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.

On occasion of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Netherlands, northwest Germany and Denmark, the media Arbejderen had published a series of articles on the history of the Danish resistance movement.

This is my translation of the article on the 1944 People's Strike of Copenhagen, the most radical uprising in modern Danish history.

When the Citizens of Copenhagen Triumphed over the Occupiers

• https://arbejderen.dk/historie/da-koebenhavnerne-sejrede-over-besaettelsesmagten/

The people’s strike and the subsequent street battles against the occupying forces in June 1944 became the largest single confrontation between the Danish population and the occupiers. The uprising was also a clear signal that the populace listened more to the resistance movement than to collaborationist politicians.

• Barricade in Elmegade on Nørrebro in Copenhagen during the people’s strike in 1944. PHOTO: The Freedom Museum Collection/National Museum/No Known Rights

In June 1944, the citizens of Copenhagen — led by the working class — rose up against Nazi Germany’s occupying forces.

Denmark was occupied from April 9th 1940 until May 5th 1945. Various Danish governments cooperated with the German occupiers until October 29th 1943, when the government resigned. Nevertheless, the state apparatus continued to collaborate with the occupiers.

Through widespread strikes and uprisings in the streets of Copenhagen, the population brought the fearsome Nazi war machine in Denmark to a halt and demonstrated who truly ruled the streets.

The protests began on Monday, June 26th 1944, when 1,200 workers at the B&W shipyard downed their tools.

The work stoppage was a protest against the state of emergency imposed by the German occupiers the day before.

The occupiers had introduced a curfew, forcing Copenhageners to remain indoors from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m.

In addition, gatherings of more than five people on public streets and squares were forbidden. Public assemblies indoors were also banned.

The occupiers’ attempt to suppress the people of Copenhagen followed a surge in armed resistance against the German occupiers: the resistance group BOPA and other movements had carried out some of their largest and most successful sabotage operations in June, culminating in the explosion of the Riffelsyndikatet arms factory—owned by shipping magnate A.P. Møller-Mærsk—on June 22nd 1944.

Also targeted were the Neutrofon radio factory and the Globus aircraft factory, which manufactured tail sections for the German air force, along with several other companies.

B&W Workers Spark the Protests

The state of emergency prompted 1,200 B&W workers to go home early. They agreed that if they were to be forced to bed early in the evening, they would leave work earlier in the day.

Later that same day — Monday, June 26th — the Communist faction at B&W convened. They decided to launch a protest action against the occupiers’ curfew and to encourage workers at other Copenhagen businesses to go home at noon.

That evening, the work stoppage spread into spontaneous demonstrations. Particularly in the working-class districts of Vesterbro and Nørrebro, residents lit bonfires and refused to comply with the curfew.

The occupiers responded by deploying soldiers and the paramilitary Schalburg Corps, which drove through the streets firing at random.

The Schalburg Corps was a Danish paramilitary unit formed in April 1943 to support the German occupiers. The Corps carried out terror against the Danish resistance and society in retaliation for resistance actions. They also carried out reprisal killings against popular Danes whenever a German soldier or informant was killed.

In total, seven were killed and 29 wounded by German soldiers and the Schalburg Corps on June 26th.

• Barricade during the people’s strike in June 1944. Photo: The Freedom Museum Collection/National Museum/No Known Rights

The following day, B&W workers left work early once again.

Meanwhile, the strike spread to hundreds of workplaces across Copenhagen — offices, factories, the docks, and many other sites.

The illegal Communist newspaper Land & Folk reported on the B&W workers’ work stoppage.

The Danish Communist Party (DKP) distributed leaflets at workplaces, urging workers to go home at noon until the curfew was lifted.

At the same time, the Social Democratic wing of the labor movement sought to halt the work stoppages.

The Blacksmiths’ Union issued a circular refusing to support the strike and condemning its initiators, and the Employers’ Association distanced itself from the strike.

But the calls from the Social Democrats and the employers had no effect:

The work stoppages and protests continued. Copenhageners continued to demonstrate in the streets, build barricades, and light bonfires.

On Thursday evening, three were killed and 30 wounded by the occupying forces, and 75 were arrested by Danish police.

On Friday — June 30th 1944 — tram workers, urban rail functionaries, postal workers, and telephone operators also walked off the job. The People’s Strike of Copenhagen had become a reality.

