Category: Posts in English

The photo shows Britisk POWs in Trondheim May 1940. Their capture were the inevitable result of extended military amateurism comparable to our present level.

INITIAL REMARKS

By NATO I mean all the elements:

>the leading civil servants at NATO HQs,

>>the member states’ governments and key civil servants,

>>>the members’ representatives at the Atlantic Council and Military Committee (where the latter seem to have been without professional culture and knowledge as well as the moral courage to be heard as well as

>>>>SHAPE and the JFCs.

My mirror is the situation at the end of the 1980’ties.

I shall neither discuss members’ hardening of society (“total defence”) nor nuclear deterrence issues in this text, even if both are essential to our countries’ survival.

GENERAL OBSERVATION

Geostrategic blindness

It has been a constant problem that the Alliance and its promoters ignored that Europe has become an ever more secondary theatre to the U.S.

The reason is that the Pacific and Asia and the confrontation with China must be given the highest priority to Americans.

Only the maritime situation in the North Atlantic and Arctic remains of key importance for U.S. national security.

The 2% (or any higher) benchmark bred and breeds cheating and bullshit

The focus on economic input rather than the quantity and quality of the military output made sure that member states would include everything in the defence budget to look good: military pensions, coast and border guard costs, any assistance to Ukraine.

This input benchmark undermined any NATO and critical mutual memberstate focus on the output that really counts in defence and deterrence: the size, modernity and balance of forces; reserve forces’ material and personnel readiness/availablity as well as logistical resilience and robustness.

Full (and blind) dependence on airpower, U.S. airpower

The only field where the Alliance has a clear superiority over Russia is in the air force balance,

However, that superiority depends exclusively on the U.S. airforces (USAF, USN and USMC) capablitities and the assumption that the now decades old stealth technology remains an effective protection against massive losses in deep offensive missions and that Russia is vulnerable in case of precision strikes (and that the intelligence for such strikes exists) and that such strikes, if effective, won’t trigger a nuclear escalation.

If any of these assumptions proves faulty, even (the unlikely) full availability of U.S. airpower won’t be decisive.

The linked pseudo-“scientific” and NATO operational planning system

Since the First Gulf War NATO has developed a operational planning process (NATO OPP) and later a defence planning process that should give an answer to how to organise the common forces and how to use them.

The results are of course classified, but the lack of usable defence and deterrence forces outlined hereafter are only too obvious, most likely because of the lack of critical attack on the assumptions resulting from the diplomatic character of the interaction between members.

THE LOST TIME: WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE THE LAST 15-10 YEARS

Martin van Creveld has characterised the present Western forces as “Pussycats” rather than capable and resilient militaries.

I do not argue against that being the result, I shall just quote the wise 2WW-veteran and leading historian Michael Howard’s 1962 prediction of what is likely to happen to militaries in any normal peacetime:

”… the complex problem of running an army at all is liable to occupy his (the future commander’s) mind and skill so completely that it is very easy to forget what it is being run for. The difficulties encountered in the administration, discipline, maintenance, and supply of an organization the size of a fair-sized town are enough to occupy the senior officer to the exclusion of any thinking about his real business: the conduct of war.” 

Some decades after his writing, it was no longer just “normal peacetime”. All Western politicians and their advisors agreed that history amd thereby the risk of serious wars had ended. The remaining tasks would be limited to international gendarmery missions to assist less fortune parts of the world on the way forward.

The Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 should have been a wake-up call that the assumptions about the future was faulty, but even states with an acute sense of the threat from Russia – Finns, Balts and Poles – only started to react after the 2014 coup occupation of Crimea and the Russian start of first proxy and then regular operations.

The unexited NATO reaction was the deployment of symbolic “enhanced presence” elements to front line states to calm their nerves. The Alliance no longer tried to block these states’ moves to rebuilt a minimum own territorial defence, but otherwise no change happened. The “Pussycat” armies of Western Europe, including of former great powers such as Germany, United Kingdom and France still remained in Wonderland.

The need to refocus on the requirements of a general war and rebuilt forces for that possibility was not even seen. Instead all attention was given to Donald Trump’s criticism of the low level of defence spending.

Nobody in the Alliance seemed aware of the steps that had been taken during the its first fifteen years to establish a minimum conventional defence and deterrence capability in Europe.

Let me outline these missing steps and their potential.

Command Structure

The creation of an allied command structure as early in the Cold War would logically have led to common understanding of the defence problems and force requirements.

As during the Cold War this would lead to agreed concepts of defence and deterrence at the regional level, as Scandinavia, Norwegian Sea plus Baltic Sea. It could also bring defence concepts at a subregional level as the Baltic States and Sea.

