Writing the Burden of Family History: Descendant Narratives of World War II Perpetrators in Norway, 1980s–2020s

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive historical overview and analysis of Norwegian descendant literature written by children and grandchildren of World War II perpetrators—specifically Nazis, Waffen-SS front fighters and members of the fascist party Nasjonal Samling (NS)—from the 1980s to the 2020s. Based on an analysis of twenty works, it shows how these narratives articulate the emotional and social burden of family history and engage with an evolving national memory culture. The analysis identifies generational and temporal patterns, including a significant divergence within the second generation. Early publications (1980s) and later “NS children’s” accounts (2010s) foreground stigmatisation, bullying, exclusion and long-term repercussions, whereas self-reflective second- and third-generation works (2000s–2020s) increasingly portray internalised responses, such as inherited shame, guilt and emotional ambivalence. By tracing these developments, the analysis shows that descendant narratives both reflect and reshape existing frameworks of remembrance. Across periods and generations, the burden is marked by strong emotional responses and interwoven with national memory culture. These findings offer new insights into the emotional dimensions of Norway’s evolving memory of World War II, highlighting the interplay between personal, familial and collective memories.

1. Introduction1

The German occupation of Norway during World War II (WWII) presented the population with a range of moral and political choices. While many actively or passively resisted the occupation, others supported the regime in various ways. Although the dividing lines were not always clear during the war, they were sharply drawn in its aftermath, particularly through the Norwegian postwar reckoning—the treason trials2—which convicted thousands of people of collaboration with the enemy. In the emerging postwar memory culture, a strong dichotomy developed between resistance heroes and traitors to the nation. The condemnation of the latter was harsh, even extending to their families. Many children of convicted traitors grew up under social sanctions such as bullying and exclusion, often with lasting emotional, psychological and relational consequences (Borge 2012). Although overt stigmatisation has gradually diminished, the burden of being the descendant of a perpetrator persists. This burden is articulated in autobiographical works3 written by descendants, which constitute the empirical material for this research.

In this study, I investigate how Norwegian children and grandchildren of WWII perpetrators portray the emotional and social burden of their descendant position in autobiographical publications from the 1980s to the 2020s. The analysis is based on a corpus of twenty published works, including novels, documentary literature and autobiographical accounts.4 Previous research has offered close readings and thematic analyses of some of these works, particularly by Unni Langås (2024a, 2024b) and Henrik Torjusen (2021, 2023), who are also co-editors of the anthology Krigsforbrytere i dagens estetiske minnekultur (War criminals in today’s aesthetic memory culture), published in 2024 (Langås and Torjusen 2024). These contributions reflect a growing interest in the cultural memory of perpetrators and descendant perspectives in the Nordic context. However, previous studies have not offered a comprehensive overview of Norwegian descendant narratives of WWII perpetrators by analysing them collectively to identify shared features, generational patterns and long-term developments in relation to national memory. This study aims to fill this gap.

I approach the descendant narratives through a historical lens, by situating them within their historical context and the evolving Norwegian memory culture. This perspective allows me to trace broader patterns and developments across time and generations and to examine how these texts both reflect and reshape dominant frameworks of remembrance. While Norwegian memory culture and historiography related to WWII have been extensively studied (e.g., Eriksen 1995; Grimnes 2009, 2020; Corell 2010; Stugu 2021), less is known about how descendants have navigated these frameworks—how they have sought to enter, challenge or reshape them through autobiographical writing. By analysing the emotional burden articulated in these narratives, I foreground an affective dimension of Norwegian WWII memory culture, which has received limited attention in previous research.

This study also relates to the broader international field of cultural memory and descendant perspectives, particularly to research on family memories of WWII perpetrators. In a German context, the project Tradierung von Geschichtsbewusstsein (Transmission of historical consciousness) and its influential publication Opa war kein Nazi (Grandpa was not a Nazi; Welzer et al. 2002) have shown how family memories of a Nazi past are transmitted and reframed across generations. These dynamics have also been examined in cultural and literary studies through genres such as Väterliteratur and Enkelliteratur/Familienroman.5 Erin McGlothlin’s (2006) Second-Generation Holocaust Literature adds a comparative dimension by analysing German, American and French texts written by both children of Holocaust survivors and those of Nazi perpetrators. While Norwegian descendant narratives have rarely been examined in this broader context, the historical overview and analysis presented in this article lay the foundation for future comparative and transnational studies of descendant literature across national contexts.

The analysis is grounded in cultural memory studies, especially the concept of memory culture, understood here as the collective practices, cultural products and narratives through which societies remember the past. Central to this framework is the interplay between public remembrance and private recollections. Following the legacy of Maurice Halbwachs, memory is understood as dynamic, shaped in social processes and in the interaction between past and present. The analysis also draws on more recent memory theory that highlights the intergenerational transmission of memory and trauma, including concepts such as haunting and implication (e.g., Schwab 2010; Rothberg 2019). By connecting these perspectives to the empirical material, this study offers theoretical insights into how personal, familial and collective memory intersect and how historical legacies are expressed across generations. It also demonstrates that memory culture functions as a discursive space that both shapes and is reshaped by cultural expressions.

