Pre-enacting the next war: the visual culture of Danish civil defence in the early nuclear age

ABSTRACT

During the 1950s and early 1960s, civil defence sought to anticipate the next war and ensure the survival of civil society. Authorities had to adjust to developments in both military and communication technologies continuously. The article studies the visual culture of Danish civil defence by zooming in on the entanglements of technology, visuality, narrative and function. The author argues that this visual culture is characterised by the practice and visual technique of pre-enactment. Having developed this concept, the article analyses the projection of civil defence in recruitment films, educational filmstrips and public information aimed at mass audiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil defence
• visual culture
• nuclear weapons
• Denmark
• nuclear war
• film
• filmstrips
• public information

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Peter Bennesved, Rosanna Farbøl and Rens van Munster for inspiring conversations and helpful suggestions. He also wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers of Cold War History for their insightful comments. The research for this project would not have been possible without the assistance of archivists at The Danish Film Institute and the Danish National Archives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Joseph Masco, ‘“Survival Is Your Business”: Engineering Ruins and Affect in Nuclear America’, Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 2 (2008): 361–98; Bo Jacobs, ‘Atomic Kids: Duck and Cover and Atomic Alert Teach American Children How to Survive Atomic Attack’, Film & History 40, no. 1 (2010): 25–44; Erik Ringstad, ‘The Evolution of American Civil Defense Film Rhetoric’, Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 4 (2012): 93–121; Matthew Grant, ‘Images of Survival, Stories of Destruction: Nuclear War on British Screens from 1945 to the Early 1960s’, Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, no. 1 (2013): 7–26; Lars Nowak, ‘Images of Nuclear War in US Government Films from the early Cold War’, in Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought and Nuclear Conflict, 1945–90, ed. M. Grant and B. Ziemann (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 260–86; and Peter Bennesved and Fredrik Norén, ‘Urban Catastrophe and Sheltered Salvation: The Media System of Swedish Civil Defence, 1937–1960’, Media History 26, no. 2 (2020): 167–84.

² Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). See also Spencer Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Holger Nehring, ‘Remembering War, Forgetting Hiroshima: “Euroshima” and the West German Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement in the Cold War’, in The Age of Hiroshima, ed. M. G. Gordin and G. J. Ikenberrry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 179–200.

³ Historical scholarship on civil defence focused on exercises and rehearsals is highly instructive in this respect. See especially Tracy C. Davis, Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defence (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Jessica Douthwaite, ‘“ … what in the hell is this?” Rehearsing Nuclear War in Britain’s Civil Defence Corps’, Contemporary British History 33, no. 2 (2019): 187–207.

⁴ See e.g. Margit Hurup Nielsen, ‘Re-Enactment and Reconstruction in Collingwood’s Philosophy of History’, History and Theory 20, no. 1 (1981): 1–31.

⁵ Robert A. Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History, 2nd ed. (London: Pearson, 2012), 80.

⁶ Bill Nichols, ‘Documentary Re-enactments A Paradoxical Temporality That Is Not One’, in Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context, ed. T. Miller (Budapest: Central European Press, 2008), 171–92 (171).

⁷ Ibid., 182.

⁸ Ibid., 187.

⁹ Ibid., 187.

¹⁰ For a ‘continuum of reconstruction’, see Brian Winston, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries (London: BFI Publishing, 2000), 105–6. See also Jouko Aaltonen and Jukka Kortti, ‘From Evidence to Re-enactment: History, Television and Documentary Film’, Journal of Media Practice 16, no. 2 (2015): 108–25.

¹¹ In 1902, Georges Méliès produced a film about Edward VII’s coronation before it took place. Edward’s operation for an abdominal abscess postponed the coronation some six weeks. Thus, Méliès’ film ‘premiered in London on the eve of the actual coronation’. Elizabeth Ezra, Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 66.

¹² Nichols, ‘Documentary Re-enactments’, 180; see also Tony Shaw, ‘The BBC, the State and Cold War Culture: The Case of Television’s The War Game (1965)’, English Historical Review 121, no. 494 (2006): 1351–84.

