Christen Olsen

Flag of Denmark (1219-present)

### Division

1st (Zealand) Infantry Division (1938-1939)2nd (Jutland) Infantry Division (1940)

### Battles and Wars

World War II- Jutland 1940

- Zealand 1943

- Resistance against Germany 1943-1945

### Parents

Henrik Jesper Olsen (father)Dorthe Else Jessen (mother)

**Christen Frederik Olsen** (March 7, 1918 - September 25, 2010) was an officer and soldier of the Royal Danish Army and a member of the Danish resistance movement who fought in World War II.

## Early life and family

Olsen was born in the city of Aarhus on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. His family was relatively poor, and his father Henrik was a fisherman. Olsen worked at the Oil Mill in the city for most of his adolescent years, and in 1936 he used all his savings to attend the Royal Danish Military Academy in Copenhagen.

After graduating the college in 1938, Olsen was made a Second Lieutenant in the Danish military.

## Military service and resistance

### World War II

Upon recieving his commission for the Royal Danish Army, Lieutenant Olsen was assigned as a platoon commander in the presigious Royal Guard, where he was included in the 4th Company, 1st Battalion, Royal Life Guards, part of the 1st (Zealand) Infantry Division. For a year, he was stationed in Copenhagen with the regiment's mission to protect the Danish royal family. In 1939, he was transferred to the 4th Bicycle Infantry Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 2nd (Jutland) Infantry Division.

After the Nazi German invasion of Poland, the army was placed on alert. However, with the Danish government's strict policy of neutrality, the soldiers in southern Jutland were not allowed to set up even temporary defenses.

On April 9, 1940, the German Army launched Operation Weserübung, crossing the Danish border and invading the country. Lieutenant Olsen directed his men to set up a roadblock, and they held against an armored push by the Germans on the southern border. Outnumbered and unable to hold their position, the soldiers retreated north to the city of Haderslev, linking up with the Danish garrison there. They held off the Germans outside of the the town before retreating into the center. After resisting for a few hours, Olsen and his men got the news that the government in Copenhagen had surrendered, and they gave themselves up to the Germans. After just six hours of resistance, Germany had conquered Denmark.

Due to the relative ease of the invasion for the Germans, as well as the racial characteristics of the Danes, the occupation was initially very lenient. The Danish authorities cooperated with the occupying force, and thus were allowed to govern most of the country's affairs independant of the Germans. The army was downsized but not fully disbanded, with the Royal Life Guards regiment being one of the only forces allowed to remain. Lieutenant Olsen, wishing to stay in the army, transferred back to the guards as a part of his old unit. He remained on garrison duty in Copenhagen in the early years of the occupation. In 1941, with Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, Olsen was offered a position in *Frikorps Danmark*, or Free Corps Denmark, a volunteer unit fighting for the Germans on the eastern front, which he declined.

Resistance groups soon began appearing throughout the country. Most of the early groups were nonviolent in nature, as the Danish public was not enthusiastic about sabotage or other violent actions. Olsen was sympathetic to the resistance movement, and though he did not want to kill anyone, he was willing to do his part. He engaged in clandestine operations with Danish Army intelligence, in which Olsen would report on the state of the German military in a given area and then have it transmitted to the British. In 1942, he spied on the construction of the Atlantic Wall defenses in Jutland, an act in which he was nearly caught. Though Olsen was pro-Allied and anti-German, he did not believe in drastic action which would jeopardize the peace and safety of the Danish people and so did not affiliate himself with any established resistance group. In October, the Telegram Crisis resulted in widespread crackdowns on Denmark, which, along with rising resistance activities galvanized by Allied victories, served as the beginning of the end for the Danish-German peace.

The increase in violent resistance activities during the early part of 1943 did not change Olsen's mind as he still believed in mostly passive resistance to the German occupiers. In March, elections were held, leading to most votes going to pro-cooperation democratic parties. Despite this, strikes and civil disobedience erupted all throughout the country. The German authorities wanted the Danish government to put the demonstrations down and pay reparations for damages caused. When the Danes refused, the Germans declared Denmark an enemy nation and in August 1943 to dismantled the Danish government and military by force. Lieutenant Olsen was in Copenhagen when the Germans attacked his unit's barracks in Operation Safari. The Danish soldiers fought back, but by the end of the day they had been subdued. The Danish Army no longer existed. This turn of events brought Denmark onto the Allied side, and Olsen was ready for a change in tactics.