It had been the case from the 1960ies for Northern Europe as a result of the work of the allied and joint services, British led AFNORTH and Danish-German led BALTAP Headquarters.

No NATO state in the Cold War period aimed at defending its national territory only. It had to be done as a common enterprise. This had been especially clear in the defence at the Inner German Border that had been the main project of the NATO armies.

It would take the common staff work in the headquarters of a new command structure to generate the necessary common project for the defence and deterrence effert of the present front line states from Norway, Finland, the Baltic States and Poland and further in the member states bordering Ukraine, Moldova and the Transkaukasian states.

There seems to be a total loss of memory in NATO and member states of how the regional and later subregional headquarters served as essential “clearing houses” in developing a common understanding of the geostrategic challenges of that area, of ways to meet those challenges as well as force requirements.

Force generation for the common defence

On the basis of the forgotten or ignored experience of the Alliance, its was and is important that frontline member should do the maximum to create a resilient initial defence of its territory. However, it was realised that small states could not be expected to do so without assistance. The front line states would accept that their territory would become the initial battlefields of the common defence, and they would create the largest possible forces possible by general national military service.

To make these initial forces as large as possible, the less exposed members states, then the mainly the U.S., would give massive military assistance in the form of equipment, ammunition and cadre training for the front line states’ armies, air forces and navies … in the same way as the assistance presently given to sustain the Ukrainian ability to continue the war. In order to ease the burden of the frontline members further, the necessary defence infrastructure was financed as a commen project.

Such projects should have started in 2015 and onwards. Unfortunately, however, it did not happen, most likely because there was neither a common realistic awareness of the force requirements nor and in-depth acceptence of the essential condition that Alliance solidarity is not only given to your country, it is the basic obligation of all to all.

Earmarked reinforments

During the last 15 years og the Cold War period, it was agreed that it was essential to reinforce the conventional defence of Western Europe. This was considered important as a way to postpone the time where the Alliance would need to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons and thereby risk triggering the mutual assured destruction.

One key way to achieve the a more resilient conventional defence was to earmark regular and reserve land and airforce units in the U.S., Canada and the UK for the deployment to a specific Alliance region when ready. Some of the equipment and ammunition of the earmarked reinforments would be stored in the receiving country that would create host nation support units, and the deployment of some reinforcements would be exercised regularly.

Now most of NATO members are positioned far from the front members and should prepare to reinforce the exposed members. But there is no common developed understanding of the defence requirements, no acceptance of the duty to reinforce with substantial (rather than symbolic) forces and be able to sustain such forces.

The fact that all Westeuropean member states have reduced the regular forces dramatically and abolished the reserve forces in the assumption that they would not be required to fight in a general war means that frontline member states can now only be reinforced with American available forces and symbolic European elements.

Reaction forces

Starting in the late 1960’ies, NATO developed common reaction forces, The Allied Mobile Force. They should be ready to deploy quickly to a crisis area to become a “trigger” marking Alliance willingness to escalate to mobilising and deploying its far more impressive capabilities in defence of Alliance territory.

After the Cold War the NATO Response Force (NRF) mirrored the collapse of the European armed forces. The realisation of the planned NRF expansion from 100.000 to 300.000 is only to be realised after an extended period.

As the situation is now, any deployment of NRF would be of a trigger without any meaningfull substance behind it, as such a substance would, again as before 1990, mean mobilised societies with their forces trained and equipped for general war.

The situation, where the force elements are not focused on, trained and tailored with support and logistics for a known mission means that they will be as unsuited for that task as the British forces sent to Norway in 1940 and those sent to Greece the following year.

NATO Europe can only be defended by solidarity in holding the front.

In the 1950s and again after 1976: solidarity assistance for members directly threatened

From the development of NATO from 1950, everyone understood that the vulnerable member states bordering the Soviet-controlled areas should be given substantial help to defend themselves.

This became crucial for countries such as Denmark and Norway. We were shown solidarity by massive military and by joint financing of bases and other infrastructure. Moreover, we the directly threatened countries could be protected from the outset by the superior American ‘nuclear umbrella’.

When, the threat was again from the mid-1970s felt to be acute at the same time as NATO sought to reduce dependence on the early use of nuclear weapons, the Alliance decided that the directly threatened areas (such as Norway, Denmark and the Federal Republic of Germany), should not be defended solely by Alliance standing units stationed the countries and the mobilised reserve units of frontline members.

From about 1980, non-invasion-threatened member states contributed to the combined defence of the eastern border with earmarked reinforcement units of both air and ground forces.

