The Isted Lion on an American military vehicle in Berlin in October 1945. The monument was erected in Flensburg Cemetery in 1862 to commemorate the Danish victory at the Battle of Isted in 1850. When Flensburg became part of Germany in 1864, however, the monument was moved to Berlin as a trophy of war. After the Second World War, it was brought back to Denmark at Danish request and exhibited at the Royal Danish Arsenal Museum (the present-day Danish War Museum). It remained at the museum until 2011, after which it was moved back to its original location in Flensburg by mutual German–Danish agreement. A new inscription marks its relocation: ‘as a sign of friendship and trust between the Danes and the Germans’. Photo: Royal Danish Library

The unwanted German refugees, 1945–1949

Many German citizens remained in Denmark in the immediate aftermath of the war. Repatriation for the remaining soldiers and officials from the occupying forces was settled relatively quickly, but some leading figures were detained and faced prosecution. Smaller army divisions remained to help clear the German mines laid on the west coast of Jutland. There were also around 240,000 civilian German refugees – mostly women, children and elderly people who had fled the chaos and violence in Germany in the final months of war, especially from the Soviet Union’s offensive advance in the east. 14 million Germans fled or were expelled, and some of these ended up sailing across the Baltic Sea to Denmark on evacuation ships organised by the Nazi authorities. On the demand of the German occupying power, they were accommodated in schools, community centres and similar institutions.

The German refugees proved to be a major problem for the Danish authorities when they took control after the liberation. The refugees could not be sent home immediately because the German state had collapsed, and their number gradually increased to around 300,000. Refugee camps were set up and it was strictly forbidden for Germans and Danes to have contact with each other, in an expression of the extreme anti-German sentiment prevalent at the time. After the Danish government exerted intense pressure on the Allied occupation authorities in Germany, the German refugees were gradually sent home – the last in 1949. Approximately 17,000 refugees, including many children, died whilst in Denmark, partly because many of them were injured or in poor health upon arrival, but also because not all camps had a well-functioning health care system.

Bornholm under Soviet occupation, 1945–1946

As already mentioned, the liberation euphoria of 4–5 May did not embrace the Baltic island of Bornholm, where the German occupation forces did not surrender as they did in the rest of Denmark. The Baltic Sea was an important escape route for German soldiers and civilians, and the German commandant on the island would only surrender to British forces. For this reason, on 7 and 8 May the Soviet Union bombed the Bornholm towns of Rønne and Nexø. From 9 May 1945 until 5 April 1946 Bornholm was occupied by the Soviet Union.

The occupation of Bornholm was an indirect consequence of the power struggles between the four Allies – the USA, Britain and France on one side and the USSR on the other – which had started during the Second World War and which, in its final weeks and days, centred on territories. No agreement between these great powers had been reached in advance about the status of Denmark. In a race against time, Britain took over much of the country, which in turn became a part of the Western occupation zone, while the USSR and the Red Army ended up close to Lübeck and Kiel, approximately 100 km from the Danish border. Bornholm thus became a geostrategic pawn, and British and Danish politicians were reluctant to issue demands in order to avoid an escalation of simmering oppositions and conflicts. Negotiations between the USSR and the Danish government began in early 1946. The result was that Soviet forces left Bornholm on the condition that only Danish – not British or American – troops were stationed on the island.

Greenland – the last Danish colony

Geopolitical strategy and international relations also had a decisive impact on Greenland. Greenland was still formally a Danish colony until 1953, but from the beginning of the twentieth century it had been moving in the direction of greater independence under the auspices of the Greenland Provincial Council, established in 1911. Greenland’s connection to Denmark was severed during the Second World War when it temporarily became a protectorate of the USA as part of a defence agreement, negotiated not with the government in occupied Denmark, but with the Danish envoy in Washington, Henrik von Kauffmann. The agreement allowed for the establishment of American military bases on the island. After the war and following much hesitation that was not reduced by American proposals to buy Greenland, the Danish government finally allowed the USA to remain and expand its presence there, enshrined in a new defence agreement signed in 1951.

International relations during the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War were thus significant for the relationship between Greenland and Denmark and for the Greenlandic population. Greenlanders were inspired by new ideas of self-determination, and they also had greater access to imported goods, which gave them a new sense of self-awareness. Among the Greenlandic elite, this led to a desire for modernisation to replace old Danish colonial policy, which had prioritized the protection of traditional ways of life over economic development and social modernisation. Danish politicians grasped the Greenlandic desire for modernisation.

Wider international developments made the Greenland issue an urgent matter for the Danish government. Globally, the post-war period was marked by anti-colonialism, and the abolition of the colonial system of power was viewed as just and necessary. In order to get into ‘good company’, Danish politicians wanted to rid themselves of the stigma of being a colonial power. In 1948 the Greenland Commission (G50) was established for this purpose; in its 1950 report, it put forward proposals for the restructuring of Greenland’s status. Initially, this resulted in legislation that led to the modernisation of social, economic and business conditions, as well as equality between Danish and Greenlandic legal practice. With the revised constitution of 5 June 1953, Greenland acquired the status of a Danish county (amt) and became represented by two members in the Danish Folketing. The Greenland Provincial Council and the UN supported this solution, though it was later criticized for overriding people’s right to self-determination and for not offering Greenland a referendum on national independence.

