Graphic monochrome images from a liberated Denmark show how kidnap squads hunted down and abused women who had slept with Germans at the end of WWII

 

Graphic photographs taken during the liberation of Denmark after five years of Nazi rule show how gangs of men rounded up and abused conspirators and women accused of sleeping with Germans.

The black and white images, taken after British paratroopers swept into the Scandinavian country in 1945, illustrate the anger and hatred the Danes felt towards the German occupiers.

In one shocking series of images, a woman who is believed to have slept with a German is chased down and stripped before having swastikas painted over her.

In other images, which are only now coming to light as they go up for auction, men are taken away at gunpoint while another image shows a baying mob rip and burn a Nazi swastika flag.




Written beside some of the pictures of men being taken away is the Danish word 'stikker' which translates to 'mole'.

The album also includes shots of a car riddled with bullet holes and a blood-soaked passenger seat



Another photo meanwhile depicts a celebratory scene of a truck carrying dozens of British paratroopers being cheered through the streets of Copenhagen.

The album, which gives a stark insight into anger felt in the aftermath of the war, is now coming up for sale at C&T Auctioneers of Rochester, Kent.

Unlike other countries under German occupation, the Danish government remained in power and the country continued to function relatively normally after leaders opted to cooperate with the Nazi regime.

But, increasingly provoked by German soldiers' brutality, resistance groups started to build momentum prompting mass strikes and demonstrations across the country.

When the Danish government refused to prohibit public meetings and impose curfews on its people in response to the action, German authorities dissolved the government and took military control of the country in 1943.

Later that year, Danish citizens discovered German troops were planning to round up Danish Jews and take them to concentration camps. Many more Danes joined the resistance which then stepped up its acts of sabotage and hostile attacks against the Nazis.

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