113 The Shell House Raid.pdf

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battle

after the

SHELL HOUSE

9 770306 154080

SHELL HOUSE RAID

Number 113

£3.25

NUMBER 113

Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey

Editor: Karel Margry

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With its avowed neutrality reinforced by a treaty of friendship with Germany, the

invasion of Denmark in April 1940 came as a rude awakening. To avoid any provoca-

tion of its powerful neighbour the country had even reduced its number of soldiers

under arms and a mere 15,000 men were available to resist the German landings in

the early hours of Tuesday, April 9. Most of the troops laid down their arms without a

fight, total Danish casualties numbering 13 killed and 23 wounded, German forces

suffering the loss of 20 killed and wounded. The capital Copenhagen was buzzed by

low-flying German bombers as the troopship

Hansestadt Danzig

carrying an assault

battalion passed the Danish coastal batteries without a shot being fired at her. She

tied up at a pier in the heart of the city where the troops disembarked to head

straight for the Citadel, location of the Danish General Staff headquarters which had

previously been reconnoitred by General Kurt Himer, the Chief-of-Staff of the German

task force, who had visited the city in plain clothes two days previously. Just before 6

a.m King Christian agreed to capitulate and surrender Denmark’s military installa-

tions and to hand over control of the press and broadcasting facilities to the Ger-

mans. In return, he was promised that the Third Reich would respect Danish neutral-

ity, allow the government to continue, and maintain its army and navy.

Above:

German officers outside Copenhagen’s City Hall on April 9. (MDR)

Regardless of a non-aggression treaty

signed by Germany and Denmark in May

1939, on April 9, 1940 German armed forces

crossed the frontier in Jutland and at the

same time disembarked from ships in Copen-

hagen, and several other harbour towns.

Germany had been making preparations for

an invasion of Denmark for at least four

years and used this time to spy on Danish

defences and to set up secret networks inside

the country. The Danish armed resistance

was futile and short lived and within hours

the Danish government had given orders for

surrender.

Denmark was declared by Germany to be

a ‘Model Protectorate’ and the Germans

stated that they would respect Danish neu-

trality and refrain from interfering in internal

affairs. In return, the Danes had to surrender

military installations, press and radio free-

dom, and external communications, and to

suspend all relations with Germany’s ene-

mies. However the Danish armed forces and

police were allowed to remain intact, and the

King and his government permitted to con-

tinue to govern.

Most Danes accepted the German occupa-

tion sullenly but, even so, resistance organi-

sations quickly began to take root. In the fol-

lowing five years the Resistance gained

strength, destroying any co-operation

between the Danes and the occupiers, and

nearly succeeded in stopping logistic commu-

nications with Norway. At the same time it

tied down large German military forces

needed elsewhere.

CONTENTS

THE SHELL HOUSE RAID

WAR FILM

The Date of Infamy on Screen

UNITED KINGDOM

Deerbolt Camp

WRECK RECOVERY

The Icelandic Battle

IT HAPPENED HERE

Bravery in New Guinea

REMEMBRANCE

Commemorating Saskatchewan’s

War Dead

Front Cover:

The raid on the Gestapo head-

quarters in Copenhagen — contemporary

shots taken in March 1945 set against a pre-

sent-day oblique taken on the approach route

to the Shell House. (Jens Ottesen)

Centre Pages:

The sinking of the

Arizona

—

then, and as recreated in Jerry Bruckheimer’s

new film

Pearl Harbor.

(Touchstone Pictures)

Back Cover:

Unique tribute to Pilot Officer

Vernon Byers who failed to return from the

attack on the Ruhr Dams — see page 52. (Doug

Chisholm)

Photo Credits:

AWM — Australian War Memor-

ial, Canberra. IWM — Imperial War Museum,

London. MDR — Museum of Danish Resistance

1940-1945, Copenhagen.

Douglas Hinton, our author, matched the photo in April 2000.

THE SHELL HOUSE RAID

Ebbe Munck, war correspondent for the

Copenhagen newspaper

Berlingske Tidende,

Denmark’s oldest newspaper, heard the

news of the occupation while in Finland. He

felt that Denmark must resist the occupiers,

and if the Danish government would not act,

the Danish people themselves must take

action. Munck returned to Denmark and in

secret made contact with officers of the mili-

tary intelligence service. With the co-opera-

tion of this organisation which became

known as ‘The League’, a network was

arranged to collect information on all enemy

troop movements and shipping, and the

means of communicating this information to

Sweden was put in place. Munck then took

the position as correspondent for

Berlingske

Tidende

in Stockholm. There he made con-

tact with the British and arranged to send the

intelligence material to England. His reports

started in the latter half of 1940 and contin-

ued for the duration of the war.

