The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

In all, 29,660 French hostages were executed by the Germans during the war and this figure did not include the 40,000 who “died” in French prisons. The figure for Poland was 8,000 and for Holland some 2,000. In Denmark what became known as a system of “clearing murders” was substituted for the publicly proclaimed shooting of hostages. On Hitler’s express orders reprisals for the killing of Germans in Denmark were to be carried out in secret “on the proportion of five to one.”41 Thus the great Danish pastor-poet-playwright, Kaj Munk, one of the most beloved men in Scandinavia, was brutally murdered by the Germans, his body left on the road with a sign pinned to it: “Swine, you worked for Germany just the same.”