Soviet invasion of Denmark

The location
It can be accessed directly from the roiling plains of the North German Plain or by a short sea journey from Malmö in Sweden.

Denmark is a agricultural fertile and climactic temperate place which is formed by the mid and upper Jutland, along with the Danish archipelago of 443 named islands and many smaller named ones, of which around 70 of the name ones are inhabited.

The islands are characterised by flat, arable land and sandy coasts, low elevation and ether of sedimentary or morainic origin. Zealand Island is the most populous Danish island (pop. 2012 est. 2,491,090) representing about 45% of the country's total population. Lolland Island has the nickname "pancake island" because of its flatness with the highest peak just outside the village of Horslunde standing at only 25 m (82 ft) high. The Nazis and Vikings had realised it's strategic value of the coast of Germany, as had the NATO and Warsaw Pact planners of the Cold War after them.

Sugar beet field cover Lolland Island. Clay is found on Bornholm Island.

As a fellow Nordic nation, Denmark shares strong cultural and historic ties with its overseas neighbours Sweden and Norway that date back to Viking times and the Danish Language is both very closely related and mutually intelligible with Swedish and Norwegian.

Soviet Occupation of Bornholm Island was from 1945 to 1946. The Almegårds Kaserne is the islands local armed forces base.

The GDR invades Lolland Island
The leading East German invasion on Lolland would be due to the strategic fact that the island had control of Danish waters on the Fermern Belt between Lolland Island and Rügen Island.

End game
Copenhagen, the American airbase at Karup and Esbjerg port would be hit with conventional carpet bombing. Denmark would be ordered to surrender after a couple of days in it had not allready done so. More E. Germans and Soviets would arive in order to back up the Poles and E. German advance guards.

The first nukes
Assuming Denmark had not surrendered, which it would have done in the face of overwhelming odds like in WW2 and the Cold War nuke would have got in to the military equation at that point. After a few days Roskildein Denmark would be targeted for its cultural and historical significance demoralise them, while Esbjerg port would be targeted because it had a large harbour capable of facilitating delivery of large NATO reinforcements. The American airbase at Karup was also a target for either nukes and/or conventional carpet bombing. Copenhagen would have only conventional carpet bombing.

The next 57 to 75 nukes
If Denmark had not folded up in a few days, some say about a week, then it was to be total irradiated due to it's strategic value to the NATO forces.

Nikita Khrushchev's perspective on Denmark
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited Denmark from 16 June to 21 June 1964 and he fell in love with the nation.

In the parallel in-game universe
There is a major government command and control centre in a bomb proof bunker under the city of Aalborg.

Also see

 * Operation Square Leg (1980) and Exercise Hard Rock (1982)
 * Germany's Fulda Gap
 * Swedish pseudo-neutrality
 * The Swiss National Redoubt (1880-2010)
 * French nuclear plans and the Force de Dissuasion
 * North German Plain
 * Finnish pseudo-neutrality
 * Operation Northern Norway
 * The southern Danube route
 * Soviet/NATO invasion of Finland
 * The week of war policy
 * Operation Gladio
 * Greece, Turkey and southern Italy
 * Cold War secret police organisations
 * How Governments become Authoritarian
 * Nations in 1988
 * Nations in 1991
 * O.T.L. history notes
 * Today's OTL types of economies, societies and regimes
 * Why the USSR broke up in reality

Online links

 * 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine
 * 2) http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/operation_eclipse.htm
 * 3) http://coldwarsites.net/country/denma http://www.strategypage.com/error.asp?aspxerrorpath=/militaryforums/%3Cark/
 * 4) http://www.strategypage.com/error.asp?aspxerrorpath=/militaryforums/%3Ca
 * 5) http://www.dupi.dk/webdocs/attack_plan.jpg
 * 6) http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/44-379.aspx#startofcomments
 * 7) http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/index.htm
 * 8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_relations
 * 9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealand
 * 10) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark