Last night I watched a Danish film called April 9th about the day Denmark was invaded in 1940. It concentrated on small-scale action and seemed pretty authentic, although I'm no WWII expert. It was quite something to see a small cycle platoon attempt to take on German armoured cars. This was followed by a sequence depicting street to street fighting in a Danish town, which clearly showed the tactic of covering a colleague as the unit fell back. Despite the subtitles it was pretty easy to follow and seemed the kind of film that might inspire some of our WWII skirmish fans to try something a little different. From a purely historical point of view it was fascinating as I knew nothing about Denmark's brief role in the Blitzkrieg period of the war - probably because it was only that one day. One slightly amusing incident was when the Luftwaffe dropped their inevitable leaflets calling for surrender.........written in Norwegian.
That sounds like a good one to keep an eye out for. Thank you.
Hi,
The film is indeed very good, and the campaign is a good skirmish candidate with some rarely seen gear. There is a very good online pdf for those who want to recreate it http://www.chakoten.dk/The%20Danish%20Army%20on%20April%209th,%201940_complete.pdf (http://www.chakoten.dk/The%20Danish%20Army%20on%20April%209th,%201940_complete.pdf)
One of our club members bought quite a few Elhiem 20 mm models in preparation for a Chain of Command campaign. My personal favourite piece of kit is a motorcycle sidecar mounted anti-tank rifle.
Anyway, a very tense and compact film of the one day war.
Cheers,
Aksu
Will have to search that one out.
Currently available on Amazon Prime.
managed to catch this (on amazon) on Monday. Good film thanks for the recommendation
Matt
I've seen that street fight bit on youtube, looks like a really good film :D
What makes this film especially worthy is the apparent attention to detail and authenticity. The sketches and period photos of the actual battle sites (in the pdf I mentioned earlier) look almost exactly the same as the scenes in the film.
Cheers,
Aksu
Have just watched this and thoroughly enjoyed it. As Aksu pointed out the attention to detail is commendable. Pearl Harbour it is fortunately not! Fans of "Nordic Noir" series The Killing will recognise a number of the actors. I suppose asking for a small WW2 Danish range from Pendraken would be a long shot ;).
Hello Gazza
In lieu of a new Danish range, you could look at using the Romanians as proxies:-
Pendraken Romanians:-
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0zs5Pjc6en4/TlRBUnEw1ZI/AAAAAAAAAGw/AIQjo_Sbt5g/s1600/IMG_0717.JPG)
WW2 Danish:-
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d1/58/a1/d158a1810ce981494c16cf0c8ae57aa6.jpg) (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Weser%C3%BCbung-S%C3%BCd_Danes.PNG)
or maybe the Pendraken Poles could be press-ganged.
(http://www.pendraken.co.uk/ProductImages/POL1.JPG)
Cheers
GrumpyOldMan
Some viable alternatives, thank you GrumpyOldMan. However, I have just been told that a rival manufacturer is going to be producing a WW2 Danish range towards the end of the year. I think I'll hold tight and see what they look like first.