Gustav Rasmussen

Niels Carl Gustav Magnus Rasmussen (born August 10, 1895 in Odense , Region Syddanmark , † September 13, 1953 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish diplomat and politician who was the only non-party who was foreign minister for several years after the Second World War .

Life

Diplomat, international law expert and World War II

After visiting the Katedralskole in Odense in 1913, Rasmussen, the son of a lawyer , began studying law at the University of Odense and was a member together with his fellow student John Christmas Møller , who was chairman of the Conservative Folkeparti between 1928 and 1947 and was briefly foreign minister of the Academic Rifle Corps ( Akademisk Skyttekorps ). During the First World War he was temporary secretary of the diplomatic mission in Petrograd and between 1917 and 1918 of the delegation for prisoners of war in Siberia .

After completing his studies in 1921, he joined the Foreign Service and was established in 1922 initially authorized representative of the Foreign Ministry and in 1927 d'affaires in Switzerland . During these activities he continued to deal with questions of the law of prisoners of war and published on this subject in 1931 Code des prisonniers de guerre: Commentaire de la convention du 27 juillet 1929 relative au traitement des prisonniers de guerre . When in 1930 Norwegian fishermen, with the benevolence of their government, began to occupy the east coast of Greenland , so that the island was threatened with partition in 1931, Rasmussen acted as deputy legal representative of the government of Denmark in the process before the Permanent International Court of Justice in The Hague between 1932 and 1933 . In 1933 Norway finally gave up its claims on Greenland in favor of Denmark after the arbitration of the Permanent International Court of Justice.

Then Rasmussen was in 1934 as a specialist in international law Counselor of the Permanent Mission of the League of Nations and then in 1935 bureau chief of the Foreign Ministry before he 1939 Counselor and Head of the Legation in the UK was. Here he joined the line of the ambassador at the time, Eduard Reventlow , who at the end of 1941 had refused to accept any further instructions from German-occupied Denmark . He then resigned from the foreign service and became a member of the working group of the Danish Council in March 1942 and, in 1944, a lieutenant colonel and head of the civil department of the military mission, which was to be deployed after the liberation of Denmark by the Allies .

Foreign minister

Cold War and the founding of NATO

After the end of the Second World War, Rasmussen was appointed envoy to Italy at his own request , but could no longer officially take up this office because he was appointed Foreign Minister ( Udenrigsminister ) on November 7, 1945 as the successor to his old student friend John Christmas Møller through Prime Minister Knud Kristensen his cabinet and held the function of foreign minister in the first government of Kristensen's successor Hans Hedtoft until October 30, 1950. Rasmussen was the only non-party to hold this ministerial office after the Second World War.

During his tenure as Foreign Minister, Denmark initially did not take a clear position in favor of a camp in the emerging Cold War , but leaned on the positions of the United Nations in terms of foreign policy . His statement that Denmark will not join any Western bloc at the time contributed to the fact that the Red Army withdrew its troops on April 6, 1946 from Bornholm, which it had occupied since May 1945 . At the same time, the Greenland question came up again, in the course of which the US Secretary of State James Byrnes also offered to buy the island, which Rasmussen refused. However, after the establishment of NATO on April 4, 1949, there was a new foreign policy orientation, with the result that Greenland was converted into a joint Danish-American defense area under NATO control with the treaty of April 27, 1951.

In the negotiations for the founding of NATO and the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, however, it was not Rasmussen but Prime Minister Hedtoft who was the driving force. The foreign minister was initially concerned about Denmark's accession and was quoted by the former Swedish defense minister, Per Edvin Sköld , as saying: "Denmark is signing its own death warrant" ('at Danmark underskrev sin egen dødsdom'). After signing the contract, however, Rasmussen was loyal to the prime minister.

Südschleswig question and leadership crisis

The most important and at the same time most difficult foreign policy problem in the early post-war period was the question about southern Schleswig . While Prime Minister Kristensen wanted a more active policy, contrary to the parliamentary majority in the Folketing , Rasmussen rejected this stance. Thereupon Rasmussen apologized and explained that he did not want to contribute to the voting out of the Kristensen government in the Folketing election on October 28, 1947 through his stance on the Südschleswig question , but that it was his opinion as a non-party. He also represented his position in the government of Prime Minister Hedtoft, who became Kristensen's successor on November 13, 1947, and in relation to King Frederik IX.

Rasmussen's stay as foreign minister in the government meant that the social democratic Hedtofts did not have to raise their own positions and politicians for the foreign ministerial office and the related South Schleswig issue, such as Hartvig Frisch , who instead became minister of education. On the other hand, during Hedtoft's tenure there were repeated debates in the Folketing, in which Rasmussen criticized the inadequate foreign policy of the Kristensen government, but indirectly exposed himself to criticism as the responsible ministerial minister.

After the influential director of the Ministry, Frants Hvass, first became head of the military mission in Berlin in 1948 and then acted as ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany between 1951 and 1966 , a personnel crisis arose in the Foreign Ministry during which Rasmussen wanted to take up a post at the United Nations and Hedtoft should deal with the personnel question. Ultimately, however, Jens Rudolph Dahl , a childhood friend of Rasmussen's and head of the ministry's political and legal department, was appointed to succeed Hvass. However, Dahl was retired early in 1950 for health reasons.

After the Folketing election on September 5, 1950 , Rasmussen resigned from the government as Foreign Minister on October 30, 1950 and took over the now vacant post of Ambassador to Italy, although he strove to be appointed Ambassador to France . He died after a lung operation in the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.

Publications

• Code des prisonniers de guerre: Commentaire de la convention du 27 juillet 1929 relative au traitement des prisonniers de guerre , 1931

Web links

• KRAKS BLÅ BOG 1949 (online version)
• Entry in danmarkshistorien.dk

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Udenrigsminister Gustav Rasmussens tale i Folketinget i marts 1949 (detgodesamfund-1n.blogspot.de)
2. ↑ The kolde krig. Den danske udenrigsminister om AtlantpAGEN: Gustav Rasmussens tale i Folketinget 22.3.1949 ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (erdenidanskperspektiv.systime.dk)