Ny viden om besættelsen

Resumé

The development of the Occupation Museum’s new exhibitions is broadly based on new research about the Occupation of Aarhus between 1940 and 1945.
With help from volunteers and part-time staa, the Occupation Museum has collected more than 60,000 archival records from archives in Denmark and Europe, records which hold knowledge that is used to tell the story of Aarhus during the Occupation in the exhibition, but will also be used in future in podcasts, blogs, events and
lectures.
Among other things, these records contain knowledge about the German Wehrmacht at a structural and personal level, about crime during the Occupation, and the German Intelligence Agency – the Sicherheitsdienst – who by 1945 held the citizens of Aarhus in an iron grip created by fear and acts of terror.
Studies have cast a new light on the extent and the consequences of the German Occupation of Aarhus. For example insights into
the German Transport O^cer’s war diary have shown that over 620,000 German soldiers travelled through Aarhus between October 1942 and February 1945, making Aarhus a transit hub for the German war machine
Not only did this create di^culties for the public negotiators who were forced to provide accommodation for the troops it also sparked a surge in violence that took its toll on the resistance, the Germans themselves, and the ordinary Aarhus citizens.
Finally, the newly collected records hold a potential for creating data-driven knowledge, which leads to a highly specialized and specific body of knowledge, making Aarhus one of the most complete case studies of a Danish city during the German Occupation .