Denmark: F-16’s to Ukraine for war with Russia; on holiday beaches, scars from WWII
The corner of a World War II German military bunker on the island of Fanø, Denmark, August 2023
My latest post is from Denmark, where I have been on holiday, on its decision to send F-16 warplanes to Ukraine, and on its own history of being occupied during World War II.
REPORTING FROM WAR ZONES, I GREW TO FEAR the sound of approaching warplanes. A Russian airstrike in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in early 1995, was a moment of true terror. The roar of jets, however distant, has me searching the skies. When I heard it on a holiday walk earlier this month, I could see nothing–so settled back into the sand dune where I had stopped to take a rest.
Only when I checked the news later did I see that the Danish air force had intercepted Russian bombers reportedly heading for Dutch NATO airspace. Perhaps, given where I was, what I heard was related to the incident. It was later followed by reports of the British Royal Air Force intercepting Russian bombers north of Scotland.
Now the two NATO allies, Denmark and the Netherlands, have–as Reuters reported on August 20th–made ‘the first real promise of F-16’s for Ukraine’s armed forces’: the decision to send war planes to Ukraine announced just days after their fighters took to the skies to see off the Russian air force.
‘TOURISTS’ IN NAZI UNIFORMS
My holiday was on the Danish island of Fanø. Along with the rest of the country, it was occupied by German forces during World War II. Some years ago, a tour guide told the story of a group of young German tourists staying in a hotel during a walking holiday. On the day of the invasion, they came down to breakfast in Nazi uniforms. The hikers were actually were intelligence officers. Once the invasion was underway, they rapidly discarded their disguise.
Five years later, in the spring of 1945, the soldiers that followed the spies fled as Hitler’s regime crumbled. Today, the bunkers that the occupiers built attract genuine tourists–many of them from Germany. And in the summer skies above the island, this week there was a reminder that war has returned to Europe.
My walk that morning took me past some of the bunkers from that earlier war in Europe, and which still scar the sand dunes on Fanø. They were built to withstand heavy bombardment. The port city of Esbjerg–a short distance across the narrow sound that separates Fanø from the Danish mainland–is less than 300km from Hamburg, so could have been used to launch an invasion from the north. Today, the abandoned fortifications at the north of the island still look over the harbour.
Abandoned WWII German fortifications on Fanø, Denmark, looking towards the port of Esbjerg, August 2023.
On a summer day, despite the grim historical reminders that the bunkers represent, the deserted north end of the island is a very pleasant place to be–the main sound the turning of the nearby wind turbines which today are part of a growing industry in Esbjerg. How much more pleasant it must have been to serve as a German soldier here than in the deadly Russian winter of Stalingrad.
WAR RETURNS TO EUROPE
And it is at that other side of Europe that war has returned to the continent–and, although the interception of Russian bombers over the north sea is not directly related to the war in Ukraine, such provocation would probably not occur so frequently, or be taken so seriously, were we in a time of peace.
Part of a German WWII bunker on Fanø, Denmark, looking towards the port of Esbjerg, August 2023.
The bunkers’ stubborn and ugly presence on Fanø is a reminder–like the warplanes sometimes in the skies above–that peace in Europe was hard won, and there is no guarantee that it will endure.
The time when the western allies united with the Soviet Union to defeat Nazism fades further into the history of the last century. There are still reminders of that war in the concrete monstrosities among the sand dunes of Fanø, and elsewhere across the continent.
The bunkers and gun emplacements may one day be buried by drifting sand–but today, Putin’s armies are creating a new set of deep wounds that will scar Ukraine’s landscape, and Europe’s history, perhaps even longer than these grim abandoned fortifications.