Article written by Thomas Wegener Friis

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No sooner was World War II over than a new war had begun. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War divided not just the world, it also divided countries and even families. It was a conflict that pitted democracy against dictatorship, and with both sides armed with nuclear weapons, it was a conflict that threatened to annihilate mankind. Denmark was on the frontline between East and West, and before long a half million enemy soldiers stood ready to invade.

The end of the war in 1945 saw Europe celebrate the defeat of Nazism. Most looked towards a future of lasting peace, but instead Europeans saw their continent divided and the world pulled towards two polar opposite superpowers. The conflict pitted communist dictatorships led by the Soviet Union against the US and the Western democracies.

At the heart of the Cold War lie a political struggle and the threat of mass destruction posed by the new atomic weapons. The political struggle centred on whether states had the right to determine the direction of societal development. The communist parties of Eastern Europe believed they had discovered the elixir that would bring about the utopian civilisation, and they felt they had the right to force it down the throats of individuals or entire countries in order to bring it about. On the other side stood the West, who wished to defend itself and stop the spread of communism.
Denmark found itself on the frontline of the…

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