When Athens invaded Denmark: reading Thucydides before and during the Second World War

Abstract

The Danish politician Hartvig Frisch’s reading of Thucydides at the eve of and during the Second World War is a particularly illuminating example of the modern reception of the Athenian historian. This is not due to any peculiar character of his interpretation, which scarcely differs from other contemporary accounts of the History of the Peloponnesian War as a lesson in seeing the world ‘realistically’. Rather, it is due to Frisch’s eagerness to make the text meaningful in a very practical sense. Addressing fellow socialist politicians, working-class youths, and students alike, and drawing parallels between the situation of his native Denmark and the fate of the Greek island town of Melos in 416 bce, Frisch saw Thucydides’ History as an invaluable guide for the demanding times of the late 1930s and 1940s, in particular for the inhabitants of ‘small nations’ like his own.