PhD Student Søren Werther Kjær Rasmussen
2022 – 2025
Velux Foundation
Project description
This PhD is part of the project The Outcast, the Unwelcome and the Admired, which investigates how the handling of outcast collaborators, unwelcome German refugees, and admired resistance fighters became a catalyst for the development of welfare and democracy in post-war Denmark. The project focuses on how the authorities prepared 60,000 refugee children for life in a democratic Germany, how Danish SS and HIPO members were subject to denazification efforts, and to what extent young resistance fighters were helped to reintegrate into civilian life in peacetime. Through empirically grounded research and wide-ranging dissemination, the project offers historical perspectives on contemporary issues such as deradicalisation and citizenship.
This PhD project centres on the admired resistance fighters. Its aim is to describe and analyse the social and economic support provided to members of the Danish resistance between 1941 and 2025, with particular focus on the post-liberation period. The study is structured around two main themes:
The first is an empirical, social-historical analysis of the specific support measures implemented. How many former resistance fighters received assistance? What types of support were offered? What were the criteria for receiving help, and what needs did the applicants present?
The second theme examines the ideological and political background of this support. Who were the driving political forces behind the initiatives? Was the support state-led and regulated, or initiated by non-governmental actors? Was it a tool for advancing the political ambitions of the resistance movement in the post-war era—or, conversely, a means of exercising social control over certain segments of the resistance? The study also considers how the social effort influenced political debate, and how political agendas, in turn, shaped the implementation of support schemes.
Output
Efter Sachsenhausen: Peder Damsgaard og hjælpen til besættelsestidens ofre (After Sachsenhausen: Peder Damsgaard and the Aid to Victims of the Occupation)
Fynske Årbøger (Funen Yearbook), 2025 (to be published December 2025), 20 pages
Vi sætter stearinlys i vinduerne den 4. maj, men få kender historien bag traditionen (We Place Candles in the Windows on 4 May, but Few Know the Story Behind the Tradition)
Information (05/05–24), 2024
Read the article here.
Når krigen er slut
(When the War Is Over)
Co-author: Henrik Lundtofte, 2024
Read the article here.
I nationens tjeneste? Gesandt Kruse i Stockholm under krigen (In the Service of the Nation? Envoy Kruse in Stockholm During the War)
Co-author: Jacob Vrist Nielsen, 2024
Read the article here.