¹³ Ben Anderson, ‘Preemption, Precaution, Preparedness: Anticipatory Action and Future Geographies’, Progress in Human Geography 34, no. 6 (2010), 777–98 (778).

¹⁴ Ibid., 778–9. See also Claudia Aradau and Rens van Munster, Politics of Catastrophe: Genealogies of the Unknown (London: Routledge, 2011).

¹⁵ Joseph Masco, The Theatre of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).

¹⁶ Anderson, ‘Preemption, Precaution, Preparedness’, 783.

¹⁷ Ibid., 793.

¹⁸ In 1935, the year after the establishment of the Aerial Defence League in Denmark, Prime Minister Stauning argued that a re-armament running into billions involved a preparation for the ‘ghastly war in the air, which is a particularly vicious threat against the peoples, even the smaller ones in the cradle’. ‘Statsminister Staunings Grundlovstale’, Social-Demokraten, 6 June 1935, s. 6. On the broader European picture, see John H. Morrow Jr., ‘States and Strategic Airpower: Continuity and Change, 1906–1939’, in The Influence of Airpower upon History: Statesmanship, Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy since 1903, ed. R. Higham and M. Parillo (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013), 37–59.

¹⁹ This phrase appeared in the Danish Law on Civil Defence (no. 152, 1 April 1949, par. 1).

²⁰ Casper Sylvest, ‘Atomfrygten og civilforsvaret’ (‘Nuclear Fear and Civil Defence’), temp – tidsskrift for historie 16 (2018): 16–39; Casper Sylvest, ‘Nuclear Fallout as Risk: Denmark and the Thermonuclear Revolution’, in Histories of Knowledge in Post-War Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas and Aspirations, ed. J. Östling, N. Olsen and D. L. Heidenblad (London: Routledge, 2020), 21–38; Marianne Rostgaard and Morten Pedersen, eds., Atomangst og civilt beredskab: Forestillinger om atomkrig i Danmark 1945–1975 (Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2020); and Rosanna Farbøl, ‘Urban Civil Defence: Imagining, Constructing and Performing Nuclear War in Aarhus’, Urban History (2020): 1–23, doi:10.1017/S0963926820000590.

²¹ See e.g. the DCDL to the Film Committee of Danish Ministries (FCDM), 15 December 1950, Old film records, ‘Civilforsvaret’, the Danish Government Film Office (DGFO), Danish National Archives (DNA)/The Danish Film Institute (DFI).

²² Further films were produced in 1954 (Do You Take Part?/Er de Med?) and 1955 (Self-Protection in Civil Defence/Egenbeskyttelsen i Civilforsvaret).

²³ Minutes of meeting regarding films, 3 July 1951, Beredskabsstyrelsen, Civilforsvarsdirektør E. Schultz’ embedsarkiv (ES), Diverse notater og referater, box 134, DNA. By 1955 two films produced in 1953 and 1954 had been screened in 40% of cinemas in Copenhagen and 66% of cinemas outside the capital. See note dated 29 February 1956, ibid.

²⁴ DCDL note, undated (December 1950?), Old film records, ‘Civilforsvaret’, DGFO, DNA/DFI. This and all subsequent translations from Danish are by the author.

²⁵ Minutes of meeting with the Film Committee, 26 June 1951, ES, box 134, DNA.

²⁶ ‘Minutes of meeting about civil defence film, 7 January 1952, Old film records, ‘Kvinder i Civilforsvaret’, DNA/DFI.

²⁷ Civil Defence (1951), 3:05–3:10.

²⁸ Protecting the Population (1953), 2:48–3:03.

²⁹ See also Peter Bennesved and Casper Sylvest, ‘Embedding Preparedness, Assigning Responsibility: The Role of Film in Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Civil Defence’, in Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe, ed. M. Cronqvist, R. Farbøl and C. Sylvest (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

³⁰ Mit navn er Christensen (1953), 17:28–17:35.