Modernisation and Inuit identity

Greenland was faced with very rapid modernisation, affecting infrastructure, urbanisation, technology, business, education, housing, social structures and many other aspects of society. However, there were still some asymmetries. The so-called ‘birthplace criterion’ (fødselskriterium) meant that until 1990 people born in Greenland received less in salary than Danish employees working in Greenland. Furthermore, what became known as ‘the specific Greenlandic conditions’ meant that parts of Danish legislation were not fully implemented or were implemented differently in Greenland, for example legal status in paternity cases and inheritance rights for children born out of wedlock.

Around 1970, many Greenlanders had developed a stronger awareness of Greenlandic identity, language, culture and history. This was partly due to modernisation and education, and partly due to international currents in the wake of the UN’s focus on indigenous peoples, human rights and decolonisation in many parts of the world. In the

1960s, the Canadian government set up schools where students from all over the Arctic could meet for the first time. A new generation of Inuit activists from Greenland, Canada and Alaska initiated political and cultural collaborations, emerging as a united group and drawing attention to the conditions and demands of the indigenous Arctic people. The first conference on Arctic development took place in France in 1969. The next, in Copenhagen in 1973, created the background for the establishment of the multinational NGO Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), which has since aimed to safeguard the culture, natural environment and rights of the Inuit population.

One million more inhabitants

In 1945, the population of Denmark was just over 4 million. By 1973, this figure had risen to 5 million. During the post-war era, the population thus increased by approximately one million – or around 25%. This was mainly due to longer life expectancy and falling infant mortality rates. The age demographic of the country changed so that more of the population was made up of elderly people and less of children and young people. Life expectancy in 1946–1950 was 67.8 years for men and 70.1 years for women, but this rose to 70.9 and 76.5 respectively for the period 1971–1975. This shift in the age profile of the population was also due to a decrease in the fertility rate – and consequently the birth rate – throughout the twentieth century, with the brief exception of a few years in the 1940s.

This decline was particularly noticeable from the mid-1960s, and became a clear feature of the post-war period. The main reasons for the changes in population patterns were economic progress, welfare policy and medical advances in relation to disease control and contraception. These factors affected people’s opportunities and choices and led to major cultural and sociological changes. Having several children was no longer an economic advantage or a necessity for production in agriculture or the trades, and significantly improved public benefits meant that the need to be supported financially and cared for by one’s children and children-in-law was no longer as urgent.

Medical advances and public health

Improved public health was particularly noticeable in the post-war period. Before the Second World War, medical progress in controlling diseases and epidemics meant that fewer people died of what later became relatively harmless infections, such as scarlet fever and measles. Penicillin was discovered in 1928, and following its mass production and distribution to the Allied troops during the Second World War it became a common treatment for bacterial infections with previously high mortality rates, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrhoea.

In Denmark, childhood vaccination programmes were carried out against the bacterial diseases diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough from the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. From 1946 to 1986, schoolchildren in Denmark were also vaccinated against tuberculosis. However, the post-war era saw an increase in two other types of disease: cancer and cardiovascular conditions. This was partly because people were living longer and partly because many people were now living a less healthy lifestyle that involved more smoking and alcohol, unhealthier food and less physical activity.

The pharmaceutical industry invested heavily in the development of new treatments. Along with improved surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy became a part of standard treatment protocols offered to cancer patients, who now had a better chance of surviving their diagnosis. Heart medicine, pacemakers and insulin also helped to relieve the consequences of age-related conditions and an unhealthy lifestyle.

Immigration and new population groups

In the first decades after the Second World War, the Danish population was linguistically, ethnically and culturally largely homogeneous, as it had been since 1864. However, an increasing number of foreign population groups began to settle in Denmark, each wave reflecting the country’s increased internationalisation and migratory flows. Following the establishment of the Nordic Council in 1952, a Nordic passport union and a common Nordic labour market was introduced in the 1950s, giving citizens from the other Nordic countries the right to reside freely and work in the different countries of the region. From the mid-1950s, there were also smaller waves of immigration (a few thousand refugees at a time) from various dictatorships and military regimes, such as Hungary, Poland and Chile.

During the 1960s there was a need for extra labour, especially in industry. Male workers from countries such as Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece and Pakistan travelled to Denmark. In 1970, approximately 20,000 ‘foreign workers’ (fremmedarbejdere) or ‘guest workers’ (gæstearbejdere), as they were called, resided in Denmark at the invitation of Danish employers. The original idea was that these workers would help to relieve acute temporary labour shortages, but gradually more began to settle permanently and establish themselves and their families in Denmark. The new labour force was not a politically controversial issue during this period, though the possibility of downward wage pressure was raised by the trade union movement and some politicians. It was only with the oil crisis, the start of the economic downturn and rising unemployment in the 1970s that immigration began to be discussed as an economic and political problem on a larger scale. This resulted in the government launching an immigration ban in November 1973, inspired by similar initiatives in other western European countries. At the time, however, religious and cultural differences were not major topics of debate.

Labour Immigration in the Post-War Era