Prompt 1 In high school history classes Denmark isn’t even mentioned when discussing World War Two. Furthermore, Denmark is almost completely left out of the Holocaust conversation as well; with Poland and the German frontier taking center stage. It’s the irrelevancy that saved the approximate 7,500 Jews in Denmark (Crowe, pg 286). Thousands of Danish Jews managed to survive World War Two because of Denmark’s cooperation with the Nazi’s, deliberately ignoring Hitler’s calls to get rid of the Jews, and the courageous Danes who helped thousands of Jews escape to Sweden. Machiavelli famously said in his book The Prince, “The ends justify the means.” Denmark’s political approach to World War Two perfectly illustrates this concept by Machiavelli. …show more content…
Duckwitz, clearly against the idea, asked Swedish authorities if they would take the Danish Jews and informed leaders in the Danish resistance about the Nazi plan. The Nazi ambassador’s mistake proved to be costly for the Nazis but critical for the Jews. Non-Jewish Danes started to hide Jews, the Lutheran church of Denmark spoke out against the Jewish oppression, and even King Christian X stood in solidarity with the Jews by threatening to wear a Star of David if the Jews were forced to as legend has it (Crowe, pg 287). Over time, the resistance became more organized and Danes started to smuggle Jews across the Danish straights into Sweden. This was a major success. The Gestapo only managed to arrest 461 Jews, but 7,220 Danish Jews made it safely to Sweden. Danish Jews survived World War Two because of the courage of the Danish government and the citizens of Denmark. If they had not stood in solidarity with their Jewish brothers and sisters, the 7,500 plus Jews would have been either slaughtered or put to work in concentration