2. Sources and Method

The empirical basis for this study was a corpus of twenty published works, all publicly available. I identified them through a broad search for autobiographical books by Norwegian descendants of individuals affiliated with Nazism, the Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling (NS) and/or the Waffen-SS explicitly written from the descendant position. The aim was to identify all works that meet these criteria and establish a comprehensive corpus for analysis. While I cannot guarantee that the corpus is exhaustive, it provides a solid basis for analysing key developments in the narratives of Norwegian descendants of WWII perpetrators. I have grouped the texts into five temporal–thematical categories according to shared features and generational patterns, which structures the analysis. Each category includes from one to six works. Of the twenty works, fifteen were published after 2000, reflecting a clear increase in second-generation texts since the 2000s, as well as the emergence of third-generation texts in the 2010s. The concentration of works in recent decades underscores the growing trend of literary engagement with family history. It is worth noting that the process of corpus building, as well as my analytical categorisations, is inherently performative, shaping both the research object and the knowledge produced (Bode 2022).

I closely read each text in the corpus, paying attention to two main aspects: first, how it constructs the descendant position and portrays its consequences—lived experiences, emotional responses and identity work; second, how these narratives relate, explicitly or implicitly, to national memory culture. While I do not present close readings in detail in this article, such readings served as a method for grouping the texts, thereby enabling the identification of overarching developments. I foreground the works that most clearly illustrate these developments while briefly mentioning or referencing others in notes. Although the broad scope of the corpus limits the depth of analysis for each text, it facilitates the identification of broader patterns and generational shifts. Through this approach, I show how the burden of family history is expressed through writing and how it evolves over time, shaped by generational shifts, family dynamics and changes in national memory culture.

3. Conceptual Clarifications

I use the term perpetrator as an overarching analytical category that includes ideologically committed Nazis, front fighters (Norwegians who volunteered for the Waffen-SS), members of the NS and individuals who were affiliated or associated with these groups.6 Given the wide variation in degrees of involvement, complicity, motivations and beliefs, this use of the term may appear as a generalisation. I do not aim to assess or discuss degrees of guilt, responsibility or criminal acts or to uphold dichotomous categories of heroes and perpetrators, as wartime realities were complex. Rather, the term perpetrator reflects how these individuals were branded as traitors to the nation in the legal and informal reckoning after the war and in the subsequent Norwegian historiography and memory culture. Descendants have, in various ways, related to and negotiated this categorisation. Furthermore, the term perpetrator is a central reference point in cultural memory studies on WWII, to which this research contributes.

My use of the term generation follows family relations. The second generation refers to the children of perpetrators, regardless of whether they were born before, during or after the war. The third generation refers to perpetrators’ grandchildren, who did not experience the war or the immediate postwar period and therefore view the past from a greater temporal and generational distance. My analytical focus is on how the position of being the descendant of a perpetrator is constituted in the texts, on the burdens it entails and on how descendants engage with their family histories through writing, rather than on how the perpetrators themselves are portrayed or to what extent the texts correspond to historical reality.

4. Historical Background and Norwegian WWII Memory Culture

Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany on 9 April 1940. After the government and king fled to London to establish a government in exile later that year, the fascist NS, which collaborated with the German occupiers, became the only legal political party. Around 55,000 Norwegians joined it during the war (Dahl 2018, p. 13). Among them were individuals who actively contributed to the party’s operations in support of Germany—some through violent acts—and a large group whose support was passive, limited to party membership (Dahl 2018, p. 30). The persecution of Norwegian Jews included arrests, systematic liquidation of assets and deportation to extermination camps. These actions were carried out with the active participation of NS officials, Norwegian police officers and other collaborators. Several thousand Norwegians, many of them NS members, also volunteered for the Waffen-SS, serving in divisions abroad that took part in the murders of civilians and prisoners of war (Seemann 2024, p. 7).

Norway’s postwar reckoning with collaborators was the most encompassing in Europe. Almost 93,000 cases were investigated—equivalent to 3.2 per cent of the population—and around 49,000 individuals were convicted. Most received prison sentences or fines, while thirty were sentenced to death, twenty-five of whom were actually executed (Seemann 2024, p. 5). The scale of the reckoning was largely due to the retroactive criminalisation of NS membership as “landssvik” (treason against the nation), making political support for the enemy punishable by law. Both active and passive members were prosecuted for treason, and collective guilt was attributed to the group. Convicted traitors were deprived of civil rights, and the trials’ binary logic of innocence and guilt gradually produced a group of social outcasts. Beyond the legal proceedings, informal reckonings also took place, resulting in the ostracism of former collaborators from their communities, workplaces or even families (Seemann 2024, pp. 3–7, 299). The legal basis for the reckoning has been debated since the early postwar period. Critics from various backgrounds have questioned both the scope and administration of the trials and whether they were “just”, “legal” and in line with constitutional principles. In recent years, a growing number of works have addressed another shortcoming in the trials, both in Norway and across Europe: the lack of attention to the victims of the Holocaust (Seemann 2024, pp. 5–8, 284, 294).

