Going through my late father's papers, I found a newspaper clipping of the "Manifesto of the Work-Shy," published in 1978 by Marxist scholar Gustav Bunzel and writer Paul Smith. It served as the ideological foundation for SABAE (Sammenslutningen af Bevidst Arbejdssky Elementer —the Association of Consciously Work-Shy Elements), a political group from Aarhus that emerged from Denmark's Marxist and anarchist circles.

At a time when Denmark faced mass unemployment and stagflation, mainstream discourse moralised joblessness as individual failure. SABAE offered a provocative counter-narrative: Unemployment as liberation.

The late 1970's marked a high point of unemployment insurance in the Danish welfare state. The system had been fully built out and had not yet fallen prey to the neoliberal reaction. Back then the unemployed enjoyed benefits that were close to what they could have earned from wage labour. The period you could receive unemployment benefits was significantly longer and unlike later regimes, who saw the threat of economic destitution as a useful tool for disciplining the work force, it was a stated objective of the system to keep the unemployed within the insurance system by offering time limited employment to those at risk of expiring their benefits. Workfare, unpaid compulsory labour as a condition for receiving benefits, had not yet been implemented. While unemployment came with its downsides and hardships back then, conditions were a lot less harsh than they would be later on and unemployment truly did come with a form of freedom to have your own time at your disposal.

The manifesto parodies The Communist Manifesto for comic effect, but behind the satire lies a serious argument: that compulsory work serves capital's logic of exploitation, that freedom from labour could be genuinely liberating, and that the left's obsession with "meaningful work" often masked an inability to imagine life beyond the wage relation.

By ironically embracing the slur "work-shy", a term with a dark past in Nazi Germany, where the label Arbeitsscheu could mean a death sentence, Bunzel and Smith weaponised humour against the ideological fetishisation of work.

From the late 1970s, SABAE front figure and comedian Jacob Haugaard ran as an independent candidate for parliament as a joke; in 1994, to everyone's surprise including his own, he became the first and only independent ever elected to the Danish parliament, securing a seat on a platform promising tail-wind on bike lanes, less sex in teachers' break rooms and men's right to impotence.

The manifesto doesn't appear to be available online, so I have transcribed and translated it here.

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The Manifesto Of The Work-shy

A spectre is haunting the world — the spectre of freedom from work. All the powers of the old world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and the new Tsars, Carter and Schmidt, left-wing radicals, German police and Danish social workers.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried for not wanting to fight unemployment enough by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of inability to get more people in work, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

Freedom from work is already acknowledged by all world powers to be itself a power.

It is high time that the work-shy should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the scourge of unemployment with a manifesto drawn from the wells of reason.

To this end, work-shy of every stripe have assembled at a feast in Aarhus and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish, Danish, Swahili and Greenlandic languages.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of compulsory labour. And it came to pass in those days, when all the unemployed of the world were to be enrolled in men and women, that the three wise men appeared bearing gifts of balances of payment, coffee grounds and statistics, and proclaimed the joyful tidings: In the year to come, 200,000 Danish men and women shall be delivered from work — the employer's gift. Once, twice or four times in the month shall they go forth to fetch money; otherwise they roam free.

But how have the Pharisees and temple servants of work received this message? Have they hailed this greatest opportunity for freedom in history? No — they have filled souls with infantile shame. They have sung nauseating hymns in the minor key about idleness, which is supposed to be the root of all evil, where unemployment appears as the torments of purgatory and the rebaptism of work as the coming salvation. With horror they depict especially the misery of the newly confirmed as youth unemployed. They fear the apparition before them: Generations of young and work-free, who have all their time at their disposal — time that erodes the public school-instilled, pedagogy-reformed self-repression which work was meant to safeguard from kindergarten to state pension. Hypocritically they bemoan a society where the young are not corralled into the normality of working life. Even an office boy who fills and empties wastepaper baskets, dishwashers who retch with disgust in hotel kitchens, labouring boys who become men in the stench of the construction trailer, cafeteria girls whose maiden dreams are enveloped by the smell of deep-fryer fat and the spluttering burps of ketchup bottles — these live in the blessedness of the industrious, granted, as long as the wages are high enough. Yet in this choir, just voices sound! Progressive forces demanding meaningful work with radical expressions, while they underpay their domestic help because she works off the books. Meaningful work! Circles cannot be square, the camel cannot pass through the eye of the needle, the work of capital is filled with but one single meaning: Exploitation!

To comfort and soothe the middle-aged unemployed, the media serve up entertaining tragedies about the suicide, self-hatred and self-destruction of the unemployed. We hear of family life shattered when one has time to be together, nothing of the families who use this time. We hear of the ache for workmates, nothing of how 200,000 work-free people have time enough for companionship. In fact, they are thereby saying that freedom from the stupefying busywork of labour makes people feel superfluous, like the masochist who loses their identity without suffering. We are revolted by interviews with tear-soaked slave souls who long back to the prison of the factory and office landscapes.

When do we hear the television clothes-rack Bjørn Elmquist[^1] call attention to the following simple truth: Never have so many been able to live so well without lifting a finger — unless they feel like it — without waking with a jolt to the alarm clock, without flattened packed lunches consumed in the stale haze of the break room, without the frenzied St. Vitus dance choreography of piecework, without the armoured mass-murder's twice-daily repeated migration to and from the cult sites of work , without having to surrender the children to the state-employed brood-keepers. In all simplicity: Unemployment is freedom, like the deliverance from bondage under the pharaohs' madness, where the meaning of life manifested itself in the accumulation of the largest and the most pyramids possible.

Work-shy of All Countries, Unite!

Viborg, May 24th 1978

SABAE

(signed)

(The Association of Consciously Work-Shy Elements)

P.S.: Adherents of the above ideas may contact Carl Heinrich Petersen, Viborg, for further information.

Danish original

De arbejdsskys manifest

Et spøgelse går gennem verden, arbejdsfrihedens spøgelse. Alle magter i den gamle verden har sluttet sig sammen i en hellig klapjagt på dette spøgelse. Paven og de nye tzarer, Carter og Schmidt, venstreradikale, tysk politi og danske socialrådgivere. Hvor er det oppositionsparti, der ikke af sine regerende modstandere er blevet skældt ud for ikke at ville bekæmpe arbejdsløsheden nok? Hvor er det oppositionsparti, der ikke har slynget den brændemærkende beskyldning for manglende evne til at få flere i arbejde tilbage i hovedet på de mere fremskredne oppositionsfolk og på deres reaktionære modstandere?

Denne kendsgerning viser to ting.

Friheden fra arbejdet anerkendes allerede af alle verdens magter som en magt.

Det er på høje tid, at de arbejdssky giver hele verden klar besked om deres synsmåde, deres mål, deres tendenser og stiller et manifest fra fornuftens kilder op mod eventyret om arbejdsløshedens svøbe.

Med dette formål mødtes arbejdssky af forskelligste art til et festmåltid i Århus og gjorde udkast til følgende manifest, som vil blive udsendt på engelsk, fransk, tysk, italiensk, flamsk, dansk, swahili og grønlandsk.

Alle hidtidige samfunds historie er arbejdstvangens historie. Men det skete i de dage, da alverdens arbejdsløse skulle skrives i mand- og kvindtal, at de tre vise mænd med valutabalancer, kaffegrums og statistik kundgjorde det glædelige budskab: I det tilstundende år vil 200.000 danske mænd og kvinder være befriet fra arbejdsgiverens gave arbejdet. En, to eller fire gange om måneden skal de bevæge sig ud for at hente penge. ellers er de sluppet løs.

Men hvorledes har arbejdets farisæere og tempeltjenere modtaget dette budskab? Har de tiljublet denne historiens største mulighed for frihed? Nej, de har fyldt sjælene med infantil skam. De har sunget kvalmende salmer i mol om lediggangen, der skulle være roden til alt ondt, hvor ledigheden fremstilles som skærsildens pinsler og arbejdets gendøbelse som den kommende frelse. Med forfærdelse udmaler de især de nykonfirmeredes elendighed som ungdomsarbejdsløse. frygter skræmmebilledet, de ser: Generationer af unge arbejdsfri, der har hele deres tid til rådighed tid der nedbryder den folkeskole-indterpede, pædagog-reformerede selvundertrykkelse, som arbejdet ellers skulle have bevaret fra børnehave til folkepension. Hyklerisk begræder de et samfund, hvor de unge ikke indsluses i arbejdslivets normalitet. Selv en kontor-piccolo der fylder og tømmer papirkurve, opvaskere der brækker sig af væmmelse i hotelkøkkenerne, arbejdsdrenge der bliver mænd i skurvognens hørm, cafeteriapiger hvis ungpigedrømme ombølges af fritureosen og ketchupflaskernes spruttende bøvsen lever i de flittiges lyksalighed, bevares - blot lønnen er høj nok. I dette kor lyder der dog retfærdige stemmer! Progressive kræfter, der med radikale miner kræver meningsfyldt arbejde, mens de underbetaler hushjælpen, fordi hun arbejder sort. Meningsfyldt arbejde! Cirkler kan ikke være firkantede, kamelen kan ikke komme igennem nåleøjet, kapitalens arbejde er kun fyldt med en eneste mening Udbytning!

For at trøste og lindre de midaldrende arbejdsløse serverer medierne underhol dende tragedier om arbejdsløses selvmord, selvhad og selvfortabelse. Vi hører om det familieliv, der slås i stykker, når man har tiden til at være sammen intet om de familier der bruger denne tid. Vi hører om savnet af arbejdskammerater intet om at 200.000 arbejdsfri har tid nok til kammeratskab. Faktisk siger de hermed, at friheden fra arbejdets fordummende nusseri får mennesker til at føle sig overflødige, som masochisten der taber sin identitet uden lidelse. Vi væmmes ved interviews med grådkvalte slavesjæle, der længes tilbage til fabriks- og kontorlandskabernes fængsel.

Hvornår hører vi TV-tøjstativet Bjørn Elmquist gøre opmærksom på følgende enfoldige sandhed: Aldrig har så mange kunnet leve så fedt uden at røre en finger - med mindre de gider selv - uden at vågne spjættende til vækkeuret, uden fladtrykte madpakker der indtages i kantinernes harske fims, uden akkordens opskruende Skt. Veits-dans-koreografi, uden det pansrede massemords to gange dagligt gentagne folkevandring til og fra arbejdets kultsteder, uden at skulle overlade børnene til de statsansatte yngelplejere. I al enfoldighed: Arbejdsløsheden er frihed som udfrielsen fra slaveriet under faraonernes vanvid, hvor livets mening manifesteres i akkumulationen af størst og flest mulige pyramider.

Arbejdssky i alle lande, foren jer!

Viborg, den 24.5. 1978

SABAE

(sign.)

(Sammenslutningen af Bevidst Arbejdssky Elementer)

PS: Tilhængere af ovenstående ideer kan henvende sig til Carl Heinrich Petersen, Viborg, for yderligere oplysninger

[^1]: State TV journalist at the time, later Liberal Party and “Radical Left” party politician.

I hope Santa brings us all communism this year

This is my translation of a chapter in Danish communist criminal defense counsel Carl Madsen's (1903-1978) book “Den Gode Læge” (The Good Doctor) from 1966. The chapter is the manuscript of a talk given in 1965.

Although the text is dated, the points made are still relevant, both in a Danish context and in a more general sense. In the talk, Madsen outlines Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and uses specific examples from the Danish legal system to underline his points, drawing on his practical experience as a defense counsel and his lived experience as a survivor of the Communist Law. Using the example of WWII-era persecution of communists to argue that the courts first and foremost serve the ruling class and will disregard written law if put under enough pressure. Madsen goes on to argue that the lay element in criminal justice in the form of juries and lay judges is mostly illusory and without any practical significance. He also argues that the courts are instruments of class power since they are organs of a class-based state. Additionally Madsen points to how the true centre of criminal justice is not the courts but the prosecution whose decisions to charge offenders are mostly rubber-stamped by the courts and whose decisions not to charge offenders are exempt from meaningful scrutiny.

I have previously posted two other chapters from Madsen’s book:

• Can It Be Different?, describing a visit to a Soviet labour camp in 1965
• Criminal Justice In The German Democratic Republic

CW: This is a text written in 1965 by a man born in 1903. While Madsen was a principled communist who defended many socially progressive causes, his views on gender were typical for the patriarchal ideas of the time. The text contains a few instances of sexist language as well as a claim about the trustworthiness of the testimony of CSA victims that was as wrong and harmful then as it is today. They do not detract from the argument made in the text though and I have kept them in the text to preserve the integrity and accuracy of the piece.

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Are They Class Judges?[^1]

Everything was gray, fortune was unkind, in that little town I thought I left behind. I was so alone, no one heard my plea, nothing but the wrong that ever followed me. Then I went to see the Old Judge, wise and mild, with his snow-white hair and his understanding smile, and now I know winter’s just a fleeting child, now my heart is April-fresh and free from guile.

For the Old Judge’s quiet words were like a key, gently saying: “Set the one who wronged you free.” If that wrong should ever come back haunting me, I will go again to him, and I’ll be free.

• Text: Thomas. Music: Verner Frederiksen ... and actually broadcast on Danish radio.

If one raises the question among a circle of jurists of whether Danish judges are class judges, one engages both the emotions and prejudices of most.

This is connected to the fact that bourgeois jurisprudence is arguably the wealthy relative of theology, but more boisterous and just as uncultivated, and notably without any real philosophical or cultural background.

Undeterred by the social thinkers and general philosophy of the last century, the bourgeois jurist clings to simple a priori dogmas. For example, that the courts float above the interest conflicts of the social classes.

For many a jurist, faith in the courts' formal and actual independence serves a similar function as faith in the Immaculate Conception does for a believing Catholic. In his youth, he might believe it himself, and later, he at least makes sure to raise his children to believe it.

The judges probably experience themselves as independent. Most of the time, at least. Socially speaking, many of them are a kind of overprotected incubator babies, hatched in thermostat-controlled hotbeds. They are rather unburdened by knowledge of the population's strife and toil, of the people's language and ethics. Even with nearly 40 years of forensic practice behind me, it still happens that I am startled by the striking ignorance of sensible judges about the society they live in and the people they judge. Words like 'class struggle' and 'class justice' must seem agitational, outdated, and emotionally charged to them, not to say vulgar, and yet these designations are merely common historical and philosophical categories and are used, at least by me, as such.

In these brief remarks, I can only identify, not analyze, this professional mindset—the social life-lie that allows the respectable judge to maintain his self-respect. It can be summed up as follows: the judge believes he rules independently of social factors, with as much fairness as is humanly possible, based solely on the law and the evidence presented. He believes that the law — in the broadest sense — and the law alone, is his guiding principle.

For my own part, I declare myself an adherent of a Marxist-Leninist conception of society. This conception presupposes the acceptance of a philosophy that is materialist and dialectical.

That it is materialist means — in contrast to the various idealist directions within philosophy, represented by Plato, Berkeley, Hegel, and others — that it fundamentally considers existence to be objective and knowable. That it is dialectical implies that it perceives the material, and thus knowable, world as a process of motion and a process of motion whose driving force is the quantitative accumulation of contradictions to the point where quantity transforms into quality. Modern cybernetic research is said to confirm dialectics.

The Marxist-Leninist conception of society is thus the application of materialist-dialectical philosophy to the historical development of human society.

This conception is the prevailing social doctrine in the socialist world. The social system of the socialist countries — including, for example, their foreign policy — has this doctrine as its premise. It remains incomprehensible to anyone without some training in this line of thought. That Danish jurists who serve as diplomats in the socialist third of the world are as ignorant of this as they are knowledgeable about which color of necktie is supposed to go best with blue suits, I mention merely in passing.

Marxist-Leninist theory views societal development as a natural-historical process governed by the laws of materialist dialectics. As Marxists and Leninists, we adhere to a monistic worldview. We also reject any dualism between society and nature.

The dialectical factor that has determined societal development throughout history, more than any other, is class struggle, the global tension between exploiters and exploited. In the present day, class struggle must be understood as a relation between social groups, rather than merely as an individual relationship between a given employer and his workers.

Historically, exploitation has taken multiple forms, but its foundation — and therefore the foundation of class struggle — is the historical fact that the most important means of production are owned, directly or indirectly, by an increasingly narrow and now highly internationalized upper class. Ownership of the means of production has never been more concentrated than it is in contemporary capitalist society.

This — in conjunction with other factors — means that the global class struggle, the tension between the starving masses and the upper class, has never been more acute than it is today.

The recognition of this should not be obscured by the fact that it has been necessary for the high-capitalist great powers, whose policy is dictated by monopolized capital, to establish a social cordon sanitaire between the countries of the socialist world and the utterly impoverished peoples in the former colonies, Latin America, and many other countries.

Private ownership of the means of production is, therefore, the basis of class society. It is not legal laws that create these property relations, but rather property relations that give rise to the laws. The position and true function of judges within this society is thus revealed.

The laws are a reflection of property relations, and the judges who rule based on these laws, or norms, as I would prefer to call them, are exercising the power of the wealthy when they pass judgment.

They are, in this sense, class judges. The essential function of the courts is to act as an instrument of power used by the ruling class to assert the privileges that form the basis of exploitation, privileges that are still being attacked by the exploited part of the population.

It is so for the wise, grey-haired, and benevolent judge. And the same goes for the state's other organs of power, such as the police and the military.

The state came into being and developed alongside the class struggle. In our time, state power is exercised autocratically by monopoly capital. I am not speaking here of legal forms, but of the social realities that underlie them.

We saw an early form of the direct exercise of state power by high finance in German Nazism and Italian Fascism. Now the form has become more streamlined and practical, as we know it in our Western nations, where capital exercises its domination under a guise of democracy.

If you compare the actual power structures, Hækkerup’s Denmark is like Hitler's thousand-year Reich, only the methods are smarter and undeniably, at least for now, more pleasant here in our part of the world.

If there happens to be anyone among my listeners who would like more detailed information on the philosophical foundations of socialism, I can recommend a book published by Dietz Verlag in Berlin in 1965, entitled Grundlagen der marxistischen Philosophie (Foundations of Marxist Philosophy). It contains the core philosophical material considered essential for students in socialist countries. For the Marxist theory of the state in particular, it is quite manageable to read Lenin's pamphlet The State and Revolution, which is available in various Danish editions.

In a lecture delivered in 1919, Lenin made the following remarks,which hit the central point of the Marxist-Leninist conception of the state.

Is the state in a capitalist country, in a democratic republic — especially one like Switzerland or the U.S.A. — in the freest democratic republics, an expression of the popular will, the sum total of the general decision of the people, the expression of the national will, and so forth; or is the state a machine that enables the capitalists of those countries to maintain their power over the working class and the peasantry? That is the fundamental question around which all political disputes all over the world now centre.

And Lenin answers:

you say your state is free, whereas in reality, as long as there is private property, your state, even if it is a democratic republic, is nothing but a machine used by the capitalists to suppress the workers, and the freer the state, the more clearly is this expressed.

He mentions Switzerland and the United States and states:

nowhere is this suppression of the working-class movement accompanied by such ruthless severity as in Switzerland and the U.S.A., and nowhere does the influence of capital in parliament manifest itself as powerfully as in these countries. The power of capital is everything, the stock exchange is everything, while parliament and elections are marionettes, puppets.

• Himmler: "Yes indeed, it is you, Herr Stamm, who are the police commissioner, but it is me who pulls the strings. (Illegal cartoon, 1943)

It was in 1919 that Lenin made this statement. Now, in 1965, the state's alienation from society is even more evident. The sovereignty of small nations has been annihilated; they are controlled by international capital groupings. In correspondence with this, the class struggle finds a characteristic expression in the national liberation struggles of oppressed peoples.

But what about reality? Does Danish reality actually correspond to these crude, agitational theories? Is there any empirical basis for such a characterization of our democratic state? Can one with any factual justification degrade our state institutions, including the courts, to class organs?

The courts are our subject of inquiry, and my thesis in this discussion is that our judges, too, are ultimately executive organs of dominant social forces, even if they do not always perceive themselves as such.

The recognition of the courts as class courts is concealed, and the public is largely deceived because the work of judges ostensibly consists of applying existing laws and other legal norms to facts and quasi-facts, which are established under the principle of the so-called free evaluation of evidence.

The central social function of the courts is to keep the people in check and safeguard the privileges of the ruling class and the foundation of exploitation: property rights. This is done, however, while carefully preserving the necessary democratic illusions. It is especially crucial to cultivate the belief that the courts are independent, both formally and in practice, and that they dispense a humane and impartial form of justice. Without maintaining this facade, the courts would be unable to fulfill their class function.

This duality between the real — the class character of justice — and the apparent — its freedom and independence — is of central importance to our discussion.

I will return to that point. But first, let me sharpen my thesis: I contend that our courts are class courts in the sense that they will fully and consciously disregard the legal order which they normally, at least formally and subjectively, uphold whenever state power demands it with sufficient force.

The Nazi regime in Germany represented the direct seizure of state power by German high finance. Its immediate purpose was to crush the revolutionary workers' movement with a level of violence that had, after all, been unavailable under the Weimar Republic. Furthermore, the intent was to use the state's military might to violently expand its sphere of exploitation. In reality, Hitler's Germany belonged to the Ruhr barons, just as the Federal Republic does, though in a slightly different guise.

Consequently, the occupation of Denmark must be seen as the country's incorporation into the unrestrained exploitation by German high capitalism.

Here, as everywhere else, the class struggle, under the given conditions, took on the form of a national liberation struggle. Within this framework, the conscious segment of the working class united with bourgeois patriots.

German high capital hardly found such willing legal henchmen in any other occupied country as they did in Denmark. The judiciary oriented itself frictionlessly towards the new upper class.

Under the new societal power structure, the courts shamelessly broke with all traditional law and justice. They fell in line with the collaboration governments and — to cite a particularly characteristic feature — sacrificed the lives and safety of Danish citizens.

The internments carried out under the Law on the Prohibition of Communist Activity and Agitation of August 22, 1941, serve as the classic evidence that our courts, when required, dispense an unconcealed form of class justice.

Since I dare not assume that the majority of my audience is fully aware of what transpired then, 25 years ago, I must provide a few, though I believe sufficient, details.

During the night of June 22, 1941, German forces launched a massive invasion across the borders of the Soviet Union. That same night, the occupation authorities here in this country demanded immediate measures to be taken against Danish communists.

Leading Danish police officials were summoned to the headquarters of the German police in Dagmarhus. There, they were presented with a list of 71 prominent Danish communists whose arrest was demanded. Among those listed were three members of parliament.

This list originated from the Danish police's intelligence division—Department D. All available evidence suggests it was handed over to the Germans by Police Commissioner Odmar, who recently retired with great honour.

Danish police immediately arrested everyone they could apprehend from this list. Furthermore, they arrested several hundred more on their own initiative and using other material.

Of course, communist activity was legal, and the party was represented in parliament by three members. Of these, Martin Nielsen was arrested immediately, while Aksel Larsen was taken into custody much later.

After several months of being held in overcrowded prison cells, the detainees were transferred to the Horserød camp. This took place on August 22nd, the very same day the Communist Law — passed unanimously by parliament — came into effect and Danish class justice swept into motion.

The Communist Law prohibited all communist activity and agitation. Furthermore, it stipulated that individuals who could be expected to violate the law in the future were to be arrested and interned immediately.

The internments were decided by administrative order of the Minister of Justice. His decisions had to be presented to a district court judge within 24 hours, and the judge would then rule on whether the order should be upheld. Under certain conditions, the judge had the power to overturn the administrative internment order.

The district court's ruling could be appealed directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the High Court.

On August 22nd and 23rd, 1943, District Court Judge, and currently High Court Judge, Arthur Andersen ratified the first 109 internment orders.

The internment orders were signed by the then Minister of Justice, Thune Jacobsen, and countersigned by his department head, Herfelt.

