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Urban civil defence: imagining, constructing and performing nuclear war in Aarhus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2020

Rosanna Farbøl Open the ORCID record for Rosanna Farbøl [Opens in a new window]
Rosanna Farbøl*
Affiliation:
University of Southern Denmark, Department of History, Campusvej 55, DK-5230Odense M, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: rosfa@sdu.dk
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Abstract

During the Cold War, cities were seen as likely targets of modern total warfare and systems of civil defence were created to protect cities and their inhabitants. Yet existing civil defence histories have focused little on the specifically urban aspect, and urban historians likewise have paid civil defence little attention. Using Aarhus, Denmark, as a case-study, this article examines civil defence through planning, practices and materiality in a specific urban landscape. By analysing how civil defence was organized, performed and built in Denmark, the article sheds light on the mutual imbrication of urban planning, geography and materiality and local civil defence. I argue that through biopolitics, local civil defence authorities imagineered an idealized survivalist community of city dwellers who would pull together to protect and save their city and that this contributed to taming an incomprehensible, global, nuclear catastrophe into a manageable, localized, urban calamity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 701 - 723
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Dr Casper Sylvest, Dr Jonathan Hogg and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. All faults remain, of course, entirely my own.

References

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4 An exception here is the case of Coventry and the city's refusal to engage in civil defence; see Barnett, N., ‘“No protection against the H-bomb”: press and popular reactions to the Coventry civil defence controversy, 1954’, Cold War History, 3 (2015), 277–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 Monteyne, Fallout Shelter.

13 Vanderbilt, T., Survival City (Princeton, 2002)Google Scholar; Light, J.S., From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Vancouver, 2005)Google Scholar; Zipp, Samuel, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (Oxford, 2010)Google Scholar. See also the special issue of Urban History, 42 (2015) and the forthcoming volume: Hogg, J., Dodge, M. and Brooks, R. (eds.), Cold War Cities. Spatial Planning, Social Politics and Cultural Practices in the Era of Atomic Urbanism, 1945–65 (London, 2021)Google Scholar. Within the field of cultural geography, among others Stephen Graham has carried out important work on cities and war; see Graham, S., ‘Cities as battlespace: the new military urbanism’, City, 13 (2009), 383–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Graham, S. (ed.), Cities, War and Terrorism. Towards an Urban Geopolitics (Oxford, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See though this author's essay ‘Warfare or welfare? Civil defence and emergency planning in Danish urban welfare architecture’, in Hogg, Dodge and Brooks (eds.), Cold War Cities. For histories of Aarhus in the post-war period, see Christensen, S.B. (ed.), Aarhus i årtier – Aarhusianernes historie fortalt i billeder, 1950’erne (Aarhus, 2016)Google Scholar; M. Høghøj, ‘Between utopia and dystopia. A socio-cultural history of modernist mass housing in Denmark, c. 1945–1985’, Aarhus University Ph.D. thesis, 2019; Stigel, L., ‘Grænserne sprænges. Århus 1950–1984’, in Paludan, H. et al. (eds.), Århus Bys Historie fra vikingetid til nutid (Aarhus, 1984), 281–353Google Scholar.

15 Nørgaard, H., Egeskov, U. V. and Horn, L., REGAN Vest. Demokratiets sidste bastion (Copenhagen, 2019)Google Scholar; Stenak, M., Pedersen, T. Tram, Hansen, P.H. and Jespersen, M. (eds.), Kold krig. 33 fortællinger om en kolde krigs bygninger og anlæg i Danmark, Færøerne og Grønland (Copenhagen, 2013)Google Scholar.

16 Senellart, M., Michel Foucault. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–79 (Basingstoke, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Aarhus Stadsarkiv (AS) (Aarhus City Archives) Århus Kommune Økonomikontoret (ÅKØ) Journalsager 259/2 ‘Memorandum vedrørende civilforsvarets opbygning i Danmark’ Dec. 1955 and ‘Referat af møde i CF-kommissionen 18/1 1956 med civilforsvarsdirektør Arthur Dahl’.

18 Rigsarkivet (RA) (Danish National Archives) Erik Schultz embedsarkiv (ES) 64 ‘Kommunerne of Civilforsvaret’ draft article by Erik Schultz 1966; AS Magistratens 1. afdeling (M1) 52 minister of the interior's speech at Aarhus City Hall 28 Feb. 1964.

