MUNCH, PETER ROCHEGUNE

born July 25, 1870, Redsted, Den. died Jan. 12, 1948, Copenhagen historian and politician who as Danish foreign minister in the 1930s attempted to maintain Danish neutrality and independence during the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler in Germany. After a career as a historian of modern Europe, Munch entered the Danish Parliament in 1909 as a member of the Radical Party. In the same year he became minister of the interior in the Radical government of C.T. Zahle (190910). In the second Zahle government (191320) he served as minister of defense. While he was foreign minister in the Social DemocraticRadical government of Thorvald Stauning (192942), Munch's most difficult task was to induce Adolf Hitler to recognize the 1920 border between Denmark and Germany, traversing the ethnically mixed area of Schleswig. Although he failed in this undertaking, he succeeded in avoiding an open breach with Germany. At the time the Germans occupied Denmark in 1940, Munch was made a public scapegoat and resigned his post.