This same Herfelt later became Copenhagen's Police Commissioner and recently finished his career as a Supreme Court Judge. He is still alive.

Between 1941 and 1943, hundreds of internment orders were issued, including against people who were not, and had never been, communists.

Once Arthur Andersen was done ratifying the first 109 internment orders, all of his rulings were appealed to the Supreme Court.

The defense was taken up by Supreme Court Counsel Steglich-Petersen. However, I have been informed that the Supreme Court refused to either hear him or see him, and would not even accept any written submission from him.

I requested permission from the Supreme Court to examine the records from that period, but my request was denied. I had been looking forward to a debate this evening with Supreme Court Judge Hvidt, who had agreed to be my interlocutor. He has since cancelled, and I would be very surprised if this were unrelated to his being informed that I intended to focus my remarks on the Supreme Court's implementation of the Communist Law to illustrate the class character of our judiciary. This is a great pity, as I had hoped to clarify several obscure points in my understanding of the events of that time. The Justice, of course, would likely have had access to the court records that I have been denied.[^2]

However, I can at least confirm the following: Before the three Supreme Court judges forming the Court's appeals committee had reached their decision on the cases, they were given a stern dressing-down by the Court's president at the time, Troels G. Jørgensen, who is still alive.

He pre-empted the court's decision by publishing an article in the Nazified journal 'Juristen' (The Jurist). In it, he vouched for the constitutionality of the Communist Law and branded the Communist Party of Denmark a criminally corrupt organization.

The groundwork had thus been laid. Without a hearing and without defense, all 109 hostages had their internment orders ratified by the three noble Supreme Court judges.

Throughout the entire occupation, to my knowledge, there was not a single instance in which either the District Court or the Supreme Court overturned an internment order.

The current Ombudsman, Stephan Hurwitz, was also listed for arrest but was saved due to the interventions of the the Minister of Justice with the German authorities.[^3]

The internment camp was run by the current prison warden, Alfred Claudius Bentzen. The first handovers of internees to the Germans took place even before 1943, without this affecting the courts' practice of ratifying the internment orders in the least.

On the night of August 28-29, the camp was handed over to the Wehrmacht. 98 of the internees managed to escape, but 150 could not and were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. Many were shot, tortured, or starved to death. Nearly all of the survivors sustained the most severe damage to their bodies and health.

I have reviewed this case to provide a clear and accessible example of class justice as practiced by Danish judges — in flagrant disregard of our most precious laws, including those on high treason.

We who have witnessed Danish justice operate in this manner are utterly impervious to any talk of the courts' independence from societal power structures. We have seen the raw, utterly unconcealed, and bloody class justice in our own land. We need no further proof.

I put before this learned assembly an interesting legal problem — a small, concrete exercise in criminal law — how can one possibly justify that the judges and officials in question are not guilty of homicide?

Their actions caused the suffering and death of many. They must have been aware of this consequence with the degree of certainty required to establish intent. Can this be considered lawful? Since when does a state of necessity confer the power to sacrifice human lives and liberty? And what about the internments that not even the Germans requested? Or the internments under the Communist Law of individuals who were not, and had never been, communists? Or the continued judicial ratification of these orders after the first hostages had already been handed over to the Germans?

It is tragic when a mentally deviant person shoots down four young police officers. We can all agree about that. Against such an act, society must react and will react. But what of the judges who sentenced to an internment, the consequence of which we know, and which the judges who sentenced had to reckon with as a near possibility?

The conclusion I have drawn from these years of experience is that Danish class justice, dispensed by the most esteemed Supreme Court judges, does not hesitate to sacrifice innocent lives when called upon by the holders of power in society.

These judges have delved deep into the very nature of judicial authority. They have embraced the notion that the supreme law above all laws is power itself, and that to judge is to exercise that power. This power ought to be exercised in accordance with written or unwritten law, and one should avoid causing provocative affront to it. However, when there is no alternative, when the imperative of power clashes with the letter of the law, and when a decision is of vital importance to society's rulers, then judgment must be rendered even against the written law, the constitution, and proclaimed principles of justice.

From this point of view the judges who acted against their compatriots during the occupation may escape the label of murderers.

---

I will now turn to the criminal justice system under more peaceful circumstances, and I will highlight various peculiarities that characterize it as a class instrument. Primarily, I will attempt to demonstrate the fundamental duality that is a defining trait of our, and indeed all, bourgeois criminal procedure. This is its peculiar characteristic: that its true nature is obscured, masked by a democratic facade, so to speak.

Thus, the ordinary citizen is granted a role in the criminal justice system alongside the legal element. It is an attempt to avert the devaluation of the court's authority that would follow from it openly appearing as what it is, a class instrument. And the punitive justice system cannot function effectively if the court does not enjoy this authority.

This apparent popular influence is formally significant but, in reality, illusory, a political deception. In the years following the 1919 judicial reform and on into the 1930s, this form of public participation was known to us only through the work of jurors in certain criminal cases.

The juries were, or were supposed to be, the fulfillment of a promise made to the people during the infancy of the constitution, forced through by the semi-revolutionary class struggle in 1848-49. The promise remained unfulfilled until the First World War. The heightened class tensions that emerged in the war's aftermath made it impossible to delay judicial reform any further.

The system entered into force in 1919, and it soon became clear that in certain cases the jurors really did assert a popular sense of justice that conflicted with the legal one. This was especially true in cases of abortion.

One might easily assume that the point of lay participation was to adjust the norms and views on criminal justice asserted by the state’s officials by confronting them with the people’s opinions. That, however, would be a mistake.

By the 1930s, the class struggle had entered a new phase. Conditions in Denmark mirrored those in the wider capitalist world. Fascism and Nazism — expressions of big capital's drive to seize state power directly — were gaining strength. Reactionary forces triumphed, both within and outside the Social Democratic Party, while the communist movement was weak. It was in this context that reactionary elements pushed through a reform of the Administration of Justice Act. This reform formally expanded public influence but, in reality, liquidated it.

Abortion cases were exempted from jury trial and the concept of the institution was compromised by having jurors not only deciding the question of guilt but also participating in sentencing. In these deliberations, each professional judge has four votes, while each juror has one.

The practical impact of including jurors in sentencing is nil. However, this formal participation is presumed to make them less inclined to acquit defendants than they might otherwise be. It is virtually inconceivable that all the lay judges would ever vote as a bloc against the professional judges, whereas the three judges can easily reach a consensus on sentencing.

Concurrent with this neutering of the jury system, the use of lay judges was introduced in the majority of criminal cases that do not proceed as guilty plea cases. Periodically, the jury system — which remains the only court where laypeople formally have the primary authority to decide the question of guilt — comes under attack from reactionary and legal-professional circles.

In the sole domain where the popular element ever managed to assert an independent viewpoint against the professional judiciary, it was defeated and removed from its position. The law did not adapt to the legal consciousness of the people, and in a stable capitalist state, it never will.

The situation is now that we have laypeople in the criminal justice system in a few jury trials, where they only rarely assert themselves against the state element, which operates through the public prosecutor and the jury-instructing presiding judge, who rounds off the procedure with a judicial instruction that almost always shapes itself as an ex cathedra evaluation of evidence. The legal presiding judge's concluding prosecution is the last thing the jurors hear before they decide the question of guilt.

Alongside the jury institution, we have the system of lay judges. However, I am convinced that they generally do not assert any independence from the professional judge, particularly not in the High Court. If the lay judges actually exerted any independent influence in their cases, this would be reflected in the number of acquittals. One can reasonably assume that it is extremely rare for the lay judges to rule against the professional judge and convict a defendant. The most recent crime statistics available to me are from 1961. In that year, 616 cases with lay judges, involving 670 defendants, were appealed to the Eastern High Court. Out of these 670 defendants, only 12 were acquitted at both the district and high court levels. The court changed the verdict from guilty to not guilty for seven defendants, and from not guilty to guilty for 35.

This statistic indicates that the lay judges’ influence on the outcome is negligible. The indictment forms the basis for the ruling in virtually every case, yet the assessment of the prosecuting authority is not good enough for this.

What, then, is the reason that the considerable lay element of the criminal justice system has so little practical impact?

The answer is not hard to find. The participants in the criminal justice system are not drawn from the population at large, but solely from its older[^4], upper, and middle strata. These are the demographic groups that side with the capitalist state, either due to their social standing or because of the dominant functionary mentality that pervades most of the middle class.

I acknowledge that the documentation for this claim is quite dated. However, to the best of my knowledge, no newer studies exist than the one conducted by High Court counsel Robert Mikkelsen, who compiled his data by reviewing all the annual lists and cross-referencing them with available statistics on the population's occupational distribution.

An update to this study would be desirable; however, I have no doubt that it would reveal a similar pattern.

I will now present some characteristic details from these older investigations.

In the period in question, Denmark's 68,000 farmers had provided 3,483 jurors, whereas the 103,000 smallholders had provided only 740. Consequently, farmers were overrepresented by a factor of seven compared to smallholders.

At that time, Denmark had 40,000 agricultural laborers and 100,000 farmhands, but they had no representation whatsoever. Furthermore, while there was roughly one juror for every 20 farmers, there was only one for every 200 fishermen. In the crafts and industries, master craftsmen were far more heavily represented than journeymen. In Copenhagen, for instance, the ratios showed one juror for every 19 master bakers, every 13 master masons, and every 9 master carpenters. For the journeymen in these same trades, however, there was only one juror for every 100 to 150 men. Overall, master craftsmen were consistently overrepresented by a factor of ten compared to their journeymen.

Among workers, the skilled were far more heavily represented than the unskilled. Across the entire country, there was only one juror for every 320 manual laborers. The same pattern held in commerce: there were 789 representatives for independent shopkeepers, while the entire national retail workforce only had 45. Furthermore, there were 240 directors asking the jurors compared to only 227 from subordinate office staff.

Independent restaurateurs were represented by 10 jurors, whereas their subordinate staff provided only seven. The pattern shifts again within the liberal professions. For architects, teachers, doctors, and journalists, there was one juror for every 50 to 100 practicing members of each profession.[^5]

Robert Mikkelsen concludes that the juries are comprised of representatives from the middle and upper classes. Consequently, the working class wields far less influence in the criminal justice system than its numerical size would entitle it to.

I can only agree with Mikkelsen when he writes:

...that the juries have nevertheless proven to be more progressive than the professional courts merely demonstrates how backward the latter are in their development, not that the lay courts represent the legal consciousness of the Danish people.

We must of course note that even a formally democratic electoral system would by no means deprive the lay courts of their now so pronounced class character. In capitalist society, the state, through the press, the educational system, the high voting age, etc., will prevent the people's legal consciousness from asserting itself, in the same way that the democratic parliaments of the capitalist states absolutely do not mean that 'the people' rule…

When debating whether the courts are class courts, one can indeed establish as a fact that the working population is virtually unrepresented among lay judges and jurors, and that the lay element there is play no independent role. The only beneficial effect of the lay element, in my view, is that it forces both prosecutors and defense lawyers to prepare their cases more meticulously.

The manner in which the prosecution — the dominant factor in criminal justice — works is a very significant element in the discussion of whether the courts — and I am speaking here only of criminal justice — are class courts. The prosecution works behind closed doors, and it follows an expediency principle in the decision of the charging question, such that charges can only be brought when the prosecution deems that the case can be carried through to a conviction. We do not have the small safety valve that one has in Norway, where there is a subsidiary access to private prosecution.

It is my opinion that the courts show nowhere near the necessary criticism with regard to evaluating evidence. The activity of the courts in criminal cases tends to restrict itself to giving the indictment a stamp of approval. The true state of affairs, as I see it, is that criminal cases are not decided by the courts, but by the prosecution, from which, incidentally, a large part of the country's judges are recruited.

In my opinion, 99 percent of all the talk about how the legal guarantees which the courts, with lay participation and all that, provide the citizens against miscarriages of justice, is hypocrisy and deceit. I believe that miscarriages of justice are not rarities in this country,[^6] and this is due, chiefly, to the courts' enormous meagerness in the evidentiary demands that are placed on the prosecution. It is striking how much stronger evidence a plaintiff in a civil case, which concerns money, must produce to get a ruling in their favor, than that which is enough to condemn a person to the most severe punishments.

An area where I find the usual assessment of evidence positively baroque is the credence given, despite all scientific evidence, to the testimony of children — and of pubescent girls in particular — in sexual assault cases.

Something similar applies to the trust the courts consistently show police officers who appear as witnesses. An officer may be ever so incompetent and his credibility highly questionable. Yet the legal system operates on the premise that an officer's testimony is inherently reliable.

In this country we practise the principle of free evaluation of evidence; that is, a fact is deemed proved once the judge is — or pretends to be — convinced of it. The judge weighs the evidence according to his or her personal conviction, but since that conviction is shaped by class society, the assessment of evidence inevitably reflects the same bias. Under our present social conditions, a socially skewed evidentiary practice is probably unavoidable.

The center of gravity of the criminal justice system is not the courts, but the prosecution, whose acquittals, decisions not to prosecute, are sacrosanct, and whose convictions, the bringing of charges, are usually rubber-stamped by the courts.[^7]

One can get a faint impression of the prosecution's activity through crime statistics. In 1961, 131,520 violations of the penal code were reported to or discovered by the police, and 42,699 violations were solved.[^8]

A total of 10,208 cases handled by the state prosecutor's office were adjudicated (most violations of the penal code fall under their purview). However, this number cannot be directly compared to the number of solved violations, as multiple violations can easily be adjudicated within a single case. Unfortunately, I do not have data on the number of acquittals in these state prosecutor cases, but that figure is vanishingly small and must necessarily be quite low, since charges are only brought when the prosecutor estimates that a conviction can be secured.

It is revealing that in 1961, cases involving 2,071 defendants were appealed to the two High Courts. Of these, only 41 resulted in acquittals at both judicial levels, while in 71 instances, a conviction was overturned and changed to an acquittal. Naturally, criminal statistics provide a very limited picture of actual crime, a large portion of which constitutes an unknown 'dark figure' that never comes to the attention of the authorities. However, the statistics do clearly demonstrate that a significant segment of the population finds itself in conflict with the penal code.

The decision-making within the prosecution's inner sanctum regarding whether to press charges is, as noted, shielded from public scrutiny. However, when one examines the social strata from which the criminals who are charged originate, one can confidently characterize the work of the prosecution as class justice. This is where it truly happens, far more so than in the courts

In a society such as ours, there is no fundamental difference between acquisitive crime and legal business activity. It is the prosecution service, through its charging decisions, that ultimately draws the line between the two.

This assertion was made not by me, but by Professor Hurwitz.

I cannot refrain from quoting from his work on the special part of criminal law:

...The boundary for the criminalization of fraud in economic matters is difficult or impossible to draw through abstract legal provisions. Concrete discretion must always be applied. This is because a certain measure of incorrect information and thereby equivalent omissions must be tolerated as falling outside the realm of the punishable... only when the demonstrated conduct falls outside what according to customary perception is considered defensible in commerce and dealings does room for criminal liability arise…

The difference between fraud and normal business practices is merely one of degree and form. It is the prosecution that marks this boundary, by deciding whether or not to bring charges. However, big business is, with few exceptions, shielded from prosecution. No single ray of light penetrates the infinite darkness of the prosecution service, but we can see the results of its work, and it is by these results that its class character must be judged.

With virtually no exceptions, only the small and the destitute are presented for the courts. No charges are ever brought for the large-scale fraudulent transactions that form an integral part of bourgeois business operations.

The public prosecutor exercises his discretion, and this discretion can only be overruled by the higher and highest prosecutorial authorities. The highest authority, as known, is the Minister of Justice, and the ultimate responsibility lies with the government.

The fact that we never see the tycoons of the business world charged by the prosecution service is not because they do not commit fraud, but because their class controls the state and by extension, the prosecution service. That our judiciary is a class-based system is evident from even the most cursory examination of the social background of those who are convicted.

As a Marxist, I can state this fact without any emotional distress. This is the reality, and it is the inevitable reality in a society founded on exploitation, where the line between criminal activity and respectable business practice is merely conventional.

Consequently, when I refer to our judges as class judges, it is because they are parts of a state apparatus that is class-dominated.

To substantiate this assessment, I could cite many more specifics than I have presented. However, I prefer to concentrate the discussion around three key points.

First, experience demonstrates that when subjected to sufficient pressure by the ruling power, judges will deliver verdicts as demanded by those in authority, irrespective of formal laws.

Second, the participation of laypeople in the criminal justice system is far from sufficient to purge it of its class character.

Third — and this is the crucial point — I refer to the courts as instruments of class rule because I view them as an organ of power within a class-based state. They function in unison with other organs of power, with the primary objective of preserving the established social order.

Naturally, there are many relevant aspects of this topic that we have not been able to address this evening. However, I would like to clarify a few final points to preclude the most trivial misunderstandings.

Nothing I have said here constitutes an ethical condemnation of judges. Hans Scherfig has written a preface for a book I am publishing in the near future, containing articles and reflections on the judicial system. In this preface, he writes:

Carl Madsen's book on the essence of the bourgeois legal system is not a tale of evil people, but of an evil social order. It deals not with the moral failings of individual persons, but with how property relations corrupt human character. A judge is a victim as well.

And that is my opinion on that matter as well.

By referring to judges as class judges, I do not mean to suggest that in specific, individual cases they are so class-bound that they would consciously favor convicting a worker over a director. While I certainly believe the widely cited Norwegian studies, which show a correlation between a person's income and their chances of acquittal or receiving a suspended sentence, are likely applicable to our country as well, I do not consider this finding particularly significant for my argument. My focus is on overarching currents and historical tendencies, not on individual rulings unless they are as profoundly revealing as, for instance, the internment cases. Moreover, it is in the ruling class's own interest for the public to maintain a degree of trust in the judiciary. This would be impossible if the outcome of a dispute between an individual employer and his worker were predetermined in the employer's favor. I would never put forward such a crude interpretation of my position.

[^1]: Manuscript for a lecture I held on October 27, 1965, in the Legal Discussion Club and the Student Society.

[^2]: Instead of the Supreme Court judge, a district court judge named Høgh appeared as my counterpart. I had sent him my manuscript in advance so he could have prepared a rebuttal to it. Instead, he gave a completely disinterested and boring lecture about banalities and about how excellent our criminal justice system is. How splendidly the prosecution functions, and how most defense lawyers know their place. He mocked the couple of 'dynamic' defenders we have. They are American in style, and it must be sad for them time and again to have to see their clients convicted, while their role model Perry Mason still gets his acquittals. Let the level thereby be indicated.

[^3]: I have had an interesting correspondence with the ombudsman about this, who, despite being in the Germans' material, maintained that he was not and had never been a communist. I shall not comment on that, but the Danish police must have registered him as such. This correspondence is mentioned in a memorial article about Hans Kirk that I wrote in 'Folkets Jul' (The People’s Christmas) for 1963.

[^4]: According to § 68 of the Administration of Justice Act, a number of persons who may be deemed suitable to serve as jurors or lay judges must be selected for each jury district. According to § 69, any man or woman of good repute who has the right to vote for parliament may be selected as a juror or lay judge. According to § 29 of the Constitution, cf. the Election Act of March 31, 1953, as amended by the Act of June 16, 1961, everyone who is a native citizen, has a permanent residence, and is 21 years of age has the right to vote for parliament. From this pool of individuals, the municipal authorities compile a primary list. Upon receiving this primary list, the presidents of the High Courts are responsible for establishing the official lists of jurors and lay judges. For each specific case, the presiding judge or a lower-court judge then selects the individuals who will serve from these lists. The selection of persons from the primary list for the juror and lay judge lists is performed in accordance with the § 74 of the Administration of Justice Act by a drawing of lots, which is arranged by the president of the High Court. Without exception, at least in the jurisdiction of the Eastern High Court, one only encounters women of menopausal age or older, or similarly aged, dispassionate men serving as jurors and lay judges. Young or younger people who have a concept of the life that is lived in contemporary Denmark by fellow citizens in the more proactive generations are never seen. Sexual assault cases are adjudicated by the elderly,removeds by those whose active lives are behind them. This outcome can only be the result of a systematic sabotage of the legal statutes. I do not know at which stage this blatant sabotage is carried out. It is possible that the municipal authorities only include elderly individuals on the primary list, though this seems unlikely. Alternatively, it's possible that the High Court presidents filter out, prior to the lottery, any candidates who have not reached a certain 'age of maturity,' meaning the average age of the judges themselves. Once again, we see the familiar double-dealing: The public is led to believe that the broad Danish populace participates in the criminal justice system as judges. Yet, thanks to a sabotage of both the spirit and the letter of the law, the younger generations of eligible voters are barred from taking part. Many are aware of this blatant discrimination against the young, yet no one protests. We have grown accustomed to accepting everything, and we put up with this too. But would we still tolerate it if it were true that the High Court president sits in his office behind closed doors and rigs the lottery? If this is done with the full knowledge of the high court judges and the tacit approval of the Ministry of Justice? How is this possible? [Translation note: Today, the practice in most municipalities is that the primary lists are compiled from rank-and-file members of the parties represented in the municipal council who volunteer to be on the list. The result is that jurors and lay judges remains older, whiter and richer than the people they convict and the community they are supposed to represent.]

[^5]: In the recently concluded 'Mona case,' the jury consisted of twelve jurors and two alternates. The foreman of the jury was a senior assistant. The panel also included three housewives, a female kindergarten director, two farm owners, a smallholder, a news stand owner, a manager, a mechanic, and a master bricklayer. There was not a single ordinary laborer among them.

[^6]: I use the term miscarriage of justice to mean a conviction delivered without a sufficient evidential foundation, in violation of the principle that any reasonable doubt regarding the guilt of the defendant should lead to an acquittal. A recent example is the "Mona case," in which a purser was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a young girl. The conviction was based solely on circumstantial evidence and was handed down despite his persistent denial of guilt. This verdict has caused significant public unease, and on Sunday, October 24, 1965, Editor Nørgård of the newspaper Politiken published a highly readable editorial on the matter.

[^7]: We are sliding into a situation where the actual decision concerning both acquittals and convictions rests with the executive administration, while the courts merely perform a formal review of the cases brought to trial. This is a state of affairs in which one would have to concede that it makes no difference whether a defendant has a good defence counsel, a bad one, or none at all. Many defence counsels do, in my experience, perform a commendable and energetic job for their clients, but there are also very slack ones, who in no way assert themselves and the rights of the defense during the criminal process, but are just there because it's now the done thing. This type of defense counsel must not become the standard of the future, even if they are held in high esteem by the judges and are favored by the administration and the Bar Association.

[^8]: The efficacy of the criminal justice system in combating crime is significantly lower in our capitalist nations compared to socialist countries. While fully acknowledging the challenges in comparing statistical data across different nations, consider the following illustrative example: Danish criminal statistics for 1961 (reported cases): · Burglaries: 21,685 · Other thefts: 38,381 · Embezzlement, fraud, forgery, and debtor fraud: 8,105 · TOTAL: 68,171 Note: This Danish total does not include thefts of motor vehicles, mopeds, or bicycles. For comparison, the German Democratic Republic 'recorded' (festgestellt) i

Call the Victims of Communism Foundation! In the Soviet Union they were so evil that they forced prisoners to read theory!

This text by the Danish communist lawyer Carl Madsen describes his visit to a Soviet labour camp in 1965. It seems like a credible account of what this part of the Soviet correctional system looked like in the 1960s.

A modern reader might object to many aspects of the camp, for instance I personally find the apparent lack of privacy troubling, but compared to other prison systems of the day, the Soviet one seems to have been on the more humane and sensible end of the spectrum. Some aspects of the system, like the focus on education still feels progressive today and the widespread self-government by the prisoners’ own council is lightyears ahead of anything known in modern prison systems in the “democratic” west.

I got this text from Madsen's book “Den Gode Læge” (The Good Doctor). A couple of days ago I posted a translation of another chapter from the book Criminal Justice In The German Democratic Republic.

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Can It Be Different?

