Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
: L-gruppe) was a resistance group tasked with assassination of Danish collaborators and German forces occupying Denmark during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
. The precursor to the group was established in 1940, but it was most active from 1944 to the end of the war. The group carried out at least 18 assassination operations and killed between 20 and 30 people. In 1945 the group was hard hit by arrests and killings of its members and further suffered a very high death-rate in the years immediately after the war with suicides and accidents killing a number of members. The group had strong ties to the Danish police, with 5 of its members being police officers.
History
The L-groups can be traced back to Hans Krarup Andreasen from
Silkeborg
Silkeborg () is a Danish town with a population of 49,747 (1 January 2022).Aarhus. The Aarhus groups counted among them two police officers: Einar Sørensen and Henrik Platou, who had shot the informant Karl Vilhelm Gustav Jeger in Aarhus in January 1944, and it was agreed to form a dedicated assassination group with them as the backbone.
The L-groups was officially formed over the summer of 1944, and in August the first assassinations occurred. On 4 October 1944, the
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...
agent
Kjeld Toft-Christensen
Kjeld Toft-Christensen (10 March 1910 – 27 November 1945) MC was a Special Operations Executive officer and Danish resistance fighter during the Second World War. Toft-Christensen was born in Copenhagen to Aage and Elna Elise (née Bonnelycke) ...
arrived from
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and joined the group as a
liaison officer
A Liaison officer is a person who liaises between two or more organizations to communicate and coordinate their activities on a matter of mutual concern. Generally, liaison officers are used for achieving the best utilization of resources, or empl ...
and trainer. In the fall of 1944 the group was divided in two, with Einar Sørensen and Henrik Platou taking control of one each. Henrik Platou's group was based in Aalborg and was to cover central and southern Jutland, while Einar Sørensen's was based in Aarhus with northern Jutland as its operational area. The two groups were to subsequently recruit reliable locals within their areas and expand. L-group North initially counted Hans Krarup Andreasen, Svend Ulrich Pedersen and Vagn Nørlund Christensen with Henrik Platou as group leader. Sigurd Vestergaard Christensen, Jørgen Christian Jensen, Kjeld Toft-Christensen and Carl Johan Nielsen formed L-group Central with Einar Sørensen as group leader.
The groups settled into their new roles, and through 1944, performed a total of 10 operations against 10 targets. However, in early 1945, L-group North was destroyed. On 27 January Svend Ulrich Pedersen was killed on his 22nd birthday by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
during a shoot-out which also cost the lives of two Gestapo members. One month later, on 14 February, Henrik Platou was wounded during an assassination attempt leading to his later arrest on 21 February and
execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
in March. On 21 February, the Gestapo also raided the residence of Vagn Nørlund Christensen and Krarup Andreasen; Krarup was discovered and committed suicide by shooting himself, but Nørlund escaped through a bay window in the roof. Nørlund was subsequently sent to
Vejle
Vejle () is a city in Denmark, in the southeast of the Jutland Peninsula at the head of Vejle Fjord, where the Vejle River and Grejs River and their valleys converge. It is the site of the councils of Vejle Municipality ('' kommune'') and th ...
to start a new group, L-group South, with Svend Middelboe Jensen to cover southern Jutland.
Of the 10 original members of the L-group, 4 were killed during the war and another 2 committed suicide in the months following it; only one is known to have survived the decade after the war.
Members
Operations
1944
* Karl Vilhelm Gustav Jeger, shot on 18 January in Aarhus by Einar Sørensen.
* Peder Ole Pedersen Sandhøj, shot on 12 August in Aarhus by Hans Peter Krarup Andreasen.
* Gunnar Siim, shot on 29 August in
Silkeborg
Silkeborg () is a Danish town with a population of 49,747 (1 January 2022).Skanderborg
Skanderborg is a town in Skanderborg municipality, Denmark. It is situated on the north and north eastern brinks of Skanderborg Lake and there are several smaller ponds and bodies of water within the city itself, like Lillesø, Sortesø, Døj S ...
by Einar Sørensen.
* Ernst Laurits Mikkelsen, shot on 5 October in Ålborg by Einar Sørensen.
* Landry Arnfeldt Nielsen, shot on 18 October in
Randers
Randers () is a city in Randers Municipality, Central Denmark Region on the Jutland peninsula. It is Denmark's sixth-largest city, with a population of 62,802 (as of 1 January 2022).Vejle
Vejle () is a city in Denmark, in the southeast of the Jutland Peninsula at the head of Vejle Fjord, where the Vejle River and Grejs River and their valleys converge. It is the site of the councils of Vejle Municipality ('' kommune'') and th ...
by Svend Middelboe.
* Olaf Christian Quist, shot along with 3 Gestapo officers on 29 April in Aarhus by Kjeld Toft-Christensen.
* Jørgen Hvid, shot 1 May in Vejle by Svend Middelboe.