Planning and preparations could be made both bilaterally and within the framework of the then existing NATO command structure. In the case of Denmark; the Northern Region (AFNORTH) and the Danish-North German Unified Command (BALTAP).

From 1999 to the present. no real solidary with the front

When NATO was enlarged 20-27 years ago to include first the Eastern European countries and then the Baltic States, it was considered inappropriately hysterical in old member states that the new members felt threatened by Russia.

Embarrassed partners pressured them to suppress their anachronistic threat perception in the development of their small armed forces. Keeping conscription was ridiculed as anacronistic.

Even when Russia seized Crimea in a coup in 2014 and launched the war for Donbas with Ukraine, partners did not provide significant assistance in support of the now accepted Baltic states’ small self-defense forces. They did not get military assistance that they needed as Denmark had desperately needed it in the 1950s. The Baltic States remained limited to what their small human and financial resources could do.

If the early NATO history had been remembered and learned, the non-invasion-threatened hinterland members would have provided massive arms and infrastructure support.

This did not happen, which means that especially the directly threatened Baltic countries are only weakly defended with almost exclusively light forces.

Nothing significantly changed, even after Russia launched a general invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022, and after 17 December 2021.

On that latter day the Russian Government had announced in an ultimatum to NATO that it demanded a military rollback of the only token Partner forces from Eastern Europe.

The ultimatum should have made it obvious, that that NATO had stressed that the defence of the Alliance front would be done with earmarked ground and air reinforcements that would be deployed when ready towards the Alliance’s eastern border.

As after 1976, all rear partner members should have made an effort to re-establish significant reserve forces earmarked for the frontline states and especially the Baltics. They should have started routine training i the region, and stored equipment and ammunition i depots there.

It would also be clear that the framework for such an effort would have been a new regional military NATO command, where core elements were detached immediately from SHAPE.

Summary

The fiction is maintained that defending one’s own territory is not only the minimal requirement, it is sufficient. This fiction is maintained in NATO and at home. It is brain-dead but apparently politically and bureaucratically convenient.

But being able to defend one’s own country in a rear member state is only the starting point, not enough.

The actual defence of a member state such as Denmark or the Netherlands must again take place forward of its own territory as happened from 1951 to 1990,

This must once again be achieved through a joint effort of solidarity, including at the border of the vulnerable front member states.

Their defence cannot just be the responsibility of others. It is also in the key interest of the Swedes, the Dutch, etc.

If the Baltics fall, we too are soon lost as left to own resources. To think that we will then have alliance protection of Denmark is a completely irresponsible stupidity.

The fact that we do not have this understand as a common starting point shows more than anything else, the decline in the Danish and other European understanding of security and defence policy.

The Balts should, of course, have made this reality clear to everyone a long time ago. Not only diplomatically, but through academics also publicly.

They should have acted in a timely manner as the little boy in the store og “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

They should have stressed the common need for comprehensive solidarity assistance in common defence.

Their discretion is probably partly due to the fact that they have been grateful for the symbolic little they have achieved, and partly to the fact that they recognize that the rear members from Germany via Great Britain to Denmark are now completely “without clothes”.

They have therefore had to trust that Ukraine could last until we woke up.

The Balts realistically and fatalistically acknowledged that the non-directly threatened alliance partners had downgraded and disbanded the land and air units that ten years ago could and should have been restored and prepared as earmarked reinforcements from 2022.

To conclude on the basis of numbers only is easy, and the result is equally easy to present convincingly with the support of graphs.

However, anybody who humbly bothers to include just a fraction of the relevant strategic and military history soon realise that purely quantitative analysis is meaningless and dangerous as a basis for political decisions on security policy.

In order to establish a more solid basis for policy and strategy, one has to use and apply the knowledge and insight of relevant professionals, even if this calls for both hard work learning new stuff. And it takes humility.

The current West European view of present Russian warfare still has a relaxed and facile head-in-the-clouds-or-sand character. It is dangerous in its easy observations of Russian backwardness and crudeness of tactics.

It apparenty remains based on the amateurish view that comparisons of official budget input and status in the form of basic bean counting of equipment numbers are both relevant and sufficient in the estimate of military power and related options.

It assumes that we have learn and assimilated the lessons of the present war as well as the Ukrainians and that the Russians cannot learn anything.

Russian strategic resilience may be limited, but a good strategy is not based on optimistic hope

All this seem to be considered unchallengeable realities and is constantly promoted by shallow political scientists, busy journalists, “military analysts” uncritically echoing each other as well as parroting politicians.