The trials’ demarcation between “patriotic” and “treacherous” citizens quickly found its way into Norwegian historiography and memory culture. A patriotic master narrative emerged in the immediate postwar era (Stugu 2021), framing the occupation as a collective moral struggle of heroic Norwegians against the NS and the Germans. This narrative was built on stark dichotomies—good and evil, heroes and traitors—offering a unifying national identity while excluding collaborators from the national “we”. It functioned mythologically as a moral framework that shaped collective identity and contributed to the nation-building of postwar Norway (Eriksen 1995; Stugu 2021). Resistance and heroism were prioritised over narratives of suffering and victimhood (regardless of who suffered), and there was little room for ambiguity, nuances or moral complexity. This interpretive framework remained hegemonic for decades, forming a stable and consensus-driven memory of occupied Norway (Stugu 2021, pp. 49, 170). Although alternative voices and narratives existed, they were largely marginalised.7

Gradually, especially from the 1970s and 1980s onwards, the patriotic master narrative was revised, expanded and challenged. Grey areas and moral complexities were more openly acknowledged, and the narrative became more nuanced and less marked by rigid dichotomies. This shift was particularly evident in academic historiography, with a new generation of historians criticising earlier accounts for being moralistic, value-driven and thematically narrow. Topics such as NS membership were brought into focus with a historicising approach, seeking to understand the NS as an ideological movement and interpret members’ motivations on their own terms rather than simply condemning them as social and moral outcasts (de Figueiredo 1995, pp. 358–60; Stugu 2021, pp. 80–81). In broader memory culture, however, the patriotic narrative continued to dominate popular culture, commemorations and political rhetoric (Stugu 2021, p. 75). Some exceptions occurred, such as the 1980s television series I solkorsets tegn (In the sign of the sun cross),8 which, through interviews of former NS members and their families, offered a more empathetic portrayal of them—though not without controversy (Grimnes 2009, p. 482). Overall, the moral compass of the patriotic master narrative continued to shape wartime interpretations in both historiography and broader memory culture (Stugu 2021, pp. 42, 58–63; Grimnes 2009, p. 481).

From the 1990s onwards, the memory culture of WWII has become increasingly pluralistic and nuanced. More groups and perspectives have gained visibility, accompanied by a more self-critical examination of the occupation and the related national narratives. Central to this development is what Grimnes (2020) identifies as a moral turn in the historiography of the occupation years, marked by increased attention to all kinds of victims, especially the Jewish population, and to the treatment they received in the postwar period. Holocaust remembrance has taken a central role in this evolving memory culture, and victimhood itself has acquired greater symbolic status (Grimnes 2020, pp. 281–83). These developments reflect broader international trends in which the Holocaust, human rights violations, and civilian suffering have become key reference points in the memory of WWII. As Ola Svein Stugu (2021, pp. 171–77) notes, this shift is closely linked to a growing transnational awareness of historical injustice and the use of WWII memory in shaping shared European values.

In this context, renewed attention has also been paid to perpetrators, both in Norway and internationally. Historiography and cultural representations have adopted more empathetic and nuanced approaches, seeking to understand individual motivations and experiences without legitimising NS ideology. Claudia Lenz (2007, p. 27) has shown that, while maintaining the fundamental belief that it was wrong to support Nazism or the German side, a number of individuals from postwar generations hold the view that NS members and front fighters were branded as traitors too harshly and for too long. This suggests that more empathetic and critical views on the postwar treatment of NS members can coexist with a moral rejection of the ideology they supported—a development that reflects the increasingly nuanced memory culture. Stugu (2021, pp. 76, 83–88) underscores that apologetic narratives from the “losing” side have never found a place in the master narrative, including its revised form. Instead, former NS members, front fighters and their sympathisers have developed alternative versions of the past that remain incompatible with the dominant narrative embraced by most Norwegians. A tension thus persists between acknowledging and understanding the perpetrators and maintaining a clear moral stance (Grimnes 2009, p. 482). The increased focus on the Holocaust and Norwegian complicity in the deportations has contributed to upholding clear moral boundaries in public memory, making it more difficult to relativise or downplay the role of the NS in the occupation and its legacy (Stugu 2021, pp. 105–106). These changing dynamics in national memory culture provide an essential backdrop for the descendant narratives analysed below, which engage with, reinforce and at times challenge the dominant frameworks of remembrance.

5. Establishing the Narrative of Suffering and Exclusion: Early Second-Generation Texts (1980s)

In Norway, the earliest autobiographical publications by descendants related to the “wrong” side appeared in the 1980s, with Roar Baglemo’s (1982) Rinnans sønn (Rinnan’s son) and Jens Erik Normann’s (1987) Rittmesterens testamente (The rider’s will).9 Both authors were born before the war—in 1937 and 1933, respectively. Their narratives stem from very different family situations. Baglemo’s father was the high-profile Norwegian Nazi Henry Rinnan, an intelligence agent, informant, torturer and leader of the group Sonderabteilung Lola, which collaborated closely with the Gestapo. Rinnan was executed after the war for the murder of thirteen people, among other crimes (Ystgaard et al. 2025). Baglemo’s book is about his experience of being Rinnan’s son.

Normann’s father, on the other hand, initially served on the “right” side as a pilot and officer. Later in the war, however, he was suspected of having ties to the NS and its leader, Vidkun Quisling, which led to him being branded a traitor. In 1949, he was dismissed in disgrace for having applied for NS membership in 1940. After a long struggle with bureaucratic and legal authorities, he had his case overturned in 1975, which formally cleared him. By that time, he and his family had lived as “traitors” for over three decades (Normann 1987; Brakestad 2025). Normann’s book is about his father’s struggle for an “honourable legacy”10 and about his own childhood and later life, shaped by the consequences of being seen as the child of a traitor.

