Play as · WW2 1939 · L1 · Neutral · Six-Hour War
Denmark - 1939
Denmark in 1939 is a neutral constitutional monarchy governed by a Social Democratic-Radical Liberal coalition, signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in May 1939 that Berlin offered to most Nordic states (only Denmark accepted), and shares a 67-kilometer land border with the Reich at southern Jutland. Population about 3.8M. The strategic identity is the small-state pragmatism that treats neutrality as the only available foreign policy and military deterrence as a fiscal indulgence the country has chosen not to afford.
Starting position
The Danish armed forces are minimal - about 17,000 active, two infantry divisions, a token armored component, an air force of about 50 aircraft (mostly Fokker D.XXI fighters and Fokker C.V reconnaissance biplanes), and a navy that is largely coastal-defense vessels appropriate to controlling the Danish Straits in peacetime but not capable of contesting them against the Kriegsmarine. The Jutland border has no significant fortifications - the political-strategic decision through the 1930s was that any defense substantial enough to matter would be politically destabilizing in peacetime and operationally inadequate in war. Greenland and the Faroes are sovereign Danish territory with no garrison to speak of.
What turns the campaign
What Denmark wants is the German non-aggression pact treated as durable, the Danish Straits accepted as a neutral waterway, the country's small but real strategic value (food production, dairy exports, the straits) leveraged for survival without political alignment, and the Greenland-Faroe Atlantic connection preserved if the war reaches the North Sea. What Denmark fears is exactly what is coming - Operation Weserübung in April 1940, the German requirement for transit to Norway and air bases for the Luftwaffe to operate against the Royal Navy in the North Sea, and the impossibility of meaningful resistance against an invasion executed at scale against a 67-kilometer flat land border, two airfields, and a coastguard navy.
Signature challenge
The six-hour war
Denmark's central strategic problem in 1939 is that its defense plan is not a defense plan but a peace plan, calibrated to a Germany that respects the May non-aggression pact rather than to a Germany that finds Norway strategically necessary and Denmark in the way. The historical answer was the April 9, 1940 invasion that took six hours, killed 16 Danish soldiers, and inaugurated four years of German occupation under a Danish government that stayed in office until 1943. NationFall surfaces this as the Danish campaign's defining tension: a country whose defensive options range from token to political - there is no military path that stops a determined invader, only choices about whether to make the invasion costly enough to matter diplomatically, and what kind of relationship with the occupier survives the choice.
Try the Denmark campaign
Free demo. Pick WW2 1939. Pick Denmark. Six hours, or longer.
Play Free Demo as DenmarkRegional: Germany · United Kingdom