This guide is for those who are willing to face the complex and unpleasant reality. It will not and cannot present any exact result. It can just offer an approach to gain the essential deeper insight.

The first step is to define the geographical focus (such as the Baltic-Nordic Region or Ukraine/South-Western Russia within the general European “theatre” of potential conflict) and to accept that military power unfortunately has very little to do with the amount of money spent.

Large amounts of money as well as sorely needed intellectual energy is wasted on:
1) running small and large base complexes for reasons rather unrelated to military power
2) paying salaries for a large number of officers without any recent practical experience and relevant knowledge of or interest in their profession or even their branch speciality
3) paying salaries to a large number of other ranks as well as civilians with no operational or relevant operational support role, many too old to contribute anything, people with no wish to learn or subordinate themselves to the military profession
4) paying salaries to underemployed full-time personnel in positions where a contract or even drafted reservist would be the better choice
5) supporting education systems that actually undermine military professionalism by seeking empty theoretical academic credits
6) supporting expensive employment and working hour contract systems that are incompatible with maintaining effective forces
7) implementing New Public Management and similar civilian fads that undermine the essential clear link between authority and responsibility for advice and implementation
8) maintaining elements of force structures only or mainly relevant for national prestige, anti-terrorism, ceremony or peace time work (such as fishery inspection, gendarme work, etc.)
9) covering pensions for retired military personnel without any reserve function in the armed forces’ budget
10) covering the cost of the veteran support system in the armed forces’ budget
11) covering costs of outsourcing driven by liberal ideology that create dependence on support structures without any military potential (because they are not deployable reserve structures)
12) covering costs of a general state rescue service rather than only the extra civil defence capabilities relevant in war
13) covering costs of the general state cyber defence organisation rather than only cyber defence and offence capabilities needed in joint and combined arms operations.

There may be perfectly good political reasons for all these budgeting choices, but most are irrelevant in a military balance analysis and some even detract from the military effect of the money spent. Military capability can only be measured with a focus on the combination of quantity and quality of the output. Focus on the ressource input breeds waste and loss of professionalism.

On the other side some states such as Russia and China fund large and capable para-military forces with war-time security roles outside the defence budget.

Basically the budgets should be ignored in the analysis of relative power, because the total input necessary to produce the same military effect may be several times larger in one state than in another.

This is not easy to achieve when the U.S. has focused on the fellow NATO member states’ commitment to spend 2 % of the GDP on defence (that has led to a creative industry to transfer other budget post to defence).

The second step is to accept that simple “bean counting” of the two sides’ number of combat aircraft, tanks, submarines, artillery weapons, etc. is nearly as irrelevant, because it ignores:
1) the availability (with fully trained operating crews, available and trained support crews, spare parts, ample stocks of key weapons such as precision munition, etc.)
2) whether fully modernised/updated (if not, it has very limited general use and cannot be counted in a comparison)

The third step is to understand whether all forces of a country would be available in the potential theatre of confrontation/war (U.S. forces committed to the now highest priority Pacific-East Asia Region cannot be counted as NATO forces for European operations as China and North Korea are likely to use any crisis in Europe to move positions forward … or worse)

Numbers are not irrelevant if all things are equal: the equipment similar, crew standards were comparable, leadership and doctrine at same quality level and the situation symmetrical (including a disputed control of the air space), however that is hardly ever the case, especially before extended fighting enhances harmonisation.

The initial part of the fourth and decisive step is to identify the numbers and availability of the force elements that should be counted as the main building stones of military power:
1) On land the relevant output to be counted is the number of basic army formations (brigades)
2) At sea the relevant output is the exercised potential for creating mixed naval task groups that are clearly balanced in composition for the analysed deployment area (with robust command-and-control systems, long range surveillance and warning, mine counter-measures, anti-submarine, long range anti-ship as well as appropriate air and missile defence systems)
3) The relevant air power element to be counted is the number of fully capable composite air combat wings that can be organised from the national air forces (with command-and-control, long range air-to-air, effective electronic and other means for suppressing enemy air defences and a mix of precision and area weapons against ground targets)

Your have to accept that the key to any sound analysis is to concentrate on the comparison of output in the form of fundamentally similar force elements available in the relevant potential theatre of conflict.

