course never made it into the (rather horrible) article but it ended the discussion. Those articles linked to are not exactly good examples of objective journalism and the only reliable sources aside from reactions from the red cross and the medical society would be the thesis in question. MartinDK 08:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
- If anybody perceived my post above as rude, that was not my intention, however Danish-German relations right after the war are incredibly complicated and a very sensitive issue. As I see it, at least three problems are all connected; #1: the German refugees in Denmark, #2: the German minority in South Jutland and why its membership rate suddenly dropped sharply in 1945, #3: The sharp rise in the membership rate of the Danish minority in Sourthern Schleswig, combined with a very heated Danish debate in 1945-47/48 about whether Denmark should be reunited with Southern Schleswig or not, and if so, on what conditions. Many Schleswigers saw reunification with Denmark as a means to get the East Prussian refugees removed from Southern Schleswig as well. As I understood my grandparents; people back then held a great fear that the refugees would stay permanently (the last left around 1947/48). In addition, everybody expected that WWIII would start around 1965 and that it - again - would involve a German occupation of Denmark. Even more problematic: the time was a time of shortage. When this story broke, I remember seeing an interview on the TV with a Danish doctor that had treated German refugees, who simply stated that he could have done more, but he couldn't get penicillin and other medical supplies. And if he had two sick children, both in equally poor condition and only one dose of penicillin, he wouldn't split the dose in two, since such a treatment wouldn't have worked for either child; in that case, he would give it to one child, if one of the two children was Danish, he would give it to that child in order not to cause problems for himself. What I'm trying to say is that each of these issues is sensitive enough on its own, but the problem is that these issues are connected. Valentinian T / C 08:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] EEC Membership
Elsewhere I see that Denmark joined the EEC on 1 January 1973 along with the UK and Ireland, but this article says the Danish people voted in 1973 to join. What's the real story? —Largo Plazo 14:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
- The real story is the one you found elsewhere. The Danish European Communities membership referendum, 1972 was in October 1972. Thanks for finding the error. Hemmingsen 15:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