DKP and the Resistance Movement Clash with the Social Democrats

The widespread protests prompted the Social Democrats to turn against the workers who had struck and the rest of the Copenhagen populace who had taken to the streets in protest against the Nazi occupiers.

On Friday evening, former Social Democratic Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl approached the Freedom Council.

The Freedom Council was formed on 16 September 1943 by representatives of the major illegal organizations — (the Danish Communist Party (DKP), Frit Danmark, Dansk Samling, and Ringen) — as a coordinating body for the resistance during the occupation.

The Freedom Council was the closest thing to an alternative government in Denmark during World War II.

Its aim was to coordinate the various resistance groups’ work against the German occupation. The Council set up subcommittees to handle, for example, arms distribution and the illegal press.

Buhl attempted to persuade the Freedom Council to intervene in the protests and urge the population to end the strike and return to work.

The Freedom Council refused, and as soon as Buhl left, they drafted a proclamation insisting the strikes continue.

For the occupiers, the people’s strike was a catastrophe that threatened to spread and paralyze all industry and food production in Denmark, which heavily supplied Nazi Germany.

On 1 July, 4,000 German soldiers surrounded Copenhagen and sealed off the capital.

The occupiers deployed military patrols in the streets, occupied key utility works, and cut off water, gas, and electricity. Copenhagen was put under siege and isolated from the outside world.

Copenhageners were forced to cook their food over bonfires and fetch water from the city’s lakes.

German warplanes flew low over rooftops. German troops with artillery were moved into the Copenhagen area and encircled the capital.

• The large barricade on Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen during the people’s strike in 1944. Photo: The Freedom Museum Collection/National Museum/No Known Rights

On radio and with posters, the occupiers tried to intimidate Copenhageners into ending the uprising immediately.

Collaborationist politicians and a number of civil servants began negotiations with the occupiers to end the strikes and protests.

The Social Democratic leadership in several unions, together with leaders of various employers’ organizations, issued an appeal via radio, posters, and loudspeaker trucks, urging the people of Copenhagen to stop the strikes and uprising.

But their pleas fell on deaf ears.

Posters were torn down, and loudspeaker trucks were pelted with rocks: those who attempted to collaborate with the occupiers no longer held any sway over the population.

Defying the Occupiers’ Terror and the Collaborationist Politicians’ Appeals

On the morning of Saturday, July 1st, the Freedom Council published their appeal to Copenhageners to continue the strike.

The proclamation — distributed in thousands of copies — set out four demands: The hated Schalburg Corps were to be expelled from the country. The occupiers’ state of emergency and the siege of Copenhagen were to be lifted and that the supply of electricity, water and gas to be restore. Finally, the occupiers were to refrain from any reprisals against the People’s Strike.

The citizens of Copenhagen persisted in their uprising. The occupiers’ terror intensified. On July 1st, 23 were killed and 203 wounded in clashes between German soldiers and the population.

Sympathy strikes were initiated in several towns on Zealand, adding further pressure on Werner Best, the German Reich’s plenipotentiary in Denmark.

On Sunday, July 2nd 1944, the Social Democratic leadership — with former Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl at its head — and other collaborationist politicians, department heads, union leaders, and the Employers’ Association once again demanded that the population resume work.

That same day, the Freedom Council distributed leaflets urging the populace to continue the strike.

Once again, the population ignored the demands of the Social Democrats and the rest of the collaborationist politicians, the union elite, and the Employers’ Association to go back to work.

Instead, they heeded the Communists and the resistance movement and the Freedom Council, which—despite being illegal—had far greater resonance and legitimacy among the populace.

On Monday evening, former Prime Minister Buhl and Conservative Ole Bjørn Kraft, along with representatives of workers and employers, appealed once more on the radio for work to resume the next day, Tuesday, “to avoid the misfortunes that would otherwise befall the population.”

Yet again the population ignored the collaborationist politicians and continued the protests.

In the end, Werner Best was forced to lift the siege and the state of emergency, withdraw the Schalburg Corps from the streets, and renounce any reprisals against the People’s Strike.

The Freedom Council was able to proclaim victory and urged Copenhageners to return to work on Wednesday.

In the Freedom Council’s declaration — distributed to the population Monday evening and Tuesday morning — the Council stated that the people’s strike had “underscored the unbreakable unity of the people and confirmed our strength and solidarity,” and that the strike “is only a prelude to the decisive battle that lies ahead.”