However, such a counting and comparison of the number of such force packages is not sufficient. The follow-on analysis is at least as essential and includes e.g. answering the questions that requires the professional insight that is ignored for very good reasons by “experts” that can’t have it:
1) Is the force element well-balanced for the mission? Does it have the necessary combat elements, flexible and robust command and control elements, indirect, long range fire systems with integrated reconnaissance elements (if surface forces), robust area and point air defence systems including against drones, engineer support (if land or air units), full and flexible logistic systems, and with resilience and redundancy created by personnel and equipment replacement systems. If not balanced, the force is only a facade usable for bluff.
2) Has the command cadre and the full units been exposed to a realistic and demanding, free-play training and exercise regime and the cadre thereafter been trimmed deliberately on the basis of practical performance to enhance quality? This may be quantified by counting the frequency, length and peace-time limitations of exercises ranging from fully scripted, one type, generic scenario, command post, computer supported exercises at one end of the spectre to unscripted, free-play troop exercises within changing mission scenarios and with deliberate elements bringing disruption of plans to increase friction and realism. Only the latter type of exercises can add significantly to force combat readiness.
3) Does the command philosophy encourage flexibility in execution?
4) Are one side’s forces deliberately handicapped in relation to availability of means (such as cluster ammunition, anti-personnel mines, thermobaric weapons)?
5) Are one side’s forces handicapped in the level of integration and range of indirect fire weapons?
6) Are one side’s forces handicapped by inferiority in key technical fields such as cyber warfare or electronic warfare (e.g. in the air defence/offensive air operations field)?

Even forces such as mechanised brigades that are more or less similar in manning, equipment and technological level can be fundamentally different in de facto capabilities. If one brigade has been through a rigorous, realistic two-year exercise programme and have weeded out inefficient leaders and other cadre and the other brigade has just maintained a peace-time activity level, the second formation simply does not have a military capability. It is just another waste of state funds.

It is important to accept that some forces cannot be directly included in the force comparison for a specific part of the potential conflict theatre such as large oceanic surface and submarine naval warfare units in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and East European operational context. The same applies to the general nuclear forces of Britain, France, Russia and the U.S.

In the force comparison it is essential to accept that multinational land forces with mix at brigade or lower levels are as militarily ineffective as they may be effective as a symbol of political solidarity.

Due to language, equipment and training differences and diplomatic politeness they must be considered military Potemkin Villages if the bluff is called.

One final element: In relation to land forces it is essential to underline the fundamental operational handicap of the defender. It can only be balanced by preparations such as deep systems of obstacles to movement and concrete reinforced defence positions such as those now created by both the Ukrainians and Russians in the current war.

Normally we think that a defending unit can defeat an attacking force 2-3 times as large. This, however, assumes that the attacker must attack frontally, that no side has a clear artillery advantage, and that neighbouring units are in place to prevent the defender being bypassed. With fully developed defences and obstacles, the defending force can defeat a far larger force than one double or trippel its strength.

However, if there is no deep preparation of the terrain for defence such as in the Kharhiv Oblast last September, a mobile force inferior in size can defeat a numerically superior defending force. Land combat forces do not have the mobility of air and naval forces to concentrate and engage the enemy where and when he emerges.

With a couple of thousand kilometres of threatened sectors on the European eastern border, the side with the freedom to choose the time and places of invasion needs far fewer forces than the defender that have to screen all possible sectors and therefore will have significant forces deployed in sectors that prove to be irrelevant. A brigade or battalion can only screen a limited sector of threatened border and defend even less.

When I read text comparing forces, I see a strong tendency to ignore the fact of geographical dispersal and the requirement to chose where to deploy. It is as if the commentator believes that the two sides will be forced to commit their forces to meet the opposite number in a direct, frontal fight as if in the stricts confines of a medieval tournament. This is of course rubbish. Both sides will seek to outmanouver the opponent and the side in offensive has by far the best chances to achieve this.

A platoon to company detachment blocking a road will be destroyed by artillery in minutes and only the quality of any obstacles will create delay. A well-equipped and led battalion with engineer elements, robust air defence and long range artillery support can hold a frontage of around five kilometres with one major road for some hours. If no neighbours, it will thereafter be forced to withdraw or be bypassed and destroyed. A brigade can cover 2-3 times that frontage and two major roads.

 

The photo above from Richard Fry’s collection shows Harry Lembourn with the two years old daughter Grace in early spring 1928 just before the fateful departure for the Berlin fact-finding late April.

BACKGROUND OF THIS ADDITION
A year ago I finished the work on my book “Sønderjyllands forsvar og Lembourns spionage” (The Defence of South Jutland and Lembourn’s Espionage) that was published on 25 February 2019, on Thordis and Harry Lembourn’s daughter Grace Fry’s 92th birthday. A large part of the book reconstructed the tragic Lembourn family history.

