PASSING OF KING CHRISTIAN and PROCLAMATION OF KING FREDERICK

(28 Apr 1947) King Christian of Denmark has died and will be succeeded by his son who becomes King Frederick the Ninth.
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[@MeowAdi_108]

and now, his daughter Margarethe II abdicates after 52 years on throne ❤.

[@HauntedXXXPancake]

Ugh. Sadly, after the war the Allies decided to back the tale of courageous Denmark, resisting the Nazis wherever they could, United by King & Country. Fact is, King & Government collaborated with one of the most vile Empires in History and later passed laws that retroactively sentenced civilians to Death, who did the same. The official story is, that all of this was to save lives - Who's lives where of prime-concern is rarely, if ever, questioned. Last but not least: The Resistance. While a very few, brave Men, Women & Children fought the Nazis from Day 1, wide-spread resistance only started in late 1944 and the total number of Fighters in all of the war was only about 2500. They also went on a massive vigilante killing-spree in the Days AFTER Germany surrendered, murdering Both Nazis, Political Enemies and "That guy who's face I never really liked". Not our finest Hour, but I guess better than the war-profiteering that was going on, while the rest of Europe tore itself apart in WWI.

[@augustus_lex6126]

The Germans would have just killed the King and his government if they didn't and just because someone does something doesn't mean they believe it and the killing spree you were talking about happened in every country that was occupied and then freed

[@doctorwho6364]

I would as a Danish citizen say that if we hadn’t collaborated with the German Reich then I would dread to think of the outcome of that situation. I have many family members who were forced to do labour to build airfields in central Jutland and bunkers on the West Coast, also placing mines on the West Coast, by 1945 Denmark was the most heavily mined country in Europe. So don’t go saying that the Danes didn’t suffer, because unless you can hear the history first hand then I would suggest that you don’t make assumptions based on Wikipedia or what you read online. Come to Denmark and see yourself.

[@limesebastian]

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarter-back, especially 80 years after the fact. People made the decisions they made based on the information they had available at the time and from the desire to do what was best in that moment. You could say, "Oh, they cooperated with the Germans and they surrendered too fast" etc. etc., but that's extremely narrowminded and doesn't address the predicament they were in on April 9, 1940. The Germans had made landfall in several locations in Denmark, and in Copenhagen the king, PM and top ministers were told that if they did not surrender Copenhagen would be bombed. Knowing that Germany was vastly superior, and that fighting was just a demonstration (A documentary from a few years after the war had an officer of the Danish army, who was in service during the attack of April 9, explain why the fighting was just "a demonstration", i.e. they knew they could not defeat the German war machine), they made a decision to spare as many lives as they could. I will remind you that Warsaw suffered a different fate in 1939: "Starting at 08:00 on 25 September, Luftwaffe bombers under the command of Major Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen conducted the largest air raid ever seen by that time, dropping 560 tons of high explosive bombs and 72 tons of incendiary bombs, in coordination with heavy artillery shelling by Army units. [...] By estimates around 20,000 to 25,000 civilians were killed, 40 percent of the buildings in the city were damaged and 10 percent of the buildings destroyed. [...] The September 25 raid had the aim of breaking Polish morale and forcing a surrender." The benefits of surrendering were many. Not only did they spare the lives of the soldiers who were fighting the Germans at different locations, it also spared Copenhagen and the inhabitants of Copenhagen. And at the same time, cooperation with the Germans meant that Danish Jews were 1) not required to wear the yellow star on their clothes, and 2) they did not get deported to concentration camps as was the case in other European countries. Cooperation ended in September 1943 when the Danish government finally had enough, and that's when the Germans started tightening their grip. You can choose to acknowledge the hard decision that was made on April 9, 1940, and that a decision to fight back against the Germans would have resulted in loss of countless lives as well as the deportation of thousands of Jews, the bombing of Copenhagen, and almost certainly many other cities - with the same outcome, an occupied Denmark. ... Or you can be a total dick and hide behind your keyboard as you character assassinate the king and government of Denmark who had to make one of the toughest decisions in the history of the country.

[@HauntedXXXPancake]

@@limesebastian Yes, No doubt a lot less people would have died, if everybody had just been objective & brave enough to surrender to the seemingly invincible Nazi war machine ... At least in the short run.

[@limesebastian]

@hauntedpancake, so you would have prefered that Denmark kept fighting even though it was a lost cause, sacrificing hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers' lives. You would have prefered that the Danish king, PM and government refused surrender, causing the bombing of Copenhagen, the deaths of thousands of civilian men, women and children and the capture of the king to be used for whatever propaganda measures. You would have prefered that the Nazis installed Frits Klausen as the Danish equivalent of the Norwegian Quisling, leading a Danish Nazi government that would have deporterede thousands of Danish Jews, communists and other undesirables to concentration camps. And you would have prefered that Danes be forced to fight for the Nazis on the front only to be killed by the Allied forces as they went along. All so we could look good 80 years later and say, 'Well at least we fought black...' ... Cool. Yeah I'm sure people 80 years ago would have loved to sacrifice their lives for that alternative.