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political force in the lower House of Parliament. Thereafter, its sway over the government was only rarely interrupted.

Thorvald Stauning, a vigorous and shrewd Socialist with neutralist leanings, led Social Democratic governments from 1924-1926 and from 1929 until his death in 1942. Under Stauning social reforms made Denmark into a welfare state. In the first postwar election of 1945, the Social Democrats stumbled badly, evidently because of their relatively weak record in the wartime resistance compared to that of the Communists. Consequently, a Moderate Liberal government ruled from 1945 to 1947, when the Social Democrats returned to power. Again in 1950 the Social Democrats were ousted, this time in favor of a Moderate Liberal-Conservative regime, but the SDP once more took the reins of government in 1953, continuing its dominance - precarious though its margin was at times - until 1968, when a center-right coalition of the Radical Liberal, Moderate Liberal, and Conservative Parties took over. Returned to power in 1971, in time to lead Denmark into the EC, the Social Democrats relied on the Socialist People's Party (SFP) for a razor-thin one vote majority in the Folketing. The support of the SFP, rendered tenuous by EC accession, to which it was opposed, was further strained by Anker Jorgensen's succession to SDP and government leadership. Jorgensen was named to succeed J.O. Krag, when the latter resigned on 3 October 1972, the day after the referendum confirming Denmark's entry into the EC.

Throughout the post-World War II decades, Social Democratic governments were steady performers, guiding Denmark back to prosperity and ensuring its security by taking it into NATO, despite a persistent undercurrent of neutralist and pacifist sentiment. Those parties in opposition to the SDP were frequently unable to find attractive alternatives to the Social Democratic program of state-sponsored welfarism, nor were the two major bourgeois parties, the Moderate Liberals and the Conservatives, able to bridge their own differences sufficiently well to unite and thereby match the numerical strength of the Social Democrats, which reached a high of 76 Folketing seats in the national elections of 1960 and 1964.

Since World War II the Social Democrats have experienced a leadership problem, as a succession of Socialist Prime Ministers failed to equal pre-war strongman Stauning in leadership qualities or endurance. Hands Hedtoft died in office in 1955, having served as Prime Minister for 4 1/2 years. H.C. Hansen died in 1960 after heading two governments, lasting a total of 5 years. Viggo Kampmann retired from the Prime Ministry in 1962 for reasons of health after 2 1/2 years service. Jens Otto Krag, who at age 47 became Denmark's youngest Prime Minister, proved himself a presentable and generally effective leader, though not as dynamic, appealing, or clever a one as to maintain for the Social Democrats their peak electoral strength of the early and mid-1960s. His last political struggle was in the outcome a resounding success - a national referendum in which an unprecedented turnout of almost 90% of the electorate approved entry of Denmark into the EC by a majority of 63.5%. The resulting internal divisions within the SDP, however, and the exacerbated relationship with its anti-EC SFP ally may have been factors in his decision to resign. Krag's initially less controversial successor, labor leader Anker Jorgensen, seemed not to demonstrate the flexibility and overall leadership capabilities to reunite the party fully and elicit consistent SFP support in parliament.

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6