From the archive of Ib Nørlund, DKP’s long-time chief ideologist, two smaller archives for the peace organizations Peace Supporters and Danish Peace Conference have emerged.

By: Jesper Jørgensen (First published in ABA’s Yearbook 2001)

The archives provide a good opportunity to shed light on the communists’ early work to create inter-political organizations in Denmark after WW2. The archives contain sources that illustrate individuals’ great commitment to peace and their concerns about an impending nuclear world war.

Hans Scherfig on the rostrum at the International Peace Congress of the Supporters of Peace at the Odd Fellow Palace in 1950. Photographer: Betting.

By their opponents, who in parliamentary terms comprised most of Danish society, including the national newspapers, the Supporters of Peace and the Danish Peace Conference were described as communist front organizations. They were often referred to as 5th columnists of the worst kind, harmful to the country. DKP played a crucial role in both organizations, and they can therefore be seen as tools in DKP’s popular front policy in the post-war period. For the party, the resistance struggle during the occupation was a constant reference.

The background to the archives

The material from the Supporters of Peace and the Danish Peace Conference was originally submitted as part of Ib Nørlund’s private archive. At the request of Nørlund himself shortly before his death, it was collected together with the rest of the material from the Danish Communist Party’s office in Dr. Tværgade, Copenhagen in 1989/90. However, it is unclear how the material from the Supporters of Peace came into Nørlund’s possession. Nørlund had no official organizational connection to the organizations. DKP was aware that well-known communists with strong ties to the party leadership would create too much negative attention around the peace organizations.

How much Ib Nørlund was informally involved in the work and politics of the peace organizations is unknown, but he played a central role in party politics in the post-war period and until his death in 1989. In the archives, however, there is a small amount of private papers that may shed some light on the material’s path to Ib Nørlund. The papers belonged to the communist and architect A. Wagner-Petersen, who was chairman of the local committee of Peace Supporters for Ydre Østerbro, and Jørgen Jensen, who was chairman of the Danish Peace Conference from 1962 (later he also became chairman of DKP, 1977-87). These two have been responsible for archiving the material, and since the material from the two organizations was to some extent mixed together, it could indicate that it was delivered together to Ib Nørlund by Jørgen Jensen, who represented the last existing organization.

The Supporters of Peace archive

In principle, this is an archive for the local committee for Ydre Østerbro, but it covers the entire history of the organization up to 1954, with some gaps. More precisely, the material covers the period from the first national meeting in June 1950 to the demand for a referendum on the “German question” in December 1954. There are agendas and resolutions from the national meetings and from the Peace Congress in November 1950, but unfortunately the minutes are missing. On the other hand, the collection of correspondence in and out of the local branch gives a good insight into the level of activity and the organizational difficulties that a relatively small and communist-based organization could encounter. Specific political issues and positions can be deduced from a number of different manuscripts, and finally there is a relatively extensive material from the World Peace Council meetings in 1952, 1953 and 1954. Especially from the last two in Budapest and Berlin, from which manuscripts of many of the speeches were obtained.

The international background of the Supporters of Peace

Peace Supporters in Denmark was officially founded in 1950, but had been underway for over a year at that time. The background was first and foremost international. The Danish initiative was derived from the formation of the world movement Les Partisans de la Paix at a peace congress in Paris in April 1949, which had among its participants several internationally known and communist sympathizing personalities such as Pablo Picasso, Charles Chaplin, Poul Robeson and Martin Andersen Nexø. The initiators of the World Congress, the two anti-fascist and basically inter-political organizations Women’s Democratic World League (KDV) and the International Committee for Relations between Intellectuals, also had a communist background.
The holding of the congress was a reaction to the danger and fear of a third world war. The intransigence and arms race between the USA and the Soviet Union and their allies had created doubts about the security of continued peace in the world relatively soon after World War II. However, the responsibility for the tense world situation was placed primarily with the Western powers, which did not reduce the general distrust of communist actions.

After the congress, national committees were established all over the world. In Denmark, the Danish participants in Paris, the communists Edvard Heiberg, Martin Andersen Nexø and Agnete Olsen (chairman of KDV in Denmark) formed a committee in the fall of 1949 with Heiberg as chairman. This contributed to the creation of local networks across the country.

Supporters of Peace in Denmark

56 local committees and 29 organizations attended the organization’s founding national meeting on 11 June 1950 in Copenhagen. At the meeting, a national committee (later called the national leadership) was established with Mogens Fog as chairman. The committee included Jørgen Jørgensen, Hans Kirk, Morten Lange and Martin Andersen Nexø, who, like many of the other leaders within the organization, were communists or sympathizers. One of Mogens Fog’s roles has undoubtedly been – with his goodwill from the occupation – to legitimize the Supporters of Peace and make it appear as a democratic and Danish peace organization.

