In a ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the fall of the Danish government that had collaborated with the Nazis, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “Denmark’s collaboration with the Nazi occupiers was morally unjustified and it was a mistake to have collaborated with the Germans. If all the countries of Europe, together with the Americans and Russians, had decided to behave like the Danish government, Hitler would have won the war”. Rasmussen’s remarks aroused a public debate in Denmark, and a number of historians criticized him, including those who said that the Danish government had displayed opposition to the Germans and had refused to implement the laws requiring Jews to wear the Yellow Star, in addition to which members of the Jewish community had been smuggled out of Denmark to Sweden. Rusmussen is the first Danish Prime Minister to denounce the policy of the Danish leadership during World War II.
