Inaug.-Diss.--Bonn. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 213-229.

This dissertation examines the implementation of the SS’s Greater Germanic idea in the Danish border region of South Jutland. Its focus is on how Danish and ethnic German (volksdeutsche) national socialists, organised in their respective Nazi parties, dealt with the SS’s crusade on behalf of a supranational racial vision. The study traces why the two groups reacted so negatively to the SS’s ideology - despite the SS’s power, despite the Greater Germanic promise of high racial prestige, and despite shared service in “Germanic” units of the Waffen-SS. The SS’s attempts to use a race-based ideology to overcome the disputes that divided South Jutland’s two Nazi parties ran aground on fundamentally nationalist identities. For most members of the German minority, the Greater Germanic ideology was a threat. The German minority hoped for border revision; to acknowledge Danes as racial equals would endanger their political goals. Nor were Danish Nazis more enthusiastic. To be sure, the SS’s vision did provide an ideological weapon in the fight against demands for border vision. But the potential imperialism of the Greater Germanic idea worried those who prized continued Danish sovereignty. After all, the first hope of the Danish Nazis was to rule an independent national-socialist Danish state. The study makes it clear, however, that the fate of the Greater Germanic idea cannot be understood simply in terms of Realpolitik. Rather, the conflicts between the SS and its collaboration partners must also be understood as a clash between racial and völkisch concepts of community. The SS's vision of a Greater Germanic Reich based on ideologies of race clashed with the German-minority and Danish national-socialist commitment to Volk-based nationalism. Despite their strong commitment to Nazi ideologies, both collaboration partners found the SS’s racial community “unimaginable”.

This thesis was written with the aim of studyingthe volksdeutsche minority in Danish Sleswick-Holsatia (dan.“Sønderjylland”). The author has been using theories from Robert Dahl (amongother prominent political scientists) regarding minority activities in amajority society to measure inclusion of this minority. The thesis is a casestudy on a macro-political level. The result of this study was that thevolksdeutsche minority is indeed well integrated in the contemporary Danishsociety albeit with a strong German identity. Politically, the volksdeutscheminority is represented by their party, the Schleswigsche Partei,which enjoys a good relation with the Danish administration and is representedin Copenhagen by a secretariat. The phenomenon ofhaving two ethno-cultural identities appears to be an elite phenomenon in thisregion but the author welcomes a sociological study regarding identities in Sleswick-Holsatiaas well as a study concerning the volksdeutsche minority´s economic statusin Denmark.