Why didn't the Danish government and monarch flee during WW2?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

So during WW2, in the majority of countries occupied by Nazi Germany the incumbent government's fled into exile. Those that didn't, like Quisling, Leopold of Belgium and the leaders of Vichy France were treated with disdain and heavily punished after the war. The exception though, is Demark, where the government and Christian X remained behind.. The Danish administration didn't particularly collaborate with the Nazis (the attempts to destroy the Danish Jewry falling short, and the king treating Hitler with mild disdain) but they never really made moves to oppose the regime. (Unlike the polish, Benelux, Czech, Nowegian and Greek exiled governments). However, the all party government readily joined in with repressive anticommunist measures. Even when the government was suspended, they parties and monarchy never seemed to really complain. It just strikes me as odd that the Danish political structure emerged from the War almost completely unscathed (aside from a brief postwar bump for the Comminists)

[ingemann]

The Danish administration fully cooperated with the Germans early in the war. Let's get that right, there wasn't some glorious attempt at peaceful resistance from the Danish government. Of course it also was made it clear that the cooperation would end, if Germany began to mistreat Danish citizens, and there was a lot of good reason Germany prefered to keep the Danes as happy as a occupied people could be.

As for why the Danish government didn't flee, it had been analysed in the years before the war, that Germany could occupy Denmark at will, but the same analyses told that Germany needed the Danish cooperation. It can best be illustrated this way, core WWII Germany, which included Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Poland, 24% of it consumption of animal products and 12% of plant product consumption came from Denmark. The Danish government was from the start fully aware that Germany needed to keep occupied Denmark from making trouble, which was also why under Folkestrejken (1944) (the people's strike) the Germans ended backing down, because they was afraid it would spread from the capital.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Oh OK. Was there any political implications? After all in Belgium the country almost fell apart because Leopold stayed behind. But in Denmark it seemed like nothing really changed after the war.

[ingemann]

Oh OK. Was there any political implications? After all in Belgium the country almost fell apart because Leopold stayed behind. But in Denmark it seemed like nothing really changed after the war.

Yes, but they're was very complex and relative minor compared to Belgium; the republican movement died almost completely out (it was rather popular before) even the communist celebrated the royal family, Denmark saw a increase miltarisation (the Cold War also helped there), neutrality became unviable and instead of the complete Social Democrat dominance we would likely have seen without the occupation (like in Sweden), instead we only saw a near complete dominance by the Social Democrats.

[buritobr]

Hitler's real war was the Eastern European front. He though that the slavs were an inferior race, bolshevism was evil and Germany needed a Lebensraum.
Germany invaded France and made air strikes against the UK, because France and the UK declared war against Germany. The germans invaded Belgium and Netherlands because it was the way to invade France. They invaded Denmark and Norway in order to avoid that the British use this countries as a base to attack Germany. Hitler did not mind that Western European governments existed since they don't bother him.
Hitler tried a Peace agrément with the UK before invading the USSR.

[rob in cal]

     Also, in the case of Denmark the German invasion was so quick and successful that the Danish government probably didn't have time to flee.  I read somewhere that Germany was hoping to also keep the Norwegian government intact as well, and IIRC in the case of Belgium there were some government ministers who stayed on, as well as the King, so it was really only a partial government in exile.
    More pertinent to the forum, perhaps, was the Danish General election of 1943, held during the German occupation, in which all the main parties participated.