Frits Clausen (12 November 1893 – 5 December 1947) was the leader of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark from 1933 to 1944 during World War II.
Biography[]
Frits Clausen was born in Apenrade, Prussia, German Empire (now Aabenraa, Denmark) on 12 November 1893, and he served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He studied medicine at Heidelberg in 1924 and returned to his hometown, which had been voted back to Denmark in the Schleswig plebiscite. He became involved in Danish politics as a representative of the German minority in southern Jutland, and he joined the Danish Nazi Party in 1931. In 1933, he ousted the leadership committee to become the party's new leader, and he espoused nationalism and called for closer relations with Nazi Germany. The party had about 20,000 members and 20,000 sympathizers at the height of its popularity, but Clausen never became a fascist dictator, as King Christian X of Denmark refused to let him and his collaborators have a role in the government, and he lost the 1943 election. He decided to serve as a Wehrmacht surgeon during the war with the Soviet Union, and he left politics upon his 1944 return to Denmark. A three-man committee replaced the unpopular Clausen, who had been unwilling to form a Danish branch of the SS. He was held in the Froslev Prison Camp after the war's end, and he died of a heart attack in Copenhagen on 5 December 1947 before his trial could be completed.