19 In every city and town with a civil defence obligation, a CD Commission was the main authority. A commission consisted of the mayor, four members of the municipal council, the chief constable and the leaders of the male and female voluntary civil defence organizations. The practical work was done by a CD leader, in Aarhus initially C.V. Smith-Hansen (1950–67) and later E. Lynggaard (1967–93), and a staff of conscripts, volunteers and clerks.

20 Simply put, the first-generation nuclear bomb, the atomic (A-bomb) bomb utilizes the energy released when an atomic nucleus splits into two nuclei (fission). The second-generation nuclear bomb, the hydrogen bomb (thermonuclear or H-bomb), by contrast, uses a fission chain reaction that initiates a fusion of separate atoms. The neutrons released by the fusion cause fallout. Both types of nuclear bombs are radioactive, but the explosive power of an A-bomb is counted in kilotons (equalling 1,000 tons of TNT) whereas the H-bomb is measured in megatons (1,000,000 tons of TNT).

21 Civilforsvarsbladet, 3 (1968), 13.

22 The conscripts received one month of training at the national Corps’ barracks. In their hometown, the conscripts then had a further 100 hours of training over the course of two years. The training was additional to the conscripts’ ordinary job or education. They had also an obligation to report for minor exercises, roll calls and mobilization until they turned 50 years of age.

23 Civilforsvarsbladet, 3 (1968), 12–15.

24 See e.g. Betænkning Vedrørende Bygningsmæssige Civilforsvarsforanstaltninger Afgivet Af Indenrigsministeriets Luftværnsudvalg af 1946 (J.H. Schultz, 1949); RA Beredskabsstyrelsen (BS) 2/1 ‘Almindelige betragtninger vedrørende masseskader’; RA ES 60/4 ‘Memorandum’, 5–6; AS M1 45 Appendix ‘Beskyttelsesrum’ to meeting 7 Mar. 1952.

25 Civilforsvarsbladet, 3 (1968), 13.

26 AS M1 ‘Plan for reservevandforsyning for Storårhus CF-område’ 55/1.

27 AS ÅKØ 1175/8 ‘Århus civilforsvar. En orientering’; AS (M1) 55/1 ‘Plan for reservevandforsyning for Storårhus CF-område’; AS M1 47 letter from Smith-Hansen to Unmack Larsen 31 Oct. 1951; AS M1 47/1 letter from Smith-Hansen to Bernhard Jensen 19 Apr. 1952; AS M1 46 ‘CF-kommissionens møde den 19. dec. 1952’; AS M1 52 letter to the mayor regarding the swimming stadium dated 8 Apr. 1964. The use of spaces and buildings typically associated with the welfare state (such as schools, public parks, public buildings, swimming stadiums and social housing) for civil defence purposes is explored by this author in ‘Warfare or welfare?’.

28 For discussions of the circulation of knowledge of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, see Sylvest, ‘Atomfrygten’; Sylvest, C., ‘Nuclear fallout as risk: Denmark and the thermonuclear revolution’, in Östling, J., Olsen, N. and Heidenblad, D.L. (eds.), Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas and Aspirations (London, 2020)Google Scholar; A.H. Nielsen, ‘Dansk atomkutur fra 1945–1963. Forestillinger om atomenergiens praktiske anvendelse i efterkrigstidens Danmark’, University of Southern Denmark Ph.D. thesis, 2020.

29 R. Farbøl, ‘Imaginaries of nuclear war: local authorities and civil defence in 1980s Britain and Denmark’ (manuscript in review).

30 RA CV Smith-Hansen 4 ‘Grundlaget for Civilforsvarets planlægning 1959’; Civilforsvarsstyrelsen, Memorandum (Civilforsvarsstyrelsen, 1980).

31 Dahl, A., ‘Countering vulnerability’, Danish Foreign Office Journal, 17 (1955), 16–18Google Scholar.

32 Clarke, L., Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar.

33 RA BS 2/1 minutes from meetings in the Self-Protection Committee of CDD 1966–67.

34 This was in line with official advice to the population; see Bjørnsson, I., Farbøl, R. and Sylvest, C., ‘Hvis krigen kommer. Forestillinger om fremtiden under den kolde krig’, Kulturstudier, 1 (2020), 33–61Google Scholar.

35 Singer, ‘Civil defence’.

36 in, E. Smith Civilforsvarsbladet, 3 (1966), 4–5Google Scholar.

