Born at Charlottenlund Castle near Copenhagen on September 26, 1870, Christian was the eldest son of Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and of Louise, Princess of Sweden and Norway. In 1912, he inherited the throne to a country with very little precedent for militarism: before world War I, Denmark had established pacts with twelve nations to avoid war and settle all disputes through boards of arbitrations (Current Bibliography). As King, Christian maintained his country’s commitment to peace through the most morally devastating event in European history: the Holocaust.

The myth regarding Christian X’s protest for the rights of Danish Jews, although untrue, summarizes the predominant Danish viewpoint in favor of peace. In 1940, Nazi Germany tried to incorporate Denmark into the Reich, potentially spelling doom for approximately 7,000 Jews living in Copenhagen (Buckser, 2-3). According to popular myth, during the attempted persecution of the Jews living in Denmark, Christian X, although not Jewish, wore a yellow star of the kind that Jews were required to wear for identification by the nazi government. Thousand of Danes followed suit in a demonstration that culminated when “50,000 Danes wearing Jewish stars marched in the streets in protest. The fact that neither King Christian X nor the Danes did any such thing has not tarnished the legend’s popularity or its credibility” (Fogelman, 33). Indeed, although not literally true, the myth represents the mentality that guided the Danish people in demanding equality for Jews and, after the fall of the Danish government, shipping the persecuted Jews to neutral Sweden.

Beyond its literal interpretation, the myth symbolizes the Danish unity in favor of a more peaceful policy toward Jews. Denmark was the only portion of the Nazi empire that retained autonomy after German occupation, and one of the few in which the Nazis generated almost no support for anti-Semitic causes (Campbell, 190). The Nazi military encountered resistance not because of a particularly strong military opposition, but because of the political and ideological unity of Denmark. In this sense, no peace hero acts alone; the most crucial peace-sustaining force in the unity and commitment of the public, which Christian X evoked with his many acts of compassion and self-sacrifice. One account of early Nazi threats demonstrates his commitment to the rights of Jews:

In April of 1933 King Christian X was due to visit the Copenhagen synagogue to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its construction; between the day the visit was to take place and the day the invitation had been sent out by the Jewish congregation Hitler had come to power. The congregation therefore suggested that he kind postpone his visit, but Christian X insisted on coming and was in fact the first monarch in Scandinavia to visit a synagogue (Kisch, 218).

In this demonstration of courage, as in the myth of the yellow star, the public followed suit with its insistence to continue providing equal rights for Jews despite the Nazi threat.

While in the 1930s and 40s the Danish public did fear provoking Germany and thus losing their relative political freedom, signs of opposition to anti-Semitism were unmistakable. Hoping to permeate public opinions with anti-Semitic propaganda, the Nazis permitted free elections in March of 1943, but the public responded with a 90 percent vote in favor of the Social Democrats (Campbell, 190). However, on August 29, 1943, the Danish government resigned and was replaced by German forces (Kisch, 220). Some interpret this precipitous change as a Nazi response to Danish support of democracy in the March elections, while others believe that the Danish government, predicting that Germany would lose World War II, hastened the takeover by refusing to cooperate with Germany to avoid being labeled as a German ally. In any case, when the Germans declared martial law, the Danish Jews who had been protected by the former government became vulnerable to arrest and deportation. Meanwhile, Christian X was placed under house arrest, but he remained a symbol of national resistance when Denmark most needed one.

Following the inspiration of their most cherished leaders, the Danish people worked to save Jews from deportation by the Nazis. Sweden offered Danish Jews asylum shortly after the German intent to arrest the Jews was made public. After the first day of the arrests that began on October 1 (Rosh Hashanah), the Germans captured only 202 people, many of whom had not been healthy enough to flee. During the few months of military occupation, Danish supporters helped 7220 Jews escape to Sweden, while only 464 people were deported to Theresienstadt, a ghetto with the harsh conditions of a concentration camp, but run by a Jewish administration. The Danes arranged for even these deported Jews to receive packages containing supplies and food, including pork, which was meant to show that the help was being extended because those captured were Danes, not because they were Jews (Kisch, 220).

However, the inspiration found in King Christian X and the Danish people transcends both time and space. The successes of their efforts sends a universal message that peace is possible under the most horrific circumstances: according to Professor Andrew Buckster of Purdue University, “the Danish rescue has served as an indictment of much of the rest of Europe, as a prima facie refutation of the excuse that mass action against the Holocaust was impossible” (Buckster, 3). The myth of the yellow star is told all around the world, and has even been made into a children’s book: Carmen Agra Deedy’s The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark. In their many forms, the myths and truths about King Christian X represent not just a single peace hero, but a group of people uniting to create a better world.