The museum is organized chronologically, beginning with "Operation Weserübung," the German invasion of Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940. They had a video of an interview with a man who was 15 years old at the time, and he talked about how strange and surreal it was that life went on as usual - he went to school and learned about how to calculate compound interest, and he saw German soldiers buying pastries at a bakery, all while Denmark was being invaded. That stuck in my mind for some reason.
That military operation was ostensibly to protect Danish and Norwegian neutrality against an alleged British planned invasion. The Danish government continued to exist. The museum displayed a letter from the king that was circulated all over the country, saying that the government had decided to welcome the Germans - there was no way the small neutral country on Germany's norther border was going to repel the invasion. Convinced that Germany would win WWII, Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning decided to cooperate, in return for which he got to keep most of his Government, the kind remained on the throne, and Denmark retained control of its police force and judicial system, unlike most other Nazi protectorates. With the fall of France just a couple months later, many Danes also believed that a German victor was inevitable. We saw a uniform of a Danish soldier who fought on the German side against the Russians when the eastern front opened in the summer of 1941.
Soon enough, though, the abhorrent Nazi ideology led to the birth of various resistance groups. When wartime rationing led to minting coins with softer metals like zinc, people carved anti-nazi slogans into the coins: we saw one with a hammer drawn across the curve of the number 5 to make a hammer-and-sickle and one that said "Down with Hitler." Then people began printing illegal newsletters advocating resistance. We saw another video interview with a member of the first known active resistance group, a bunch of high school students who printed pamphlets and then started stealing weapons from the Germans and burning warehouses.
This eventually evolved into several very active sabotage groups, coordinating their efforts with British spies and doing significant damage to the occupiers. As Denmark became harder to control, Germany cracked down, imposing more and more restrictions on the country, which added fuel to the revolutionary flames. The Nazis also used terrorism against the population to try to stop the acts of sabotage. For example, if a German officer was killed they would execute a random Danish citizen; they also blew up random buildings in the wake of significant resistance successes. Over six thousand political prisoners from Denmark went to concentration camps.
Meanwhile, the museum also showed what was happening to Denmark's Jewish population. Many were smuggled out of the country during the early days of the occupation, when Denmark still had significant control over domestic policy and was able to rebuff German demands to oppress the Jewish population. But even so, hundreds of Danish Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
It was an emotional experience, touring the museum (which does a great job of having everything labeled and explained in both Danish and English). Some stories were horrible, others were inspiring. The museum itself grew out of an exhibition that started just after the war ended, and it's well worth a visit.
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