Despite the very different positions of their fathers, Baglemo’s and Normann’s narratives share many similarities in terms of how they construct and convey the burden of their descendant position. Both texts can be characterised as victim narratives, grounded in a sense of victimhood and perceived injustice, as the authors consistently highlight their suffering and the cruel treatment they received from others.11 Through chronological narratives that begin in their childhood and extend into their present in the 1980s, Baglemo and Normann portray lives shaped by bullying, exclusion and judgement. Growing up, they were subjected to repeated insults and ostracism from both adults and other children, and at times even physical assault. Both authors use the word “hell”12 to describe their postwar years (Baglemo 1982, p. 28; Normann 1987, p. 8). Their accounts centre on the punishment they suffered solely for being the children of perpetrators or, as Normann bitterly puts it, for being “a fucking Nazi child” (Normann 1987, p. 150).13

The burden of their descendant positions began with the harsh treatment they received, leading to long-term psychological consequences. Baglemo struggled with anxiety and restlessness throughout his life. He became withdrawn and felt unable to trust other people. He recounts repeated urges to end his suffering and recounts several suicide attempts (Baglemo 1982, pp. 29, 102, 116, 137). Normann describes his life as being in an endless war (Normann 1987, p. 253). He developed deep feelings of hatred towards society, convinced that the painful experiences of his childhood had contributed to “closing his mind” (Normann 1987, p. 13).14

A further aspect of the descendant burden in both texts concerns the experience of exclusion from the national community. Normann (1987, p. 165), for instance, describes how he, as a twelve-year-old, went out in the street on the day of Norway’s liberation holding a Norwegian flag to celebrate, only to be threatened with beating because he was the child of a traitor. He uses the phrase “when the peace broke out”15 to emphasise that the liberation, rather than bringing freedom, exacerbated the difficulties faced by people on the “wrong” side and their families (pp. 168–69). Baglemo (1982, p. 9) similarly describes how his life was completely changed after the war, as he was “pushed aside and excluded from society”.16

The authors’ experiences of bullying, stigmatisation and exclusion gave rise to strong emotional responses, particularly bitterness, anger and hatred towards society, the “right” side and the individuals who had offended and hurt them.17 Both react most strongly to the injustice of having to bear the consequences of other people’s actions or opinions. These feelings are both described retrospectively and reflected in the language and tone of the texts, reinforcing the affective intensity of their narratives. Baglemo’s (1982) tone generally conveys bitterness and despair, repeatedly expressed through rhetorical questions such as “Why should a child suffer for what his father had done?” (p. 22) and “Could the people of Norway be so thoughtless that they let me suffer for what my father had done?” (p. 24).18 He explicitly states that he began to hate the people who had made him into the wreck he had become (p. 88). Normann (1987) expresses himself with an angrier and more accusatory tone, revealing violent fantasies about revenge, such as “In my hallucinations, I was a tall, grown man stabbing everyone who had ever called me a fucking Nazi child—and they were not few” (p. 199).19 Thus, for both authors, the burden of being a perpetrator descendant entails not only social and psychological but also deeply emotional consequences. Neither of them implies that they feel guilty; rather, guilt—which they themselves reject—has been imposed on them by others.

Both Baglemo (1982) and Normann (1987) wrote from a position of exclusion from the national community in the postwar period. When their books were published in the 1980s, narratives about the difficulties experienced by the children of traitors and war criminals were not a visible part of the established memory culture or public discourse. These children were not recognised as a distinct group with victim status. Both publications therefore positioned themselves outside the dominant postwar memory culture, which was still largely characterised by national–patriotic stories about resistance and heroism. At the same time, the authors challenged this memory culture by highlighting their experiences of suffering and exclusion. In Normann’s case, this is an explicit, purposeful challenge, as he directly opposes the patriotic master narrative.20

6. The Formation of a Collective Identity Among Second-Generation “NS Children” (1990s)

The 1990s witnessed increased public attention to the suffering of children of NS members, as well as other groups who had experienced the burdens of the postwar period without public recognition. A key contribution in this context was Eystein Eggen’s (1993) autobiography Gutten fra Gimle: Et NS-barns beretning (The boy from Gimle: An NS child’s account), which received considerable media coverage. Born in 1944, Eggen was a second-generation descendant of two perpetrator parents. His mother was active in the NS, while his father served in the Waffen-SS.21 However, he writes from the position of an “NS child” shaped by his upbringing in a strongly NS-affiliated environment.22

For Eggen (1993), the personal burden of being the descendant of perpetrators consisted of instability, a disrupted sense of belonging and fractured family relationships. As a child, around the age of six years, he felt constantly on alert, as if the war were ongoing, caught between his parents and society (pp. 41–43). His school years were marked not by social exclusion or bullying but by emotional distance from others and a sense of alienation (pp. 96–97). He felt disconnected from “humanity”23 and the postwar community of “good” Norwegians (pp. 96, 130). He also describes how the war and its aftermath had affected his parents and, in turn, his relationship with them. His mother, whom he deeply loved, became mentally ill and emotionally unavailable, while his father was often absent and struggled with alcoholism and aggression (pp. 34–41, 45–50). Unlike the highly emotional narratives of Baglemo and Normann from the 1980s, Eggen recounts his personal experiences in a relatively sober and reflective tone. He describes emotions and difficult experiences without adopting a clear victim role or a bitter, accusatory tone.

