„Gentlemen of the press“. Danske journalister i britisk eksil 1940-1945

Resumé

“Gentlemen of the Press”. Danish Expatriate Journalists in Britain, 1940–1945
This article examines the journalists who belonged to the expatriate community in London 1940–1945. Based on archival material from Danish and British archives, it revisits a topic that has largely been approached within Danish resistance-historiography, now observing it through a transnational lens. It contemplates the expatriate community as a field of informal diplomacy in which journalists came to assume key roles. It maps the navigation of allegiances between the journalists and, on the one hand, the Free Danish movement in Britain and Sweden, and, on the other, British propaganda and intelligence agencies targeting Scandinavia. It argues that drawing on their international experience and networks, expatriate journalists came to function as “moderators” and liaison officers that smoothened relations between the expatriate community and British officials in the Foreign Office and the Political Warfare Executive. Thus, a group of journalists returned to Denmark after the war, bringing the experience of informal diplomacy with them. One may well ask about the legacy of this wartime intermezzo in post-war history of the press, given that many of them entered either the foreign service or assumed influential positions at leading newspapers.