Historian in training here, just delivered my paper on the Holocaust. We read a short bit about the Holocaust in Denmark(studying in Denmark), most of it from the Columbia Guide to The Holocaust from 2000 by Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia. The rest is from Danish books. I’ll share what I know.

First of all, Denmark had a very low number of Jews when the Germans invaded on April 9th, 1940. About 8000 or so and the vast majority of them lived in or near Copenhagen. When the Germans took over, the Danish king and the government made very little trouble, even going as far as to collaborate with the Germans, in part also to ensure the safety of the Jews. Both sides had good reasons for this. The Danish government knew that they could do very little against the sheer power of Germany. Collaboration was likely the only sensitive option. On the other hand, the Germans found Danish agricultural products quite important to the German economy, and so in part also wanted to appease the Danes. They also knew that Danes despised Nazi racism, and that antisemitic policies would be met with hostility, at least to some extent. In summary, both parties likely wanted this occupation to proceed as smoothly as possible.

So the German occupation force had been working with the Danes for 3 years, when the order came in 1943 for the SS to round up the Jews. This was a result of mounting Danish resistance and the following collapse of the collaboration government. The mission date was in the night between the 1st and 2nd of October, the Sabbath, and Jewish new year, meaning a convenient time where many Jews would be in the same places.

The leading German official in Denmark, Werner Best, and his subordinate Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, discussed the order on the 28th of September, and promptly leaked it to the Danish resistance via the leader of the Social Democrats, Hans Hedtoft. So when the order came to round up the Jews, most had already been warned and were in hiding, soon to be ferried to neutral Sweden. Less than a hundred Danish Jews died in the Holocaust as a result.

In summary, the collaborative occupation policy made the Wehrmacht and Werner Best reluctant to participate in the holocaust, as it would destabilize the country and thus require more troops to be kept in check. This reluctance led to a leaking of the SS order, meaning that when the time came to round up the Jews, they were already underground with a prepared escape plan. So yes, German officials were reluctant to pursue the Jews, but their motives weren’t necessarily altogether altruistic. A stable occupation was in their best interest, and that would be jeopardized by a violent deportation mission.