³¹ Aske Hennelund Nielsen, ‘Dansk atomkultur fra 1945 til 1963. Forestillinger om atomenergiens praktiske anvendelse i efterkrigstiden i Danmark’ (PhD dissertation, University of Southern Denmark, 2020).

³² Eugen Pfister, ‘Nuclear Optimism in European Newsreels of the 1950s’, Zeitgeschicte 5, no 42 (2015): 285–98 (288); Danmarks Radio, Politikens Filmjournal 1949–1954 (catalogue, unpublished), DFI  Library.

³³ Nielsen, Dansk atomkultur; Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985); and Jonathan Hogg, British Nuclear Culture: Official and Unofficial Narratives in the Long 20th Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).

³⁴ On the nature of these debates see Toshihiro Higuchi, Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020); and Sylvest, ‘Nuclear Fallout as Risk’.

³⁵ Levente Borsos, ‘Translation of Digitized Filmstrips: Sociocultural Aspects of Pedagogical Potential’, Perspectives 27, no. 2 (2019): 316–31.

³⁶ See H. R. and I. W. Dance, An Introduction to Filmstrips (London: Harrap, 1948).

³⁷ Film Strips in Daily Teaching (Billedbånd i den daglige undervisning), filmstrip produced by the Film Service of the Danish armed forces, undated, The Information and Exhibition Barracks H1 of the Danish Civil Protection League (H1).

³⁸ See Civilforsvarsbladet 5, no. 10 (1954): 243.

³⁹ Orientering fra Civilforsvarsstyrelsen, no. 10 (November 1955): 5; Denmark produced its own filmstrip on the organisation and state of civil defence for NATO: Civil Defence in NATO – Denmark, filmstrip (undated), H1.

⁴⁰ Federal Civil Defence Administration, Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1956 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1957), 58.

⁴¹ Modern Warfare, frame 25f.; Modern Warfare, manuscript, 14, H1.

⁴² Modern Warfare, manuscript, 27, H1.

⁴³ Iben Bjørnsson, ‘“Stands tilløb til panik’ – Civilforsvarspjecer som social kontrol”, in Atomangst og civilt beredskab: Forestillinger om atomkrig i Danmark 1945–1975, ed. M. Rostgaard and M. Pedersen (Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2020), 65–102. See also ‘Civil Defence and Thermo-Nuclear Weapons – Memorandum by the Senior Civil Defence Advisor’, 25 November 1954, NATO Archives Online, Civil Protection Committee (1952–1970), http://archives.nato.int/memo-by-senior-civil-defence-adviser (accessed 24 March 2020).

⁴⁴ A partial exception is the UK, where the 1955 Strath Report led to far-reaching change. See Matthew Grant, After the Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Britain, 1945–68 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).

⁴⁵ Kenneth D. Rose, One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

⁴⁶ See ‘Statement on Evacuation by Erik Schultz, delivered at Christiansborg before Members of the Military Sub-Committee of the House Government Operations Committee under the Chairmanship of Representative Chet Holifield’, Saturday, 5 October 1957, in ES, Diverse foredrag, box 131, DNA.

⁴⁷ DCDL, Annual Report, 1959–1960 (November 1960), RDL, 14.

⁴⁸ Damage Scenarios following an Attack with Nuclear Weapons, manuscript, 6, H1.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 15–16, H1.

⁵⁰ Some information about Danish civil defence exhibitions has survived. By the end of the 1950s, at least three exhibitions circulated throughout the country: a travelling exhibition, a window exhibition about the H-bomb and a smaller ‘suitcase’ exhibition. From 1960, a revised travelling exhibition focused exclusively on atomic war. See Civilforsvars-Forbundet (DCDL), Referater af landsrådsmøder, beretninger, Royal Danish Library (RDL), Copenhagen.

⁵¹ Various versions of the voiceover are available in Old film records, ‘Egenbeskyttelsen’, DGFO, DNA/DFI.

⁵² Forord til synopsis til Civilforsvarsfilm’, 27 September 1958, in Old film records, ‘Civilforsvar’, DGFO, DNA/DFI.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Civil Defence (1959), 5:07–5:11.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 4:10–4:19.