On 8 June Grace died, and on 1 November 2019 her youngest son, Richard Fry, informed me that he had been given the largest part of the family’s letter and photo collection. He asked me to take care of it and if possible hand it over to an interested museum. Then he sent me the collection in three packages, with the last supplement arriving on 27 December.

The parts of the collection relevant for my reconstructed family story added up to more than 2500 letter pages, etc. and more than 250 photographs.

When I received the packages I copied by taking photos and processed for easier reading.

In all key aspects my reconstruction of the family history was confirmed. What I give below is my supplements and adjustments to the narrative.

1920 TO SUMMER 1924
During the winter 1920-21, Harry Lembourn worked as leader of the passport office at the Danish Legation in the Norwegian capital. In reality it was an intelligence service posting as the main mission was to monitor Norwegian and other left-wing activists that tried to enter Denmark. In spring 1919 an international “Bolshevik Central” with military intelligence and passport representatives of the foreign legations had been established in Copenhagen. The main revolutionary threat against Denmark had soon proved to be radical members of the Norwegian Labour Movement.

Harry Lembourn did not meet his future wife during his stay in Christiania. It did not happen until 1922 when they both stayed in Nice. Based on information from the daughter, the book places the meeting in Easter, but the letters make clear that it did not happen until just before Christmas. In a few days over the holiday the brilliant dancer and elegant gentleman Harry courted the 18 years younger Thordis in storming offensive, proposing to her several times and apparently convinced her at visits to the Monte Carlo Casino on 28 December and New Year’s Eve. The parents were informed just after New Year, and Thordis had to counter her mother’s scepticism of the match in her January letters.

As Thordis stay in France into 1924 and Harry’s service with the French Army continued until autumn 1923, they kept in close touch and could meet in France during the first many months of the engagement.

In late 1923 after having returned to Denmark, Harry informed Thordis that he might have to break-up the engagement if he lost his commission in the massive reduction of the number of regular army officers that was one result of the 1922 Defence Laws. If that happened he would not be able to support the marriage economically.

However, early in 1924 he happily wrote Thordis that he had been saved from retirement by Captain Halvor Jessen from the War Officer. He knew Jessen from his work as instructor of the volunteer “Kongens Livjægerkorps” during the war that Jessen had now taken over as commander of the corps in addition to his work as head of the ministry’s mobilization office. The captain had appointed Lembourn as his second-in-command and chief instructor. As made clear in the book the continued connection to Lembourn ended undermining Jessen’s until 1928 promising career prospects.

Lembourn was active in the Copenhagen Citadel volunteer corps until a couple of days before he started in the border garrison of Tondern on 1 April 1924. Harry got three days leave in August so he could travel to Christiania to get married.

1924 TO SUMMER 1927
Thereafter the newly-wed settled to the active social life of the small provincial garrison. Thordis had to learn to ride, Harry trained his conscripts, gave French language lessons, worked to create a local branch of the Alliance Française, practiced his hobby as amateur photographer, and participated in starting a local sports club.

As a natural consequence of his many years long work as instructor for volunteer military corps, he joined as instructor when such a corps, “Grænseværnet” (The Border Guard), was created some months after his arrival by a group a local Danish nationalist activists.

He had first met one of the leading activists, the senior leader of the town’s Danish community, Bank Director Rasmus Peter Rossen, at a party on 11 October.

In his letter to Thordis’ parents Harry only mentions that it was useful that his wife was seated next to a local bank manager at the dinner. He does not mention the discussion he had with the veteran intelligence agent Rossen during that evening or one of the next days about his own interest in intelligence work that Rossen mentioned later than month during the visit of his General Staff intelligence contact officer visit.

Rossen became the first chairman of the volunteer corps board, and it was he who later dispatched Harry Lembourn on his fateful fact-finding trip to Berlin in spring 1928.

Reading the letters one gets the solid impression of a very close and intensely happy married couple. Apparently Harry did not hide anything from Thordis who was aware that the instructor work for the still officially unrecognized “Grænseværn” was a risk to his career in the army.

Lembourn’s work to reinforce the defence of South Jutland was not limited to the volunteers. Another of Halvor Jessen’s ideas was to train and test the former World War I German Army veterans to become Danish reserve officers and NCO for the “South Jutland militia”, the reserve units created on mobilization from the veterans. Lembourn ran courses for the Tondern battalion of that militia.

The Francophile Lembourn is recognized by France’s diplomats. In late March 1925 he and Thordis visited Copenhagen, and during the visit, they spent time with Captain André Sorne, “one of Harry’s French friends”, and the next week they met Sorne’s superior officer, the Military Attaché, Colonel de Saint-Denis.

