Little known story of young German POWs forced to remove thousands of mines on Danish Coast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...WewjMTnKS-XP-NeQeHTd

I saw it. Not a happy, feel good movie.

I'd watch it. Is it fiction or based on history?

Would be curious as to how much history/background they give? As in, why the Danes might not like German soldiers right after the war? In early 1940 Germans invaded Denmark, the defenseless neutral small country on their northern border simply to help them with the logistics of invading another a neutral country still farther north (Norway). I don't think the Danes even put up any armed resistance to the Wehrmacht as they rolled north over the border (not that it would have made any difference).

And to what end, you may ask? The Nazis did all this (invade and occupy Denmark and Norway) in order to safeguard shipments of iron ore from Sweden. They were chronically short of steel and this was a strategic resource they were afraid the British Navy might throttle. So, yeah, take over two countries.

So, from the Danish perspective, the Germans invaded their country and occupied it for 4 years just to keep Swedish iron ore shipments coming. I am not a professional diplomat, but I can't imagine that's a good way to improve your popularity with the Danes.

And of course, if there were mines put on Danish beaches, it would have been by the Germans to keep the Allies from landing there. So there would be some reasonable justification in having German POWs remove them.

It's quite possible there were very young POWs - as their manpower was drained towards the end of the war, the Nazis put boys as young as 13 into "Volkssturm" units.

So it quite possibly could be historically based.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
And of course, if there were mines put on Danish beaches, it would have been by the Germans to keep the Allies from landing there. So there would be some reasonable justification in having German POWs remove them.

It's quite possible there were very young POWs - as their manpower was drained towards the end of the war, the Nazis put boys as young as 13 into "Volkssturm" units.

So it quite possibly could be historically based.

It is definitely historically based in the broad sweep. Although the specific details of the story were doubtless fictionalized. MASH was historically based.

I had a lot of sympathy for the German characters in the movie, and many in real life died. But there was no safe way to remove all those mines from the Danish coast. If the Germans had not been forced to do it, many Danes would have died in the process. That said, using prisoners for such labor probably violated the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

For the most part German soldiers were ordinary people pressed into service, quite unlike the SS and the Nazi fanatics. There are a lot of little known facts about World War II, and the behavior of the Allies, not just the Russians. The victors get to write history. Many of the German POWs lived relatively normal lives in captivity in the southern United States and even interacted with the locals. Alabama and Mississippi were two locations. The Russians did not treat German POWs very well at all. Many starved to death in prison camps exposed to the elements.

Send in the PMD!

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
I don't think the Danes even put up any armed resistance to the Wehrmacht as they rolled north over the border

They did, but their armed forces were small, weak, and scattered so they were utterly overwhelmed. In the face of that, and after the Luftwaffe communicated a threat to bomb the civilian population of Copenhagen unless the Danish government capitulated, Denmark surrendered after 6 hours of armed resistance.

The Danes suffered 26 killed and 20 wounded, and inflicted 3 killed and 17 wounded on the Germans.

quote:

The Nazis did all this (invade and occupy Denmark and Norway) in order to safeguard shipments of iron ore from Sweden

That was one of the goals, but not the sole reason. Other aims of the invasion of Denmark and Norway were to:

- cut off the British Royal Navy's access to the Baltic Sea
- render a WW1-style British naval blockade of Germany untenable
- secure access to Norwegian mines for raw materials like chromium, aluminum, copper, nickel, and molybdenum
- secure access to the renowned livestock, dairy, and poultry farms in Denmark - known at the time as the "Larder of Europe" - in order to ensure a greater food supply for Germany (after their near-starvation experience during World War 1)
- prevent Britain and France from basing troops in Norway (a plan that was already underway) and using it as a springboard for attacks on the rest of Europe
- gain access to Norwegian ports and fjords as bases for submarine and surface forces of the Kriegsmarine, with easy access to the North Sea and North Atlantic without transiting right next to Britain
- isolate Sweden and put Germany in an even stronger bargaining position, in order to ensure favorable trade deals (Sweden being a source of key war materials even beyond iron ore, like ball bearings, timber, tar oil, and trucks), as well as for other negotiations (like forcing Sweden to allow German troops and war material to transit their country)

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