While Munck was setting up his intelli-

gence organisation, the Special Operations

Executive was being created in London with

the purpose of supporting subversive activity

in enemy-occupied territory. The leader of

the Scandinavian section of SOE, Charles

Hambro, went to Stockholm to confer with

Munck and they agreed on an outline for

SOE policy for Denmark. The agreement

was that the existing intelligence network

would be under Danish control and that the

SOE was to give support, to provide training,

and to supply radio equipment and weapons

as the Resistance movement grew. In its pol-

icy towards Denmark, SOE also hoped to

destroy any co-operation between the Ger-

By Douglas Hinton

mans and the Danish government. However,

the first priority of the movement was intelli-

gence gathering and sabotage, although

actions were to be kept low-key until

strength was built up.

One crucial element in the Resistance’s

success, was that of propaganda to waken the

Danish people from their passivity. The

means of doing this was through the illegal

press and broadcasts by the BBC. The under-

ground press began in the first week of occu-

pation and grew into the most powerful tool

of organised resistance. The BBC at first

confined itself to war news, the activities of

Danes abroad, and other such topics, as it

would have been disastrous for the broad-

casts to excite sabotage and resistance before

the movement had gained sufficient strength

to carry it out.

The Danish government was successful in

resisting most demands during the first year

of occupation, but thereafter the Germans

began to drop their policy of allowing Danish

self-government, and to increase the force of

their requirements. When the Danish gov-

ernment resisted, Germany countered by

threatening to cut off all supplies of fuel and

coal of which Denmark had no natural

resources. The arrogance of the occupiers

continued to grow and, when conciliation did

not give the required results, force was

employed, but far from destroying the Dan-

ish will to resist, the Germans instead

destroyed Danish apathy.

After the occupation of Denmark, the

first embryo resistance organisation was

set up by Ebbe Munck. (MDR)

In January 1943, the RAF began to bomb

targets in Denmark. German military instal-

lations were attacked and on January 27 the

shipbuilding yards of Burnmeister and Wain,

which produced diesel engines for German

U-Boats, were bombed in Copenhagen.

These raids were welcomed in Denmark and

the Danish public openly showed their pro-

Allied feelings. Before long acts of sabotage

increased, alarming the Germans as most of

it was carried out against firms producing

war material.

Co-operation between SOE and the Dan-

ish military resistance organisation became

less important at this time, because The

League did not want to be involved in active

sabotage and they were also vulnerable if the

Germans took action against the Danish mil-

itary (which, in fact, later happened). Instead

SOE decided to give more support to civilian

groups. These groups received shipments of

arms and training and a countrywide resis-

tance organisation came into being, sup-

ported by 18 SOE agents.

During the summer of 1943 the strength of

the resistance groups continued to increase

with a steady supply of arms and by weapons

manufactured in secret workshops or stolen

Left:

German guards on duty outside the Royal Palace. (MDR)

Right:

Time marches on

in Copenhagen but the face of Amalienborg Castle remains unchanged.

from the Germans. In July there was an aver-

age of three acts of sabotage a day and in

August these doubled. The Germans coun-

tered this increase by sending in the Gestapo

to destroy the Resistance and to cower the

population. Nevertheless, despite increas-

ingly harsh methods used by the Gestapo,

the will to resist continued to grow.

Dr Werner Best had been appointed as

Hitler’s plenipotentiary in Denmark in

November 1942. He advised a moderate pol-

icy in dealing with the Danes but was over-

ruled by Berlin. Open insurrection broke out

in several towns, most notably in Odense,

Esbjerg, and Aalborg, and these riots and

strikes soon spread to Copenhagen. Conse-

quently, Berlin sent orders to Dr Best to take

over the Danish government. On August 28,

1943, total control was passed to the

Wehrmacht, thus achieving SOE’s wish of a

total break between the Germans and the

Danish government.

On the morning of August 29, the people

of Denmark awoke to find German guards at

all public buildings and the King a prisoner.

Army and Navy personnel were made pris-

oners of war, although before the Germans

could get control of the royal dockyards, sev-

eral naval vessels were scuttled and other

ships at sea were either sunk or sailed to

Sweden. Only the police were still left

untouched.