Early July they were visited by the French Consul in Esbjerg, Paul Kraemer, who as described in my book would be instrumental to the misfortune of the Lembourg family in his role of French intelligence in Jutland.

The the otherwise comprehensive letter and photo collection is without sources to the period from Grace’s birth in late February 1926 until spring 1929.

Based on the content of the rest of the collection there should have been dozens of letters to Thordis parents as well as letters between Harry and Thordis during Harry’s communications course in Versailles during the first quarter of 1927. But these are lacking as are photos from the same period.

The most likely explanation for the destruction is that the letters would have exposed the close relations between Rossen and the Lembourg couple during the next two years and thus undermined Harry’s effort to keep Rossen’s role in sending him to Berlin secret.

SUMMER 1927 TO THE LEIPZIG STATE COURT VERDICT IN JANUARY 1929
However, even if the expected letters and photos are missing, the collection contained something that helped explaining what motivated events. As already described in the book, Rossen became intensely worried in the second half of 1927 that the German nationalists were preparing to carry-out a coup invasion of South Jutland to move the border back north. A small envelope with newspaper clippings in the collection’s general collection of newspaper cuttings documented that a new local movement named after the old border river, Kongeåen (in German Königsau) had started an aggressive campaign with the mayor of Flensburg, Hermann Todsen, as one of the leaders. Other clippings describe how Stahlhelm created motorised columns in eastern Pomorania close to the border of the “Polish Corridor”.

At the same time the para-military Stahlhelm militia had started to create branches among the German minority north of the border. Rossen had briefed Lembourn in the autumn of the need to carry-out the fact-finding visit to Berlin and correctly informed Lembourn that the General Staff Intelligence Section would be interested in anything he could find-out about the German militias. However, Lembourn did not get time to make the trip until next year, when the dedicated General Staff Intelligence liaison officer to the South Jutland intelligence districts had been prematurely retired.

Reading the letters from the periods before and after it seems most unlikely that Harry had not involved his wife in everything that he planned to do. Most likely it was Thordis who destroyed all letters from early 1926 until summer 1928 and all photos linked to the volunteers immediately after Harry’s arrest at the border.

For obvious reasons the collection does not add to the German and official Danish actors’ motives for acting as they did. It is covered to the extent possible in my book and my coming article in “Fra Krig og Fred”, the journal of the Danish Commission for Military History: “Om Nils Arnberger, den svenske marineattaché, der i 1928-29 var tysk agent mod Danmark”. The article narrates how Denmark had to be presented as an ally of France and Poland to get a political decision in the German Government to build the first pocket battleship. And to give Denmark a strong warning for the alleged hostility, Lembourn had to be given a severe sentence. However, the contents of the letters about events at the Leipzig trial strongly reinforce the article’s thesis.

THE YEARS IN PRISON JANUARY 1929 TO DECEMBER 1932
When Harry Lembourn was moved from Leipzig to Gollnow in north-eastern Germany following President Hindenburg’s reduction of the sentence to five years fortress arrest, Thordis and her two small children followed him and settled in a rented room in the town’s market square. During the next year the family could meet during Harry’s five hours daily time outside the prison and his cell. The letter collection documents how this year was used in an intensive campaign driven by Thordis’ energy and strong will and with the support and active public contribution of the old lawyer Oluf Heise.

Heise’s criticism of Danish authorities’ handling of the case was considered awkward, and the authorities convinced Harry’s brother Edgar and his youngest sister Alice (Alix) that Thordis and Harry should break with Heise as his efforts was counter-productive. However, they failed, and Heise continued his work.

The work to achieve Harry’s release was even more extensive than described in my book and included letters to the French defence minister, André Maginot, and the first of several letters to Hindenburg. However, as described in the book, pressure from increasingly radical right-wing groups made it unsafe to keep the family in Gollnow, and they returned home in early summer 1930, either staying with Thordis parents in Oslo or with Harry’s sister Astrid (“Adda”) at Nyraad east of Vordingborg in southern Zeeland.

The next year became characterized by the continued campaign of Oluf Heise and the friendship between Harry Lembourn and the young German anarchist-pacifist Ernst Friedrich that led to Friedrich’s presentation of Lembourn’s situation and the case for his immediate release in the book “Festung Gollnow” published some months after Friedrich’s release in autumn 1931. The letter collection documents that Friedrich and his wife still tried to help Lembourn and his family after the publication of the book, but still in vain. After a final failure in August 1932 Friedrich concluded that the release was blocked by a group of influential German military officers.

In spite of intensified efforts of Thordis and Heise through the year following the publication of the book, the only result of it’s revelations was that Lembourn was transferred from Gollnow to the prison in Bielefeld in Western Germany at New Year 1991/1932.