Denn wovon lebt der Mensch? Indem er stündlich Den Menschen peinigt, auszieht, anfällt, abwürgt und frisst. Nur dadurch lebt der Mensch, dass er so gründlich vergessen kann, dass er ein Mensch doch ist

• Bertold Brecht

There are Danish psychiatrists who believe that all crime originates in neuroses, that crimes are manifestations of neurotic states of anxiety and tension. As a logical consequence, they regard the criminal as a patient. They intervene to cure him of his neuroses and believe they have thereby removed the basis for his criminality.

This starting point is appealing, and under our social conditions, it is probably also the best. The psychiatrists attached to our prisons and institutions for criminals cannot, under our social conditions, approach the problems differently, but must simply leave them as they are.

But these neuroses, what is the precondition for them? What is the reason that people here cannot live and develop according to their abilities and aptitudes, but are whipped up into a rat race for money and career that cripples and destroys them in a spiritual sense? Why must they strive for imagined honour and turn their fictitious needs into demands that are aggressively directed outward against other people?[^1]

For me, there is no doubt that the essential breeding ground for neuroses, crime-breeding neuroses, is the capitalist social conditions we live under. In any case, one cannot help but bring the problem sharply into focus: whether the interpersonal relationships that capitalism entails – the need to get ahead of, dominate, and subjugate one's fellow human beings rather than developing according to one's potential and abilities – constitute a dunghill where the poisonous flowers of neurosis thrive.

This is precisely the case, which in turn means that only by socialism displacing the stinking social system we live under will the preconditions for neuroses, and thus for crime, disappear.

Still, it is hard to blame those doctors who, given the constraints we live under, are engaged in fighting crime; not all of them see the wider picture, and instead they treat the individual as a patient, alleviating the most disruptive symptoms with pills and psychotherapy as best they can. They cannot, after all, change society.

I have had the satisfaction of studying criminal justice and corrections both in the German Democratic Republic and in the Soviet Union.

It is completely obvious that they are far ahead of us in terms of crime prevention. Under socialist conditions the human being is the centre of attention, and what people are brought up to strive for is to develop themselves, to realise their talents and abilities, whereas it is considered anti-social, immoral and criminal to seek to live at others’ expense in one way or another. In these countries the ‘rat race’ is being replaced by comradely co-operation. The socialist countries are the countries where people come to one another’s aid.

I told many colleagues in the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic about Herstedvester [Danish high-security preventive detention facility] and [chief physician] Stürup and his institution. They listened with astonishment.

A fate like that of inmate number 81 [case of unjustified indefinite preventive detention previously mentioned by Madsen] is unthinkable except under the conditions of capitalism. To give a sense that there is a solution to the problems of crime, I will reprint a column I wrote about a visit to a penal institution near Moscow.[^2] But I have made similar observations in the German Democratic Republic, where, incidentally, Dr. Stürup had the opportunity to lecture about his institution. He was a peculiar experience for the audience.

But the account of my prison visit in Moscow comes here:

In the autumn of 1962, I undertook a journey in the Soviet Union. I had previously read about Soviet criminal justice, and during my stay in Moscow, I expressed a desire to see a labour camp. My wish was fulfilled,[^3] and on October 5th, I was driven out to such a labour camp, located about an hour and a half by car from central Moscow in one of the satellite towns around the capital.

During the drive and during the visit to the camp, I was accompanied by an interpreter and by a representative of the Moscow district soviet, who was also a member of a special committee set up by this soviet, responsible for maintaining public order. Prisons and labour camps also fall under this committee, and it contains every conceivable form of necessary expertise, particularly medical-psychiatric, pedagogical, and legal.

Soviet legislation recognises various forms of punishment and, naturally, also imprisonment, which is generally not imposed for longer than ten years. For very serious offences, imprisonment of up to fifteen years can be applied.

As the overwhelming rule, imprisonment is served in labour camps, correctional camps, as they are also called. Serving time in closed prisons occurs only exceptionally, and only where it concerns particularly serious crimes or very dangerous habitual criminals.

Furthermore, crime is rapidly declining, and many penal institutions are being closed down.[^4]

It was one of these aforementioned camps that I was on my way to. The camps are divided into four classes, according to the inmates. The mildest camps are class 1, and then come the other classes with regimes of increasing severity. The camp I wished to see is of the mildest category. There are 800-900 prisoners in it, and their sentence generally does not exceed three years; however, there are some with a sentence of up to five years.

In most cases the admission offenses are unlawful use of property, theft, membership in criminal gangs, and the like. There were no sex offenders.

Regarding the distribution of prisoners by age, it was stated that 40 percent were between 25 and 30 years old, another 40 percent between 30 and 40 years, while the last 20 percent are distributed among persons between 18 and 25 years and persons over 40 years.

The visit to the camp stretched over most of a day. It was shown by the camp's chief and two deputy inspectors, one responsible for cultural affairs, and the other, who was trained as an engineer, for work operations.

All the innumerable questions I asked were answered unreservedly, and it was immediately declared that there was not a single door in the camp that was closed to me. My interpreter was of excellent quality.

The camp's chief and the other senior staff are non-commissioned officers from the Red Army who have reached the special military age limit and have a pension and rank as NCO’s. Prior to appointment, they have undergone special training so that they are versed in the relevant laws, particularly, of course, the criminal and procedural codes. Their training also includes criminology and penology (the study of corrections). They do not belong to the army but are subordinate to the district soviet.

The basic guard duties are carried out by soldiers who are not fully fit for service and who serve their military service as prison guards. They are provided by the army, are command-wise subordinate to the camp's leadership, but have no direct contact with the prisoners.

In the camp, there is a school, which I will mention later. It is in no way subordinate to the camp or the district soviet, but to the Ministry of Education, like all other schools.

Attached to the camp is a staff of instructors, foremen, supervisors, doctors, dentists, nurses, etc.

In the Soviet Union, there is no form of indefinite detention of anyone other than dangerous mentally ill or mentally disabled persons, who can be committed for treatment. Detention can occur by criminal sentence, and no authority other than the courts can sentence to detention.

Thus, there is nothing in the Soviet Union that corresponds to our preventive detention facilities in Herstedvester and Horsens.

I have little negative to say about this camp when I compare it with conditions in Denmark, as far as I know them. Still, let me point out, if only so there is something to note, that the physical facilities are poorer than their Danish counterparts. The buildings are inferior and clearly the work of unskilled labour. This must, of course, be viewed against the backdrop of conditions in the Soviet Union as a whole."

Otherwise, the conditions in the camp, as far as I can judge, are better than the corresponding ones here in this country. The underlying principles are more humane, more rational, and they are attuned to the special conditions in the Soviet Union, where socialism is predominant, with the transition to communism on the agenda. This stage of development is the background for all social phenomena in the Soviet Union, also for criminal policy.

The life of the camp is based on an intimate cooperation between the administration and the prisoners' council, soviets as it is called in Russian, and the committees they have set up.

All able-bodied prisoners must work in the camp's metalworking enterprises for eight hours daily. Free time is used mostly for education and cultural-political work.

In the enterprises, work is done in two shifts, but apart from time indications, the daily schedules are identical.

The schedule for the first shift is as follows:

• At 6.00 the prisoners get up.
• From 6.00 to 6.10 the morning wash is carried out.
• From 6.10 to 7.10 breakfast is eaten in shifts.
• From 7.10 to 7.20 there is a roll-call.
• From 7.20 to 7.30 instructions for the day’s work are given.
• At 7.30 work begins.
• From 11.30 to 13.30 the midday meal is eaten in shifts.
• At 16.00 work ends.
• From 16.30 to 16.45 the evening wash is carried out.
• From 16.45 to 17.45 supper is served.
• From 17.50 to 21.30 prisoners are occupied either with lessons in the school or with general political work; this includes reading the newspapers.
• At 22.00 the prisoners go to bed.

Prisoners are not allowed to idle just because the work-day has ended. There are only two options for them. Either they participate in the political-cultural work, or they go to school.

The core of the general political-cultural work is study circles or lectures on various topics, but the prerequisite is reading one or more newspapers, and Soviet newspapers are weighty and factual. They cannot in any way be compared to the press we know here in this country.

Study circle leaders and lecturers usually come from outside. Various enterprises have taken on sponsorship of the camp, and the administration cooperates with these enterprises in many ways, among other things also to procure lecturers and study circle leaders. Often, skilled workers from the sponsoring enterprises come to the camp and give lectures, participate in discussions, lead study circles, or otherwise contribute to the political-cultural work.

I asked for examples of topics for the political-cultural work, and they mentioned at random:

• The morality of the Soviet man.
• The Communist Party's program.
• Factors that lead to crimes.
• The development of technology and science.
• The world political situation.

A worker from a sponsoring enterprise, one of the best, had given a lecture on what can and must be done to realise the demands of the new party program regarding the transition to communism. Another had spoken about the measures necessary to implement the seven-year plan.

Once a week, there is a political hour on current political questions.

In the camp, there is compulsory school education outside working hours for all who are under 50 years old and who have not at least completed an 8-year elementary school. The prisoners subject to compulsory schooling consequently do not participate in the general cultural and political work except to the extent it is compatible with their education. Of the entire inmate population, about 50 percent actually participate in the compulsory education in the school. As far as I recall, there are eighteen teachers in the school, and work is done in 30 classrooms. In some classrooms there are prisoners who study or do assignments without a teacher present. The school program and the rules that apply to the school are the same as those applicable to regular schools.

The eleven-year curriculum that is now being introduced in the Soviet Union can be completed in prison. If a prisoner completes it, he is awarded a diploma from the Ministry of Education just like everyone else, a qualification roughly equivalent to our high school diploma.

The prisoner may sit the entrance examination for the university or any other institution of higher education, where he will receive free tuition and a salary while he studies. There are former prisoners who are now doctors and engineers or hold other positions of responsibility in the Soviet Union.

I had a conversation with the school's leader, who stated, among other things, that he could not observe any difference between the prisoners' intelligence level and that of regular students.

Apart from the general school education, vocational further education of the prisoners takes place in connection with work in the camp's large metal enterprises. It is a basic principle of the camp that all prisoners without vocational training must receive such training. They can be trained in the camp as mechanics, metalworkers, and in other trades within the metal industry.

If they already have vocational education, it must be improved, and it is an absolute rule of the camp’s operation that no one who is at all qualified to receive education and vocational training may leave the camp without being better qualified to take part in production than when they were admitted.

The vocational training takes place partly at the workplace and partly in a small vocational school attached to the camp. There are instructors employed who handle the prisoners' vocational training according to a program that is laid out for each prisoner immediately upon admission based on available information about vocational education at the time of admission.

There are a number of invalids and mentally disabled and other work-impaired persons in the camp. They work according to ability and are occupied in accordance with their own wishes, for example with gardening. They can participate in education and cultural-political work or not, as they themselves wish.

The administration may recommend a prisoner for parole when his conduct in the camp, his diligence, competence and behaviour warrant it. The recommendation is submitted to the court that sentenced the prisoner to placement in a correctional camp, and upon receipt of the recommendation the court convenes inside the camp itself, where the prisoner’s circumstances are examined and verified by the court. If the court issues an order for parole, a most careful follow-up support programme is arranged and carried out. Employment is found for the individual, and the workers at the enterprise where he is employed supervise him and support and assist the parolee in every possible way, and they submit reports to the camp on his situation.

The prisoner who is released on probation after serving his sentence does not lose connection with the camp. On the contrary, the camp is responsible for ensuring that the person is placed in a socially stimulating environment. The camp can only live up to this responsibility because here, too, there is close cooperation between the camp and the enterprise where the prisoner is employed after release.

During the conversation, they showed me the most recent reports from workplaces about released prisoners. I asked for a translation of a randomly selected report. This report is dated September 29, 1962, and it reads as follows:

... Smirnov came to the enterprise after his release, and he proved to be a disciplined worker. He has fulfilled all assigned work tasks at 140 to 150 percent, and qualitatively his work is of the highest class. He is eager to help young workers with their work. He works as a milling machine operator in our department for diving equipment. He participates both in evening education and in the public life of his department….

This randomly selected report is signed by the relevant enterprise's manager, the chairman of the party cell at the enterprise, and the chairman of the trade union's local club.

The camp’s industrial operations are closed in large factory buildings. In the camp I saw, items belonging to the light-metal industry were produced: household goods and kitchen utensils, motorcycle parts, oil filters and the like. In addition, the camp has an attached garden that grows vegetables for its own consumption.

Responsibility for discipline and order rests first and foremost with the prisoners' council, which I have mentioned before. There is pronounced self-government, which the prisoners exercise through the councils. The disciplinary measures the councils have at their disposal are summoning the prisoner to a meeting in the council or a committee thereof, issuance of warnings and reprimands, which, among other things, are brought to all prisoners' knowledge via the wall newspaper, so that they have the opportunity to keep an eye on the prisoner who has offended against the camp's rules of order. These rules are such that the prisoners themselves have acknowledged their reasonableness and necessity.

If these more comradely measures do not work, the administration can bring various sharper disciplinary punishments into use.

Firstly, the prisoner can for a specified period be denied the right to purchase tobacco, canned goods, and other extra provisions in the camp's shop.

Secondly, visitation rights can be denied for a set time.

Thirdly, the prisoner can be denied the right to receive extra provisions from relatives for a set period.

Fourthly, the administration can place the prisoner in a punishment cell, but only outside working hours and for no more than fifteen days.

But the administration cannot only impose disciplinary punishments. It can also reward positive behaviour. These rewards consist of privileges.

Firstly, the prisoner can be given the right to freer use than otherwise prescribed of the money he earns through his work in the camp.

Secondly, he can get the right to individual visits from his wife, family, work comrades, and other relatives. Such individual visits can extend up to three days.

Thirdly, the administration can recommend probationary release.

The fourth and highest privilege that can be given to a prisoner who is not deemed to pose any danger to the legal security of society is the administration's recommendation of a petition to the supreme court for the annulment of the criminal case.

If an order for annulment of the case is subsequently issued, the sentence lapses, all documents concerning the case are destroyed, all entries in public registers are deleted, and the prisoner obtains in every respect the status of a person who has not previously been convicted.

If the disciplinary measures available to the prisoners' council and the administration are not effective, the administration can submit a recommendation to the court to issue an order for transfer from the camp to a closed prison. This measure can only be used in consultation with the district soviet's committee for public order, and in fact, such recommendations are almost never made.

The prisoners are paid exactly like workers with similar employment in ordinary production, but deductions are made to cover the costs of staying in the camp. The wages are credited to the prisoner and paid out upon release. During the stay in the camp, the prisoner can buy for 10 rubles—something like DKK 70-80 [roughly RMB 1,000 in 2024-prices] —per month in the camp's shop, and as a privilege, he can get the right to use up to 20 rubles monthly.

The prisoners sleep in large dormitories in bunk beds with spring mattresses. They have next to their bed a bookcase with private books and school books.

In the camp, there is a library of 8,000 volumes. Furthermore, books can be borrowed from ordinary libraries. There is both non-fiction, political literature, and fiction. A great deal of work is done to guide the prisoners in their reading. To keep up with the political and cultural life in the camp, prisoners must be diligent newspaper readers, and there is ample opportunity for this, as the camp subscribes to 60 different newspapers, which are available for the prisoners' use.

Three daily meals are eaten in the camp in a common dining hall. In it, there is a notice about the ingredients that must at minimum be included in the daily food provision in one form or another. Furthermore, there is posted a meal plan for the current week, and it shows day by day how the dietary components the prisoners are entitled to are included in the meals. According to the first notice, each prisoner must daily have at least 700 grams of bread, at least 50 grams of meat, at least 85 grams of fish, at least 400 grams of potatoes, at least 250 grams of vegetables, and at least 110 grams of various grains. The notice lists fourteen different dietary components that must be given each day.

The prisoner may receive visits from relatives and work colleagues. If he wishes, he may wear his own clothes during the visit, as he is generally permitted to do outside working hours. Normal visits are held in a common room, with the prisoner and visitor separated by two counters spaced about one meter apart. Prisoners are allowed to exchange letters with their relatives.

Only minor illnesses are treated in the camp. There is an infirmary with a number of beds, as well as isolation rooms for prisoners suspected of infectious diseases. The principle, however, is that all real illnesses must be treated at a hospital. Upon admission to the camp, a thorough medical examination of the prisoner is conducted. A meticulous health record is created for him and is maintained with great accuracy throughout his stay. There is also a dental clinic where all dental treatment is provided, and dentures are also fabricated if necessary. The greatest emphasis is placed on preventive dentistry.

If a prisoner should wish to complain about the conditions in the camp, he has the right to contact, in writing and without censorship, any of the authorities connected to the camp in any way, including the district soviet.

The information I have reproduced was conveyed to me primarily during a long conversation in the camp's office with its three senior officials. Once this conversation concluded, a tour was conducted.

First, I saw the production department where, as mentioned, metal goods are manufactured in large premises—from spoons to parts for motorcycles and engines. I do not have the expertise to comment on this aspect of the camp's operations. I do not understand the fabrication of metal goods. There were many large rooms; lathes were spinning, punch presses were noisy, stamping and riveting were happening, and apparently, everything that should happen in such an enterprise was taking place.

I have brought some items from the production to this country, and I have shown them to experts who declare the products satisfactory. I can say no more about it. To me, everything looked appealing and up-to-date.”

From the production department we went to the residential section, where the prisoners live their lives when they are not working. The general impression was appealing. It was sunny, and the prisoners, who were waiting to go to the dining hall, were basking in the sunshine on benches in a neat and well-maintained garden area between the buildings. Everywhere, notices and wall newspapers could be seen. There were notices about prisoners who had distinguished themselves in production or in other ways, but there were also drawings and notices alluding to prisoners who had not behaved satisfactorily. Those who slacked off, smoked in the dormitories, were careless with production, etc., were called out in an easily understandable way.

I inspected the dormitories, occupancy rooms with bunk beds. Loudspeakers and the prisoners' private book collections were seen by each bed. I walked over to a random bookshelf and took out some of the books in the order in which they stood. There was a German textbook, a presentation of the Soviet Union's history, a book on the basis of Darwinism, a trigonometry textbook, and a collection of short stories by Chekhov.

We walked through the medical unit and inspected the wards. There were no patients apart from a few prisoners: one had a cold, one had crushed a hand, one had a bruised leg. There were no actual sick people. I greeted the nurses, saw the doctor’s office, the dental clinic, and whatever else a medical unit might contain.

Next we were in a large clubroom with space for 400 prisoners. There was a theatre stage where, as part of cultural life, the prisoners put on amateur plays. There was an operator’s room for use during film screenings.

The library was closed for repairs, but I saw it. In addition to the book stacks there were cosy reading rooms and notices about books especially recommended to the prisoners.

In the shop, I noted a rich stock of extra provisions. One could buy bread, canned goods, pickled herring, cakes, tobacco including the famous makhorka, and all sorts of other such items found in such outlets. The transaction process was demonstrated. One does not buy with cash, but the amount is deducted from the prisoners' account and a voucher is issued that can be used for purchases in the shop. This is done so that purchases are not made with cash money originating from relatives.

We went through the school. Classrooms, equipped like a Danish rural school in my childhood, were filled with prisoners sitting on school benches, belonging to the shift that was not working in production. In one room I entered, Russian was being taught, and in another room, prisoners were solving geometry problems. A vocational school was installed in rather primitive premises in a basement, but most instruction took place at the workplace.

In the visitation room, two rows of benches were seen for the prisoners and their visitors. Adjoining this room were a dozen visitation rooms for the mentioned individual visits given as a reward. All these rooms were occupied, which was marked by a hung sign. We knocked and entered one of the rooms where a prisoner had a visit from his wife. They were in the process of cooking on a hotplate. The room was small and sparsely equipped with a table, chairs, and an iron bed. There is no control with these individual visits. The visitors stay overnight.

Adjoining the dining hall was the kitchen, which I inspected.

Dinner was being prepared for the prisoners, and I was served the two dishes that the meal consisted of. One dish was a porridge-soup boiled with meat and cabbage; a decent piece of meat came with the portion. The other dish was stewed together with meat, cabbage and potatoes and had a Russian name I don’t remember. I have spent more than two years in Danish prisons and prison camps during the war. If the food I received on October 5th reflects the normal standard, then I can say with certainty that it is far better than the prisoner fare was in Vestre Prison. The dinner I got was excellent and well prepared. The kitchen was neat and clean in every way. We were not let in without first putting on a white coat.

I won’t list every place I was shown, but I walked through the entire camp and displayed the most intrusive curiosity. Yet, as promised, every door opened for me. The last thing I saw was the solitary confinement unit, where disciplinary punishment was served outside working hours for up to fifteen days. It probably says something about this camp that only two prisoners were in solitary confinement, and even then only for a very short time. In this section the cells have a little light, a wooden bench and a wooden plank-bed. The prisoner in solitary confinement sleeps on a hard bed.

So, my overall impression is that while the buildings and inventory are inferior to what we are used to, in all other ways this camp beats Danish standards.

But at the same time it must be stressed that the treatment prisoners are able to receive in the Soviet Union, the rational methods, the co-operation between prisoners and administration, the possibility of having cases annulled, the schooling, the wages, the productive work-training and all the other gratifying and impressive things, all of this presupposes the socialist form of society.

I am by no means praising the foreign to indirectly criticize Danish prisons. I am no fan of preventive detention institutions, but otherwise I believe that Danish prison staff often do their work with diligence. It should not be a reproach against them that we do not have social conditions that make a prisoner treatment like the one I came to know in this camp near Moscow on October 5, 1962 possible.

We now return to the case against the prison guards, to our domestic conditions, where the core problem probably is that there is no fixed boundary between the norms of respectable business life and the provisions on fraud and embezzlement in the penal code. In our country some people are sent to prison for performing acts that are virtually indistinguishable from those for which others are honoured and decorated.

In the socialist countries there are neither employers, manufacturers, factory owners, nor rent-squeezing landlords, so there it is easier to figure out what is crime and what is business.

As I overheard an exchange between two farmers on the train to the Bellahøj fair when they passed Vridsløse [state prison]:

“That’s Vridsløse.”

“Yeah, a lot of crooks sit in there.”

“Sure, but even more drive past.”

But in the socialist countries the crooks don’t drive at all.

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[^1]: Those who want to know a little about these neuroses and who can work their way through an English book may profit from reading Karen Horney: Neurosis and Human Growth , London 1951. Of interest is a paper written by the assistant senior physician at the Horsens preventive-detention institution, Tofte, in Nordic Journal of Criminal Science , 1963, p. 325. It is titled “On ‘Vicious Circles’ in Detainees.”

[^2]: The same column has been broadcast on Danish state radio.

[^3]: By the Ministry of Justice, which as an exception permitted the visit. Such permits are rarely given.

[^4]: In the GDR—the German Democratic Republic—only a fraction of the prisons' capacity is utilised.

Hans Scherfig (1905-1979) was a renowned Danish communist, author, and satirist. His piece, "ABC Warfare – Tips and Tricks," first published on January 24th 1960 in Land & Folk, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Denmark, clowns on the rampant paranoia of the Cold War era and the absurd advice given by authorities.

Today, as NATO is gearing up for a new cold war and pushing paranoia against geopolitical enemies, his takedown of military authority and fearmongering feels eerily prescient

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ABC Warfare – Tips and Tricks

If, during a walk in northern Zealand, you notice that the cows are lying dead in the fields "without visible cause," and that the grass and trees have taken on "a sickly appearance," you should immediately report your observation to the nearest police authority. On your way to the police station or the local bailiff, you must only breathe through your nose, and you must be wearing a raincoat and gloves. If you subsequently also feel sick or unwell yourself, it is recommended that you see a doctor.