With the removal of the Danish govern-

ment, people were freed to act according to

conscience, unfettered by official decrees.

The Germans were aware of this and tried —

but failed — to form a new government.

However, in order that the administration of

the country could continue, an agreement

was made that civil servants would stay in

their posts. After the government was dis-

banded several Danish patriots met on Sep-

tember 16 and formed the Freedom Council.

Although the composition of the Council

changed from time to time as members were

arrested or had to flee to Sweden, for the

remainder of the occupation Denmark was

governed by this secret underground com-

mittee, whose members were unknown to

the public until after the war.

DANISH MILITARY HQ

ROYAL PALACE

SHELL HOUSE

DAGMAR HOUSE

Dr Werner Best

(left)

was appointed the Reich’s ‘Protector’ in

Denmark in November 1942 but Berlin’s new hard line against

the increasing resistance led to the Gestapo being ordered into

Copenhagen in May 1943. Their first HQ was in the Dagmar

House on Radhuspladsen which had been taken over by the

Wehrmacht but in March 1944 the Gestapo commandeered the

headquarters of the Shell oil company — the Shell House — on

Kampmannsgade (illustrated on page 3). (MRD)

On July 12, 1944, the people of the city observed two minutes silence in response to

a plea by the Danish Freedom Council to demonstrate against the arrest and execu-

tion of resistance operatives. Here Danes stand defiantly with their backs to the Ger-

man (and Gestapo) headquarters in Dagmar House. On the roof can be seen the flak

positions which were attacked by the Mustangs during the raid on the Shell House

the following year. (MDR)

On October 1, the Germans moved to

intern the Danish Jews. Danish leaders, how-

ever, had been forewarned by Georg Ferdi-

nand Duckwitz, a German official, who

learned of the plan from Dr Best and the

warning enabled nearly all of the Jews to go

into hiding. Adolf Eichmann arrived on

October 3 to direct the roundup and by the

end of October, 472 Jews had been captured.

However, more than 7,000 were still in hid-

ing, and in an attempt to locate them, Gen-

eral der Infanterie Hermann von Hanneken,

the Wehrmacht leader in Denmark, offered

to release senior Danish military officers

who had been arrested on August 29. His

offer of reciprocation was refused but,

regardless of this, he shortly afterwards

released thousands of Danish military pris-

oners thus providing the resistance move-

ment with many new well-trained recruits.

When the invasion in Normandy began on

June 6, 1944, the Danish resistance received

orders from SOE to go into action on a large

scale and in one attack the Globus factory in

Copenhagen, which made aircraft parts for

the Germans, was totally destroyed. Other

‘City Hall Square’ 60 years later with the

town hall now minus its AA protection!

raids were carried out all over the country.

The Germans reacted savagely and began

the summary execution of arrested saboteurs

and hostages. Dr Best declared a state of

emergency in Copenhagen, including a cur-

few between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.,

and immediately 10,000 workers at the ship-

yards of Burnmeister and Wain went on

strike. Dr Best declared their action illegal,

but this only inflamed other workers who

promptly joined the strike. Soon the whole

city of Copenhagen was in open rebellion.

Thousands thronged the streets looting pro-

German shops, erecting barricades and

attacking German soldiers. The Germans

demanded that the strikes end, but the only

group with the power to bring a return to

order was the Freedom Council. The Council

presented a list of demands to which the

Germans were forced to agree, including the

end of the state of emergency, before the

strikers would return to their workplaces.

During the rebellion, several German divi-

sions were in the process of being moved

from Denmark and Norway to France to

help stem the Allied invasion and the strike

by the railway workers and sabotage of the

network in Jutland caused serious delays.

The track had to be double guarded at 200-

metre intervals which necessitated even

more soldiers to be sent from Germany at a

time when they could hardly be spared. Even

so, the Germans had to give up use of the

railways in northern Jutland as the tracks

were blown up quicker than they could be

repaired.

The Danish police had turned a blind eye

to the strikes and sometimes even joined the

strikers. The Germans disbanded the police

force and any policemen considered likely to

join the Resistance were deported to Ger-

man concentration camps.

To quell the protest which was feared could lead to open insur-

rection, the Germans even deployed troops with artillery.

This is the corner of Borgergade and Klerkegade, a couple of

streets west of the Royal Palace . . . then and now. (MDR)

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