1932 saw the continued attempts to ensure Harry’s release, but the letters between Harry and Thordis make clear that their marriage had been brought to the breaking point. Thordis not only drove the campaign to seek his release, she had to find support and money from her and Harry’s family both to keep her and the children alive and to help Harry keep his morale in prison by financing his gentleman’s living style that included buying new lacquer shoos for his dinner jacket and money for the best tailor in town. He fantasied without any sense of realism about his glorious return and the likelihood of receiving the Commander’s Cross of the French Legion of Honour. When hopeful about about his early release he asked her if his full morning suit and best quality riding outfit was ready, and he complained about her continuous failure to understand his horrible situation. What she needed, but rarely got, was statement of optimism and a determination to prevail and fight for his rights.

By mid-November 1932 Harry had become desparate, and he asked Thordis to write the German authorities and win favour with them by blaming the French for having failed to give support by explaining how they had decieved and exploited him.

THE ATTEMPTS TO REGAIN POSITION OR PENSION 1933 TO 1937
The letter add little to my book’s narrative of the Danish War Office’s pseudo-investigation of Lembourn’s actions conducted in March 1933 and the discussions in the French Ministry of War in the following weeks. However, in a letter to France in autumn of that year from Norway Lembourn makes clear that the value of the sum sent every quarter that with the value of 400 crowns monthly (equals roughly 16.000 crowns in 2018) was completely insufficient to support the now full family. However, as the money transfers continued at the same level in the following years, the complaint had no effect.

The book described how both Harry and Thordis tried in vain by letters to the Danish Prime Minister in 1934 and the Minister of Finance in 1937 to get his pension. The collection add hitherto missing parts of the correspondence including a letter from 1937 addressed directly to the Finance Committee of the Danish Parliament had had taken the formal decision not to grant pension.

THE FAMILY FATE DURING THE WAR
As narrated in the book the family’s fate during the war was bleak during the German occupation of Denmark and Norway, and letters give us details.

Harry had returned to Denmark in spring 1940 to see his family for the first time in seven years. Early March he wrote in vain to the French legation in Oslo to achieve a restart of the support that had ended after the start of the war. He was stopped from returning to Oslo by the German invasion, and during the next months his situation looked hopeless.

However, they the letter make clear that the situation gradually got better in two ways. In autumn 1941 the teenage daughter Grace was given permission to join her father in Denmark, but as he lived as boarder in cheap pensions, she got a good place at a large farm close to Knapstrup Manor.

One year later Thordis joined Harry in Copenhagen. They started to look for a flat, but continued to live in low quality pensions, Thordis spending time in South Zeeland with Harry’s second youngest sister Adda. As the food situation in Norway was desperate, the letters tells the story of the constant effort to help Thordis’ parents in Oslo with food parcels. In summer 1943 Harry’s youngest sister Alix’s husband, a successful lawyer, had found a six room, newly painted apartment in central Copenhagen. With economic help from Thordis parents, Thordis and Harry moved into the flat in the late summer of that year. Thereafter Grace and well as Philip, who was still with his grandparents, could join their parents, and Thordis started to work so that they could pay the rent. She lived in that apartment until she moved to a flat for elderly in the “Peter Lykke Centre” on Amager a short time before her death in early 1991.

FROM THE END OF THE WAR TO THE END
The collection adds little new to the book’s narrative of Harry’s attempt to get vindication and pension just after the war. It only makes clear and illustrates with a photo album that Thordis had a job as interpreter for the British Army in Germany at Hamburg in autumn 1946. It does not explain why she ended her contract after only three months in spite of her employers’ satisfaction with her work.

The only supplement to the story about Thordis and Harry’s final effort to get a an income to himself and his wife after his 70 years birthday is the information that the decision in late 1956 to give support by adding extra funds to the intelligence budget lapsed on Harry’s death in early 1958. Thordis had to apply to the Defence Ministry to have the support extended thereafter. In June 1958 it was decided that she would receive 1470 crowns annually, which equals a little more than 20.000 in 2018. No wonder that she complained about Denmark and praised Norway the rest of her life.

In the short narrative of her life that Grace left for Richard, the family’s tragic fate was left out. It simply stated that “My dad was 20 years older than my mum, so when he retired we moved to Norway”. However, in November 1991, she started to collect Harry’s key descriptions from 1937 and 1955 of events in an envelope marked “Papas historie”. It was a little more than half a year after Thordis’ death and Viggo Øhlenschlægers had started his project on 14 March to find out what had happened.

Now we know.