37 RA ES 231/1 Civilforsvarsstyrelsen, Beretning om arbejdet inden for civilforsvaret, 1967, 3. On the priority of cities see also RA ES 60/4 ‘Civilforsvarets arbejdsplan IV, Oktober 1953–55’, 3.

38 In addition to public shelters, it had become mandatory by law in 1950 for new buildings in cities housing a company or more than two families as well as public institutions all over the country to construct so-called ‘reinforced rooms’ in the basements, a sort of provisional or temporary shelter usable for ordinary purposes in peacetime. In total, a 125 per cent coverage was set as target. It turned out to be far too ambitious. In the late 1980s, there were approximately 3.5 million seats in private and public shelters for a population of app. 5 million people.

39 AS M1 54 ‘Beretning for 1968/69’ and ‘Oversigt over beskyttelsesrum’.

40 AS M1 45 ‘Beskyttelsesrum’.

41 Jensen, in office 1958–71, was a Social Democrat too but of the more traditional pacifist kind. Jensen was deeply concerned about the risk of nuclear war but less inclined to accept the status quo of deterrence and prepare for nuclear war. He was sceptical of the usefulness of shelters, sought to reduce the civil defence budget and supported the Campaign against Nuclear Weapons. In this, he was in tune with a wider change in the attitude towards civil defence as international Cold War relations began to thaw while détente took hold from the mid-1960s.

42 Olesen, ‘Velfærd og kold krig’.

43 Pedersen, P.B., Arkitektur og plan i den danske velfærdsby (Aarhus, 2005)Google Scholar; J.M. Balslev, ‘Hverdagen’, in Christensen (ed.), Aarhus i årtier, 123–85.

44 Stigel, ‘Grænserne sprænges’, 282.

45 AS ÅKØ 259/2 ‘Dagsordenens punkt 9’; AS M1 54 ‘Beretning for 1968/69’.

46 AS M1 45 ‘Vedr. Udbygning af offentlige beskyttelsesrum’; RA CV Smith-Hansen 4 letter from W. Aschehough to the city engineer in Aarhus 22 Oct. 1954; Demokraten 30 Oct. 1960, 6.

47 AS M1 47/2 CD Commission meeting 28 Oct. 1950.

48 AS M1 46 Aarhus Stiftstidende 24 Jul. 1951 ‘Beskyttelsesrum under Clemens Bro til 300’; Demokraten 24 Jul. 1951 ‘Tilflugtrum under Clemensbro’.

49 This was also an issue of discussion between CDD engineer A.J. Moe and Smith-Hansen in a series of letters in 1950, RA ES 62. See also AS M1 45 report to Unmack Larsen from C.V. Smith-Hansen 10 Oct. 1950 and report ‘Civilforsvaret udbygning i Arhus pr. 1 marts 1951’ as well as letter to Arthur Dahl from C.V. Smith-Hansen 8 Dec. 1950; AS ÅKØ 259/1 ‘Møde i Civilforsvarsstyrelsen’ 12 Jan. 1951; AS M1 47 ‘Møde i C.F.-styrelsen 3 Nov 1950’.

50 AS M1 45/1 CD Commission meeting 18 Jun. 1953; AS M1 54 ‘Beretning 1969/70’.

51 Stigel, ‘Grænserne sprænges’, 284–7; A.A. Laursen, ‘Byen’, in Christensen (ed.), Aarhus i årtier, 64–108.

52 Laursen, ‘Byen’, 72.

53 Stigel, ‘Grænserne sprænges’, 289–91; T.N. Kristensen, ‘Det Aarhus, der forsvandt’, in Christensen (ed.), Aarhus i årtier, 22–64.

54 RA ES 64 letter to Bernhard Jensen from Erik Schultz 28 Apr. 1966; AS M1 54 ‘Beretning 1968/69’.

55 Civilforsvarsstyrelsen, Vejledning om offentlige beskyttelsesrum, 1970; Statsministeriet, Hvis krigen kommer 1962.

56 Aarhus Stiftstidende, 15 Jan. 1973.

57 Ibid.

58 If nothing else is stated, the following is based on the script and reports from the exercise all found in AS M1 51.

59 Demokraten, 1 Apr. 1962, 19.

60 The notion of desirable futures stems from Sheila Jasanoff's concept of ‘socio-technical imaginaries’; see Jasanoff, S., ‘Future imperfect: science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity’, in Jasanoff, Sheila and Kim, Sang-Hyun (eds.), Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (Chicago, 2015), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Graham, ‘Cities as battlespace’.