The resolution adopted at the national meeting, which established the purpose of the organization, supported this desire: “The Supporters of Peace will seek to awaken the Danish people to opposition to war preparations, rearmament, military pacts and war propaganda”, and it would work for: “l) general internationally controlled disarmament and peaceful settlement of international disputes within the UN, 2) prohibition of the atomic bomb and international control of compliance with the ban and 3) combating all forms of warmongering activities”.Although the organization fought for a rapprochement between the two warring parties in the Cold War and therefore did not officially take sides in the conflict, there was a clear tendency to be most critical of NATO and the US.

The Stockholm Appeal

Specifically, the “weapon” in the 1950 peace struggle was a petition – the “Stockholm Appeal”, which focused on the banning of nuclear weapons. The appeal had been adopted at a meeting of the World Peace Committee (later the World Peace Council) in Stockholm in March that year. Eight months later, it claimed to have been endorsed by around 500 million people. The largest support came from China, the Soviet Union and the “people’s democracies” in Eastern Europe with almost 4/5 of the signatures. In Denmark, around 135,000 people signed the appeal, which was not very many considering the DKP’s turnout in previous elections. The decisive factor was the strong reaction to the proposal in public opinion.

The Stockholm Appeal was accused in the newspapers of being a communist attack on the freedom values of the Western world. The rearmament was seen as a necessity to resist the Eastern Bloc. The sharpest expressions came from Berlingske Tidende, where the Supporters of Peace were described as belonging to a category of “… people and organizations so vile that one cannot be known and has no desire to answer criticism and attacks from their side.” The Supporters of Peace generally had problems getting their message across in magazines other than the communist daily Land og Folk.

“The German question”

The issue of German rearmament fared better, resonating more with the population than the more abstract threat of a new nuclear world war. In relations with Germany, memories of the occupation were still vivid.

From the end of 1950, the Supporters of Peace argued that rearming Germany would lead to a repeat of history. German rearmament would be a direct threat to Denmark’s security. The German mindset was simply not to be trusted. From the beginning of 1951, the Supporters of Peace therefore saw it as their main task to counteract this rearmament. The call to the local committees from the organization’s working committee was short and sweet: “Put everything else aside and get the population on its feet”. There was a particular call to mobilize former resistance fighters and “gestapo prisoners”.
In line with this, at the end of 1954, with the support of certain radical circles, the Supporters of Peace demanded a referendum on Denmark’s accession to the NATO agreements on German rearmament and NATO membership. As before, the reactions from the newspapers were sharp and condemning, especially towards the radicals, who according to Politiken had been misled by the communists. In view of later EC/EU referendums, it must also be said that nationally motivated referendums can be difficult to handle.

The broader cooperation

In 1952/53 there was a certain slowdown within the organization. The attitude towards the Supporters of Peace in the Danish public had not changed for the better. They were still “merely” labeled as “red mercenaries” who had no legitimacy in the Danish debate.

Nevertheless, in late 1952, the Supporters of Peace tried to open up a broader dialog. A more cross-political magazine, Tænk i Tide, which was to include larger parts of the peace movement, replaced the previous Kæmp for Freden. The new magazine’s editorial board included both communists and cultural radicals (such as Herbert Pundik). However, the collaboration was put to the test from the start when the publication of the magazine coincided with Stalin’s paranoid fight against the “Zionist-imperialist conspiracy”. Specifically, two communist show trials came into question – the Slansky Trial in Prague and the so-called doctor plot in Moscow. Not surprisingly, the Moscow Communists and the doubting and critical cultural radicals perceived the events differently. However, the strongest reaction came from the communist-Jewish couple, Peter P. Rohde and Ina Haxen (later Rohde), who attacked DKP and especially Mogens Fog for not taking a clear stand against communist anti-Semitism.

The communists had a hard time coming to their senses. With the formation of the Danish Peace Conference in 1954, the broader cooperation within the peace movement took on a more concrete character, but it was at the expense of the Supporters of Peace. The death blow was the Soviet Union’s intervention in Hungary in 1956, which resulted in both a split within DKP and the dissolution of the Supporters of Peace in 1959.

One of the immediate successes of the Supporters of Peace was that left-wing politician Elin Appel joined the World Peace Council in February 1951 as one of three Danish representatives. In addition, the organization’s work can be seen as preparatory for later cross-political, popular work in Denmark. Both the Stockholm Appeal and the “German question” created dilemmas for those who wanted to fight for the same cause, but who did not like what the communists otherwise stood for.