The reason for the sudden death of the cows, the sickly appearance of the vegetation, and your own indisposition could possibly be biological warfare, inflicted upon us by Sweden or some other ill-intentioned neighboring nation. During such biological warfare, it would be prudent to "refrain from socializing as far as possible" and "avoid visits to the theatre and cinema." Furthermore, you should – already in peacetime – wash your hands "every time you have been to the toilet." It is further emphasized that "good eating habits, good sleep" and "daily appropriate exercises" provide good protection against biological weapons, also called B-weapons.

These wise tips come from the head of something called the "Defence ABC-School," Lieutenant Colonel A.J.B. Reiler. They can be read in a little pamphlet "Protect Yourself," which appears to have been published by the "Civil Defence Journal." The place of printing is missing and is possibly a military secret, which it might be dangerous to try and investigate.

"In principle" biological warfare is nothing new, "as humans have waged war against bacteria for centuries," writes Lieutenant Colonel Reiler very reassuringly. "We can therefore immediately establish that any attempt to talk up B-warfare as something new and mysterious lacks a factual basis." But even without "talking up B-warfare," it must be admitted that it can cause unpleasantness. These unpleasantnesses will, however, be diminished and our country's defensive force strengthened when we carefully follow the Lieutenant Colonel's instructions.

We are thus to "be vigilant against foreigners' interest in food and drink," which can be difficult in a country where it has hitherto been a national endeavour precisely to spark foreigners' interest in our food. We must furthermore refrain from collecting "colourful feathers or the like," which "could be tempting as souvenirs or as toys for children." The mysterious, colourful feathers "may have been left or scattered intentionally in the hope of thus spreading sources of infection." Furthermore, the ABC-Lieutenant Colonel warns against consuming wine or beer which has been handed out by unknown persons on public streets or squares. That sort of thing could very well be "biological mines." The same applies to cigarettes, candy and chocolate, as well as banknotes temptingly placed outdoors after having been maliciously infected beforehand. In addition, we must beware of free balloons, remote-controlled or "free" rockets, insects, rats and mice, water, fruit, and the bacteria spread "with any form of ammunition, both mortar and artillery ammunition as well as aerial bombs and small arms ammunition." And it is very bad indeed if airplanes drop "seemingly innocent things."

During war, one must not bathe in "uncontrolled water (see the illustration!)," but the Lieutenant Colonel also says: "Take regular baths!" He encourages cleanliness and does not believe one should lend one's toothbrush to others, which is unlikely to be common practice outside officer circles anyway. One must never eat "random" fruit or "raw garden and field produce," and one must be vigilant against "any unusual event."

Now, it is quite possible that the nations which secretly seek our lives will not content themselves with inflicting B-warfare upon us, but will also devise waging C-war against the innocent Danes. Lieutenant Colonel Reiler has been attentive to this possibility and has supplemented his B-advice with two pages of equally good C-advice.

C-war means chemical warfare, "popularly called gas warfare." The types of gas intended for use against us are divided by the Lieutenant Colonel into six groups:

1. Nerve gas
2. Blood agents
3. Blister gas
4. Choking gas
5. Tear gas
6. Sneeze gas

Each group contains several different gases with different effects, smells, and tastes. Among the nerve gases, "the most important" are for example tabun, sarin, and soman, which, without leaving visible traces, penetrate through the skin and clothing and attack the nervous system, causing, among other things, convulsions and "in severe cases death within minutes." Among the blood agents are hydrogen cyanide and cyanogen chloride, which smell like marzipan, but unfortunately prevent one's cells from utilizing the oxygen in the air and, like the previous gas types, cause death within minutes.

Blister gas, on the other hand, acts more slowly. It gets its name from the blisters it causes on the skin, which after a few hours turn into sores. Furthermore, it corrodes the airways. It occurs in several variations, of which mustard gas and lewisite are the best known.

Under choking gas, chlorine, chloropicrin, phosgene, and diphosgene are mentioned as examples. These gases cause fluid to seep into the lungs and kill by suffocation; they are also recognized by the fact that they smell like mouldy hay.

These many possibilities for an agonizing death might perhaps cause despondency in the less brave part of the civilian population. But with Lieutenant Colonel Reiler's instructions in your pocket, you should not despair. Read the rules carefully and learn them by heart!

When war threatens, you must be vigilant for, among other things, the following symptoms: Dizziness, visual disturbances, tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, convulsions, and unconsciousness. In "more severe cases" of unconsciousness, it is recommended to see a doctor. Hot drinks are said to provide relief against choking gas. Staying in the open air is good against blood agents. In case of poisoning by sneeze gas, one can "in severe cases rinse the nose and mouth with water," and against tear gas, it is recommended to "wash affected areas of the skin," though only "in more severe cases."

"If you notice a strange smell" you should always be vigilant. Sneeze gas smells like "burnt fireworks," but blister gas has a scent like geraniums, onions, mustard, or horseradish. Tear gas has an aroma like apple blossoms or watercress. But – says Lieutenant Colonel Reiler – "do not expect the gas types to have the pure smell we indicate above; smell can be camouflaged." Nerve gas, unfortunately, has no smell or taste at all, but it can be "recognized by its symptoms," so one at least has the satisfaction of knowing what one is dying from.

Of course, one should never go to town without a gas mask. But for careless civilians who, despite the Lieutenant Colonel's warnings, move about without protective equipment, certain instructions are given, "which certainly do not guarantee against poisoning, but which, when carried out, provide a fairly significant chance of saving a life, indeed, in many cases can mean the difference between life and death."

If you are outdoors, you must immediately go indoors. Conversely, for certain gas types, you should preferably stay in the open air, as "movement in the open air will provide relief." In other cases, you must not move but should "keep still, preferably in the open air, until the symptoms disappear." So: If you are outside, you must go in. If you are inside, you must go out. Furthermore, you must move and keep still.

"When gas warfare threatens, always wear a hat when you are outdoors!" says the Lieutenant Colonel. If you are surprised by an attack, you should press a handkerchief against your nose and mouth and hold your breath "for as long as possible." But better than a handkerchief is "a sock filled with soil," which is why such a thing should always be carried. "If you hear aircraft in the air, do not be curious, see fig. 2, the eyes are in danger.

Since our unknown enemy – whoever it may be – will not shy away from harassing us with A-warfare in addition to B and C-warfare, the pamphlet provides good instructions on how best to avert the unpleasantnesses caused by atomic bombs. This section is authored by Captain V. Skjødt, who is the second-in-command at the Defence ABC-School.

He is a swift captain. In civilian school, we learned that the swiftest thing is the speed of light. Captain Skjødt is swifter than light. When one has observed the flash of light from the exploding atomic bomb, he believes one can still manage to shield oneself from the thermal radiation, which comes simultaneously with the flash of light and at the same speed. No one can match him in this.

Simultaneously with the thermal radiation (at several thousand degrees) comes an "initial radioactive radiation" also at the speed of light, as well as a "pressure wave" like a powerful hurricane, which, however, only has the speed of sound. To protect oneself from all this, one must – after observing the flash of light – cover one's face and hands and cover the back of the neck "by pulling the coat collar up over the neck or placing headgear far back."

One must "throw oneself down." If one is indoors, one must throw oneself along the wall with the window ("if the room has windows on several walls," one must throw oneself under a table). "Do not worry about the direction, you will not have time to choose!" says the captain. That is probably correct considering that the measures must be taken at a speed greater than that of light. If you are in a vehicle, you must first stop the engine before crawling down "below window level" – faster than light.

After the atomic bomb has fallen, you must remain where you are until you receive further orders regarding evacuation. "You are stepping into the unknown if you set off on your own." But: "If it is very dusty in the area where you are" you must – besides "brushing the dust off your clothes" – "seek out a dust-free area."

If the nuclear weapon has been detonated underground or underwater, you will not "perceive" any flash of light, "but radioactive water particles or dust particles will be dangerous." After such explosions, one must therefore "unconditionally remain or go indoors, until guidance is given by competent persons." The radioactive dust (or water) "is removed from the body by thorough washing (see fig. 12)."

The question then is whether there still is any "indoors" after such an explosion where competent captains can seek you out with their astute guidance, and whether after the destruction of the waterworks there will still be clean water in the taps for washing off the radioactive water.

Captain Skjødt concludes his advice thus: "The aforementioned rules should not be a guarantee that everyone will come through the explosion of a nuclear weapon unscathed, but you might be one of the thousands whom the rules can bring safely through the disaster."

The captain is too modest. This pamphlet is truly composed in such a way that it can contribute to saving us all from war and disaster. It is a useful pamphlet. It should be distributed free of charge as soon as possible to every household in Denmark, and people who read it will themselves formulate the simple protective rules that are necessary: Protect yourself against the civil defence. Protect yourself against the military. Protect yourself against idiots!

While clearing out a box of old books that had been sitting in my garage for ages, I stumbled on a tiny gem that I thought I had lost, my copy of Carl Madsen's book “The Good Doctor”, containing a series of texts criticizing the legal system from a Marxist viewpoint.

Most of the texts are very specific to a Danish context and to the time in which they were written but I think this presentation on criminal justice in the German Democratic Republic has a more general interest and still has relevance as an inspiration on how to build a humane legal system.

If it has any interest I might also translate his article arguing why the Danish legal system is a system based on class justice.

Carl Madsen (1903-1978) was a defense counsel known as “the red lawyer”. For generations he was the go-to lawyer for the left and defended Spanish civil war volunteers, communist activists, Vietnam war protesters victimised by the police and squatters from the freetown Christiania. For most of his adult life he was an active member of DKP, the Danish Communist Party. His political understanding, legal career as well as the betrayal he experienced from the state during and after the war left him with no respect whatsoever for the legal profession or the bourgeois courts, in the words of poet Dan Turell “he radiated contempt of court”.

His style is a mixture of gnarly legalese, Marxist theory and vitriolic insults that I personally find very engaging. As a leftist inhabiting the bleak political reality following the disaster of the 1990’s, one can only envy his confident defiant optimism.

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Criminal Justice In The German Democratic Republic

Talk given in the Legal Discussion Club in Copenhagen on March 22 1966 and in the Student Society in Aarhus on April 14 1966

Du hässlicher Vogel, wirst du einst mir in die Hände fallen, so rupfte ich dir die Federn aus und hacke dir ab die Krallen

(You foul bird, were you ever to fall into my hands, I would pluck out your feathers and hack off your claws)

• Heinrich Heine — on the German eagle

The starting point

I am not able, here and within the time available, to provide a comprehensive overview over the extensive complex of rules on criminal procedure that applies to the German Democratic Republic. That is also beyond my expertise.

It is not, and it cannot be, my task at an occasion like this. What I will attempt is to present some scattered pieces of information that I hope are able to give an impression, in glimpses a sense, of the democratic principles of the socialist administration of justice and its realisation in the German Democratic Republic.

When the German people were liberated from Nazism in the spring of 1945, when Hitler's thousand year Reich crumbled, the war the Nazis started had cast Germany into the deepest misery. Eight million dead, total economic ruin, hardship and chaos. This was the legacy of the Hitler regime for the German people.

The politics of the ruling classes had proven bankrupt. Among the broadest classes of the population, the deepest depression, demoralization, and mistrust prevailed that a German future was even possible. Millions and millions were infected with Nazi ideology.

The only popular force that could enter into the estate, save the nation, and steer development in a peaceful and democratic direction was the working class, whose best sons had been murdered in the tens of thousands by the Hitler fascists.

The starting point for later developments in the German Democratic Republic was the communist party's proclamation to the population of June 11 1945. The proclamation demands the establishment of an anti-fascist, democratic republic for the whole of Germany, and it is stated that it would be incorrect to impose a social system based on the Soviet model on Germany.

The communist party's proclamation confronted the people with the task of carrying out a bourgeois-democratic revolution, of destroying militarism and imperialism, and of implementing an anti-fascist democratic social order in Germany.

The goal of the proclamation is thus not socialist. It says:

Under the current circumstances it is in the interest of the German people to create an anti-fascist democratic regime, a parliamentary republic in which the people can enjoy all democratic rights and freedoms…

Based on this viewpoint, a long series of concrete demands for social measures were put forward.

Insofar as these have a connection to the administration of justice, it concerns primarily the following:

1. With the assistance of all honest Germans, to track down Nazi leaders, Gestapo agents, and SS bandits
2. To conduct thorough purges of active Nazis from all public offices
3. To bring before German courts for severe punishment all those Nazis who were not major war criminals, who were to be sentenced by the victorious powers' courts, but who were nevertheless guilty of criminal offenses and of participation in Hitler's treason against the German people.
4. To reorganize the administration of justice in accordance with the people’s new democratic way of life
5. To enact equality before the law for all citizens without regard to racial differences
6. To criminalise all expressions of racial hatred, and
7. To seize the assets of Nazis and war criminals and make them available for the municipal and provincial organs of self-government.

The communist party's proclamation was followed by a call from the social democratic central leadership on June 15. This call was in line with the communist one and it demanded similar measures regarding the administration of justice:

…the adaptation of the legal system to the anti-fascist democratic constitution. Freedom of expression in writing and speech under consideration of the interests of the state and individual citizens. Freedom of opinion and freedom of belief. Protection through criminal law against incitement of racial hatred…

A complete eradication of all traces of the Hitler regime from legislation and the administration of justice is demanded.

—

The converging principled objective, which was proclaimed to the population, paved the way for an action agreement between the leadership of the two workers' parties. This agreement was made already on June 19th 1945 and it was concerning with a narrow cooperation on solving the proclaimed objectives regarding the final liquidation of Nazism, national reconstruction and the creation of a parliamentary-democratic republic that was not plagued by the mistakes and weaknesses of the past, but which secured all democratic rights and freedoms for the working people. It was established that the two parties should strive for agreements with other democratic anti-fascist parties on the formation of a stable bloc, so that the most pressing tasks could be solved.

The trade unions, who had been banned during the Hitler era, re-emerged for the public with a call on June 15 1945. They agreed with the demands of the two workers’ parties.

The road had been cleared for a broad unity on objectives and measures and on July 14 the bloc of anti-fascist democratic parties was formed, consisting of the communist party, the social democrats, the Christian democratic union and Germany's liberal-democratic party. Other parties and organisations were added later. Justice and administration could begin to function.

—

In 1946 the communist and the social democratic parties were united in the socialist unity party and international developments led to the partition of Germany.

In September 1949 the separate west German state was proclaimed and on October 7 1949 this breach of the Potsdam agreement was answered by the creation of the German Democratic Republic, GDR.

As mentioned, the administration of justice began to resume its functions shortly after the liberation from Hitler fascism in 1945. However, getting a well-oiled anti-fascist justice system started was a complicated matter, as virtually every jurist had been a member of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP. It was immediately determined that no person who had been affiliated with this or affiliated organizations, or who had in the slightest way shown sympathy for Nazism, would be permitted to work within the judiciary or the educational system of the GDR.

Courts were then established in which the functions were carried out by people's judges who were elected in workplaces, in trade unions, and in a similar manner. Few of these judges had legal training, but simultaneously with assuming their functions, they began a basic schooling. This happened through short courses, remote studies and through personal instructions. Many of these people's judges are still serving today, but they have gradually received legal training equivalent to that undergone by other jurists in the GDR.

This goal was reached by 1957.

The west German federal republic was permeated by American capital and it kept its old Nazi jurists in important offices in and outside the administration of justice. It did so, like we here in Denmark kept compromised judges and other legal officials — except for the few who had to be thrown to the wolves. The GDR did not receive Marshall aid and had to pay reparations. But in that part of Germany the Nazis were 100% removed from the legal system.

The result, as we see it, is that the West German judiciary is dominated by Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. Therefore the construction of a democratic legal system in the federal republic has been impossible. By the hundreds, Hitler's top and leading Nazis hold decisive positions. In the GDR there isn't one person in the judiciary whose anti-nazi sentiment hasn't been examined and found satisfactory.

Thus it began, and thus was the prerequisite created for the establishment of a democratic administration of justice in the GDR, an administration of justice exercised by the people or kept under the people's close scrutiny.

The Development

Since the establishment of the GDR, the legislative authorities have frequently concerned themselves with criminal procedure. I will mention some of the most important stages of its development:

In 1950, the Provisional People's Chamber issued the Law on the Supreme Court of the GDR and on the Office of the Supreme Public Prosecutor. This law must be seen in connection with the establishment of the two German states. After a West German state had been established, all members of the old Reich Court in Leipzig left the GDR and moved to the Federal Republic. As is well known, the Reich Court had led a rather withdrawn existence under the Hitler dictatorship, but when the choice stood between the socialist state and the reactionary West German one, the choice naturally fell in favor of the Federal Republic. The current president of the GDR’s Berlin-based Supreme Court is named Toeplitz and he is a member of the CDU.

In 1952 came the Law on the Public Prosecutor's Offices and on the Youth Courts. In addition, laws on the constitution of the courts were adopted.

Around 1953, the Conflict Commissions began their activity. These are bodies that are elected in workplaces and which adjudicate a very large portion of minor criminal cases. I will later discuss this element of the administration of justice, which is something very important and very characteristic of criminal justice in a country that dares to place the administration of justice in the hands of the people. Up to that point, the legislation regarding the judiciary had been relatively sporadic. Individual reforms were introduced gradually as the need for them became clear, but in the following years, a comprehensive reform of the administration of justice was prepared.

In 1958, 'The German Academy for Political and Legal Science' held a congress in Potsdam, and here a broad principled discussion took place. The agenda was 'The Marxist-Leninist Theory of the State and its Application in Germany'. The discussions at this congress helped to accelerate a development that culminated in 1963 with the issuance of a so-called 'Rechtspflegeerlass' [Administration of Justice Decree], a proclamation that contains a codification of the principles of socialist administration of justice and which serves as a guideline for legislative work in the realm of the judiciary. On the basis of this Erlass [decree], a complex of procedural laws was developed. The decree is of decisive importance for the administration of justice as it is now practiced in the GDR.

Prior to the proclamation, the State Council had issued a program declaration in October 1961 on the tasks and working methods of the judicial organs, and this declaration was followed by a decision of January 30, 1961. Finally, on May 24, 1962, a State Council commission was established to draft proposals for the further development of the socialist administration of justice. This commission submitted a report, which was approved by the State Council as the basis for a people's discussion of the problems of the administration of justice.

To carry out this discussion, meetings and congresses were held throughout the country. In these events — amounting to some 80,000 — over 2 million citizens participated, and more than 300,000 took the floor in the discussions. More than 6,000 suggestions were submitted to the Secretariat of the State Council. Meetings on the matter were held at all workplaces, in all trade unions, and in all educational institutions. Such public discussions take place before particularly significant laws are drafted.

The fact is that in the GDR, there is a particular notion that a government by the people, a democracy, consists not only of the population's right to vote in elections, but namely in its direct participation in the functions of society. They don't really consider a democracy genuine if its citizens are not active in all public affairs.

Here with us, legislation and state administration have become alienated from the people, a matter for officials and professional politicians. In the GDR, no effort is spared to involve the population directly in the discussion and resolution of societal problems.

Therefore, a full-fledged democracy is growing in the GDR, while Western countries like Denmark are increasingly developing into technocracies, into the experts' latent fascist dictatorship over the people. It is not surprising that the GDR disturbs Danish officials, disturbs them to such an extent that they will not even see with their own eyes what is actually happening in this country located right beyond our borders.

After the people's debate on the administration of justice had been concluded, and after a new draft of the administration of justice decree had been prepared taking extensive consideration of its results, in April 1963 the People's Chamber adopted the laws currently in force on the organisation of the courts and on the public prosecutor's offices.

Socialism Is The Foundation

The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state, a socialist workers' and peasants' state. It is that, whether you, ladies and gentlemen, like it or not, and that is what it will continue to be.

This is the fundamental reality that we must keep in mind if we wish to understand anything of what is happening in this country, so near our doorstep.

The country's administration of justice — as well as other manifestations of society — is shaped in simple consequence of this. Socialism permeates the administration of justice in all its branches, and it is proclaimed in numerous legal provisions, proclaimed with German thoroughness and in a legal language that is not easily transformed into manageable Danish.

To give you an impression of the fundamental difference in the objective of the administration of justice in the GDR and here, I have not spared myself the effort of translating its purpose clause, §2 of the Law on the Constitution of the GDR's Courts. This law is dated April 17, 1963, and it was prepared on the basis of the State Council's Administration of Justice Decree, which was approved by the People's Chamber.

This purpose clause reads as follows in my translation:

The activity exercised by the courts in the GDR shall serve

to the resolution of the workers' and peasants' state's political, economic, and cultural tasks during the ongoing comprehensive construction of socialism, namely the planned development of the productive forces and the strengthening of the socialist relations of production,

to develop and shape the citizens' socialist relations to society, to their state, and to one another in their societal interactions,

to protect the socialist state and economic constitution, including in particular the vital interests of the people and socialist achievements, against crimes against peace, humanism, and socialist state power, as well as against other seriously punishable acts,

to safeguard and enforce the rights and legally protected interests of the citizens, the state and economic organizations, the enterprises, the collectives, and the social organizations and institutions.

The courts shall contribute to ensuring that all citizens, institutions, and organizations purposefully observe and realize socialist law, the law that expresses the will of the people and serves their peaceful life, their freedom, their productive labor, and justice for each and every person.

The fulfillment of these tasks requires

that the courts, in the course of their activities, comprehensively and thoroughly investigate the social context and causes of legal disputes and violations, and work to eliminate the basis and conducive preconditions for unlawful acts—with the assistance of the responsible state and economic organizations and with the participation of the working population and its social organizations

that the courts continually engage with the problems of societal development; with the tasks posed by the comprehensive construction of socialism, with the administration of justice and the development of criminality, and that they draw consequences from this for their legal decisions, and

that the courts, during the period in which the comprehensive construction of socialism is taking place, rely on the knowledge and experience of the responsible state and economic organizations and of the scientific institutions in their work addressing the problems of political, economic, and cultural development.

I shall immediately proceed to explain a little about how, from this lush socialist soil, a criminal justice system has grown that constitutes the working people's voluntary self-administered justice.

I will do this by telling a little about institutions that cannot be imitated and results that cannot be achieved here or in any capitalist country.

What I will describe presupposes socialist conditions, conditions where the people consider the state their own, and where they solidarize with the executive organs of this state.

Justice is a concern of the entire people

In the GDR, the fundamental problem of the judiciary consists in achieving a complete unity between the people and the judiciary. The administration of justice must be something that concerns the entire people. It must be a function that springs directly from the working people.

We are familiar with similar talk here in this country, we encounter it in the schools' social studies classes, and perhaps even here at the university. One might have suspected von Eyben [progressive legal scholar].

But the crucial difference between Denmark and the GDR is that what is a television show and empty phrases in this country — a deception against the people — is a living reality in the GDR. Not to be understood as if the process of merging the people and its judiciary has been completed, but rather that the goal is being pursued with energy and honesty. The honesty in societal matters is, on the whole, a predominant yet, for us, distracting feature in the portrayal of the GDR. It is, in a peculiar way, as if this honesty offends our Western way of life. It comes across as somewhat uncultured, so to speak. Profoundly alien, in any case.

Lay Judges

One of the means to promote this development is the participation of lay judges in the administration of justice, both criminal and civil.

Since also the professional judges are recruited from the working class and the working peasantry, one might ask whether lay judges are actually necessary. This question was already discussed at the first lay judges' congress in the GDR. However, it was pointed out that while judges do indeed come from the working people, from the lathe, so to speak, the lathe is not the same as it was 10 years ago, and the working people today live, work, and think differently than they did 10 years ago. The direct participation in the judiciary by workers from industry and agriculture is intended to ensure that the knowledge of workers and peasants about the pressing problems of the day gains entry into the judiciary.

The decree on the administration of justice states that lay judges in particular should contribute to creating the closest connection possible between the judiciary and social development in general. They are to assist the professional judges in drawing the necessary conclusions from the general political and social development, particularly in the economic sphere, and thus contribute to the courts working more expertly than they would otherwise be able to.

What is required of the lay judges in the GDR is that they should be the direct link between the millions of the working people and the courts, between material production and other spheres of life on the one hand, and the judiciary on the other.

