[citation needed] On one occasion, in the early 1930s, in a comment that came back to haunt him in later years, Munk expressed admiration for Hitler (for uniting Germans) and wished a similar unifying figure for Danes.

In 1938, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published on its front page an open letter to Benito Mussolini written by Kaj Munk criticising the persecutions against Jews.

[citation needed] The Gestapo arrested Munk on the night of 4 January 1944, a month after he had defied a Nazi ban and preached the first Advent sermon at the national cathedral in Copenhagen.

[6] Half of the January 1944 issue of the resistance newspaper De frie Danske was dedicated to Munk with his portrait filling the front page.

Lastly the paper featured condemning reactions from influential Scandinavians, namely Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, Jarl Hemmer, Johannes Jørgensen, Sigrid Undset, Erling Eidem and Harald Bohr.

In his play En Idealist, for example, the "hero" is King Herod whose fight to maintain power is the motive behind all of his acts until he is at last defeated by a show of kindness to the Christ child in a weak moment.