Christian X of Denmark
Christian X was king of Denmark from May 1912 to April 1947 and, from 1918 to 1944, the first and last king of Iceland. He was the tall, stiff, unpopular monarch who twice nearly lost his throne, in the Easter crisis of 1920. He became, in his seventies, the most popular man in the country by riding his horse through occupied Copenhagen every morning without an escort, which the Germans watched and the Danes understood. The Easter crisis was his own doing. He dismissed the Radical government of Zahle in March 1920 because it would not annex the town of Flensburg, which had voted German in the Schleswig plebiscite, and appointed a caretaker cabinet. The Social Democrats and the unions answered with a general strike and the word republic. Within a week he had dismissed his own cabinet, accepted a compromise government, and agreed never to do it again. He did not. The crisis made the Danish monarchy constitutional in the sense the word has had since. Iceland, which had been a kingdom in personal union since 1918, voted itself a republic in 1944 while Denmark was occupied and could not answer. He sent a telegram of congratulation, which the Icelanders had not expected. It settled the matter between the two countries. The occupation of April 1940 was accepted in two hours, the government staying and the king with it. The five years were the rides, the refusal of the German demand for a joint Danish-German force, and the reply to Hitler's long birthday telegram of 1942 with the five words My best thanks, Christian Rex, which produced the telegram crisis and a new German plenipotentiary. There was the fall from his horse in October 1942 that ended the rides and left him an invalid. There was the government's resignation in August 1943 when the Germans demanded the death penalty for saboteurs. After that there was no government and he was, in the German view, a prisoner in Amalienborg. There was the rescue of the Jews that October, which he did not organise and did not obstruct, and the story of the yellow star, which he never wore because the Germans never imposed it. He was born at Charlottenlund. He married Alexandrine of Mecklenburg. He died two years after the liberation, at seventy-six, having lived to see it. His brother Haakon was king of Norway for the same decades. The two thrones the Germans occupied were held by one family. The family minded.
- Lived: 1870 CE – 1947 CE
- Nationality: Danish
- Roles: king, monarch
