What kind of destination was West Germany to post-war holidaymakers from neighboring Denmark? What did World War II mean for Danish-German tourist relations? And what does tourism as a prism offer to the historical knowledge of post-war Danish-German relations? Danish historian Julie Andersen-Mølgaard answers these and many more important questions in her 2023 monograph, “Turen gik til Vesttyskland”, a title that is a past-tense spin on the title of a well-known Danish travel guide series, translating to The trip goes to … in this case, West Germany.

Such travel guides, alongside other written sources from the National Danish Rail Services and Car Owner Association magazines, constitute one leg of the book’s source base. Old postcards and photographs as well as oral history interviews form the other. This makes for a very solid and diverse foundation, upon which the sophisticated analysis is built. Andersen-Mølgaard uncovers a multi-faceted construction of West Germany as a destination for Danish holidaymakers: it was one of old castles, high mountains and un-spoiled forests, as well as one of modern cityscapes and abundant consumer goods. Such representations of West Germany as a tourist destination pointed both to a romanticized past and an idealized future. No wonder West Germany was the favorite holiday destination of the Danes throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Or was it? For in the 1950s and 1960s, the relationship between the two neighboring countries was at its nadir. Culminating in five years of German occupation of Denmark during World War II, a century of Danish hostility towards Germany is what historians have usually highlighted – even if resentment was not really reflected in high political and economic relations, nor mutual on the German part. Starting with the nineteenth-century crisis and wars over the control of the duchies Schleswig and Holstein, alongside the acceleration of Danish nationalism and its widespread anti-German sentiment, Denmark re-oriented itself away from its southern neighbor and towards its northern ones, Norway and Sweden, and later towards its western one, the United Kingdom. But, as Andersen-Mølgaard states about her study: “this book fundamentally contradicts that claim.” (p. 166)

Indeed Danish, and other, international appreciation of Germany and in particular of Berlin, is typically considered a twenty-first-century phenomenon. But Andersen-Mølgaard shows that a pre-history of present-day Danish appreciation of its German neighbor exists. To some travelers, World War II was only a break in their travelling to Germany (p. 48). To others, West Germany was the chosen new destination, as the Marshall Plan included reconstruction of Germany’s pre-war tourist destination status. The Danish National Rail Services long offered travel packages, as Andersen-Mølgaard argues (p. 52). The West German camping grounds were favorite Danish destinations in the 1950s and 1960s before air travel to Spain took over as most popular toward the end of the period.

Of course, Danish tourism in West Germany did not take place in a vacuum, and, when necessary, Andersen-Mølgaard draws relevant contexts into the analysis. She explains how the two countries both experienced changes that stimulated increased tourism. Paid holiday weeks increased for Danish employees to three in 1952, and going on holiday abroad ceased to be a luxury reserved for the upper classes only. In West Germany, an economic post-war boom accelerated the tourist industry already by the end of the 1940s, and the field attracted considerable political attention and action. Another important contextual factor was the two countries’ mutual destiny as Western allies in the Cold War. Andersen-Mølgaard argues that tourism became a way of establishing a nuanced and personal connection between Danes and Germans. Danes (who travelled to West Germany) did not hold the ordinary German individual responsible for the war – just as they thought of the Germans in the GDR as victims of the USSR.

Constructed in tourism discourse, West Germany comprised both a romanticized past and a modern future. Fairy-tale like castles and small towns, like the Grimm Brothers would have described them, co-existed with glimpses into the future in re-built Hamburg or West Berlin. Previously Danish-controlled areas in Schleswig were also highlighted as potential points of special interest and appeal. But it was one thing how West Germany was presented in guide books and tourist articles; another was what Danish travelers actually experienced, wrote home about, and highlighted later in oral history interviews. Andersen-Mølgaard shows how the very recent past of World War II entered into the consciousness of Danish tourists, too. The ruins of the war, present in most West-German cities, made a strong impression on the Danish visitors – even if they did not keep the Danish tourists away. As Andersen-Mølgaard argues: “Dark tourism and ordinary tourism could easily co-exist in the same trip.” (p. 164) Her arrival at such conclusions is made possible by the simultaneous use of the diverse source base. The oral accounts and postcard texts construct the ruin-filled cityscape, while the tourist literature constructs the futuristic one.

In conclusion, “Turen gik til Vesttyskland” is a dense analysis based on an inspiring diverse source base, and it offers arguments on both post-war tourism and Danish-German relations. Danish holidaymaking in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s founded the present-day Danish tourism culture and was a first glimpse of the rest of the world for thousands of Danes who had never travelled internationally before. At the same time, Andersen-Mølgaard firmly establishes that Danish-German post-war connections through tourism were a large-scale phenomenon and not just an odd example. This contradicts conventional wisdom that post-war Danish attitudes towards Germany were only negative, and Andersen-Mølgaard asks: how did such relations inter-connect with other developments in post-war society? (p. 169) It seems relevant to also pose the question whether tourism is the only phenomenon to harbor such overlooked relations?