Picture: Social Democrat flyer from the period. The text reads: "Communists protests for 'peace among the peoples'. Say NO to that fraud"

The Labour Movement Information Centre (AIC) emerged as Denmark’s leading anti-communist intelligence and propaganda organization during the Cold War. Founded in 1944 by the Social Democrats and the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, the AIC operated as a clandestine arm of the labor movement, dedicated to curbing communist influence within trade unions and workplaces. Over nearly three decades, the AIC's operations spanned deep surveillance, covert maneuvers, and partnerships with both the domestic security state and international intelligence agencies.

The Social Democrats' Weapon Against Communists

In the autumn of 1944, as it became clear who would emerge victorious from World War II, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, the Workers' Confederation in Copenhagen, and the Social Democrats founded the AIC (Arbejderbevægelsens Informations Central). The AIC was intended to continue the work of the defunct HIPA, a social democratic propaganda organization that had opposed both the Nazis and communists in the inter-war period. With the Nazis defeated, the AIC's focus shifted exclusively to combating the communists.

From its inception, the AIC aimed to bolster the presence of social democrats in workplaces, actively working to replace communist shop stewards with social democratic ones. It also functioned as a training ground for young social democratic politicians, many of whom would later rise to prominence within the party.

Post-war Denmark saw intense power struggles between social democrats and communists in labor unions and workplaces. The AIC meticulously monitored communist activities, reportedly maintaining a comprehensive database on communists, which was shared with the Danish intelligence service and the CIA. While direct evidence of individual registration remains elusive due to sealed archives, the parallels to earlier practices are striking. In the 1930s, HIPA and the Copenhagen police had compiled databases of communists, later used by the Danish state to round up communists and imprison them in concentration camps at the request of the Nazis during the occupation. 150 Danish communists were transported to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany where 22 of them were eventually murdered.

An "ice front" against communism

By 1947, the AIC had intensified its efforts, urging social democratic organizations and officials to closely monitor local communist activities and report back. This surveillance network extended to attending and reporting on communist meetings across Denmark, regardless of the meetings' content, and to gather statistics on the venues **used and the frequency of meetings. The AIC’s agenda was clear: collect as much intelligence as possible to undermine communist influence.

The AIC didn’t stop at surveillance; it also engaged in counter-infiltration. In 1947, when a communist defected with membership lists, the AIC quickly identified and expelled communists who had infiltrated social democratic ranks. It also produced social democratic election materials and disseminated anti-communist propaganda. A notable campaign followed the 1948 communist coup in Prague, where chain letters, allegedly conceived by "a circle of Danish men and women from all walks of life, representing all political opinions", encouraged Danes to create an "ice front", ostracizing communists socially and economically, portraying them as foreign agents of the Soviet Union.

The message of the AIC was clear: At no point should you listen to the communists, seek common ground or reach across the aisle. The social democrats would rather go under than compromise with the communists.

Not only communists were surveilled by the AIC, the organisation also kept a close eye on social democrats who opposed the party line and were open to a less hostile attitude to the communists.

Throughout the 1950s, the AIC employed personal agitation tactics to isolate and diminish communist influence in workplaces, engaging in what it called "systematic preparation" to cleanse the labor movement of communists. This was evident during a strike at the B&W shipyard, where Social Democrat Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag requested a list of strikers from the employers' organisation and passed it on to the AIC, enabling them to break the strike by addressing loyal workers individually.

Krag was not the only prominent social democrat to be involved with the AIC. When he was chairman of the warehouse workers's union in 1963, future prime minister Anker Jørgensen was also closely involved in AIC efforts to sabotage communist influence at the new campus of state broadcaster DR.

Connections to intelligence agencies

The AIC's activities were not confined to the labour movement; it worked closely with Danish military intelligence and the CIA. The post-war Danish military intelligence service, having escaped Nazi infiltration unlike the secret police, was a natural ally for the Social Democrats. Together, they monitored and documented communist activities, sharing intelligence with the CIA and the British embassy who considered the social democrats to be the strongest anti-communist force in Denmark. By 1949, American intelligence reports indicated that around 35,000 Danish trade union members were registered as communists.