Olsen joined the Holger Danske nationalist resistance group shortly after, and volunteered for some of the more dangerous assignments. The group became a part of the centralized Danish Freedom Council in September 1943. However, a much more pressing matter for the resistance soon came about. Without the Danish government to protect them, the Jews in Denmark were soon to be subject to deportation to German concentration camps. Tipped off by a source in the German government, the resistance immediately began to act. Various groups began hiding Jews, and Olsen opened his home in Copenhagen to Jewish fugitives. However, this was not enough, and preparations were made to ferry Jews into neutral Sweden. Olsen and the resistance members secured passage and transportation from Zealand to Sweden, and through quick action, almost all of the Danish Jews were saved.

With the government out of the way, Holger Danske could step up its action against the German occupiers. Olsen took part in propaganda distribution, sabotage, and the killing of Danish collaborators and Gestapo agents. These activities escalated in 1944, as the resistance began to receive more and more assistance from the Allies. In May, they received word of the impending Allied invasion of Normandy. In order to help, Olsen and several other resistance members travelled to Jutland. There, they blew up rail lines and disrupted the train network, preventing the Germans in Denmark from reinforcing the front line in France. Holger Danske's operations continued throughout 1944 and into 1945, with agents like Olsen even going so far as to begin killing German nationals. By May, with an Allied victory at hand, open fighting broke out in the streets of Copenhagen between resistance fighters and German troops. On May 5, 1945, British troops liberated Denmark. Three days later, Nazi Germany surrendered to the allies, ending the war in Europe.

### Cold War and end of service

After the war, Olsen rejoined the Danish Army and was promoted to Captain. Not all of Denmark had been liberated by the end of the war, however. The island of Bornholm was occupied by Soviet troops from May 1945 until April 1946, after which there was a great fear in the Danish government that they would attack again. With Denmark's involvement in NATO, it was necessary to station troops on the island. From 1946 to 1950, Captain Olsen was stationed on Bornholm to respond to a Soviet invasion if one came.

On June 5, 1950, Christen Frederik Olsen retired from military service.

## Personal life

Christen Olsen married Hannah Rosenberg, a Jewish girl who he had hidden in his house along with many others, in 1945 after her safe return from Sweden. The two moved to Aarhus in 1947 to be closer to Olsen's ailing family. His father had suffered a stroke in 1943 and as a result could not work. Olsen took up and ran the family's fishing business until the 1980s.

In 1968, Christen and Hannah Olsen traveled to Israel where Christen was honored as a part of the Danish resistance. Uniquely, at their request, the resistance as a whole was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations designation, as opposed to individual people. Christen gave a speech at the dedication of the commemorative tree.

On September 25, 2010, Christen Frederik Olsen passed away peacefully at the age of 92.

### Views

After being largely apolitical throughout his early years, Olsen became more active in social democratic politics after the war. In the 1950s he denounced the government's inactivity and isolationism before the war and condemned the cooperation policy during the occupation at a time when it was very controversial to do so. He supported Denmark's joining of NATO and its increased participation in world affairs. He was also in favor of home rule for the Faroe Islands and colonial status for Greenland.

Olsen was a devout Lutheran and attended regular Church of Denmark services until his death.

## Equipment

During the first part of his military service, Olsen used the Danish M/1889/24 Krag-Jørgensen bolt-action rifle and its M/1916 bayonet. His sidearm was the Bergmann-Bayard M1910/21, and he carried the M/1923 fragmentation grenade.

As a liquidator for the resistance, Olsen used several different firearms. He carried at different times a Norwegian Kongsberg M/1914 pistol, a Smith & Wesson M10 police revolver, and his Bergmann-Bayard M1910/21. When the resistance began to take part in open warfare, he used an American M1917 Enfield rifle which he had acquired from a British supply drop.

In 1950, just before he left the service, Olsen was given the opportunity to try out the Gevær M/50, the Danish version of the American M1 Garand.