Following the German capitulation in Denmark on the 5th of May ’45 (except on Bornholm), there were mixed events. Most noticeable, of course, were the celebrations with flags everywhere and huge gatherings of people in the streets and squares. Some people made makeshift pyres with their air-raid curtains the Germans ordered to be used. On the other hand, there were a few scattered fights in the streets between partisans and the few hard-core nazis who refused to give up. Resistance fighters went through the country to arrest anyone suspected of almost any transgression, and the arrested people were publicly humiliated and occasionally assaulted (some of the biggest victims were the women accused of dating Germans, who would be shaved in public while being called “field-mattress” or “German bitch” and being spat on). Notice the use of accused and suspected; some of the people that were arrested definitely deserved their fate, but there was no due process, and if someone was accused, the accuser’s words would initially be taken as valid enough for now.
In an effort to get this under control, the politicians urged calm, and introduced a law, which among other things made it punishable with prison to profiteer from the occupation (“værnemageri”) and reintroduced the death penalty for grave treason, a year later to help sate the bloodlust of the people. Despite this law being retroactive, which is unjust in principle, some argued it was better than outright vigilantism (which was the alternative, given the circumstances). Thus *retsopgøret* began. Around 40.000 ended up standing accused in the end, of which 13,500 were found to be some degree of criminals. Of these, 103 were sentenced to death, but only 46 were executed. The rest were sent to prison instead. The trials also had some controversial outcomes, such as Werner Best (the German occupation commander) dodging execution.
All in all, it was clear to see it was a messy affair, once the parties died down a bit. Principles of justice were ignored to better carry out justice, and the idea of actually investigating and at least trying to get things done more or less calmly and collectedly took some time to come through. Some people who hadn’t commited any crimes were assaulted, humiliated, and arrested, while some people who deserved the worst didn’t get it
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We were not liberated (nor occupied) but we had a fascist regime no one cared, we had to wait until the fascist dictator died of old age in 1975 and bring democracy back by ourselves (we were also lucky as the person chosen by the dictator personally to continue with the regime agreed to restore democracy instead of continue with the dictatorship)
Poland got rid of WW2 occupation as late as in early 1990-s. Soviet / Russian army annexted half of Poland and tranferred it in a deadly process to the USSR, and then continued occupation of Poland for another devades. All with “blessing” from the WW2 winners – UK, France and USA.
The commission of USSR left the country in 1948 and the last Soviet troops left in 1956. The public atmosphere became a little more stable and relaxed, but it couldn’t be celebrated publicly because the country was still loosely allied with USSR until it’s collapse, so the public criticism and opposition against USSR was silenced until the late 80s.
Germans left the country in 1944-1945, because the Soviet officials ordered Finnish forces to push them out as a condition for peace. There wasn’t much to celebrate. While backing out of Finland, the Germans destroyed everything on their way, mistreated the locals and laid mines everywhere. People were terrified about what the Soviets would do here after the Germans leave.