The AIC also collaborated closely with "the Company," a private intelligence organization led by resistance fighter Arne Sejr and funded by domestic oligarchs and the CIA, which engaged in activities such as wiretapping and disinformation that were too illegal or too controversial for official agencies to do. "The Company" was part of the CIA's broader Gladio network in Europe, aimed at countering leftist movements through sabotage, propaganda and terrorism.

Closure and legacy

The AIC’s influence waned in the 1960s as funding diminished, leading to its closure in 1973 with its functions being absorbed by the Social Democrats and the Confederation Of Trade Unions. In the 1990s, renewed interest in Cold War-era intelligence activities led to social democratic prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen announcing the opening of the archives. This was a rather odd announcement as the archives had already been publicly available for years. Within hours of Rasmussen's announcement the organisation tasked with maintaining the archives decided to seal them, allegedly to give "peace and quiet" to the few researchers approved to access them.

The story of the AIC resonates in today's world of heightened paranoia, geopolitical conflict and an elite scrambling to consolidate ideological control over the populace. Only today the shady organisations doing the CIA's dirty work have access to advanced technological tools of propaganda and surveillance that Cold War social democrats could only dream of.

May 2025 be a year where the libs are seething, the fash are crying and the reds are laughing.

I hope we all get communism this year.

Some people collect stamps, some people collect baseball cards. I have realised that I collect spices. My small spice cupboard is full of jars, bags and bottles of different spices and it is a giant mess. I always have to take ten different things out of the cupboard to get what I want. It is annoying and takes a lot of time.

I would like to have some boxes to put inside the cupboard. Then I could just take the box out, get what I want and put it back.

I could buy some plastic organising boxes and be done with it but there are many spices and the cupboard is small so I can't afford to lose any space. I need something that fits snuggly in the cupboard so I have to make it myself.

I would like some good ideas on how to make the boxes. Ideally they would:

• Be made of thin material not to take up space
• Be strong enough to hold a box of salt or a bottle of soy sauce.
• Be easy to clean, or at least able to withstand being wiped with a damp cloth
• Be easy to make without access to a proper workshop
• Be cheap

I don't know if any of this is possible. Thin wood would be nice but it can get quite expensive and would need more time and tools than is feasible for my situation. Cardboard covered with something moisture resistant would be easy and manageable to make but I'm not convinced about it being strong enough or about if it is able to withstand cleaning. It would be cool if you could make custom-sized plastic boxes but you can't do that, right?

There once was an overseer on the Hellerup estate who was a real scourge on the peasants. He rode around the fields to make sure peasants worked hard enough and he was keen to use his whip on the serfs. Once he struck so hard that a peasant died from it. The overseer didn't get any peace in his grave though, every night he had to ride the fields where he had done his injustice. He rode a white horse and it was especially in the Southern Woods and around the Fjerritslev farm he hung out, until a peasant met him one night and - in the name of God - pulled him off the horse and gave him a beating. The horse ran away and the overseer suddenly disappeared in the hands of the peasant. He was never seen again.

Following Chairman Mao's call to go down to the countryside, I spent a day connecting to the dark heart of whiteness and avoided revealing military secrets in the process.

I had never heard of that village until the day that a friend of us called and told us that they had an annual market going on there and asked if we wanted to go. There would be stalls where you could buy all sorts of crap, beer on tap and rides for the kids. So me, my partner, our kids and our friend loaded up our cars and left the multicultural wokery of the big city behind to spend a day among the hardworking salt of the earth people who constitutes the real Denmark.

The market was organised by the village citizens' association in order to raise funds for local amateur sports and similar activities. Upon arrival, we were greeted by members of said association dressed in yellow vests who directed us to park on the muddy patch of grass that was the parking lot for a seven dollar fee. People there still follow the old ways, so when our female friend drove up to them with our queer short-haired teenage daughter on the front seat, they assumed she was the man in charge of the vehicle and tried to solicit payment from her, until our friend insisted that she, as the adult driving the car, was going to pay.

Then we went to the market, a mix of tents, caravans and rides put up on an empty field outside the village. A road divided the grounds into two and we went to the left where we quickly found a beer tent with wooden benches and a stage in front. We bought pints for the adults and sodapop for the kids. The beverages were cold and refreshing as we sipped them from the disposable plastic cups that are ubiquitous whenever beer is sold in a field. Nearby, a stall sold fried pork sandwiches, and we had the dubious pleasure of having direct view of the stand of a fascist party adorned with a big banner airing their latest grievance: "Save Danish agriculture!" Apparently, farming is about to be ended by an upcoming carbon tax.