It is evident that this function could not be fulfilled by the type of lay judges we know from criminal cases in this country. These menopausal housewives and well-heeled functionaries on the leeward side of 50 are, with rare exceptions, suited for nothing other than being yes-sayers.

In the GDR, both lay judges and professional judges are elected for a term of four years. The lay judges who serve in the lower courts, where the overwhelming majority of criminal cases are adjudicated, are elected by workers' assemblies at enterprises and in agriculture.

It is a precondition for being elected that you must be at least 25 years old.

It is presumed that only persons are elected about whom the voters feel convinced that they can solve the tasks imposed on them by law. It is required that they have a thorough knowledge of the most important sectors of societal life, and particularly of economic life, in the district where they are elected. It is prescribed that particularly citizens who harbor a faithful devotion to the workers' and peasants' state should be selected as lay judges.

The tasks assigned to the lay judges are not fulfilled merely by their participation as equal judges in all cases. They typically do so for 12 consecutive days each year during their term of office.

But outside the courtroom, it is their duty to contribute to expanding the population's knowledge of the law and justice of the workers' and peasants' state.

It is furthermore their duty to support the collective education of offenders and the resocialization of released convicts.

The demands placed on the lay judges are thus very significant, and their work presupposes thorough training. This training is carried out through participation in courses and conferences, partly on a national scale. In addition to deliberation on the adjudication of specific cases, mutual collaboration takes place between professional judges and lay judges, who occasionally gather for joint discussions of general legal problems. Furthermore, a professional journal for lay judges is published.

The connection between the lay judges and their voters is by no means severed after the election; rather, the lay judges have a duty to account for the manner in which they have fulfilled the obligations imposed upon them by the election. Thus, they are monitored by the voters and monitored carefully. If they fail to fulfill their duties, which also presuppose a proper conduct in private life, the voters can, upon the court's recommendation, revoke their mandate.

Incidentally, a corresponding duty to render accounts to the competent electoral assembly also applies to the professional judges, who are likewise elected.

The lay judges receive compensation that provides full reimbursement for lost earnings. Neither more nor less.

As you, ladies and gentlemen, will understand, the institution of lay judges in the GDR is fundamentally different in nature from that in Denmark. But this, like so much else one encounters there in the sphere of societal life, is a simple consequence of the fact that the GDR is a state of a different type than Denmark.

Our state belongs to the monopolies and the banks, the GDR belongs to the German people. That is the difference. Therefore, they can entrust the courts with other tasks than we can, principally the task of defending socialism against criminal assaults, from West Berlin for example.

The population of the GDR is, in its overwhelming majority, in solidarity with its state. Here with us, discord prevails, and the population is alienated from the state and its technocratic leadership.

This situation is naturally also reflected in the two countries' administration of justice.

When you, ladies and gentlemen, in due course have completed your studies and passed your examination, you will be well-trained in lackey skills for the masters. In the GDR, the masters do not exist. That is what is so remarkable about that country.

A Meeting At The Conflict Commission

The branch of the socialist administration of justice that most conspicuously manifests the unity between the people and their judiciary is the Conflict Commissions. These Conflict Commissions are elected in workplaces. They have many functions, but one of them is that they handle and adjudicate approximately one third of all criminal cases. In Politisk Revy, Søren Søltoft Madsen, LL. M, has described a meeting of a Conflict Commission at the massive Warnov Shipyard in Warnemünde.

The meeting was held in the company's cultural room. Present were, in addition to the young offender to whom the case pertained, four members of the Conflict Commission. Approximately 25 workers were present as spectators.

The case involved a young man — a 24-year-old unskilled laborer — who had stolen 50 marks from a colleague who was his neighbor in a collective workers' housing unit affiliated with the Warnov Shipyard. It was, in other words, a completely trivial case that would not have prompted much reflection in this country. It is one of those cases that the [Copenhagen] district court processes two in an hour of. But in the Conflict Commission, the case was not regarded as insignificant. On the contrary, they did not shrink from spending time and effort to uncover the real reasons why he had stolen the money.

The young man had to give a detailed account of his family and upbringing. It turned out that he was born out of wedlock, and that he had been raised by an elderly aunt after his mother's death. They inquired about his current relationship with this aunt, how often he visited her, and whether he supported her financially.

But the point that was most thoroughly investigated was his relationship at and to the workplace. He was examined on his own view of his work and his relationship with colleagues. Additionally, a foreman and three of his colleagues explained minor episodes that could shed light on his personality and attitude. It emerged from this that he had told several colleagues that his wish was to become a welder.

The case was resolved with a formal reprimand, but it was additionally decided that if he performed his work properly and behaved well for half a year, he would be trained as a welder at the company's expense. Such a commitment is binding on the company, but the offender is free to quit his job whenever he wishes.

During the conversations with the young man, it emerged that he was interested in a theater club at the company, and the Conflict Commission decided that it should contact the leadership of this theater club and have them integrate the offender into its activities.

Amid the discussion of these concrete circumstances, the young man was confronted with questions of a more abstract nature. They discussed with him how he thought it would fare if residents of a collective housing unit could not trust one another, and they debated with him whether he believed it was necessary for society to react to thefts, even if they were not substantial.

Minor criminal cases like the one mentioned are adjudicated by the thousands in the Conflict Commissions. The person who has their case resolved in this manner undoubtedly experiences intense discomfort in having to account for their offense before their fellow workers. It is often far more unpleasant than a formal sentence. The repressive effect is significant.

The crucial point, however, is that the Conflict Commission and the colleagues do everything they can to figure out what is actually wrong with the man, and everything to remove the conditions that are decisive for why he has offended.

There is more than a decade of experience with the Conflict Commissions, and these experiences have been such that their scope of activity is being expanded and developed. They have become a decisive component in crime prevention. Those who have had their case handled by a Conflict Commission seldom offend again.

The Tasks Of The Conflict Commissions

The Conflict Commissions do not only deal with criminal cases and the settlement of minor civil disputes. In all their activities, they must contribute to the development and strengthening of the workers' socialist morality and consciousness. They are to promote and protect the interpersonal relations that rests on comradely assistance in all aspects of life, on cooperation and mutual influence. They shall contribute to their best ability to educate the workers of the enterprise in conscious respect for the laws of the workers' and peasants' state and for the principles of socialist coexistence. Finally, the Administration of Justice Decree prescribes it as their task to mobilize the workers of the enterprise to eliminate all faults and conflicts that may hinder the enterprise in fulfilling the production plan.

Regarding their judicial function, the decree states that the Conflict Commissions shall deliberate and adjudicate in minor criminal cases and in smaller civil disputes. They shall exercise this function in such a way that, through comradely and critical discussions with offenders, they exert an educational influence on them, and they shall to the best of their ability seek to identify the reasons why the individuals in question offended. Once these causes have been identified, the Conflict Commission shall seek to eliminate the crime-inducing causes and conditions with the assistance of the work collective.

The Conflict Commissions operate in close cooperation with the 'Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund' (FDGB), the trade union organization in the GDR, but they are not bound by specific instructions from any side.

The criminal cases handled by the Conflict Commissions generally involve first-time offenses, minor property crimes, simple assault, defamation, violations of worker protection regulations, vandalism, traffic offenses, and in general such minor violations committed for the first time, where the circumstances of the act and the personality of the offender suggest that the educational purpose of the sanction can be achieved in this manner.

The basis for the activity of the Conflict Commissions regarding minor criminal cases is a referral from investigating police authorities, from public prosecutors, or from the courts. The referral to the Conflict Commission is in writing. It must contain a thorough presentation of the fully investigated facts and of the evidence of the defendant’s guilt. Only cases in which a confession has been made are referred. Presentation of evidence never takes place in the Conflict Commissions with regard to the facts. The referral documents contain the referring authority's assessment of the act, a specification of the relevant criminal law provisions to be considered, and an account of the reason for deeming the case suitable for referral, as well as the circumstances deemed to be its background. The Conflict Commissions may protest the referral if they do not believe the case has been sufficiently investigated, that it is too severe, or that it is unsuitable for resolution by the Conflict Commission for other reasons. In the event of such an objection, the case must be reconsidered by the referring authority, but its second decision on the matter of referral is final.

To fulfill their tasks, the Conflict Commissions must collaborate with social organizations such as brigades and work groups, with the enterprise management, and with the collective of lay judges.

The Conflict Commissions cannot pass sentences, but they can order certain educational measures. They can issue a reprimand and require the guilty party to apologize to an offended person or a collective. They can order the payment of compensation for damages caused, and if the damage was inflicted upon the enterprise, restitution through unpaid work.

It is noteworthy that the Conflict Commission can confirm and approve the obligations that the work collective undertakes in order to exert an educational influence on the worker who has committed an offense. It can also direct recommendations to the enterprise management or to social or state organizations regarding the adoption of measures to eliminate identified concrete crime-inducing conditions. I have heard many complex recommendations being made to management or authorities. It may involve providing the opportunity for desirable education, a recommendation to the administration of residential properties regarding the establishment or expansion of hobby workshops, procurement of other lodging or a new apartment, and virtually any conceivable practical measure. But the recommendations can also concern administrative, technical, and supervisory measures.

The authorities or organizations to which a recommendation is directed must, within two weeks, provide a written and reasoned response to the Conflict Commission regarding whether the recommendation can be complied with. The collective of lay judges enters the picture by supporting the Conflict Commissions in their efforts to eliminate the causes of criminality.

If the offender is dissatisfied with the Conflict Commission's decision, they may bring the case before the lower court. The court may then either overturn the Conflict Commission's decision or dismiss the appeal if it finds it unfounded. If the court overturns the decision, the case is returned to the Conflict Commission with the court's recommendation for alternative measures, and the case is reheard by the commission. This second decision is final.

As mentioned, the Conflict Commissions have been operating for a number of years with excellent results. Until now, the scope of their adjudication of the countless minor violations that occur in a modern society has been limited to cases where the offender worked in an enterprise that had established Conflict Commissions.

This limitation is due, of course, to the fact that collectively working citizens are more mature in a socialist sense than citizens who operate under other conditions. However, the older generations of the population are diminishing, the old ideology is disappearing, and a new generation that has benefited from a socialist upbringing is emerging. It has therefore now been possible to extend a similar method of adjudicating minor offenses to other population groups, and at this time, analogous bodies with the same authority as the Conflict Commissions are emerging everywhere in residential areas and the countryside, in private businesses, and in the cooperatives of craftsmen, gardeners, and fishermen. They are called Schiedskommissionen or Arbitration Commissions.

The Conflict Commissions and other forms of the people's direct adjudication of minor cases have been an outstanding success, and they are not experiments or transitional phenomena. These institutions have come to stay, to be expanded, and to encompass larger and larger areas.

By the summer of 1963, there were 18,900 Conflict Commissions in the German Democratic Republic with approximately 200,000 members, and these numbers have since grown significantly. I do not have the latest figures. It should be emphasized that this institution also has the significant impact that approximately a quarter of a million people out of a population of 18 million are, by virtue of their membership in the Conflict Commissions, continuously and actively engaged in addressing the problems of crime prevention.

Together with the lay judges, they carry out work equivalent to that performed by the Danish Support Society in this country, but there are, of course, far more than 200,000 staff members. The Danish Support Society and its employees should not be blamed for the fact that their supervision and assistance cannot be as effective as that which can be provided in the unknown land south of Gedser.

It is evident that the work of the Conflict Commissions and Conciliation Commissions cannot be transferred to our country. Their operation presupposes a stabilized socialist social system and an acceptance of a social ethic that is opposite to the one bred by the social rat race in which we all participate here in this country.

A Case In The Rostock District Court

But of course, it is only one-third of criminal cases that are handled by the Conflict Commissions.

I will therefore describe a court hearing in the district court (lower court) of Rostock, on the basis of Søren Søltoft Madsen’s article.

If the case cannot be referred to a Conflict Commission due to the severity of the offense or because no confession has been made, the public prosecutor brings charges before the ordinary courts.

In Danish criminal cases, the presentation of evidence is carried out by the prosecutor and the defense counsel, provided, of course, that a defense counsel is involved who is familiar with the case and feels any responsibility for their work. They examine the party and the witnesses. They question expert witnesses and document the evidence that is invoked.

In principle, the role of our criminal judges is supplementary, but they may pose questions aimed at clarifying ambiguities. The judge can even order the presentation of evidence that neither the defense nor the prosecution had intended to introduce.

A criminal case in Denmark has the character of a duel between the prosecutor and the defense counsel, and the outcome of this determines the fate of the defendant.

This scenario is not encountered by an observer in a court case in the GDR, nor, for that matter, in West Germany. In these continental countries, the judge holds a different position than in our system. In principle it is the judge who conducts the examination with the purpose of eliciting the truth.

As a Danish defense counsel, I feel alienated by a legal system where the defense counsel merely presents the case and asks supplementary questions. The prosecutor's role is also far from prominent.

Incidentally, a reform of criminal procedure is being prepared, which will grant the defense counsel and the prosecutor a more active position in the criminal process than previously.

I will not express an opinion on whether an accusatorial or an inquisitorial criminal process is preferable, since what is decisive is not the manner in which the process is conducted, but whether the participating persons strive to uncover the material truth. Personally, I do believe it would be difficult for me to serve as a defense counsel under a process such as the one practiced on the Continent, and thus also in the GDR.

The case described by Søren Søltoft Madsen involves theft. A young man had broken into a former workplace and stolen a television set from a common room. That this case was not referred for hearing by a Conflict Commission was due to the fact that the perpetrator previously had two similar cases resolved in this manner, and both times he had left the workplace shortly afterward.

If one observes a comparable case in one of the Copenhagen district court's chambers, it will be resolved in 15-20 minutes. A confession has been made. In the district court, a few summary questions would be asked about the act and the perpetrator's personal circumstances. A conditional or unconditional sentence of a few months' imprisonment would then be made. In the interest of truth and objectivity, it should be noted that the district court judge in many cases will have a thorough personal investigation to rely on. These personal investigations are in many cases carried out by the conscientious investigators of the Danish Support Society.

The case in Rostock lasted a full 21 1⁄2 hours, and most of that time was spent conducting a meticulous mapping of the defendant's personal circumstances. One of the things the judge particularly sought to clarify was why he had changed workplaces so often. The defendant had apparently not given this much thought himself. He remarked that he was rather indifferent to what he earned, since most of his income was garnished to cover installment debt and child support payments for children from a previous marriage.

The interrogation also revealed that there was a certain degree of alcohol abuse involved, and to clarify this aspect, the innkeeper from the young man's regular drinking establishment had been summoned as a witness.

That wretched finances and alcohol abuse play a significant criminogenic role is certainly not something unfamiliar to us in this country. But in the case from Rostock, they did not merely acknowledge this; instead, they took an intense interest in examining what could be done to remedy the misery, to eliminate its underlying causes.

The young man received a suspended sentence, and as a stipulation, it was determined that he could not change workplaces without reason for one year. In connection with this, the work collective was tasked with helping him obtain further education so that he could earn more. At the same time, measures were to be taken to ensure that his wages would be garnished so much that he lost the incentive to work and earn more. If the condition regarding not changing jobs was violated, a new court hearing would be held to decide whether he should serve the sentence or whether he had reasonable grounds for leaving the workplace.

The defendant’s leisure activities were also thoroughly discussed, and to shed light on this, a witness from the housing collective to which the defendant belonged had been summoned, among others. It turned out that his hobby was building model ships. However, he had only built simple models and not the more complex mechanical ones he desired but could not afford. This was taken into account, as the judgement recommended that the relevant housing collective purchase tools and materials so that he could pursue his leisure interest. In return, the young man, and this was also stipulated in the judgement, was to commit himself to helping and teaching the children and youth in the collective who had an interest in model shipbuilding.

The recommendations put forward by the court in a judgment cannot simply be ignored by the collective in question. According to §9 of the Court Constitution Act, the court may criticize conditions that foster criminality, and such criticism must be addressed by the relevant collective within two weeks.

In the aforementioned case, which I also personally observed, no defense counsel was involved.

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Continued below

Illustration: Postcard from 1945 sold by the Danish resistance to raise money. Text at the top: "Men to be reckoned with". Bottom text: "Thune Jacobsen: It is a priceless good that the administration of justice remains on Danish hands" and below that: "Price: 25 øre. The proceeds of the sale goes to he fight against fascism".

The Danish official most responsible for the persecution of communists during and before WWII was Eigil Thune Jacobsen, first as a senior police official and from 1941 as Minister of Justice.

This is my translation of an article from the independent media Arbejderen about Thune Jacobsen.

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Thune Jacobsen – A Zealous Servant of the Nazis

First National Police Commissioner, later Minister of Justice during Denmark’s occupation. Thune Jacobsen was exceptionally diligent in his pursuit of Danish communists. As early as 1928, while heading the criminal investigation department, Jacobsen established an extensive registry of communists.

In his 2016 Constitution Day speech, then-Minister of Justice Søren Pind claimed the ban against the communists enacted on June 22, 1941, had "pushed the limits of the constitution," and thereby tried to explain that Danish politicians, under "extraordinary circumstances," might need to impose bans — that could later be reversed — if it is in the state’s interest.

Forty-two days before the law enabling the arrests took effect, Thune Jacobsen, LL.M. assumed office as Minister of Justice.

Section 2 of The Communist Law, Law No. 349, August 22, banning communist associations and activities, was repealed after the end of the occupation. But that changed nothing for the Danish communists who were murdered in the Stutthof concentration camp or who returned with scars on body and soul.

One of those killed was Harry Valdemar Kiel Jensen, who perished after a brief illness in Stutthof and who, following that day's cremations, became one of those whose ashes were used to fertilize strawberries in the Nazis’ private greenhouses. Another was Arne Sode who was beaten to death by a kapo at age 28. A third was Eske Sørensen who survived the camp and who returned to Denmark only to die from typhus a few days later. The list of victims is long.

From National Commissioner of Police To Minister

The architects behind the internments, imprisonments, and deportations to Stutthof sat in the Christiansborg Palace, where a unanimous parliament on August 22, 1941, passed the Communist Law with retroactive effect from June 22 of the same year. Unanimous because none of the three communist members of parliament were able to attend the session at that time.

One of the three, Martin Nielsen, had been arrested at his home on June 22 and was therefore already interned at the Horserød Camp. Alfred Larsen was also caught the same day but escaped at the Copenhagen Central Train Station and remained underground throughout the occupation and joined the Freedom Council later on. Communist Party chairman Aksel Larsen wasn’t caught and arrested until November 1942.

Already as chief of the criminal investigation department from 1926 Thune Jacobsen began compiling an extensive registry of communists.

At the police's – very thorough – arrest of the communists, prime minister Thorvald Stauning commented: "The things that are demanded from the German side must be done", and then-Minister of Justice, the judge Harald Petersen had no objections.

Nineteen days after the internment of the communists – and 42 days before the passing of the law that made the arrests possible – Thune Jacobsen, LL.M. takes over as Minister of Justice and his tenure had a grim impact on many of the imprisoned communists, who had done nothing illegal but who fell victim to the dirty policies of the collaboration government.

After the end of the occupation Thune Jacobsen attempted to explain his actions using the same "logic" as Søren Pind: That "extraordinary circumstances" can justify legislation and sometimes democracy must compromise with citizens' rights "if it is in the interest of the state". Thune Jacobsen would like to have been charged in an impeachment trial but that didn't happen and in return he wrote his defense "On A Uriah's Post" in 1946.

Registered Communists

Thune Jacobsen – On A Uriah's Post – 1946: "Following the liberation the Communist Law has lapsed and is thus now a thing of the past."

Thune Jacobsen was the responsible minister when the Communist Law was passed on August 22, 1941, but already as chief of the criminal investigation department in Copenhagen from 1926 he began (in 1928) to college an extensive registry of communists and their activities.

He and select employees continued their illegal registrations when he assumed office as National Police Commissioner in 1938. The various entries were based on activities ranging from putting up posters, attending meetings, contributing to Arbejderbladet, standing for local elections, trade union activity, being listed as a Spanish Civil War volunteer, participating in a DKP celebration, and more.

If the state had not put the communists under protection, the Germans would have arrested them.

• Thune Jacobsen

On February 21, 1947 the communist MPs Martin Nielsen and Robert Mikkelsen handed in evidence of 60,000 registrations of communists to the parliamentary commission set up to investigate whether ministers or others could be held responsible for their conduct in office during the war. But as expected in the post-occupation whitewash, the final conclusion was that mistakes had been made for which nobody could be held responsible.

The parliamentary commission consisted of politicians, tasked with investigating themselves or their former colleagues. The communist Martin Nielsen, himself a Stutthof survivor, resigned from the commission in1947 after a few months of participation with the words "they are pissing all over us."

As explanation of his and the government's collaboration with the occupiers, Thune Jacobsen writes: "If the state had not put the communists under protection, the Germans would have arrested them," which inevitably would have suited the elected representatives, so it had not been Danish politicians and a more than eager Danish police arresting and hunting communists for the duration of the occupation. The latter even went so far that they questioned the children of wanted communists who were playing in yards or parks or spent days staking out residences to see if a fugitive dared return to their family for a short visit.

Thune Jacobsen further states in his own explanation that "I found it hard to understand how the people reacted to the arrests with a strong shock and asked myself whether it was possible under the Constitution? Precedents always have a calming effect, and if the people had known that K. K. Steincke implemented the Internment Act of 1925, whereby individuals who, at the time the law came into effect had been sentenced to imprisonment for moral offences and who, without being criminally insane, but had psychopathic traits, could be sentenced to indefinite intermittent within a year from their release. Nobody considered that law unconstitutional."

The Families' Benefactor?

Thune Jacobsen, On A Uriah's Post, 1946: "Care was provided for the families, such that their circumstances were maintained on par with the help provided to the families of those called up for military service."

For posterity, Thune Jacobsen claimed that he cared for the interned communists and their relatives, which was an outright lie. Posterity have shown that there are hundreds and hundreds of letters and requests from worried parents, wives, children, and friends, and conversely, letters from the internees who were anxious about their families' well-being. The state's interments had deprived nearly all families of their provider.

There was not much help to be found at the welfare offices either. Many of the employees were of the opinion that "the communists had made their bed and now they had to lie in it."

Usually, the Minister of Justice took an unreasonably long time before he looked at the letters and answered them and various requests with the standard response 'cannot be complied with,' often signed by Eivind Larsen, Permanent Secretary for Police in the Ministry of Justice– appointed on June 22, 1941. The same Eivind Larsen was appointed Chief of Police in Copenhagen after the end of the occupation.

There was not much help to be found at the welfare offices either. Many of the employees were of the opinion that "the communists had made their bed and now they had to lie in it," and an absolute minimum of aid was paid out. This this did cover rent, but there was no money left for food or other necessities.

The memoirs of Agnes Nielsen, together with those of other relatives of the internees, paint a consistent picture:

Now, troubles started for those of us who were left behind, many of us alone with children. How were we supposed to survive when our provider had been taken from us? At the time, no one knew how we would be treated. It all took a very long time, and many of the women fell ill, suffered nervous breakdowns, and grew desperate. There were so many tragedies.

In The Interest Of The State

Thune Jacobsen, On A Uriah's Post, 1946: "I could not restrict myself to having the small community of the Horserød Camp in mind and not also the needs of the wider society, which I had to take care of."

On the night between August 28 and 29, 1943, the policy of collaboration collapsed, and the German occupiers took over the Horserød camp. 97 communists managed to escape whole 150, of which seven were women, were delivered to Germany captivity and subsequent stay in the Stutthof concentration camp.

It was the perception of all the internees that the Danish government – and particularly the Minister of Justice– would not allow the communists to be handed over to the Germans. Therefore, they remained in the Horserød Camp, awaiting instructions on how to act if the collaboration between the government and the occupying power were to break down.