Gutten fra Gimle also includes collective experiences of NS children, framing the descendant position not only as personal but also as socially and historically shared. The book is dedicated to NS children, and Eggen consistently uses “we” and “us” to describe their experiences. He describes the exclusion, distance, emptiness, alienation, fear and lack of trust in society experienced by NS children while the rest of Norwegian society moved forward in unity and prosperity (Eggen 1993, pp. 52–53, 120). He also highlights the feeling of shame as a collective burden affecting their sense of identity and historical orientation (pp. 60, 88, 120). At the same time, he underlines that physical bullying was exceptional in the experiences of the hundred or so NS children he knew (p. 97). Unlike Baglemo (1982) and Normann (1987), Eggen frames the descendant position less through direct mistreatment and more through a lasting sense of exclusion from the national community, shaped by the broader cultural climate of the postwar period.

Eggen’s (1993) book both reflected and contributed to a shift in Norwegian WWII memory culture, with an increased focus on the children of NS members and the consequences they faced after the war. Around the time of its publication, researchers began to document these consequences, which included bullying, social exclusion, long-term psychological and emotional challenges, health issues and difficult family relationships (e.g., Larsen 1995; Eik and Larsen 1999; Borge 2002). A sense of community with other NS children was highlighted as important for their coping, which we also see in Gutten fra Gimle (Larsen 1995 p. 237). In the 1990s, two nationwide organisations24 were formed by NS children to bring them together for dialogue and reflection on how the past had affected them and to claim compensation or demand apologies from Norwegian officials for the hardships they had suffered (Dahl 2006, p. 163).

The increased public and scholarly focus on NS children must also be understood in light of broader cultural and historiographical developments. This includes a moral turn that emphasised the victim experiences of previously overlooked groups, which increasingly demanded recognition and redress. Since the 1970s, even though the patriotic master narrative remained influential, the portrayals of WWII in Norway had become increasingly nuanced, with more complexity and ambiguity, and more open to understanding than condemnation. This enabled more serious engagement with perpetrators, not merely as outcasts but as individuals whose actions and beliefs could be historically contextualised. Gutten fra Gimle was thus published at a time characterised by greater openness to alternative narratives. The book placed itself outside the patriotic master narrative, although it did not directly oppose it. Rather, it represented a form of inclusion or an expansion of memory culture that permitted alternative stories. Written as a testimony rather than a revisionist or accusatory account, it helped pave the way for the acknowledegment of NS children’s experiences and made it easier for other NS children to come forward with their own stories (Dahl et al. 1995, p. 305).

7. Later Second-Generation Texts: Critical and Self-Reflective Literary Approaches to Family History (2000s–2010s)

From the 2000s onwards, writers from the second generation began to explore their perpetrator family histories in more self-reflective and historically grounded ways. Rather than being primarily personal testimonies, these texts combined the authors’ own stories with their parents’, drawing on historical narratives, familial and public archives, and personal and transmitted family memories.25 This shift in the second generation is most prominently represented by Bjørn Westlie’s (2008) Fars krig ([My] Father’s war) and Wencke Mühleisen’s (2015) Kanskje det fortsatt finnes en åpen plass i verden (Maybe there is still an open place in the world).26 These authors were born in 1949 and 1953, respectively. Westlie’s father was an NS member who fought in the Waffen-SS, while Mühleisen’s Slovenian father was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. Both fathers are portrayed as ideologically convinced Nazis who continued to express racist attitudes into old age.

Both Westlie (2008) and Mühleisen (2015) recount the emotional challenges they faced as adults when they reached a point at which they felt they could no longer avoid dealing with their fathers’ wartime pasts. Although their fathers’ affiliations with Nazism were not entirely unknown, the topic had been marked by silence and fragmentary knowledge. In both cases, this was part of strained father–child relationships. The uncertainty of not knowing exactly what their fathers had done during the war created a strong need to find out and understand. The two authors tried to find answers through various forms of investigation and narrative strategies. This process, which they describe as emotional and difficult, involved confronting their fathers’ possible participation in Nazi war crimes. While they clearly distance themselves from the ideology and actions, they also express a sense of personal implication. Westlie (2008, p. 216) writes, “I felt complicit in something I couldn’t quite explain.”27 In Mühleisen’s (2015, p. 49) experience, the war had come to feel like a physical lump that had moved inside her. These reflections resonate with Michael Rothberg’s (2019) concept of genealogical implication: familial ties to historical violence give rise to affective involvement in a past that one did not experience (pp. 79–81). They also align with Gabriele Schwab’s (2004, 2010) concept of haunting legacies: a traumatic inheritance shaped by silence and the unconscious transmission of violent histories through generations. The emotional burden described by Westlie and Mühleisen is not a reaction to external stigma but emerges from a personal process of confronting a difficult family history.