The police had sent the two youngest and blondest female cops they could find to the market to mill around and smile at people. In police lingo, this is called "safety-creation." You have to hand it to the fuss on this one, the marketgoers were exactly the kind of people who would feel reassured by the sight of cops. Apart from a Native American guy selling pan pipes and dreamcatchers, we hadn't seen a single non-white person among the guests and merchants. We would soon find out why.

A bearded man in his 60's, wearing glasses and a baseball cap, went on stage singing and playing a Stratocaster. He was covering popular 1980s and 1990s pop songs, the kind anyone coming of age in Denmark during those years would know. Was he any good? Certainly not. Was he good enough for the job? Absolutely. He even had the courtesy to move his head away from the microphone whenever there were notes his voice couldn't reach. A few older people were dancing in front of the stage, the sun was shining, and the mood was good.

We browsed the stalls to see what was on offer. The shopkeepers' attitude towards taxation was best described by the "We love cash!" sign prominently displayed at one stall. The goods fell into two categories: old stuff and new stuff.

In the old stuff category, items ranged from garage sale junk to what you’d expect in low-tier antique stores. Several stalls sold old hand tools in varying states of disrepair. One stand's inventory looked like the going-out-of-business sale of a 1995 hardware store teleported to the present day.

The new stuff category offered goods you can't find in proper shops: the world's fakest football jerseys, cigarette lighters with skulls on them, a live poodle, cigarette lighters shaped like guns, supplies for dog and horse ownership, USB-charged cigarette lighters, 20 dollar Gucci watches, and cigarette lighters shaped like muscle cars with watch movements in them. There was also an abundance of food products of inscrutable provenance that were either disgusting health and safety hazards and/or much better than anything you would ever get in supermarkets.

As we browsed the stalls my partner noticed that shopkeepers were treating her weirdly. Being born and raised in Denmark and having a name so stereotypically Danish that JK Rowling could have come up with it, she has also inherited her stunning black hair and slightly darker skin tone from an Italian grandparent. People often mistake her for being Turkish or otherwise non-white. In the immigrant-run stores at home, this usually results in nice discounts, but here, it was a different story.

The shopkeepers clearly didn't like her. When I or our friend looked at the goods, they were nice or indifferent. But when my partner did the same, they immediately stopped what they were doing to closely watch her, as if she might steal their old silverware or porcelain figurines. They had decided she was one of "them." One shopkeeper directly asked her to leave, while another angrily told her to "talk Danish" when she spoke Italian to our kid.

We were deep in the heart of whiteness, so it wasn't surprising to see the Home Guard had set up a stall. The Home Guard is a Cold War relic of civilians LARPing as soldiers a few weekends a year. They offer the easiest way to get a gun and a uniform in Denmark, accepting those too fat and out of shape for the police or military. They hold a special place in the hearts of chuds, some of whom fantasize about being the white vanguard in an upcoming race war.

Their stall featured a jeep and an assortment of rifles, all firmly secured to the table with chains, that the public could hold. We were greeted by a woman in military uniform who looked the exact opposite of how you imagine the ideal elite soldier. "Come in!" she said, immediately trying to recruit me for the defense of the fatherland by enthusiastically mentioning that they had enlistment forms inside. I smiled and nodded.

Unlike me who have not even been a boyscout, my partner over spent a few months as a recruit and she is familiar with military hardware. "Do you have an M/75 in there?" she asked, referring to the long-time standard-issue rifle of the Danish military. "We have all sorts of stuff in there!" The Home Guard woman said, clearly confused. I am not sure if her confusion was caused by the technical nature of the question being above her expertise or if she was thrown off by the question coming from my partner and not from me.

Our kids had great fun holding the guns and my partner reached for her phone to take some pictures. "You can't do that!" the Home Guard guy overseeing the stall said. If pictures of children holding guns was posted to social media it could "hurt the image"of the Home Guard, we were told. The guy explained to my partner that "we don't have child soldiers in Denmark", as if that needed clarification.

We didn't want to stay after this visit to the people keeping us safe from Putin. The vibes in that area were nasty and my partner felt unsafe. We went across the road to the other hand of the grounds and things were a lot better there. We began to see other skin colours than pig pink and people were noticeably less nasty. Signs of civilization like kebab stalls and Asian grocers emerged.

