Communist Party of Denmark

The Comintern intervened by means of an open letter to the party in 1929, forcing the removal of the DKP's leadership.

Concurrently, the Great Depression was reaching its peak in Denmark, allowing the DKP to channel rising economic dissatisfaction.

[1][6] A national unity government was formed by the other major parties, which cooperated with the Germans, including in the outlawing of the DKP.

[1][6] Members of the DKP sat on the Danish Freedom Council, the largest underground resistance force against the German occupation.

[6][8] The Social Democrats experienced a rapid decline in influence during this period, remaining outside of the resistance movement for the entirety of the occupation.

[1] While the party was unsuccessful in that effort, the movement successfully forced the Danish government to refuse permission to place NATO air fields in Denmark.

[1] Officially, the DKP's political line did not conflict with that of the CPSU, but pre-war factional tensions continued in the party in the post-war period.

[1] Factional tensions peaked with the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, which caused a massive backlash against the DKP,[10] and sparked a split within the party.

[11] Larsen was replaced by Knud Jespersen, a hardline pro-Soviet communist, positioning the DKP as a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union.

The party achieved a resurgence following the 24th Congress of the DKP in 1973, which focused on demanding Denmark's withdrawal from NATO and the EC.

[1] On the back of rising disaffection with the EC and increased popularity amongst student movements, the DKP regained parliamentary representation in 1973 election, taking 3.6% of the vote and 6 seats.

[14] Gert Petersen, then-chairman of the Socialist People's Party, claimed at the time that cooperation between such diffuse ideological currents would fail.

[21] Since 2009, the DKP has been represented in local municipal and regional elections, often in cooperation with the KPiD and KP, two other Danish Communist parties.

[citation needed] In the early 1920s, the party's newspaper was named Arbejderbladet ("The Worker's Paper") and had a circulation of approximately 6,000, but this dropped to around 4,000 by the late 1920s.

[6] Since 2001, the DKP has published the quarterly magazine Skub ("Push") with news related to the party and communism in general.

DKP-hammer and sickle
DKP election poster [ when? ]
Land og Folk from 1945
Armed BOPA members with their Ford Deluxe, Copenhagen, May 1945. From the left: Otto Haslund (Jørn), Aage Staffe (Lille John), Per Mortensen (Tom) Børge Dahl (Teddy). BOPA (Danish: Borgerlige Partisaner, Civil Partisans) was a group of the Danish resistance movement; it was affiliated with the Communist Party of Denmark and developed after the occupation of Denmark. BOPA was mainly formed by veterans who had been part of the volunteer anti-Franco brigades of the Spanish Civil War. However, as arms were scarce, their weapons were often gasoline and matches, and only small-scale operations were carried out. On January 25, 1943, a group of students—who had previously been refused membership in the communist resistance group due to its members' distrust of elitists (including students)—set fire to a stock of German listening devices at Dansk Industrisyndikat in Hellerup using a bottle of spirit. The students were accepted into the group, which changed its name from the original KOPA (Kommunistiske Partisaner, Communist Partisans) to Borgerlige Partisaner (Civil Partisans) or BOPA. The new name was at first used jokingly by old members, since "borgerlig" in Danish also means "conservative", but it soon became the most widely used name. Operations grew in magnitude as individuals with inside knowledge of possible targets joined the group. Young apprentices from large factories proved especially useful in identifying targets that were supplying the German military.
1945 DKP election programme, "Will of the People – Law of the Country"
Denmark's Communist Youth, (Danish: Danmarks Kommunistiske Ungdom) DKU (2009).