A recurring theme in the critical and self-reflective second-generation literature is the recognition of a shared history. In various ways, the authors suggest that their fathers’ stories are inseparable from their own. As Westlie (2008, p. 217) explicitly states, “My father’s history has also become mine.”28 This recognition, combined with the need for information and understanding, illustrates how family narratives—or their absence—affect the way in which descendants relate to their own identities (McNay 2009, pp. 1178–79). By extension, Westlie and Mühleisen are concerned with questions of resemblance and inheritance. They identify traits and dispositions they share with their fathers despite having taken politically opposite paths (Westlie 2008, pp. 15, 198–99; Mühleisen 2015, pp. 16, 18, 83, 119). This theme is further discussed by Langås (2024a), who shows that descendants from different generations express fear of having inherited not only physical and personality traits from their perpetrator ancestors but also a predisposition towards extremism. Through their critical and self-reflective narratives, Westlie and Mühleisen confront not only their fathers’ pasts but also their own positions and identities in relation to them.

This group of second-generation literature from the 2000s and 2010s is characterised by an internalisation of the burden of being a perpetrator descendant. The focus has shifted from external stigmatisation and collective identity to personal processing and traumatic inheritance. These are literary texts that intertwine historical research with personal narratives. For Westlie (2008) and Mühleisen (2015), this approach was likely shaped by their academic backgrounds in history and media/gender studies. Their narratives reveal a critical engagement with their sources and a reflective awareness of their position as descendants, including how they approach and handle their family histories. During this period, victims and Holocaust memory gained increased importance in both Norwegian and international memory culture, and the authors actively relate to this context as they examine the roles their fathers played.29 In the absence of a communicative memory during their upbringing, they are left to investigate and reconstruct the past themselves as adults with a critical view and with national collective memory as a backdrop. They seek to understand their fathers’ histories and choices while distancing themselves from and condemning their actions, beliefs, and the system they served.

8. Reframing the Narrative of Suffering and Exclusion: Oppositional Memory and Family Loyalty in Later NS Children’s Texts (2010s)

During the 2010s, a handful of books were published by people who grew up as NS children. These texts share more thematic and narrative similarities with the early second-generation texts of the 1980s and 1990s than with the self-reflective and critically positioned narratives represented by Westlie (2008) and Mühleisen (2015). The five books are Landsforræder? (Traitor?) by Einar Lang-Ree (2010); Det gamle loftet (The old attic) and Hva står det i brevet? (What does the letter say?) by Karin Margareth Woll (2010, 2012); 12 brev (12 letters) by Anne Marie Waage and Kari Mathilde Bakke (2016); and Det sunkne land (The sunken land) by Inger Cecilie Stridsklev (2019). All of these authors were born before, during or shortly after the war—in 1928, 1934, 1938, 1941 and 1948. This means that they were between 71 and 82 years old when their books were published and that there is a significant time gap between the childhood experiences they describe and the time of publication. They are mainly based on the authors’ personal experiences, although several of them supplement their accounts with documents, letters and archival material concerning their families.

In all five books, the authors construct a clear victim narrative rooted in notions of victimhood and perceived injustice, echoing Baglemo’s and Normann’s 1980s texts. They recount how the legal and informal reckoning after the war affected their childhoods and, to some extent, their adult lives. Central to these narratives are experiences of bullying, stigmatisation, ostracism and a persistent feeling of being different. Lang-Ree (2010, p. 168), for instance, states that he “suffered from the family’s dishonour in the eyes of those on the ‘right’ side”.30 For several authors, these experiences had long-term psychological consequences, such as anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. The accounts of Woll and the sisters Waage and Bakke place considerable emphasis on the impact of their parents’ imprisonment, which led to financial difficulties for their families and emotional insecurity for them as children desperately longing for their parents. Like Eggen (1993), several authors express a sense of solidarity and community with other NS children, constructing a collective “we”. Their burden primarily stems from external factors: harsh treatment from others and disruption of family life following the postwar reckoning.

In addition to the personal consequences of growing up as NS children, Lang-Ree (2010), Woll (2010, 2012) and especially Stridsklev (2019) express an emotional burden rooted in a deep sense of injustice—not only to themselves but also to their parents, relatives, other NS members and NS children. This perceived injustice is closely tied to the legal reckoning, which they describe as unjust and financially, socially and psychologically damaging to the convicted and their families. They take a defensive stance, showing solidarity with their parents, whom they portray as honourable, well-meaning and punished unfairly, while downplaying NS ideology and its support for Nazi Germany. All three authors express bitterness and anger towards not only the legal and social condemnation but also historians and authorities, accusing them of having continuously demonised NS members and suppressed alternatives to the patriotic narrative. Their narratives also invert the wartime moral dichotomy, criticising the resistance movement and “good” Norwegians, while expressing frustration and anger over being excluded from dominant historiography and memory culture. This perceived marginalisation is central to Stridsklev’s (2019) account, which she illustrates with a metaphor from H. C. Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes: “I scream, ‘The emperor has no clothes on,’ but people cover my mouth so that I almost suffocate” (p. 199).31 Through this metaphor, she conveys her experience of being silenced when attempting to voice what she perceives as historical truth.

These narratives, most prominently Stridsklev’s (2019), reflect a form of oppositional memory. The authors challenge dominant national memory culture and reframe their NS parents’ roles not as implicit in Nazism but as morally upright individuals who were victims of postwar injustice. This can be read as an expression of family loyalty shaped by emotional bonds and the need to legitimise their parents’ beliefs and actions and to identify with them. Studies on intergenerational memory transmission (e.g., Welzer et al. 2002; Welzer 2010; Lenz 2007; Freund 2009) have shown that such reframing often serves as a strategy for managing the descendant position when family narratives conflict with collective national memory.