We went to the area where the kids could try different rides. The rides were mostly operated by seasonal workers from Eastern Europe and each ride was blasting it's own playlist of either current hits or 1980's Eurovision songs into the air. As the kids were having fun in a bouncy castle next to the employees' restrooms I noticed how the restrooms were segregated with one reserved for Danish and Polish workers and the two others for Romanian workers.

After the kids had finished their rides we needed refreshments so we went into a big beer tent and sat down at an empty table scattered with the remnants of several of the giant hot dogs, giant burgers and giant kebabs offered for sale nearby. You don't buy normal-sized food at events live this. We looked at the beverages offered, a few sodas, beer by the buckets and lots of moronic shots sold in tiny tubes, and decided that we had had enough for today and that we would grab something to drink from McDonalds. On our way home instead. As we exited the grounds I noticed how someone had been so overjoyed by the selection of beverages offered at the market that they had emptied the contents of their stomach beneath the sign at the entrance.

Spending a day like this, connecting to my cultural roots, was an educating experience and I am happy to report that I had so much authentic Danish folkishness that I will not need to go again any time soon.

The elder tree held a magical reputation in Western European folklore, deeply intertwined with goddess cults such as those of Venus and the Norse fertility goddess Freya. In Scandinavia, planting an elder near your house, especially by the kitchen, was believed to protect the home and fill it with love. Elders were thought to be immune to lightning strikes, offering further protection. The tree was also seen as a portal to the spirit realm; standing under an elder on midsummer eve supposedly enabled one to see the king of the elves.

Elder was highly valued in folk medicine despite its mild toxicity. The plant contains prussic acid, which can cause vomiting or diarrhea in small doses. It was believed that elder bark cut from the bottom upwards acted as an emetic, while bark cut from the top downwards served as a laxative. The flowers and berries were used to treat colds and flus. To ward off evil spirits and relieve toothache, people would put a twig from an elder tree in their mouths.

However, one couldn't just take from an elder tree without consequences. The tree was believed to be inhabited by an Elder Mother or Elder Woman, a protective spirit (some say she originated as a localised version of Freya) who would avenge any harm done to the tree. People would ask her for permission three times before picking out cutting anything from the tree. Cutting down an elder without planting a new one was considered bad luck, with folk stories recounting the deaths of those who did so, presumably at the hands of a vengeful Elder Mother.

The Elder Mother also disapproved of using elder wood for furniture or tools. Stories tell of her disturbing babies who slept in cots made from elder wood or in rooms with elder paneling by pulling their legs. However, if treated with respect, the Elder Mother, and sometimes an entire elder family with elder women, men, and children, would help busy housewives by churning butter or polishing copperware at night.

Some stories even tell of the elder tree itself being sentient and animate, with one story from Copenhagen telling of how the elder tree in a courtyard would move to a new position every night and look through the windows of the rooms inside.

The Elder Mother exemplifies traditional Germanic belief in wights, collective spirits or deities connected to a locality like a landscape, river, or farmhouse, and sometimes to families or bloodlines. Wights are neither good nor evil but are forces of nature to be reckoned with. Respect them, and they will help you; disrespect them, and they can destroy you.

Back in February we paid to get new tires on the car. One of them has been leaky for the last couple of months, something I've continually been putting in the "I'll deal with it later" pile as topping up the air once a week was easier and cheaper than dealing with it.

Now the damn tire is flat. The roadside repair guy said that the tire was soft and decayed. I'm 75% sure that a new tire is not supposed to do that so soon.

Now I'm wondering if the mechanic put on old tires or if I've been an idiot by not getting the tie fixed in time and the frequent deflation/inflation cycles has ruined the thing.

Edit: Fucking hell! The code on the tire says it's from 2007! What the fuck? The damn car went through inspection and everything with that antique on.

I made myself chana Masala for dinner tonight using this recipe. It is awesome! The perfect blend between warm hot spices and soft chickpeas.

I didn't know about amchur powder until a couple of months ago but oh my God it is good! It is dried unripe mango and gives a fruity acidity to anything you add it to. The tanginess from the amchur really brings the dish together and elevates it from being just chickpeas and canned tomatoes into something amazing.