Truslen fra Tyskland og de tre reaktioner. Dansk forsvars udvikling 1900-1918

Resumé

The Danish Defence Minister, Peter Munch’s analysis was clear. Copenhagen Fortress and the armed forces could not defend Denmark against a great power attack. Instead, they would attract such attacks as the strong Danish Navy had done in 1807. To attempt a defence was futile and would only result in tragic death and destruction. This had been Munch’s understanding and argument for a couple of years when he played a leading part in the drafting of the new program text for the break-away new Social-Liberal (“Radical”) Party in spring 1905. This radical view of Danish defence policy became the signature part of the party program to mark the distance to the governing Liberal Party and the Prime Minister, Jens Christian Christensen, as he tried to reach a defence compromise with the political Right. In the years around the turn of the century, Munch had been right. German naval and military headquarters had been attracted by the undermanned status of the large, new Copenhagen Fortress. They had planned to take it by a coup landing prior to the start of a war with England. There were two alternatives to Munch’s solution. One was to remove the initial defence weakness that made a coup feasible. The other would create a neutrality defence policy and posture that made clear to Berlin that any English attempt to use Danish territory against Germany would meet e/ective armed resistance. The article gives an analysis of how the Danish army leadership endeavoured to remove weaknesses, and it follows how others soon led by the Commanding Admiral sought make the Danish neutrality defence posture credible and attractive to Berlin. Peter Munch was defence minister from late spring 1913 and during the First World War. The article follows how he worked with increasing focus and success from late 1916 to reduce the army’s ability to defend and thus cause tragic losses and destruction. During the war, the Commanding Admiral’s solution was reinforced and dominated Danish neutrality posture towards the belligerents. It matched the German Army’s need to concentrate on the requirements of the Western and Eastern Fronts. The situation changed in early 1918 with the German victory over Russia and the likelihood in spring 1918 of an Allied defeat in France that would free army forces to support the navy in the north again as had been planned around 1900. The surprisingly quick collapse of German power from summer 1918 obscured the collapse of both defence solutions to the Danish defence problem, and the limitations of Munch’s solution were not exposed until more than two decades later, when Germany finally had free military forces for the north.