They prepared themselves to leave the camp at a moment's notice. They waited and waited, bound by the agreement with the Danish authorities and acutely aware that if they acted on their own, reprisals, collective punishment, possibly transfer to the Vestre Prison, or restrictions on mail and visitation, would become a reality, as had happened in previous cases where others had attempted to escape with varying degrees of success. When the clock struck 11:00 p.m. — on the evening of August 28th — they went to bed fully dressed. During the night, at approximately 2:30 a.m., the Germans arrived.

After the liberation, we are faced with the returned communists' grievances over what they had to endure.

• Thune Jacobsen

A single phone call from Minister of Justice Thune Jacobsen could have prevented this. But apparently the Minister of Justice did not think he could restrict himself to having the internees in mind, and furthermore he had also promised the Germans only to release internees with German approval in each case.

At the same time he would put himself in harm's way and additionally the future administrative and legislative governance of the state would be in danger. The same governance he himself aspired to become part of, which he also became.

The paradox inherent in the government's arrest and pursuit of communists on June 22, 1941, "to protect them from German captivity and under Danish guard", was defended by the Minister of Justice a few years later with the explanation that "the purpose of the imprisonments was not only to protect the communists but also to protect the Danish state."

A Zealous Servant

Thune Jacobsen, On A Uriah's Post, 1946: "After the liberation, we are faced with the returned communists' grievances over what they had to endure, and it might be argued that their removal to Germany could not be regarded as the immediate consequence of the camp's takeover by German hands. In fact it only happened a month later. By the way, the communists were not alone in completely undeservedly being subjected to the sufferings of German captivity. I am reminding of the 2,000 policemen who were taken to Buchenwald and of which 84 perished. No one is more willing than I to admit that this law placed great hardships and sufferings on the communists and their relatives, but I object to being singled out as the target for these unreasoned hostile sentiments. The Communist Law served German, but also Danish interests."

That Thune Jacobsen collaborated extensively with the occupiers to keep an eye on the communists even before June 22 1941 goes unmentioned, just as his "defense" doesn't mention the extensive registration he had launched long before the occupation and which was used by Danish police against the communists.

To shed light on these aspects of Thune Jacobsen's activities we must turn to other sources, such as an internal police report on the Danish police's collaboration with the Gestapo dated March 14 1941. An excerpt:

"In accordance with an agreement reached between Vice Police President Kanstein and National Police Commissioner Thune Jacobsen, the National Police Commissioner directed a written inquiry to the head of the German security police, SS-Gruppenführer R. Heydrich, on February 24, 1941. In this request the National Police Commissioner inquired whether the SS-Gruppenführer would be willing to receive Police Director von Magnus and see to it that he could have the opportunity to discuss with relevant authorities that part of the potential communist activity in and outside Germany which might be known to the German police, and which it could currently be of interest for Danish police to gain knowledge of. The fact that the National Police Commissioner has currently deemed it necessary to take initiative in this matter is due, among other things, to the assumption that among the approximately 30,000 Danes currently working in Germany, there must be a number who have communist leanings. This is already evident from the criminal convictions (of Danes sentenced in Germany) concerning Danes, which are reported here by the Danish consular authorities. However, this nevertheless leaves it uncertain here whether they are isolated actions or systematically planned by Danish or other organizations and are thus only part of a greater whole. In this regard it would be valuable to have any potential German information made available."

Later, we can read in the minutes from the meeting in Germany:

"At the request of the National Police Commissioner, I (Von Magnus) undertook an official trip to Berlin from March 17-20, 1941, to discuss various matters concerning communist activity with the relevant German police authorities. In response to the letter of February 24, 1941, from the National Police Commissioner to the head of the German security police, SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, in which the National Police Commissioner had inquired whether the Gruppenführer would receive me for a discussion of the aforementioned matters, notification was given by telephone on March 12, 1941, by Dr. Fest of Der Beauftragte für Fragen der inneren Verwaltung (The Plenipotentiary for Internal Administration) that I could be given the opportunity at any time to conduct the desired negotiations in Berlin.

On the 17th, 19th, 20th, and 21st of March, I subsequently conducted the desired negotiations at the Reich Security Main Office, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, with: SS-Obersturmführer, Criminal Commissar, Hermann Span; SS-Sturmbannführer, Criminal Director, I.M. Vogt; and Brigadeführer Müller; and on March 21, 1941, discussed with SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich the question of communist legal and illegal work, as well as what efforts could be made in this regard from the police's side. Vogt pointed out that whether the communist work in a country was legal or illegal, all information from the police had to be collected in one place. Considering the political activities transcending national borders, all the gentlemen agreed that a further developed cooperation between the German police and the police in the Scandinavian countries would be a highly desirable measure. Gruppenführer Heydrich expressed his desire to invite a large number of Danish police officers to Berlin for special training at the Reich Security Main Office and was also willing to make German officials available in Denmark, if it was found useful, so that through lectures and instruction they could contribute to the specialized training of those criminal police officers who were to operate in this particular area."

Danish police’s first action against the communists on June 22nd 1941. Police officers are standing outside the building in Copenhagen that housed the offices of the Communist Party of Denmark and their newspaper Arbejderbladet. Photo: The Museum of Danish Resistance.

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On April 9th 1940 Germany invaded Denmark. The poorly equipped and trained Danish military was no match for the Nazi war machine and after a few hours of resistance the Danish government decided to surrender. Mass destruction was avoided and a so-called “peacetime occupation” followed in which the Germans allowed the institutions of the Danish state to continue relatively undisturbed. In return Germany secured access to Danish agricultural exports, they were able to secure their northern flank with a minimal troop commitment and they gained a launchpad for their ongoing invasion of Norway.

Parliament and political parties were allowed to continue operating as well, including DKP, the Communist Party of Denmark. This changed on June 20th 1941 when the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union. That same morning, Danish police arrested hundreds of leading communists and put them in so-called “protective custody”. Two months later parliament passed the infamous “Communist Law”, banning all communist activities and retroactively legalizing the arrests.

Some of the detainees were eventually released but eventually a couple of hundred of them were interned in the Horserød Camp, run by the Danish state. On August 29th 1943 the official Danish collaborationist policy broke down and the government resigned. The night before, the Germans had disarmed the Danish military during “Operation Safari”.

As part of the operation the Germans raided the Horserød Camp. While 93 of the detained communists managed to scale the fence and escape into the surrounding forests under the cover of night and pouring rain, 150 were less lucky. They were captured by the Germans and deported to the Stutthof concentration camp where 22 of them would eventually be murdered.

In 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the passing of the Communist Law, Leif Larsen, a son of the communist Eigil Larsen who escaped from Horserød by digging a tunnel and went on to become became a legendary railway saboteur, wrote an article that was printed in the newspaper Information (original text). The article details the history behind the passing of the law by the so-called “democratic” parties and debunks the common myth that the ban on communist organisations was passed as a result of German pressure. This myth was widely popularised after the war, especially by Social Democrats.

Below is my translation of Leif Larsen’s article.

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It Was High Treason

One of the most shameful Danish laws was processed and debated in complete secrecy. Within minutes and three rushed readings, a unanimous parliament could send Law No. 349, called the Communist Law, to the King for signature on August 20, 1941. This happened on August 22, 1941.

Thereby, the politicians believed they had legalized the arrests made over the preceding two months of 339 men and women, in full accordance with the Constitution. Subsequently, nearly 300 more were interned under the provisions of the law.

With only three short sections, the law was not particularly wordy.

It stipulated:

• that “all Communist Associations and Organizations shall forthwith be dissolved”
• that “Persons whose conduct has furnished reasonable grounds to suspect their participation in Communist Activity or Agitation... shall be taken into custody”
• that “Assets belonging to Communist Associations... shall be taken into custody”

The lead-up to the law took place in the Cooperation Committee, commonly called the Nine-Member Committee. It was established on July 2, 1940, and consisted of two representatives from each of the four old parties: the Social Democrats, the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, and the Social Liberal Party. The Justice Party (Georgists) had a single representative.

These nine politicians held a total of 314 meetings. Its most important task consisted of maintaining cooperation with the German occupiers. When this collaborationist policy failed on August 29, 1943, the committee ceased to exist.

In the reports of the Parliamentary Commission, minutes from all meetings, written by the committee's secretary, the Justice Party member Oluf Pedersen, can be found. They are reproduced verbatim in Volume IV (pp. 505-823) of one of the commission's many reports. Here, a committee meeting on August 6, 1940, is referenced, where Minister of Justice Thune Jacobsen first presented a draft bill on the "Prohibition against the Communists."

The Minister cunningly adds that “It was strongly recommended by the President of the Supreme Court, Troels G. Jørgensen, and was in accordance with the Constitution and approved by the Ministry of Justice”.

Even for the “shut up and fall in line” mentality of the time, it was alarming that the President of the Supreme Court interfered in legislation and even claimed that a law banning a legal political party was not in violation of the Constitution.

In the following days, the committee convenes to find out whether members of parliament can accept the issuing of arrest warrants against three members of the lower house and an unknown number of people who either are, or are suspected to be, communists.

The committee meeting of August 7th 1941 was a grand day of craven remorse.

Some committee members wanted to postpone the law until the Germans themselves got the idea to directly demand a ban against the communists. Others were afraid that the law could be used on other parties as the text of the law did not indicate clearly enough that it was the communists who were the intended target.

A peculiar question was raised during the meeting on August 12th by Liberal Party member Elgaard. He said:

Have the communists signed a declaration of loyalty to the Constitution, like the rest of us?

“I know nothing about that,” came the astonishing reply from Knud Kristensen (Liberal Party).

None of the eight aging men seemed to know article 48 of the Constitution, which clearly stipulated:

On approval of his election, each new member shall make a solemn declaration of loyalty to the Constitution.

Although all of them had been elected multiple times to either the lower or the upper house, a gap had suddenly appeared in the memory, for had they recalled Article 48 of the Constitution it would mean that also the communist members of parliament had made a “solemn declaration of loyalty to the Constitution”.

So here sits a group of men with an average age of 62, convincing each other that the communist MPs probably hadn't promised to be loyal to the Constitution, and therefore they damn well deserve their comeuppance, and must accept being hunted by the police and put in prison or handed over to the Germans.

One of the three, the editor of [the DKP newspaper] Arbejderbladet Martin Nielsen, had already been locked up for two months. Now the task was to hunt down Aksel Larsen and Alfred Jensen, and to do it with a clear conscience.

On August 19th the nine-member committee held its last meeting on the Communist Law before it was on the next day with three readings in the lower house and three readings in the upper house.

Even though parliament’s rules of procedure stated that at least two days must pass between the first and second reading, and at least two further days before the third reading of a bill could take place.

At this last meeting it is agreed upon to ignore constitutional stipulations on time intervals beween the readings of bills. It is also agreed that nothing must leak out before the Minister of Justice has made his speech introducing the Communist Law and judging from the very wordy minutes nobody gave a thought about Article 38 of the Constitution (currently Article 34), which at the time read:

Parliament shall be inviolable. Whoever attacks its security or freedom, issues or obeys any command aimed thereat, shall be deemed guilty of high treason.

There was absolutely no doubt. It was a clear case of high treason when three members of parliament, who had done nothing illegal, who merely had a different view of the social order, and who had solemnly promised loyalty to the Constitution, were hunted down across the country.

Despite all of the lukewarm reservations, the 137 members of the lower house and the 70 members of the upper house enter into this legal standing on August 20th 1941. There is no wavering in the ranks. They all vote in favour of a treasonous and clearly unconstitutional law.

It must have been sickening to witness this performance on a Wednesday in August 1941. But the Ministry of Justice had secured itself against disturbances by summoning a troop of plainclothes policemen who filled all spectator seats during the few hours the law was being processed.

In the upper house, not a single person wished to speak. The three readings were over in minutes.

Minister of Justice Eigil Thune Jacobsen, who had led the police's work in creating an archive of communists and sympathizers since 1925, delivered a fiery speech about the years of depredations by communist terror groups in Denmark. The latest example was cases of ship sabotage, which had led to prison sentences a month earlier ranging from two to sixteen years. The minister conveniently omitted to inform that none of those convicted were still members of the party now to be banned. He said: “From members of the Communist Party everywhere, help can be expected to advance communist activities without asking first what these activities are or whether they are legal or whether it concerns crimes against the laws of the land.”

The lower house took a little more time. The Justice Party used 16 words, and the Social Liberals 23 words, to endorse the bill. The Social Democrats and the Liberal Party promised to support the bill. Only one member fired his full anti-communist arsenal in a very combative speech. That was the Conservative Ole Bjørn Kraft, who delivered this parting kick to the DKP:

There can no longer be any doubt about the position and character of the Communist Party in this country; in reality it has been clear ever since we had the fundamental debate here in this chamber in 1933. A party who like the Communist lets its principles and opinions be determined, not out of consideration of its own people and its own country, but by what a single country’s interests demand, places itself in a very specific way in the perception of its compatriots and consequently it will also only seem pitiful when such a party, confronting adversity, suddenly seeks shelter behind the law of comradeship, which it itself so clearly has disregarded through its stance.”

Forgotten are the Conservative leader's concerns in the nine-member committee about constitutional violations, illegal persecution of members of parliament, and attempts to avoid legislation and "settle for a royal decree."

A few minutes were spent launching a law that today, 60 years later, stands as a pillar of shame over the parties, who always call themselves democratic and defenders of human rights.

One might think that a major reckoning with a law that was endorsed by the president of the Supreme Court, even with the claim that the law was not unconstitutional, would have followed the end of the German occupation on May 5th 1945 but there was no reckoning. The only person to suffer serious damage because of the Communist Law was Thune Jacobsen. A few days after being appointed Minister of Justice he introduced a bill that was passed unanimously by both chambers of parliament. A few days after the end of the occupation on May 5th 1945 the law was called “disgraceful” in [the legal journal] Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen-

Thune Jacobsen took this label upon him in his book På en Uriaspost (On an Uriah Post) released in 1946. On page 83 he writes: “For my sake, one may well designate it as 'disgraceful', provided it is understood that the disgrace is on the German side.”

But, crucially, there had been no demand from the occupiers to ban the communists by law. As with other decisions to be made by the collaborationist politicians, during the first years of the occupation German wishes were fulfilled before they were even stated.

This applies, for instance, to the plans for a Monetary Union, or the majority of the 127,000 Danish workers whom the Danish government forced to go to war-torn Germany as forced laborers by denying benefits to the unemployed.

Thune Jacobsen died aged 68, only three years after having published his book. Thus passed the sole individual to face political turbulence after the end of the occupation. Since then, astonishingly little has been said or written about the law that I laid out by calling “a scandalous law”.

In his novel Frydenholm, Hans Scherfig vividly describes the day the Communist Law was presented in parliament on August 20, 1941. The spectator seats are filled with employees from Police Headquarters, so none of the women whose husbands were locked up in the Vestre Prison could attend the debate. Scherfig adds:

Under these circumstances, the Minister of Jsutice took the floor to present the law on the prohibition of communist associations and against communist activity. With curly hair and a Bohemian cravat, he stood at the chamber's rostrum and smiled affably at the sombre assembly. While reading the bill, he tilted his head and moved his hands like an after-dinner speaker saying pleasant things to the ladies.

With biting irony, he goes through the bill and the debate, concluding with a quote from Jyllands-Posten's editorial the day after the law's adoption:

There has always been a basis in Danish law for banning a party like the communist one. The only regrettable thing is that it didn't happen sooner.

• Leif Larsen

The communist resistance group BOPA stood for up to half of all material damage done by sabotage actions during German occupation of Denmark in WWII. On June 6th 1944 they assaulted and blew up the Copenhagen bicycle factory Globus that had been converted to manufacture parts for German airplanes. The assault was a regular partisan attack that involved up to a hundred resistance fighters. It was one of the most spectacular sabotage actions during German occupation of Denmark in WWII.

Jørgen Jespersen, the 18 year old partisan who led the assault team later described the assault in his memoirs "KK og Krigen" (Download).

Below is my translation of his description of the assault.

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The Globus factory was located in Glostrup on [the road] Roskildevej near the Western Ramparts. It manufactured aircraft parts for the Germans, and the workers were specially selected with a large proportion of Nazis among them. We had to abandon the idea of infiltrating any of our people into the company, a method we otherwise often used for hard-to-reach targets. And Globus was certainly that. The guards consisted of approximately 15 Sommer people (a Nazi corps of former Eastern Front fighters – some nasty characters [note]) armed with rifles, carbines, submachine guns, and pistols.

The factory grounds were rectangular, featuring two long two-story buildings housing the actual machinery and workshops, along with several smaller buildings, including the guardhouse. It was all surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence inside which a concrete bunker with firing slits was positioned at each corner. It was summer and hot, which meant the guards preferred staying out in the open rather than inside their bunkers. We were aware that we couldn't overpower the guards outright, and that we lacked the means to force them out of their bunkers if they retreated into them. Furthermore, the situation was complicated by the guards having direct telephone connections to Dagmarhus [Gestapo's Copenhagen headquarters] and to the Avedøre Barracks, which was full of German soldiers and located only 4 km from the factory. On the Western Ramparts, 500-600 meters away, there was a German post of about 20 men, and Roskildevej had heavy traffic, frequently including German soldiers.

We realized that the only way to get onto the factory grounds was to neutralize the guard force. We hadn't tried that before. True, we had been in firefights several times, but that was by accident, when something had gone wrong. Most of us had no military training, and our marksmanship was limited. Only a few of us had ever practiced target shooting. For months, we reconnoitered and spied on the factory, particularly the guards.

This time, we broke with our principle of only briefing our people on the plans immediately before an action. This principle was to avoid the risk of the action being betrayed to the Germans or careful planning being wasted if a comrade happened to be arrested. A couple of days before the action, we assembled the assault team – which was my section – along with the leaders of the covering groups for instruction. This took place at the YMCA Soldiers' Home on Gothersgade in Copenhagen. For the occasion, we had prepared a map of the factory and its surroundings. Then, the task of each group and each man was reviewed in detail.

The assault team, my section, consisted of about 20 men. Including the covering groups, we totaled approximately 50 men. Getting such a large force into position for the attack without the guards detecting and being warned was therefore a major challenge. This required considerable ingenuity: some arrived as boyscouts on bicycles with guns in their backpacks, some by train, and others by bus. Several came in cars so we could make a quick getaway after the action. The cars were almost all procured shortly beforehand. The explosives were transported there on two trucks. Along the east side of the factory, there were about three villas, which we occupied before the action, partly to have a reporting point and a telephone. A single villa on the north side, across Roskildevej from the factory's main entrance, was also occupied. On the south side was a fruit orchard, which allowed us to crawl almost right up to the fence.

The assault team arrived 2-3 men at a time and took up positions on the three sides of the factory in the villas and in the fruit orchard. Exactly at 7:00 PM, the assault team was to be in position, and the team near Roskildevej was to start the attack by neutralizing the guards at the gate. We had counted 5 men on guard duty, and they were all standing near their bunkers. I myself was positioned with Brandt and 4-5 other men in the orchard south of the factory. We had crawled as close as we dared towards the guard pacing back and forth; we could hear and occasionally see him.

The clock showed a couple of minutes past 7:00, and nothing had happened, when suddenly our guard shouted, "Who goes there?" while swinging his submachine gun down and pointing it towards us. I shot at him immediately, and the others followed. I don't think we hit him, but we moved towards the west side of the factory, where we climbed over the fence via a shed. Then we covered each other with fire while advancing towards our assigned bunker to neutralize any guards who might have reached it. When I was about twenty meters from our bunker, I saw a nose sticking out through the rear opening. I fired instantly and hit the frame, but then the person shouted, "Don't shoot any more, Knud!". It was one of my own men; he wasn't hit. Incidentally, we all wore a white cloth around our necks so we could recognize our own people.

As soon as we opened fire, the other teams also began their attack. The guard in front of the gate had been neutralized, and the team had thrown a hand grenade through the window of an apartment on the factory's first floor. A German engineer lived there, whom we knew was armed and had a telephone. The apartment caught fire, and both he and his wife came rushing out, shouting for us to put out the fire. "What the hell, do you think I'm a fireman?" replied Johnny, one of my group leaders. The personnel in the guardhouse surrendered after brief gunfire. They shouted for mercy, came out with their hands up, and were rounded up.

Approximately 25 minutes had now passed since we started the attack. I had moved around to the back of the guard building to see if there were more guards inside. When I cautiously looked in through a window with my submachine gun ready, I found myself staring straight down the barrel of another submachine gun. I stared deeply into the eye behind the gun, ready to shoot, when I realized it was Brandt looking in from the other side of the building. We then sent for the trucks carrying the explosives. They drove in from the road at the south end of the factory, where we disarmed and searched the guards who had surrendered. Suddenly, a guard sprang forward with a pistol in his hand, heading straight for the trucks. I shot him down with a couple of bursts from the hip. We had planned from the outset to shoot all the guards, as they were Sommer people, marked for execution. But we couldn't bring ourselves to shoot people who had surrendered.

We then placed 3 bombs in each of the two large factory buildings. A total of 175 kg of powdered TNT. In each building, the three bombs were interconnected so they would detonate simultaneously. When we finished placing the bombs, the signal was sent to the covering groups, who began withdrawing towards Roskildevej. South of the factory, towards the Western Ramparts, we had positioned a group with a machine gun tasked with stopping the German post on the ramparts. But they never appeared. A couple of kilometers south of the factory, a group of our miners had mined the road to delay any German rapid reaction force from Avedøre Barracks, but none came from there either. The explosive charges were detonated, after which we drove away in the two trucks and 5 cars amidst endless cheers from the many hundreds of Danes who had been stopped at a safe distance from the factory by our covering groups on Roskildevej. Two of our cars couldn't start after the action; they had likely been hit during the firefight.

One group of our covering men commandeered a bus to get away. With this group was Dr. Hagens, who had participated in the action to tend to any wounded. Hagens drove the bus, but when they passed the Carltorp factory, guards there, also Sommer people, opened fire on the bus and hit Hagens, who was killed instantly. Our men returned fire, and one of them managed to straighten the bus out and drive away. It was a sad end to an otherwise highly successful action. Hagens had always been ready to help us in any way. It was the irony of fate that he, who was there to patch us up, became our only fatality. We had otherwise expected casualties to be unavoidable.

After receiving the news about the guards shooting at our men, we regretted that we had been soft-hearted towards the guards at Globus and had let them escape with their lives. The Normandy Invasion began that day, but that was pure coincidence; we knew nothing about it, though it naturally boosted the morale of both participants and onlookers. A couple of days after the action, we received a telegram from General Eisenhower's headquarters:

Congratulation to Danish saboteurs reference Grundahl Hansen S.H.A.E.F.

Grundahl Hansen was the owner of Globus.

The Germans responded immediately with a series of executions of resistance fighters and bans on taxi travel, etc. Planning such an action was a major and extensive undertaking. It wasn't done by a staff or by leaders, but in collaboration. For smaller actions, it was normal for the group itself to plan its own action, get it and the action plan approved by the leader and the sabotage committee, and then carry it out. If the action was larger in scale, planning happened in collaboration with the section leader and possibly other groups. Often, the target was chosen by the group itself because it had knowledge of it, either through group members or other contacts.

This local knowledge was crucially important for sensible planning. For security reasons, as few people as possible were involved in the planning. Often, group members were only briefed about their specific tasks immediately before the action or on the way to it. We had no radios, so communication during the action itself was by shouts and signals, and therefore difficult. It should be limited to the absolute minimum necessary, but difficulties often arose during the action that required changes, placing great demands on foresight in planning and on all participants understanding the attack plan and being able to act independently. But even with collaboration, it was often necessary for the leaders to intervene during the action and for participants to follow orders.

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The Sommer Corps was a short-lived collaborationist unit formed in 1944 and comprised mostly of returning Danish Waffen-SS war criminals from the eastern front. They were named after their leader, the Danish Nazi fighter pilot Poul Sommer and were tasked with guarding the military installations of the Luftwaffe as well as factories supplying the German airforce.

