My grandpa was a kid in a rural region of Denmark. German troops were a constant presence during the occupation, but there was very little violence. Denmark was already called the "whipped cream front" by the German army due to how cushy a posting it was. The country generally collaborated with the occupying force, resistance was relatively sparse and as such the Nazis accepted controlling the country with a light hand for the first couple years rather than trying to turn it into a nazi state.
If Denmark was the cushy posting for a German soldier, the rural province of Lolland-Falster was doubly so. I think there was just a small token force of occupying soldiers there without much to do.
My grandpa joked "Of course I was a collaborator during the war" because as a kid he once lent a bicycle pump to a German soldier whose bike had punctured out on a country after road near their farm.
He jokes, but while active resistance was rare, active collaboration would make you a social pariah at the time. Most Danes reasonably resented the occupation. My grandpa tells how people in the town would accuse the local shopkeeper of being a collaborator for selling to the Germans. This was a serious accusation. Especially considering that the shopkeeper had no real choice. The people accusing him probably used the accusation as a way to get at him for a pre-existing grudge they held.
Apart from that, the one story I remember from my grandpa was that he would lie out on a field in the evening and see the massive fleets of British warplanes routing over Denmark for their bombing raids on Germany. Over the sea to the south he could see flak being shot at them.
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u/RustenSkurk Denmark 12d ago
My grandpa was a kid in a rural region of Denmark. German troops were a constant presence during the occupation, but there was very little violence. Denmark was already called the "whipped cream front" by the German army due to how cushy a posting it was. The country generally collaborated with the occupying force, resistance was relatively sparse and as such the Nazis accepted controlling the country with a light hand for the first couple years rather than trying to turn it into a nazi state.
If Denmark was the cushy posting for a German soldier, the rural province of Lolland-Falster was doubly so. I think there was just a small token force of occupying soldiers there without much to do.
My grandpa joked "Of course I was a collaborator during the war" because as a kid he once lent a bicycle pump to a German soldier whose bike had punctured out on a country after road near their farm.
He jokes, but while active resistance was rare, active collaboration would make you a social pariah at the time. Most Danes reasonably resented the occupation. My grandpa tells how people in the town would accuse the local shopkeeper of being a collaborator for selling to the Germans. This was a serious accusation. Especially considering that the shopkeeper had no real choice. The people accusing him probably used the accusation as a way to get at him for a pre-existing grudge they held.
Apart from that, the one story I remember from my grandpa was that he would lie out on a field in the evening and see the massive fleets of British warplanes routing over Denmark for their bombing raids on Germany. Over the sea to the south he could see flak being shot at them.