After World War II, thousands of young German soldiers were forced to clear landmines.
In short: The 2015 film Land of Mine uncovers a harrowing, often overlooked chapter of post-war history. Following the liberation of Denmark, German prisoners of war were ordered to manually defuse over one million buried landmines. The result was a brutal, controversial operation that cost hundreds of young lives and sparked intense moral debate.
Directed by Martin Zandvliet, Land of Mine dramatizes the forced labor of German prisoners of war tasked with clearing the Jutland west coast after May 1945. As part of the Atlantic Wall, the Germans had buried over 1.3 million mines along the Danish shoreline. Following the occupation's end, the British Armed Forces and the Danish government mandated that German soldiers—many of them teenagers—clear these explosives by hand. This practice violated Article 32 of the 1929 Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits forcing prisoners of war to engage in dangerous or unhealthy labor.
The film draws inspiration from historian Helge Hagemann’s 1998 book, Under tvang, which documents the ordeal of approximately 2,000 young soldiers. The reality was devastating: estimates suggest that 179 soldiers died during the five-month effort, while hundreds more suffered serious or light injuries. The narrative follows a squad of these boys under the command of a Danish sergeant, Carl Leopold Rasmussen. Initially indifferent to their plight, Rasmussen’s perspective shifts as he witnesses the boys' suffering, malnutrition, and the constant threat of death from the mines they were forced to dismantle.
Beyond its historical significance, the film serves as a meditation on forgiveness and the lingering trauma of war. Upon its 2015 release, it received critical acclaim, including a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards. The production itself was deeply rooted in the history it depicted; filming took place on location along the West Coast, and the crew even discovered a real, unexploded mine during the shoot. Today, the legacy of this mine clearance is preserved at the Tirpitz museum, which features an exhibition dedicated to this dark, previously neglected chapter of Danish history.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Land of Mine
- Also: Wikidata — Land of Mine · CC0
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