Invasion of Denmark - a story of a skirmish

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Regarding the 9th of April episode – Invasion of Denmark and Norway

Hi all

My name is Jonas, I`m Danish and a great fan of WW2 week by week. I think the show is fantastic and very well presented by Mr. Indy. Thank you.
I do have one thing to add. I felt there was a lack of details on the invasion of Denmark. In fact it was rather brief and I felt it was a shame. Yes I am Danish myself so I am biased. Nevertheless, I give you here a description of some of the fighting that occurred in the early morning hours of 9th of April 1940.

At around 4 am on the morning of the 9th of April, the Danish garrison in the south of Jutland was alerted by the border gendarmes that a large force of armoured vehicles and motorized infantry had crossed the Danish frontier. The Danish troops, sleeping in their uniforms, were quickly mustered and issued live ammunition.
This story will follow the engagement of elements of 1st and 4th infantry company of the 4th Danish bicycle battalion under the command of Captain Bartholdy.

The objective of this ad-hoc force was to defend Bredevad (pronounced breevath) the center of the main line of resistance covering the narrow part of southern Jutland (from east to west).

The Danish force was armed with old Kragg-Jorgensen rifles (a 5 round bolt action rifle which had to reloaded with single rounds), Madsen (pronounced masen) machine guns (air-cooled with a box magazine like the Bren Gun) and a 20mm semi-automatic cannon with a 10-round magazine.

The Danish force had hardly arrived at Bredevad before the vanguard of the German force was spotted. Quickly Captain Bartholdy deployed his men in improvised defensive positions, behind walls, in ditches, behind trees and folds in the ground. The 20mm cannon was placed to cover the main road. The German force consisted of 4 tanks (Panzer I or II) 2 armoured cars and some motorcycle infantry.
The lead tank came up the road with a white flag. The Danish Captain hesitated when he saw the white flag and ordered a warning shot to be fired. The German tank discarded the white flag and drove straight towards the Danes.

The Captain yelled “range 300 meters. Give them all you got!” the next shot from the 20mm killed the German driver in the lead tank and the crew bailed out. The German tanks returned fire while the German infantry dismounted and deployed for an attack.

On the main road the three German tanks pushed on. The 20mm cannon hit one tank, that ended in a ditch, and another tank that drove into a tree. However, the last tank wounded all 4 gun crews.
Along the road the Danish light machine gunners stopped the assaulting German platoon but the German MG34s placed effective fire on the Danish squads and killed the Danish machine gunner Private Andersen. Private Søgaard took over the gun and fired several magazines until he too has killed. This enabled the German infantry to outflank the Danish position.

The Danish Captain ordered a withdraw to a large inn in the rear. At the inn the Captain took stock of the situation. He had no communication with higher headquarters, the position was outflanked, he had no artillery support and several of his light machine guns were put out of action.
He decided to surrender.

The German officers treated the Danes well and asked with surprise why the Danes had resisted. The Germans thought that they came to protect the Danes (against who the story doesn’t tell). One of the German soldiers said about the Danes “They are ugly soldiers, but they are cheeky fellows and they can shoot straight”.

Source
Børge Outzen “Danmark under anden Verdenskrig”
Translated by Jonas Alastair Juhlin

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Some pictures to go with the skirmish

440px-Danish_soldiers_on_9_April_1940

A Madsen Light Machine Gun. Two of the privates in the photo was Killed in Action during the skirmish at Bredevad 9th of April.

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I’ve colorized a few of those.

Weser%C3%BCbung-S%C3%BCd_Danes_2

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These are fantastic!

The Danish Army had two uniforms at the time. An older light stonegray uniform with a dark grey, almost black greatcoat and a lighter “British styled” khaki uniform as you illustrates well with your pictures

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Why, thank you. The work on the uniforms was surprisingly headache-inducing. BTW, when I was doing the first picture, I was playing Boyzone’s “Picture of You” in the background. :smile: I mean, look at it!

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Yes I guess they required some research. Great faces no doubt!

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I wonder what happened to the rest of the group in that photo…

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I dont know but it is a good question. I saw an interview with one of the survivors. He said they were disarmed and sent back to their barracks. A litle later they were sent home like nothing had happend.
I know that a few of the Danish army personel ended with either the Danish resistance and more joined the Danish Friekorps fighting with the germans on the eastern front.

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Thank you for sharing my friend, a little-known story to be sure. Philosophically speaking, I find casualties like this extremely fascinating, and a little depressing. Like, maybe it’s just me, but to be a soldier and to be killed so early on in the conflict, in such a little known battle, never to see how it all turns out, never to see how this conflict would change the world, just killed right then and there in a tiny skirmish. I know millions of people died in the Second World War, but many died in campaigns that have since been examined and re examined dozens if not hundreds of times. Everyone knows about the Fall of France, and Barbarossa, the US Island Hopping, D-day, El Alamein, the list goes on. It drives home for me that these were not just numbers in a book by some historian, not just characters in a story that somebody made up for the purposes of entertainment. They were as real and as breathing as I am typing this now. Sometimes we get disconnected from that.

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some of The 20mm mashine canons where maunted I sidecars of Nimbus motorcycles…
8479385-

some more but i dont ovn the pic so i provide a link to one
WWII - Combat MotorBikes - Made in Denmark. Pic heavy!!!!!!

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There is a 2015 movie about this, “Invasion day”.

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Are you talking about April 9th (2015)?

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Thanks for the comments all. I do like to research the war through the eyes of the ordinary soldier. These stories makes the history come alive.

It is true that many of the big battles have been research to the last details (I have more books that I care to count on the Normandy and Arnhem). This however was a bit of local history. During my army service we trained close to the sites of the skirmish.

Indeed it makes you think about the individuals, killed in a skirmish so early on, never to fully understand the global conflict that this war would turn into.

That is the reason why I like some individual stories in WW2 week by week among the grand politics and military strategies. Indy did it with the Great War.

regarding the film… did you mean this one ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmcttiebIN0

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I’m Danish, and my name is Jonas too! What a coincidence!

I’d just like to add, that while this was the main combat at the border, the invasion of Denmark also saw two separate paratrooper assaults - which I believe to be the very first of its kind - as well as the regular civilian ferries connecting the Danish islands to Germany were filled with troops on the morning of 9th of April, starting the invasion.

The Luftwaffe hit the (small) Danish airforce, destroying most planes before they could scramble. They then proceeded to bomb Copenhagen with propaganda leaflets - while, apocryphally, warning the government that if they could throw leaflets all over the city, they could firebomb it off the face of the earth as well.

I understand Denmark really means little in the big scheme of things of the war, and the main goal of the invasion was to use the airfield at Aalborg to support in the invasion of far more important Norway, but I stiil feel Indy went a bit too fast across the invasion of Denmark. That’s bias, I guess, but hey, there’s 5.5 million of us, if we aren’t biased towards ourselves, we would be forgotten!

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As thorough as Indy and the team often are, there is just so much detail that things have to get cut sometimes. It’s why I am posting my own information blurbs here on the website.

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Absolutely! Anyone else watched it?

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Me too. On that note, I will be posting about the progress of the U.S. election within a few days.

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Yeah, I know. That’s why I was happy to see this thread and wanted to expand a bit on it. Perhaps they will have time later to do specials on different countries and the occupation, and include some more on the invasion itself at that time.

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Hi Jonas

Funny to meet another Dane with WW2 interest on this forum. On another note I do hope that Indy and the team will do some specials with individual stories or they might include some on the regular show. I like it the way they did on The Great War

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That looked very interesting. My Danish leaves much to be desired however.

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