The Fall Of The King

Peter Brixtofte and The Neoliberal Welfare Utopia

In early February 2002, the town of Farum radiated confident optimism. Just twenty kilometres north of Copenhagen, nestled between two picturesque lakes and connected to the capital by a commuter train line, Farum was a middle class Utopia for its roughly 18,000 residents.

Children strolled to school carrying not heavy backpacks, but brand-new laptops, a gift from the municipality. Pensioners prepared for their annual holidays in the Mediterranean, all expenses paid by city hall. These weren’t elite privileges, but public services, available to everyone. Remarkably, it wasn’t funded by soaring taxes: Farum boasted some of the lowest tax rates in the country.

Unemployment seemed a distant specter, kept at bay by a pioneering workfare scheme. Those seeking benefits were required to pack goods for private companies or attend intensive Danish language classes. Naysayers and killjoys on the left decried it as "slave labor," renting out citizens without proper rights, but official numbers showed that it worked. Public buildings shone with newness. Dominating the skyline was Farum Park, a striking 10,000-seat football stadium capable of seating half the town, a monument to civic ambition. Down by the lakeside, a new marina added a touch of prosperity. The local football team, Farum BK, fueled by municipal ambition and generous private sponsorships, was on the cusp of qualifying for Denmark’s top professional league after a meteoric rise. Everywhere one looked, things in Farum seemed fresher, brighter, and more generous than they had any right to be.

At the heart of this glittering vision stood Peter Brixtofte. Charismatic, tireless, and impossible to ignore, he was the mastermind behind Farum’s transformation. The right-wing press affectionately called him “Denmark’s worst-dressed politician,” a nod to his perpetually ill-fitting suits, a quirk that only seemed to enhance his everyman appeal. Brixtofte made himself accessible, seemingly knowing every resident by name, always ready to cut through red tape or call in favors from his vast personal network. If someone needed a permit, a job or even a bicycle, he could make it happen. Mayor for over a decade, wielding an absolute majority on the council, Brixtofte appeared to have cracked the code of municipal governance. His potent blend of tax-cutting, privatization, and lavish public services, the "Farum Model", was hailed as visionary, copied by other right-wing councils, and championed nationally by his own Liberal Party as the blueprint for the welfare state of the new millennium. Farum wasn’t just successful; it felt like a triumphant refutation of the old, lingering social democratic welfare state, proof that liberals were the true, efficient stewards of the future.

But beneath the shine, something was off. There was a tension in the air – a sense that the dream was too perfect, too frictionless. And as the old saying goes: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Farum was living in a dream. A harsh awakening was in the making

• Peter Brixtofte (left) wearing a mayoral chain and Thor Pedersen (right) wearing sunglasses at the opening of Farum's new city hall in 1989

A Liberal Wunderkind

Peter Brixtofte was born on December 11, 1949, in Copenhagen, the son of a civil servant. When his father landed an administrative job at NATO, the family followed along and for four years the young Brixtofte attended the Lycée Internationale d’OTAN in Paris, an exclusive school for the children of NATO bureaucrats. The experience left a deep impression. Surrounded by classmates from across the world, Brixtofte absorbed a cosmopolitan worldview and developed a distaste for nationalism and xenophobia that would later set him apart from Denmark’s increasingly xenophobic political mainstream. Later in life, he described his time “among Frenchmen, Americans, Chinese, [soft N-word redacted]” as transformative. His personal experience of language unlocking French society became the bedrock for his later insistence on mandatory Danish classes for unemployed immigrants, a policy masking its coercive edge as integration.

While his brother Jens pursued a musical career, winning Denmark’s Eurovision contest in 1982, only to place second to last internationally, Peter turned to politics. After earning a political science degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1972 at the age of 22, the youngest graduate to ever do that. He entered parliament just a year later. During the 1980s, as xenophobic rhetoric began creeping into Danish public life, Brixtofte remained aligned with the political mainstream which had not yet been infected. He warned that failing to engage with immigrant communities risked fostering “national self-satisfaction bordering on nationalism,” and argued that Danes could learn from immigrants, particularly in matters of family values. This early stance would later contrast starkly with the viciously racist policies of his party under Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Brixtofte’s true power base, however, was Farum. Elected to the local council in 1979, his breakthrough came on election night in 1985. Although the Liberals had won just 5 of 21 seats, Brixtofte outmanoeuvred the Social Democrats by rejecting their offer of the mayoralty in exchange for all committee chairs. Instead he struck a deal with the Socialist People’s Party (SF) and Farum’s lone Communist councillor, securing the mayor’s chain for himself. The communist, incidentally, would later defect and join the Liberal Party.

By 1989, the Liberals had won an outright majority. Brixtofte ruled unopposed.

Once in power, he moved fast. Inspired by the prevailing winds of Thatcherite and Reaganite neoliberalism, Brixtofte cut taxes, outsourced public services, and declared war on bureaucracy. City Hall staff plummeted from 220 full-time employees when he took office to a skeletal 55 by the time he left. Early results seemed miraculous: finances improved, and at the opening of a gleaming new City Hall 1989, Liberal Party Interior Minister Thor Pedersen praised Farum as a "model municipality." A new cultural center followed in 1992.

Brixtofte ruled Farum as his personal petty kingdom. Dissent was not tolerated. He cultivated a court of loyalists, appointing people without relevant experience or education to key positions, often people he had helped out of trouble, ensuring their dependence. Those who crossed him faced demotion, salary cuts, or dismissal.

In 1994 the municipally employed psychologist Ulla Andersen gave a sarcastic speech at a farewell reception for the latest victim of Brixtofte's leadership style, the town's fourth municipal director over a period of just eight years. She spoke ironically about the mayor's love of power and prestige. Paraphrasing the fairytale about The Emperor's New Clothes she said: "It makes no sense, they thought. But they didn't say it. For those who couldn't see the brilliance in the mayor's ideas were either unfit for their office or unforgivably stupid". Many people laughed. Brixtofte was not one of them. The infuriated mayor fired her on the spot. Though later forced to retract the dismissal, he subjected her to unbearable workloads until she resigned. During the ensuing legal battle, which the city lost, city hall made the extraordinary claim that mocking the mayor was just as serious an offense as physically assaulting him would be.

A cornerstone of Brixtofte’s early "success" was his aggressive workfare scheme. Benefit claimants were compelled into menial labor for private companies or language classes under threat of losing their benefits. An agreement between the union SiD and Farum in the 1980s meant that the unemployed in workfare were required to join unions and unemployment insurance funds. For the union it was about labour rights, for Brixtofte it was a cynical cost-shifting ploy. Farum would keep the workers in employment for a year before firing them, just enough for them to qualify for state-funded unemployment insurance payouts rather than municipally funded benefits. Brixtofte would openly boast about this strategy in media interviews.

SiD railed against the workfare scheme, accusing Farum of renting out the unemployed as cheap labor without rights, while companies reaped the benefits. In 1992, SiD took legal action, complaining about abuse of citizens in the workfare scheme. The municipality would rent them out to private businesses. The companies paid union wages to Farum, which then paid the workers unemployment benefits and pocketed the difference. SiD likened it to slave labour. The case failed. The county oversight committee and a labour arbitration court was convinced by the municipality's claims that the arrangement was a work capability assessment scheme and not employment.

In 1993 Jydsk Rengøring, the company in which Thor Pedersen had become CEO after leaving government, was awarded a contract on cleaning services at a retirement home. As part of the agreement they had been handed a large amount of benefit claimants who were formally undergoing a training programme but who were in reality working for Jydsk Rengøring. Although the unemployment schemes in Farum were notoriously opaque, it is clear that the scheme was a huge financial benefit for the company.

Though often lauded by the right as being the solution to unemployment, later analysis found that the claimed workfare miracle in Farum was built on hype and questionable statistics. Employment is driven by demand, not supply and in reality, Farum did no better or no worse than other municipalities when it came to fighting unemployment.

Brixtofte’s true financial wizardry, however, was the infamous "Farum Model", a sale and lease-back scheme. Starting as early as 1990, he began selling off municipal assets, the roads and parks department, the municipal sewer system, even retirement homes, to private investors, only to lease them back on long-term contracts. Loopholes in Denmark’s tax code made the deals lucrative for both sides, generating large upfront windfalls for the town. Critics said it shifted costs onto taxpayers in other parts of the country. Brixtofte brushed them aside.

In 1992, tax minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen resigned over a “creative bookkeeping” scandal. Brixtofte replaced him while continuing to run Farum as a side hustle but his time in government was short-lived. The conservative/liberal coalition of Poul Schlüter collapsed in 1993 as a consequence of a legal scandal in which minister of justice Erik Ninn Hansen criminally refused asylum to Tamil refugees despite them being entitled to it.

In 1995, Brixtofte was knighted, cementing his national stature.

His ambition grew stronger. In the mid-1990s, Brixtofte set his eyes on the leadership of the Liberal Party, positioning himself as successor to Uffe Ellemann-Jensen. His main rival was the shrewd Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The battle turned vicious. During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, persistent rumors about Anders Fogh Rasmussen allegedly being a closeted homosexual whispered through the public as well as the halls of parliament. Frequently politicians and journalists, including ministers in the ruling Social Democratic/Social Liberal coalition would joke among themselves about his alleged gay relationships. It was exactly the kind of thing people loved to believe about the robotic and uptight Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

While Brixtofte always denied responsibility, the near-universal belief within the political elite, including the leadership of the Liberal Party, was that he was the source of the rumours. Although many made jokes, few people seriously believed the gossip and the claims failed to hurt Anders Fogh Rasmussen politically. The homophobic smear campaign backfired and when Ellemann-Jensen stepped down in 1998, Anders Fogh Rasmussen secured the leadership. Brixtofte was sidelined, his national career was over. Embittered, he turned his energies entirely towards consolidating his power in Farum where he was still the big fish, determined to build his kingdom there.

The Kingdom of Farum

Brixtofte ruled over Farum unchallenged. Power was executed not in the council chamber but in the taproom of a local inn, unofficially dubbed "Committee Room Number Eight". There Brixtofte, presiding over his court of yes-men, would map out Farum's future over fine food and expensive wine. After the opening of Farum Park stadium in 1999, Brixtofte would move the proceedings to Restaurant Sepp, located there. Liberal Party group meetings would often feature food and wine paid for by the city. Under Brixtofte, Farum’s spending on “representation” ballooned, eclipsing neighboring towns by a factor of twenty.

Behind the charismatic public facade, a profound darkness festered. Brixtofte had developed a severe alcohol dependency. His daughter Maria later recalled the emotional toll: the unease of watching their father spiral, the unsettling transformation from the energetic, sober man of the morning to the distant, intoxicated figure who returned each evening. While his daughters also recalled moments of joy, dancing to Jewish folk music in the morning, being introduced to a broad cultural diet spanning from French cinema to folk comedies and football, even Sunday visits to the local Turkish cultural association, a highly unusual activity for an ethnically Danish family at the time, the alcoholism was a corrosive constant.

At city hall, the effects were visible. Brixtofte grew increasingly autocratic and paranoid, especially following his exit from national politics in 1998.

Financially, the kingdom was built on sand. The initial cash bonanza from selling off municipal assets fueled Brixtofte’s megalomaniacal construction projects and expansive welfare services. Beyond the legendary laptops and pensioner holidays, came guaranteed childcare, new housing projects for students and the elderly, and, above all, his obsession: Farum BK, the local football club forged in a merger of two smaller clubs, engineered by Brixtofte in 1992. Convinced Farum could host a Champions League club, he poured municipal resources into the team, becoming a major shareholder and chairman. Many Liberal councillors also held shares. Brixtofte was hellbent on making Farum Denmark's sports capital, hiring professional athletes as coaches and consultants. The stadium, Farum Park, and the adjacent Farum Arena stood as glittering monuments to his ambition. The new marina completed the picture.

Warnings were there for anyone willing to look. But few wanted to. Nationally, the “Farum Model” remained political gold. The Liberal Party, eager to shed its 1980s image as heartless libertarian cave-men and appeal to a broader electorate of welfare-loving Danes, the party pointed to Farum as proof liberals could deliver a generous, efficient welfare state. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, then mayor of the Frederiksborg County which Farum was part of, and himself a rising star, was a fervent admirer. He copied Brixtofte’s sale-leaseback scheme, selling a psychiatric hospital, praising the model as "a dynamic interplay of the public and private sectors" delivering "more service and more choices for the same money." As late as January 2002, the national Liberal Party lauded Farum as "an exemplary reform municipality," highlighting twelve years of tax cuts alongside free laptops and pensioner vacations as proof of what liberals could achieve in local politics.

But within Farum, the cracks were widening. Critics described a toxic political culture of opaque deals and vicious personal attacks. Helene Lund, an SF councillor with over a decade on the council, was one of the few who dared to oppose him. In a 1999 article she stated plainly: "I think he is mean. When we have a meeting I never know where the attacks will come from but I can be sure they'll come. And by the way the attacks are never of a political nature as I experience it." She fought a losing battle against Brixtofte’s tactic of moving most decisions from public agendas to closed sessions, a practice that intensified after 1998. Public council meetings became brief, meaningless formalities, with one regular attendant remarking that they were so short that it was hardly worth the trouble to take your jacket off when attending. Brixtofte attempted to cut the number of council meetings to just six a year but was stopped by the county's oversight commission.

An atmosphere of fear prevailed; several councillors reported being watched when reviewing documents at city hall and they were afraid to bring anything home, suspecting documents were marked to trace leaks, a tactic Brixtofte had used before. An anonymous councillor spoke of the "hell" that awaited anyone who dared challenge him publicly. The local branch of the liberal party dismissed the accusations as baseless and accused the smaller parties on the council for being mad that they could never vote anything through.

Inside the planning department, officials resented how anyone with a plot of land and a Farum BK sponsorship contract could get a planning permit. One official who refused to alter a critical note on a student housing project received what city hall employees called "the mushroom treatment": sent to a dark place and covered in shit, while more compliant colleagues were ordered to make the edits.

Brixtofte chafed against any constraint. In 2000, furious at how the National Municipal Association worked against his sale and lease back schemes, he withdrew Farum entirely. He refused an Interior Ministry directive to post 600 million DKK (RMB 672 mln.) as collateral for sports facility construction. In 2001, he ignored an environmental board order to halt the illegal construction of student housing in a designated industrial zone.

His next grand scheme was about to take off in the summer of 2002: transforming a decommissioned military base into a massive new neighborhood. The project would drastically expand Farum’s population and, Brixtofte believed, its tax base. The vision was bold but the foundations of his kingdom were already crumbling.

• Peter Brixtofte in his heyday

Downfall

On February 6, 2002 the tabloid B.T. detonated the first bomb: "Drank for DKK 150,000 in a day" (RMB 168,000). A few weeks before, a terrified anonymous city hall employee had snuck up the garden path to the home of journalist Morten Pihl under the cover of night. "I've never been here." was his first words to the journalist "You've never spoken to me. It must never be made public. I have never been here. You must promise me that!" Only once Pihl had agreed to the terms of silence did the man confirm what the journalist suspected, the plastic bag full of receipts from Restaurant Sepp that the table had been handed by an unknown source was authentic.

The B.T. story detailed astronomical spending on "representation," centered on Restaurant Sepp, owned by Farum BK. One receipt showed a single bill for 63,027 DKK (RMB 70,592), 61,440 DKK (RMB 68.822) of it for just eight bottles of wine for Brixtofte and four guests, fraudulently expensed as payment for "30 full-day seminars."

On February 7 B.T. struck again. Brixtofte had inexplicably delayed payment on a municipal property purchase, gifting the seller, a friend of Brixtofte, 325,000 DKK (RMB 364,000) in late fees. That afternoon, Helene Lund and other councillors filed police reports against the mayor. Brixtofte dismissed the unfolding scandal as nothing more than a politically motivated witch hunt and promptly announced a three-month leave from both the mayor’s office and parliament.

In the evening, the police questioned Jørn Frederiksen, the city’s former Technical Director, on the property deal. But while the authorities moved in, so did Brixtofte’s people. His chief of staff, Sten Gensmann, slipped into Frederiksen’s office and began removing large amounts of files about municipal property deals. Unbeknownst to Gensmann, the police had already seized the files related to the scandalous property deal. Gensmann had not acted alone; he’d been sent by party colleagues during a Liberal group meeting. When Frederiksen discovered what had happened, he filed his own police report, believing his office had been broken into.

The next morning, February 8, new damning revelations emerged. B.T. revealed that the municipality had systematically overpaid a travel agency, Alletiders Rejser, by DKK 500.000 (RMB 560,000) for organizing the widely celebrated pensioner holidays to southern Europe. The excess money had then been funneled back to Farum BK, disguised as a sponsorship. The pattern of illicit municipal funds propping up Brixtofte’s pet project was now undeniable.

By February 9, the illusion of invincibility had evaporated. Police launched coordinated raids on city hall as well as several private residences, including those of Brixtofte and Municipal Director, Leif Frimand Jensen. Computers and mountains of files were seized as evidence. Faced with a full-blown crisis, Brixtofte reversed course. He returned to city hall, abandoning his leave and attempted to reassert control. But the kingdom was falling apart, and the king was defending a throne that was collapsing underneath him.

The wine, the sponsorships, the real estate grifts, these were only the surface. In the days that followed, a deeper structural rot was uncovered. Farum’s clever finances had been built on sand. The tax loopholes that once funded the city’s wonders had been closed years earlier and the municipality had no more assets to sell. The city was running massive deficits. To keep the illusion going Brixtofte had taken out two massive, unauthorized loans behind the back of the council, totaling DKK 450 million (RMB 504 mln.), burying the town under unsustainable debt. Municipal Director Leif Frimand Jensen had signed the loan agreements, despite knowing how the council had been kept in the dark. Farum was bankrupt.

On February 19, ten days after the first story broke, the national government struck. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Brixtofte’s former admirer now Minister of the Interior in Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s newly elected government, put Farum under state administration and imposed a harsh austerity programme of huge tax hikes and sweeping service cuts, costing the average Farum household an extra DKK 1700 (RMB 19,000) per month. Brixtofte railed against this intervention, labelling it a "deeply unserious economic punitive action." He insisted his grand designs to redevelop the former military base would have saved Farum, flooding it with new taxpayers. He pointed fingers at the Fogh Rasmussen government, accusing them of a political vendetta and told how the press would often get access to relevant documents from the Ministry of the Interior before the Farum council got it.

His defiance was short-lived. On March 20, his council, overwhelmed by the scandal and the looming oversight, voted to suspend him. On May 13, the day before the suspension would take effect, he resigned as mayor. The next day, his own Liberal Party expelled him from their parliamentary group. By June 5th, he was purged from the local party branch in Farum itself.

The county oversight committee descended, fining 18 out of 19 councillors for negligence in their duties. Six pleaded guilty and paid the fines, 12 others went to court where they were all acquitted a few months later. Officials were ordered to repay misused public funds.

The scandal reached into the national government. Thor Pedersen, Brixtofte’s old ally who had once praised Farum as a "model municipality" was now Finance Minister and his name appeared as the scandal unfolded. During his time as CEO, Jydsk Rengøring, had received a lucrative, no-bid contract for municipal assisted living facilities in 1999, jumping an existing contract from 24 to 96 units, coinciding precisely with a substantial 450,000 DKK (RMB 504,000) sponsorship deal with Farum BK. The police questioned the Finance Minister but no charges were filed. Pedersen steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, eventually weathering the storm.

Brixtofte, now a pariah, scrambled to revive his political career. Parliament stripped him of his immunity from prosecution later in 2003. He briefly joined the Centre Democrats who had lost representation in parliament and were desperate for influence but even they would not let him run under their name in the 2005 general election due to the ongoing legal proceedings against him. Undeterred, he founded his own Social-Liberal Party which was quickly renamed the Welfare Party, following legal complaints from the Liberal Party. Brixtofte's Welfare Party managed a pyrrhic victory, winning back a single council seat for Brixtofte in the newly merged Furesø municipality later that year.

Looking for new revenue streams, Brixtofte turned to business in 2003. Together with the infamous slumlord and horse trader Låsby-Svendsen, he launched a Turkish real estate venture selling vacation homes to Danes in Antalya. It failed by 2008 as a result of the financial crisis.

The law, however, was relentless. His criminal case was split in two: the Sponsor Case and the Main Case. In 2006, he was convicted of gross misconduct for deliberately overpaying construction giant Skanska by 9 million DKK (RMB 10 mln.)for building Farum Arena, with the understanding the excess would be given as sponsorship to Farum BK's handball division Ajax Farum. He was sentenced to two years in prison. His appeal failed in 2007.

It was during the years of legal proceedings that his marriage for more than 20 years ended.

In 2008 he was found guilty of gross misconduct and abuse of public office in the Main Case, adding an additional two years to his sentence in addition to an order to pay 7 million DKK (RMB 7.8 mln.) in damages and legal fees. His former right-hand man, Leif Frimand Jensen, was convicted as well, receiving a suspended two-year sentence.

Later that same year, the Supreme Court upheld the Sponsor Case conviction. Brixtofte now had a final conviction to his name and the Queen stripped him of his knighthood. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, once his disciple, now as Minister of the Interior, formally barred him from his council seat. Peter Brixtofte began serving his sentence in an open prison.

His final act of defiance came in 2009. As his last appeal in the Main Case was rejected, he appeared on television, calling the presiding judge "an extreme nationalist" and accused him of pursuing a political vendetta against him. The performance earned him another conviction, this time for defamation, and a fine of DKK 10,000 (RMB 11,200).

He was released on parole in 2011. The friends and sycophants he partied with as mayor had abandoned him a long time ago. The kingdom was gone.

Legacy

Though infamous for his taste in expensive wine, few grasped the full extent of Peter Brixtofte’s alcoholism. After his political downfall in 2002, he cycled in and out of rehab, repeatedly failing to stay sober. From time to time gossip magazines would bring funny stories about his drinking. They wrote about the funny drunk, not about how he was hospitalized multiple times with alcohol poisoning or how his drinking drove a wedge between him and his three daughters, who often cut off contact for weeks or months as they could not bear being around him when he spiraled.

On November 8 2016 a police car and two ambulances pulled up in front of a Farum housing estate. Peter Brixtofte’s daughters had found him dead in his apartment, lying on the sofa. He had died alone, aged 66, several days before. The medical examiner ruled his death to be alcohol-related, a conclusion his daughter Maria later agreed to. She had not spoken to him for three weeks at the time of his death.

Following his downfall, parliament launched an official inquiry in 2003. Nearly nine years later, the Farum Commission released its findings: over 7,000 pages across sixteen volumes. Despite its staggering length, the report stopped short of recommending sweeping reforms. Its tangible outcomes were modest: changes to municipal legislation clarifying how councils could remove mayors mid-term, and improved training on minority rights and procedural safeguards for councillors. The story of Farum, of pride, hubris, and corruption, captured public imagination and has inspired several books and documentaries.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s 2004 local government reform forced smaller municipalities to merge. Farum, toxic and bankrupt, found itself without suitors. Neighboring Værløse, unwilling to merge into "the red sea" of neighbouring Social Democrat councils had secured no other options and found itself forcibly wedded to Farum by Løkke Rasmussen’s decree, creating the Furesø Municipality. Citizens of Værløse protested and the local council spoke of expropriation and hired lawyers but it was to no avail. The merger went ahead.

To soften the blow to Værløse, legislation was passed, levying a special tax on residents living in the former Farum municipality until 2013. The new municipality received a 50 million DKK (RMB 56 mln.) annual bailout until 2021. Farum’s citizens ended up paying the price for Brixtofte’s vision. Today the Furesø municipality has recovered, not to the heights of the Brixtofte age but to stable mediocrity, having a tax rate slightly below and a service level slightly above national averages.

Farum BK rebranded as FC Nordsjælland in a bid to shed association with the Brixtofte age and to appeal to a broader regional base. Being one of Brixtofte's few enduring legacies, the club survived the financial blow of the mayor's downfall and continues to play in Denmark’s top tier, having qualified for the Champions League several times.

