WW2: The Danish Resistance

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite declaring itself neutral at the outset of the Second World War, Denmark’s experience of the war years is identifiable by its internal division. Rune Edberg is a Danish historian who specialises in the history of the many Danish resistance groups that fought to make life as difficult as possible for the occupying Nazis. In this conversation, he tells James how much of the resistance against the Nazis was directed at Danish collaborators.

Book a tour of Copenhagen with Rune at www.copentell.com and watch out for our new documentary about the Atlantic wall on access.historyhit.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone it is our final day filming here at the Atlantic Wall for a new history
0:06.0	hit documentary on Hitler's Danish bunkers during the Second World War it is
0:11.4	freezing cold we're almost done It's about to snow. It's time to go home.
0:17.0	But keep an eye out for that one on History Hit TV when it comes out in a few weeks.
0:24.0	Yesterday we had a Danish World War II expert,
0:27.8	Runa Eggberg.
0:29.3	He is fantastic.
0:31.1	What he doesn't know isn't worth knowing.
0:34.0	And he took us through an amazing history of Denmark's role during the Second World War.
0:39.0	It is not uncontroversial.
0:41.0	There was the Danish Resistance, which is the core of this story, this history,
0:46.5	and just how brave they were. But it turns out there was lots of local Danish collaboration, lots of local Danish informants. You wouldn't last
0:56.0	long in the Danish resistance with locals telling on you and even the government
1:00.2	were complicit because the banks well the Danish banks they paid for the Nazi
1:06.2	fortifications here. They paid for Hitler's Wall. This is an amazing history, a completely different perspective on what you'd expect Denmark to be and the Danish resistance to be.
1:18.0	But enjoy and make sure you like, follow,, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Hey Runa, thank you so much for joining us on the World Wars. How you doing today? I'm doing fine and thank you for inviting me.
1:45.6	Not a problem at all. It is a delight to sit here and have a beer, albeit socially distanced in person with another historian and talk about the Second World War.
1:59.0	For our listeners, listening back home, we have been filming in the freezing cold beaches of Denmark today
2:07.7	at the Atlantic Wall Hitler's pet project to protect Europe from those fearsome allies and he built. How many bunkers did he build in the end?
2:18.0	Was it 15,000? I think that was the aim at least, 15,000 bunkers in a wall that stretched from the north of Norway and the Arctic down to the French Spanish border. That's correct. That's quite far. Yeah, that's pretty far. Have your fingers recovered from frostbite outside?. How you feeling?
2:42.5	Yeah, it was quite cold. It was like being on the eastern front, I guess, today,
2:46.3	but we managed to survive.
	...

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