A consequence of this reframing can be displacement and relativisation of the victim role. By diverting attention away from the victims of Nazi ideology and constructing victim narratives about themselves and their parents, the authors tend to shift the focus from historical atrocities to familial suffering. This dynamic has been problematised in research on Väterliteratur, a genre of German descendants’ literature. Scholars have noted that the focus on personal suffering, generational conflicts and inherited guilt in this literature often overshadows reflections on the Jews and other Holocaust victims (e.g., Ganeva 2007, p. 155; Pettitt 2018, pp. 296–97).

Lang-Ree’s (2010), Woll’s (2010, 2012), Anne Marie Waage and Kari Mathilde Bakke’s (2016), and Stridsklev’s (2019) books positioned themselves outside the dominant memory culture of the war in the 2010s. They were published by either small or self-owned presses, which suggests that they probably did not reach a wide audience. By that time, memory culture had been increasingly nuanced, including more complex portrayals of NS members and perpetrators, as well as critical perspectives on the patriotic master narrative. These books resonated with these tendencies to a certain extent but went much further, constructing oppositional narratives through confrontational and emotionally charged rhetoric. They continued the tradition established by Baglemo and Normann in the 1980s, marked by bitterness towards broader society and “good Norwegians” and a strong emphasis on personal and familial suffering. While the past was met with varying degrees of silence in the authors’ families, their narratives appear to have been shaped by communicative memory networks, such as NS children’s associations founded in the 1990s, and texts shared among former NS members and their descendants. Recurring arguments and phrases like “when the peace broke out” used by Stridsklev (2019), Lang-Ree (2010), Eggen (1993) and Normann (1987) indicate a common discursive framework incompatible with the master narrative. The authors’ demands for recognition, most evident in Stridsklev’s text, resonate with broader societal and political debates from the 2000s to the present, in which numerous voices have called for official apologies from state authorities for the discrimination and social stigmatisation suffered by NS children (see, e.g., Isaksen and Vaglum 2025).

9. Third-Generation Literature: Navigating Emotional Ambivalence and Identity Through Investigation of Family History (2010–2020s)

In the 2010s, during which oppositional and victim-oriented narratives were published by NS children and the critical and self-reflective second-generation literature continued to develop, a new generation of writers emerged. Third-generation descendants began to explore their grandparents’ perpetrator pasts from a greater temporal and generational distance but with no lower emotional intensity. These authors are academics, journalists, historians or established writers, and their works range from documentary prose to novels.32 They include Hva har du med Hitler å gjøre, pappa? (What do you have to do with Hitler, Dad?) by Ketil Kern (2013), Morfar Hitler og jeg (Grandpa, Hitler and me) by Ida Jackson (2014), Farfars skrin (Grandpa’s shrine) by Tone B. Bergflødt (2020),33 Skåla: Mitt landssvik—en sorgprosess (The bowl: My treason—a grief process) by Heming Gujord (2022), Om stein og jord (About stone and soil) by Peter Strasseger (2022) and Eilif og Oline (Eilif and Oline) by Mona Ringvej (2023).34 The grandparents portrayed in these books range from ideologically convinced Nazis and front fighters to NS members with varying degrees of involvement. This literature can be seen as a continuation of the critical and self-reflective approaches that started with Westlie (2008), but it is also characterised by new thematic and affective dimensions.

A central aspect of third-generation literature is the role of secrecy and silence surrounding the family’s perpetrator past—both as a formative condition and as an inheritance. The authors seek to break this silence, which itself has been a burden, described by Kern (2013, p. 164) as “absolute and suffocating”.35 The family’s silence is portrayed as originating in shame, guilt and pain and as contributing to the persistent haunting presence of these emotions across generations. It also intensifies the shock of discovering the grandparents’ pasts, especially for those who had close and loving relationships to them, such as Jackson (2014), Bergflødt (2020) and Gujord (2022). For these authors, the revelation of the perpetrators’ past blurred and destabilised cherished childhood memories. Jackson (2014, p. 13) states that learning about her grandfather’s SS past led to her “worldview falling apart”.36

Third-generation authors describe strong emotional and physical reactions when discovering and confronting their families’ perpetrator pasts: feelings of sorrow, pain, shame and guilt and bodily responses such as trembling, dizziness, nausea, crying and breakdowns. These reactions reflect both internalisation and embodiment of the descendant burden. They can also be seen as a way of stressing moral distance from the past they are uncovering, positioning themselves in clear opposition to their ancestors’ actions. A recurring theme is emotional ambivalence expressed as a tension between familial bonds, empathy and emotional proximity on the one hand and moral distance and condemnation of past actions on the other. This is particularly evident in Jackson (2014), Bergflødt (2020) and Gujord (2022), who attempt to reconcile affectionate memories of kind and loving grandparents with the knowledge of their involvement in the NS and Nazism and with the perpetrator figure they represent in collective memory. Jackson (2014) articulates the difficulty of holding together her grandfather’s image as an SS soldier and a beloved family member, while Gujord (2022, p. 129) asks, “I remember my grandfather with love. Should that fill me with a guilty conscience?”37 The ambivalence in this literature also extends to the process of uncovering the past itself, driven by curiosity and a deep need to understand, but is at the same time marked by pain, fear and an inner resistance to knowing. Many of the authors portray this process as emotionally challenging but necessary.