Most insidiously, Brixtofte’s harsh workfare policies, once controversial for exploiting the vulnerable, entered the political mainstream and became a cornerstone of Danish labour policy. Although he remained critical of the racist turn of Danish politics to the end, the workfare model he championed became a tool wielded by islamophobic politicians. Today, both Liberals and Social Democrats alike consider underpaid coerced labour for the unemployed to be commonsensical tough love for the undeserving and racialised poor.

The origins of the leaks that brought Brixtofte down remain murky. His autocratic leadership style and ruthless political maneuvering earned him many enemies. Speculation persists that elements within the Liberal Party, recognizing Farum’s unsustainable finances as a ticking time bomb under the party’s "model municipality" narrative, orchestrated a controlled demolition. By turning the story of the systemic failure of an ideology into a story of a single man’s criminality, fixating on wine, property deals, and sponsorships, they avoided being tainted. For Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, destroying his former rival would have felt like sweet revenge while also ridding him of a prominent internal critic of his national conservative turn.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who had been made prime minister by 2016, penned a warm eulogy for Brixtofte. He praised Brixtofte’s "drive and immense commitment," his "grand gestures" and "profound impatience to achieve results," framing the scandal not as corruption but as "irregularities" caused by this impatience. He expressed pain at having had to "put his foot down" as Interior Minister. He never had to answer for having embraced Brixtofte’s policies, including the infamous sale-and-leaseback schemes, as county mayor. His local government reforms dissolved the counties altogether, burying the financial wreckage in bureaucratic reorganization. Thor Pedersen retired with his reputation largely intact. The businessmen who profited from municipal contracts and facilitated the illicit sponsorships faced no consequences.

Shortly before his death, Brixtofte gave a final interview to B.T., the very tabloid that had first exposed him. He bore no grudge against the paper. He described the articles that brought him down not as an expose of criminal wrongdoing, but as sport, a fair game between him and the media where he had simply been outplayed by an opponent he underestimated. Once more he insisted on his innocence, calling the trials a “parody”.

In later interviews his daughter Maria would tell how he had been drunk while making most of the decisions that landed him in jail but during the interview he pointed to the official inquiry’s failure to prove decisively that alcohol had affected his judgement, claiming it vindicated him. He took pride in what he had built: the sports facilities, the elder care, the integration efforts. He had nothing but disdain for his successors and claimed that “nothing has happened in Farum” since his ouster. “I don’t regret shit,” he stated, recasting himself as a misunderstood jovial visionary, a far cry from the domineering narcissist described by those closest to him.

Peter Brixtofte refused to accept responsibility. He left behind a town in ruins and blamed everyone but himself. He didn’t regret shit. But he was full of it.

Mr. Smile's Last Laugh

How The Communist Resistance Took Out One of Denmark's Most Dangerous Nazi Snitches

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the morning of February 23rd, 1945 at Café 44 in Copenhagen's Nørrebro neighborhood. Around 10 o'clock, the owner, Henning Walthing, unlocked the door and entered alongside an elderly man. Shortly after, two patrons entered and ordered beer. A little later, two more men arrived. When Walthing emerged from the basement carrying supplies, the scene shifted dramatically. Two of the guests produced guns, held him up, and searched him. They found a loaded, unlocked pistol and a wallet containing a large amount of money.

Walthing was no ordinary café owner. To his Nazi associates in the Svend Staahl Group, he was known as "Walther Smile," or simply "Mr. Smile." He was a notorious and lethal informant. The elderly man was merely a bystander. The other four men in the café were resistance fighters from the communist resistance group BOPA delivering long-overdue justice.

The resistance fighters handed the wallet to the elderly man, instructing him to deliver it to Mr. Smile's mother and instructed him to wait 30 minutes before alerting anyone. They then drove off in a borrowed van with their prisoner.

It was common for the resistance not to seize money during operations like these. While the money could have funded their struggle, taking it would make it easy for Nazi propaganda to paint the resistance as common criminals and to mask resistance as robberies. Leaving the money sent a clear signal: this was a political action, not a robbery.

The elderly man did as instructed, and waited 30 minutes before reporting the incident to the municipal guard corps at a nearby police station. The guards accepted the wallet and handed it over to an associate of Walthing.

Compared to other Nazi-occupied nations, Denmark experienced a relatively mild occupation. Following their quick defeat of Denmark in 1940, German authorities pursued a "peacetime occupation," allowing Danish civil institutions to function relatively undisturbed. Large-scale destruction and imposition of direct Nazi rule was avoided. In exchange the Germans gained access to vital agricultural exports and control of their northern flank with minimal troop commitment. Initially Danish police supported this collaboration, actively hunting resistance members and rounding up refugees. However, as the tide of war turned and resistance swelled, the police increasingly shifted allegiance. By September 1944, frustrated by the police's perceived lack of cooperation, the Germans dissolved the force. Approximately 2,000 officers from major cities were deported to German concentration camps.

With the police dismantled, law enforcement was taken over by German forces such as the Gestapo and their collaborators in the hated HIPO corps (Hilfspolizei). HIPO was composed of Danish Nazi sympathizers, many of them returning Wffen-SS war criminals from the Eastern Front, tasked with doing the Nazis’ dirty work. The Nazis were only concerned with hunting the resistance and civilian law enforcement devolved into poorly trained municipal guards, civilians equiped only with batons and armbands, barely capable of breaking up fights or apprehending petty criminals caught in the act.

Amidst this chaos, the Svend Staahl Group operated. It emerged from a network of about 80 Nazi-sympathizing police officers. While the Danish police was largely anti-communist and reactionary, their nationalism made explicit Nazism unpopular, especially after the occupation, leading the Nazi officers to be shunned by their colleagues. By August 1943, in the lead-up to Germany’s declaration of martial law, roughly 30–35 of them organized into what became known as the Svend Staahl Group. These were not opportunists, they were ideological Nazis, virulent anti-communists with deep ties to the German intelligence apparatus. Many had been recruited by the Abwehr long before the group’s creation, and many were also active in other Nazi groups such as the HIPO and the Schalburg Corps – an organization of Danish Waffen-SS war criminals acting as a replacement for the embarassing failure that was the Danish Nazi Party (DNSAP).

Operating under the Schalburg Corps’ intelligence division, the Staahl Group used their positions in the police to spy on colleagues, report dissent, and feed intelligence to their German handlers. After the police were dismantled in 1944, they exploited their training and uniforms to infiltrate resistance cells. Public sympathy for the now-dissolved police force gave them cover: a glimpse of a badge sewn discreetly into the inside of a lapel was often enough to waive the usual background checks.

In the chaotic months that followed liberation, the Staahl Group was widely suspected of involvement in a wave of retaliatory assassinations carried out against resistance fighters. But these turned out to be the work of the more infamous Peter Group, a separate gang of collaborators. Unlike the Peter Group, the Staahl Group operated in deep secrecy, avoiding public raids and keeping their identities hidden. Their efforts served the Abwehr as much as they did the Nazi counter-resistance. They communicated with German forces and the Schalburg Corps through intermediaries to minimize exposure.

Their leader, Svend Staahl, real name Poul Otto Ditlev Nielsen, was a ghost. He reportedly bragged that the resistance would never catch him and claimed he’d kill anyone who suspected his true allegiance. Rumors circulated that he had already murdered six or seven men to keep his cover intact.

Nicknamed "Pretty Walthing" for his dapper style, Mr. Smile had been a committed Nazi since 1937 and once served as adjutant to Danish Nazi leader Frits Clausen. After the German crackdown on the Danish police in September 1944, he became second-in-command of the Svend Staahl Group. Funded by the occupiers, he opened Café 44 in the heart of Nørrebro, a known stronghold of the communist resistance. Feigning sympathy to the resistance, Walthing used the café as a front to gather intelligence, which he funneled to the Germans through the Staahl Group.

By December 1944, the resistance had identified both the group and an apartment they used as a meeting point. The Staahl Group posed a deadly threat: resistance fighters they exposed faced torture, deportation to concentration camps or execution. The group had to be eliminated. A liquidation team from BOPA was assigned the task.

At the time, many believed such liquidation orders came from the Freedom Council, the underground body coordinating Denmark's resistance. One participant later recalled in his memoirs that the group had been "sentenced to death" by the council’s liquidation committee. In truth, no such committee existed. For security reasons, fighters remained unaware of organizational details. Instead, liquidation decisions were taken by local leaders within individual groups like BOPA.

The team surveilled both the apartment and Café 44, aware of Mr. Smile’s key role. One BOPA member became a regular patron at the café, earning the trust of Walthing’s mother, Agnes, who worked there by offering her a black market deal for coke rationing stamps and was able to confirm Mr. Smile's identity.

Tracking the group proved difficult. The apartment was often empty, and when used, the collaborators slipped into traffic to evade pursuit. It took time to decipher the routines they followed to assemble discreetly. Just days before the planned raid, the resistance finally tailed a group member to the police guard post at Amalienborg Palace. They made a big mistake by asking the police for help identifying him from a photo. The police delayed, and one way or the other the Staahl Group caught suspicion they were being hunted, and abandoned the apartment. With the opportunity to strike the whole group lost, BOPA shifted its focus to targeting known individuals.

After his abduction, Mr. Smile was taken to the basement laundry room of a borrowed villa in a Copenhagen suburb. There, he was guarded while senior BOPA members were summoned for interrogation. Interrogations of captured collaborators was rare, but Mr. Smile was believed to possess critical intelligence.

He quickly recovered from the shock. Over the four hours he waited in the basement, the smooth-talking informant insisted on his innocence with such flair and conviction that his guards began to believe him. They assured him he had nothing to fear—he merely had to wait for questioning.

The interrogation was conducted by senior BOPA members Børge Thing (codename Brandt) and Erling Andresen (Lund). Andresen, a jurist and prosecutor with the Copenhagen Police, took the lead. Neither interrogator knew precisely whom Mr. Smile had informed on, only that he was a key member of the Staahl Group. Thing remained mostly silent except for once when he snapped, “You are fucking full of shit!” at Mr. Smile, a blunt interruption to what he felt was Andresen’s overly polite line of questioning.

Remarkably, the interrogation was filmed on silent film. The footage shows a well-dressed Mr. Smile in his fedora and overcoat, seated among dusty potted plants and laundry supplies in the basement. According to those present, no physical torture was used. The film corroborates this, showing no signs of violence.

At first, Mr. Smile denied everything. He claimed never to have heard of Svend Staahl. He asserted the pistol was merely for protection due to a past threat. He remained calm and one account describe him as "acting with the utmost servility and smarminess." However, when asked if he knew "Walther Smile," he turned pale. The resistance knew his codename. The game was up. He began talking.

He admitted to knowing Svend Staahl and revealed his real name. He confirmed he had been at the apartment but claimed his role was purely clerical. The interrogators told him he might be evacuated to neutral Sweden if he cooperated fully. He continued to deny snitching on anyone. He could not explain how he got the money used to open Café 44, funds the resistance knew had come from the Germans.

Then he made a fatal mistake.

He claimed to have told another group member about a young man involved in the resistance, arguing this somehow proved his innocence because he could have told the Gestapo about him but didn't. The young man in question happened to be the brother of interrogator Erling Andresen. He had been wanted by the Gestapo, and his evasion was certainly not due to Mr. Smile's restraint.

After an hour and a half of questioning, Mr. Smile had given up a few names and addresses, but it was clear he would divulge no more useful information. He had confessed to being part of the Svend Staahl Group and admitted to informing on at least one resistance member. It was enough. No one present doubted his guilt anymore or the inevitability of what came next. Mr. Smile, however, still clung to the belief that he would be taken to Sweden. The BOPA team maintained this illusion to keep him cooperative. They told him Svend Staahl had been captured and he would be taken to meet him to corroborate his version of events.

They drove him north, to a forest outside Copenhagen. Upon arrival, they told him they would need to walk a short distance through the forest to reach Staahl. Mr. Smile complied without hesitation, delicately stepping around puddles to avoid soiling his expensive shoes, apparently still unaware of what awaited him.

Then, on a muddy woodland path, two resistance fighters silently raised their weapons and fired from behind. A bullet snapped his neck and he died instantly. He collapsed face-down in the mud with a soft sigh.

The execution did not end there. One of the fighters, code-named "Moe", cracked under the psychological weight of the moment. Consumed by rage and revulsion, he emptied the rest of his pistol into the corpse. Andresen, a trained prosecutor, later described it as "a blood frenzy" and considered it far more chilling than the killing itself.

With Mr. Smile dead, BOPA turned its sights to Svend Staahl. They now knew his real identity and considered him the next target. But events took an unexpected turn.

When Staahl learned of Mr. Smile’s abduction, he panicked. Convinced that he was next, he barricaded himself inside the apartment of Mr. Smile's mother Agnes Walthing, a known meeting place for his group. Alongside him were Agnes Walthing and three other members, all fearing a resistance raid.

That afternoon, they phoned the HIPO corps at the central Copenhagen police station and requested reinforcements. A protocol was agreed upon: the HIPO men would knock five times, and Staahl would respond with a password to confirm their identity. Simple. Foolproof.

When the HIPO arrived, they knocked as planned. But Staahl forgot about the password and began opening the door without saying a word. The HIPO officer outside, jittery and expecting an ambush, opened fire with his machine pistol. Bullets shredded the wooden door, striking both Staahl and Walthing. They died instantly.

In a twist of fate, equal parts poetic justice and bloody slapstick, one gang of Nazis had accidentally wiped out another. Svend Staahl’s final boast had come true: the resistance never got him. His own carelessness and the paranoia of his fellow Nazis did.

The aftermath was bloody. In retaliation, German forces executed several civilians. In total, 21 people died violently on February 23rd, 1945, in connection with the Staahl Group.

Over the following months, the resistance hunted down and liquidated several remaining members of the group. Some members took refuge inside Copenhagen's central police station, hoping proximity to the HIPO corps would shield them. Others, sensing the war was nearly lost, tried to switch sides and ingratiate themselves with resistance circles.

After the liberation, known survivors were expelled from the police and sentenced to up to 16 years in prison for treason.

Although the Staahl Group is believed to have laid the groundwork for numerous German actions against the Danish resistance, details remain scarce and very little is known about their work for the Abwehr. The German police successfully destroyed most of their records shortly before capitulation.

You rarely have to count fingers when you go to an art exhibition — but here we are.

We had been invited to an exhibition titled The dragons are coming, with the breathless tagline Unleash your inner dragon. It even had a space where kids could build their own Lego dragons. I didn’t do my homework beforehand, but it sounded harmless enough. I like dragons. Dragons are cool.

The man behind the spectacle is Jim Lyngvild: fashion designer, writer, flamboyant Viking cosplayer, and media personality. He lives in a fake Viking castle and likes to dress up as an extra from a History Channel hallucination. He doesn't dwell too much on how someone as flamboyantly queer as himself would have fared in actual Norse society. He also happens to be best buds with fascist icon Pia Kjærsgaard.

I have survived another of Lyngvild’s exhibitions a few years ago, when someone at the National Museum had a stroke and invited him to make a Viking exhibition that was as historically accurate as a plastic horned helmet. It was Lyngvild playing dress-up with real artifacts, peddling the tired Hollywood myth of tattooed barbarians.

This time, though, he had pivoted to dragons. A perfect fit. After all, dragons are imaginary so no killjoy historians will be around to fact-check your fantasies.

The exhibition occupied a converted factory space, the kind of raw, industrial hangar every Western town now uses as a Hail Mary to gentrify the deindustrialized old working-class bones. It’s the same formula: slap some art into a disused warehouse and pray the microbreweries and gallerinas will follow. And you know what? Those places can be fine. It doesn’t have to be the Louvre to be a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

We arrived, dragon-hopeful. The gift shop at the entrance was a Lyngvild emporium: You could buy his book about dragons (more about that later), his book of made-up Viking tattoos (so you too can look like a neo-nazi!), his Norse mythology-themed craft beer, and any number of chintzy branded items. If nothing else, Lyngvild is a hustler, milking his personal brand for everything it's worth.

The Fog of Meaninglessness

We entered to find what the website generously called "Lyngvild’s artworks". Huge framed prints of dragons stared down at us, flanked by fake “infographics” about dragon species. Okay. We’re playing make-believe: dragons are real. I can get behind that. I can suspend disbelief and have fun with it.

But something felt off. The dim, plasticky images crawled under my skin in a way I couldn’t quite place.

We went up a staircase and were treated with reproductions of stained glass windows, mostly of a crucified Christ. What was that about?

Then we entered the big room: huge prints of giant dragons attacking cities were plastered wall-to-wall. In a corner, a wooden Christ sculpture, seemingly nicked off a crucifix somewhere, lay face-up on the floor. Smoke machines wheezed, speakers bellowed dragon roars. The ambience was there. Lyngvild has a talent for the aesthetic. But there was no deeper meaning under all that roar and fog.

There was no story, no emotional arc, no big idea beyond "here are some Lyngvild-branded dragons". It was as empty and self-promoting as his Viking exhibition.

That whimsical “What if dragons were real?” premise from the start of the exhibition had disappeared into the mist, never to be heard of again.

At one point I peered through a slit in the wall — a leftover feature from the building's previous life as a factory — and peeked down on what looked like a giant head sculpture, submerged in smoke. Curious, we descended the metal stairs into the next room

Sure enough, there it was: a giant head on the floor, ghostly and inert, surrounded by more fog. What did it have to do with dragons? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Lyngvild just thought it would look good on Instagram.

Above the head were more close-up stained glass images of a crucified Christ’s bloodied face. Nearby, a few mannequins wearing white costumes, presumably meant to evoke something — anything. They did not.

I stood there, blinking at this potpourri of religious symbolism and cinematic dragons, trying to piece together what I was seeing. But sense was a guest who had long since left the party.

Midjourney to the Abyss

I turned to go into the hallway leading to the next room. We had been promised Lego dragons but on a side table stood a Lego owl — not a dragon, not a wyvern, not even a half-assed basilisk. An owl. Above it, a framed picture of the same owl in a still life. A scrap of paper in the corner read Hogwarts.

We had apparently stumbled into the Harry Potter Room. Yes, you read that right. From dragons to Jesus to Harry Fucking Potter.

On the next table was a Lego model of the Hogwarts Express, complete with a matching picture of that Lego train hanging above it. I squinted at the photos. Something was wrong. That unnerving, plasticky gloss. Those details that felt almost right, but slid into the uncanny valley. An utter, chilling lack of human intentionality. A profound emptiness behind the pixels. It wasn’t just bad art. It was soulless. It dawned on me in a hot, nauseating wave:

We were inside an AI art exhibition.

All these “Lyngvild artworks”, the dragons, the cities, the Hogwarts owl, none of it had been touched by a human hand beyond typing a few words into a prompt bar. Lyngvild hadn’t spent sleepless nights at the studio, hadn’t spilled paint on his clothes, hadn’t even stayed up wrestling with Photoshop layers. No. He’d simply typed "Dragon attacks city in dramatic foggy lighting, hyperrealistic," hit "Generate", and accepted whatever digital diarrhea the slop machine spewed forth. Then he framed it. And charged people money to see it.

Suddenly, the nagging familiarity snapped into focus. That glossy, over-rendered, conceptually hollow aesthetic that is the visual equivalent of fast-food styrofoam. The signature style of every talentless hack with a monthly subscription to Midjourney, flooding Instagram with derivative garbage. Lyngvild was just the hack with the gall and the brand recognition to put it in a museum and call it art.

That room full of dragons attacking cities from before head been the Game of Thrones Room, I now realized.

We descended into Harry Potter's Chamber Of Bullshit.

Lyngvild had splurged on some thrift store dark wood furniture for set dressing. One of the chairs still had the price tag on it. In the corners he had placed mannequins wearing Catholic liturgical vestments and rhinestone-covered peaked caps. I assume Lyngvild had a ball hot-gluing sparkly rhinestones onto headgear like a deranged RuPaul contestant — but what did it have to do with Harry Potter, dragons, or literally anything?

The walls were covered in garish, dull prints of AI generated characters from the Harry Potter IP. Some were missing fingers. Others were holding bizarrely deforming magic wands. Signage in the background contained what looked like lettering at first but turned out to be meaningless noise on closer inspection.

The dragons, the supposed main characters of the exhibition, were conspicuously absent from the Harry Potter Room. Not a single mythological reptile were to be seen. Perhaps Lyngvild intended us to Imagine Dragons?

We progressed to the next cabinet of horrors: The random Disney Character Room. Because of course. What dragon exhibition would be complete without famously draconic characters such as Cinderella, Pocahontas, and Snow White? It was like watching someone scroll through their Midjourney history on a head injury.

Here, under brighter lights, the slop was even more horrifying and the sheer, staggering ineptitude of Lyngvild’s quality control was mercilessly exposed. If he had spent even five minutes touching up this algorithmic vomit, it didn't show anywhere. Images were full of artifacts, lovecraftian anatomy and bizarre details that made no sense. And how could it make sense? No human thought had been involved in the process of making any of these abominations. The images were riddled with errors that screamed, “Nobody could be arsed to look twice.”

This wasn’t art as an expression of an inner world. It was branding spam. A hollow sugar high of pop culture keywords arranged into vaguely impressive shapes for five seconds of dopamine.

Humbug

Finally, we arrived at the kids’ section, the “build a Lego dragon” wonderland we had been promised at the start turned out to be two sad, shallow pits of random Legos, looking like the leftover pile after a yard sale. There were no signs that anyone had ever built anything remotely draconic there. My son built an airplane. It was on fire. His small plastic conflagration was the most perfect, unintentional review of the entire Lyngvild experience imaginable.

There was also a table with paper and crayons where kids could draw. On the wall, their drawings were pinned up and these drawings exhibited more originality, more discernible skill, more human intentionality and infinitely more heart than the entire multi-room, smoke-machine-pumping, dragon-roaring, AI slop fest we had just endured.

On the table, copies of Lyngvild’s fantasy-themed coloring book were scattered. Surprisingly, these were actually decent. it looked like they had been drawn by actual humans who gave a damn. The lines were confident, and the themes coherent. In this cesspit of brand-chasing, the coloring book was the only artifact that suggested a real artist might have existed somewhere upstream.

Later, I learned that Lyngvild’s dragon book — the one anchoring this entire dumpster fire — was likely ghostwritten by ChatGPT. Of course it was.

I left feeling insulted by Lyngvild's AI humbug. Swindled.

I’m no Luddite. I’m not here to wag my finger at new technology, or say that “AI bad, brushes good.” Art is agnostic to medium. Artists have always used new tools, and neutral networks might have valid artistic applications. But when you have the unmitigated gall to charge the public admission to see your "art," you’d better put in the goddamn work and make an actual effort. You’d better give a shit about what you're doing.

What Lyngvild presented wasn’t an exploration of new tech. It was a cynical cash grab, a soulless brand extension masquerading as a journey into the mythic. The exhibition reeked of staggering laziness. He started out chasing dragons, got bored halfway, said “fuck it,” and started gluing rhinestones on hats while the slop machine vomited forth enough derivative pop culture garbage to fill the walls.

Lyngvild is a man who desperately needs a brutal editor, someone to tell him “no” when he's being ridiculous. But when you’re too famous, too deep in your own reflection, no one dares.

Maybe AI is the perfect medium for Lyngvild: shallow, lazy and devoid of substance.

Is this a meta-commentary? A sly wink at the gullibility of a cultural establishment that will let a famous name get away with anything? Maybe. But I doubt it. I suspect it’s simpler than that.

Lyngvild isn’t satirizing us. He’s a charlatan cashing in on us. Peddling algorithmic schlock to an audience he seems to hold in contempt, assuming we’re too dazzled, or simply too dumb, to notice the utter, crushing emptiness at its core.

And so we shuffled out, counting our fingers, thankful they were all still there, unlike in those images.