In the tv show 1864, which is about the Second Dano-Prussian War, it seems that the general staff of the millitary has a good plan of organized retreats until they get to a position where they can use the Danish maritime advantage.
But the plan gets ruined by interference from the civilian government who insist on the defence of Dybbøl. At Dybbøl the danes were utterly defeated leading to an overal loss of the war.
Was this interference by the government in fact one of the main reasons the danes lost, or was the war lost from the start. To me it seems that a relatively weak country like Denmark could never defeat a country like Prussia allied with Austria.
What in real life was the actual plan of the general staff of denmark, and in what way was this tenable? And was this influenced so much by the government as shown in the show 1864?
The show does embellish a lot of things about the Danish civil government in 1864 (namely by making them incompetent to an almost ridiculous extent) but the basic gist of the representation of strategy is fairly correct, if I recall right.
The Danish military correctly assessed that Denmark was incapable of fighting toe to toe with Prussia and Austria on land. Therefore the defense strategy relied on three key fortresses in Jylland, Dybbøl, Fredericia and Ebeltoft. The plan was to avoid direct engagement with the Prussians, hole up in these fortresses to strike them from the rear, and use maritime superiority to keep the Prussians landlocked.
Note that this strategy did not actually have a real victory condition except to draw the war out for as long as possible so that international pressure would mount on Prussia to end the war on favorable terms for Denmark. This strategy was not envisioned out of thin air, but was basically the strategy the Danish army used in The First Schleswig War form 1848-1851 (known as the three year war in Denmark). In this, the Danes avoided direct engagement, extended the war for three years, and ended up with a favorable (though ultimately unsatisfying) peace agreement, that maintained the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein as part of the Danish realm (though unincorporated into the Danish realm).
The obvious thing to do for the Danes would be to pursue the same overall strategy again, but several things had changed that would spell doubt on it. First of all, this time Denmark came to be seen as the aggressor internationally, as they were the ones to change the status quo by changing the constitution in November 1863 to incorporate Schleswig fully into the Danish realm. This meant that international support this time would be more questionable - of the European great powers, only Britain was really truly pro-Danish- France supported Prussia as a counterweight to Austria, their enemy in Italy, and in Russia, the conservative government was against the spread of liberalism, and therefore wanted to preserve the pre-war status quo. Britain was, however, incapable of decisively intervening in the land war, and could at most extend naval support, leaving Denmark fairly alone.
Second, there was the factor of government interference, as shown in the show 1864. It is true that the liberal government of D.G. Monrad was fixated on not giving up territory, and defending Denmark at Dannevirke. Part of the reasoning of this was national romantic - Dannevirke was regarded as the historical southern limit of the old Viking Age kingdom of Denmark, and had attained supreme importance in the national mythology that the ruling National Liberal Party promoted. Giving it up without a fight was regarded as a major political defeat, hence why the politicians pushed for the unfeasable defense at dannevirke.
This also affected the preparations. In 1864 war had changed compared to 1848, and the fortress that was sufficient in this year wasn't anymore in 1864. In particular, lessons form the brutal siege of Sevastapol in the Crimean War in 1856 was applied to fortresses all over the world. Dybbøl and Fredericia needed to be fortified and invested in. However, the fixation of the government of the defense of Dannevirke meant that all funds went to fortifying this instead of Dybbøl, meaning it was unprepared when the war actually broke out.
It is worth nothing that when the war broke out, the Danish military did actually int he end disobey the civil government by withdrawing from Dannevirke without permission. However, the defense of Dybbøl was insufficient as the fortress had not been properly fortified before the outbreak of the war. Therefore, Dybbøl was lost after a bloody battle, and the two other fortresses abandoned without fighting.
So in short, the image shown in 1864 isn't altogether wrong. The Danish government did push for an untenable strategy based on national romanticism, and the effect was most clearly felt in the lack of preparation.
Sources: Slagtebænk Dybbøl and Dommedag Als, both by Tom-Buk-Swienty (in Danish.)