Wait just a minute (man)…
Denmark suffers from its geography– at least where natural defensive lines come into play. Most countries can fall back to their interior if they are invaded by an enemy and hold a better line behind a wide river network (Poland), mountain range (Switzerland), flooded fields from blown dams (Holland) or lines of fortifications (Belgium, 1914 and 1940).
Denmark, however, has none of these. In fact, the whole narrow peninsula is a flat littoral easily reached from the sea which means in a modern military conflict, they are behind the strategic 8-ball.
Danish Army soldiers in 1936 with a 20mm Madsen gun set up Technical-style
In World War II, Hitler’s forces entered the country before on April 9, 1940 and by lunch the country was occupied.
Granted, the King and government decided that the woefully neglected Danish military was better not resisting in the first place– which may have stretched this out for a day or so more– but would have thrown away lives.
That’s why after WWII when the new Danish military was revamped, a healthy Home Guard force, the Hjemmeværnet or HJV was formed to beef up things in case of war coming around a third time.
The HJV uses Canadian made C7 (M16) rifles– now sans bolts!
These volunteer (unpaid) soldiers are in every Danish town and roughly equate to the U.S. National Guard only they don’t deploy overseas or get paid (did I mention that?).
There are something on the order of 56,000 HJV members (compared to the full-time 10,560-member Royal Danish Army) which, if you compare Denmark’s 5.6-million person population to the U.S. and adjust the math accordingly, would translate to a force of some 300,000 in the states which, coincidentally, is about the size of the U.S. Army National Guard.
However, the Danish government has no decided, since a M95 rifle (a Canadian-made version of the M16A4) with a HJV pedigree behind it was stolen by terrorists last month, those home-guards currently issued weapons now have to disarm.
According to Danish news the small portion of the HJV that keep home weapons (such as in the Swiss Army), now have to field strip the m and turn in their bolts for safekeeping.
Hopefully if they needed them they could pick them up by lunch…