⁵⁶ Sylvest, ‘Atomfrygten og civilforsvaret’, 32–6.

⁵⁷ Civil Defence (1959), 18:33–18:38.

⁵⁸ Sylvest, ‘Atomfrygten og civilforsvaret’.

⁵⁹ See also Peter Bennesved and Casper Sylvest, ‘Embedding Preparedness, Assigning Responsibility’.

⁶⁰ Orientering fra Civilforsvarsstyrelsen 7, no. 2 (March 1961): 1.

⁶¹ ‘Realistisk TV- udsendelse i aften om a-bombeeksplosion’, Aalborg Amtstidende, 9 March 1961, 14.

⁶² Symbolic of the shift away from recruitment towards public information, some volunteers were dismayed that these television programmes strove for a balanced view and were not accompanied by intensified recruitment campaigns. See CF-NYT 19, no. 3 (1961): 2–5 and CF-NYT 19, no. 10 (1961): 2–5.

⁶³ Several other countries, including NATO countries, published similar leaflets during the early 1960s. The clear-blue Danish version, If War Comes, was published by the Prime Minister’s office. For an analysis, see Iben Bjørnsson, Rosanna Farbøl and Casper Sylvest, ‘Hvis krigen kommer: Forestillinger om fremtiden under den kolde krig’ (‘If War Comes: Imagining the Future during the Cold War’), Kulturstudier 11, no. 1 (2020): 33–61.

⁶⁴ DCDL, Annual Report, 1961–1962 (October 1962), RDL, 17.

⁶⁵ Ibid. The nature of the calculation was not specified.

⁶⁶ DGFO to DCDL, 14 May 1962, Old film records, ‘Radioaktivt nedfald’, DGFO, DNA/DFI.

⁶⁷ Radioactive Fallout (1961), 00:53–1:21.

⁶⁸ The purpose of this short film was for civil defence to provide the viewer with an idea of what radioactivity is. In addition to the scientific explanation, the film contained information about protection measures against radioactivity. Old film records, ‘Radioaktivt nedfald’, DGFO, DNA/DFI.

⁶⁹ Radioactive Fallout (1961), 10:28–10:33.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 19:17–19:25. The term is associated with Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1864), which carried the title ‘Kældermennesket’ in Danish.

⁷¹ Radioactive Fallout (1961), 18:33–18:37.

⁷² Bjørnsson et al., ‘Hvis krigen kommer’.

⁷³ ‘Kampagnen mod atomvåben maa vække til debat’, Skive Folkeblad, 25 May 1962.

⁷⁴ Birgit Nystad, ‘Fra vort kælderdyb’, Frit Danmark 20, no. 10 (January 1962): 14–15. The same issue carried an article by Villum Hansen entitled ‘Civil Defence – Illusion or Realism?’ Nystad welcomed the film’s candidness about the threat, which she considered a harbinger of future protests.

⁷⁵ ‘Realistisk film om radioaktivt nedfald’, Berlingske Tidende, 5 October 1961, 6; and ‘Rystende realisme’, Jyllands-Posten, 8 December 1961, 12.

⁷⁶ I thank Rosanna Farbøl for directing my attention to the Danish reception of Watkins’ film. See, for example, Frederik G. Jungersen, ‘Advarsel mod ny verdenskrig’, Berlingske Tidende, 30 November 1967, 7; Pim, ‘Vis den i TV’, Information, 30 November 1967, 7; and Flemming Behrendt, ‘Vil de overlevende misunde de døde?’, Berlingske Aftenavis, 1 December 1967, 4.

⁷⁷ Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History, xxi, 8.

⁷⁸ For the original formulation, see John Grierson, ‘The Documentary Producer’, Cinema Quarterly 2 (1933): 7–9.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark [8018-00047B].

Notes on contributors

Casper Sylvest

Casper Sylvest is Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Southern Denmark. His recent work has studied the intellectual reception of nuclear weapons technologies in the US and UK during the early Cold War. He currently directs a research project on Danish civil defence.