The expressions of implication, haunting and shared history found in the second-generation works of Westlie and Mühleisen are also present in third-generation literature. This includes reflections on similarities and traits inherited from perpetrator family members, as highlighted by Langås (2024a). Jackson (2014, pp. 93–95) explores this through a self-reflective comparison with her grandfather, identifying shared tendencies toward extremism despite their opposing ideological views. Some authors expand these themes by also emphasising bodily and epigenetic inheritance. Kern and Bergflødt argue that their parents’ childhood traumas and silence—as children of perpetrators—have been imprinted on their own nervous systems, manifesting as physical symptoms and illness. Bergflødt (2020, p. 183) writes, “It felt as if my own, my grandfather’s and my father’s pain and shame had taken residence in my body.”38 They also highlight the consequences for their parents. Kern (2013, p. 184) links his father’s cancer to his family history: “Nazism led to shame, shame led to silence, silence led to illness and death.”39 Bergflødt (2020) similarly connects her father’s Parkinson’s disease to repressed memories. Both authors describe seeking therapy and using writing to confront the inherited shame and silence and to break the transgenerational and embodied transmission of trauma.

Like Westlie (2008) and Mühleisen (2015), third-generation authors turn an internalised burden into public confrontation and processing. They openly engage with their family histories, using various sources, investigative strategies and imaginative and empathetic approaches to get as close to the subject as possible. This entails actively seeking and exposing the “worst” aspects of the perpetrators’ past, including their roles in the Holocaust—through either direct involvement or systemic complicity. Building on this, many of the narratives shed light on the fate and experiences of Holocaust victims and other victims of Nazism. By giving these experiences a significant place in their narratives, the authors confront their family histories within the moral landscape of WWII memory culture. They aim to understand their family members but not to defend or excuse them—an approach that contrasts with second-generation NS children’s narratives from the same decade.40 Jackson (2014) explicitly criticises the tendency among descendants to defend or excuse their family members’ actions, distancing herself from the approach to family history represented in those texts.

Unlike NS children’s narratives of the 2010s, the self-reflective second- and third-generation literature has been published by larger publishers and has received more media attention and literary acclaim. By critically engaging with their family histories and clearly distancing themselves from Nazi ideology—while giving a place to its victims—these writers position themselves within a broader national memory culture and reach a wider audience. Nevertheless, a burden linked to the tension between personal and collective memory remains. This burden is expressed through both the emotional ambivalence discussed earlier and a sense of displacement from national belonging. Jackson (2014), for instance, describes growing up in a WWII memory culture dominated by heroic narratives and follows with: “To acknowledge that my grandfather was not part of the heroic narrative of the war felt like signing out of Norway” (p. 15).41 These authors grew up with the war as a national myth—more nuanced and diverse than before yet still largely framed as a moral narrative. Discovering that their families did not fit this narrative destabilised their sense of national belonging. Thus, despite the temporal and generational distance from the war, having one’s family on the “wrong” side remains difficult, tied to the moral weight of the war and the central place of the Holocaust in memory culture. The legacy and consequences of family history may be less direct and visible in the lives of grandchildren than for previous generations but are still experienced as a burden—emotional, and for some, physical—marked by silence, difficult emotions, ambivalence and identity work.

10. Conclusions

This analysis of Norwegian descendant narratives of WWII perpetrators from the 1980s to the 2020s reveals both temporal and generational shifts in the way in which the burden of family history is articulated. Second-generation texts from the 1980s and 2010s emphasise stigmatisation, exclusion and long-term repercussions; the 1990s introduce a more collective framing of exclusion, shame and identity; and self-reflective second- and third-generation works from the 2000s onwards increasingly portray difficult emotions, ambivalence, haunting and embodied responses, reflecting an internalisation of the burden. Across groups, the burden is marked by strong emotional expressions, although their form and direction vary. These shifts are closely intertwined with transformations in Norwegian memory culture and are reflected both in how the texts relate to the evolving master narrative and in how the authors position themselves in relation to it.

A defining feature of this literature is its emotional intensity, with pain, guilt, shame, bitterness and anger expressed across generations. In the earliest second-generation texts from the 1980s (Baglemo and Normann), guilt is portrayed as something imposed by others, an unjust collective burden that the authors reject. Their emotional responses are marked by bitterness and anger directed outwards—towards society and the “good” Norwegians who condemned and excluded them. This externalised bitterness is echoed in NS children’s narratives from the 2010s, in which shame and solidary guilt are combined with a deep feeling of injustice and marginalisation, often accompanied by demands for recognition. In contrast, the self-reflective second- and third-generation literature of the 2000s onwards turns these emotions inwards. Guilt and shame are not imposed by others but inherited—emerging from silence, fragmented knowledge and emotional transmission within families and as a response to a moralistic memory culture. The anger and pain are no longer directed at society but at the crimes of the war itself and family members who were complicit in them. This shift suggests that generational distance changes but does not lessen the burden. The further removed descendants are from the events, the more they seem to internalise the burden, often experiencing it as a haunting legacy that shapes their emotional lives and identities.

Communicative and familial memory, as well as family loyalty, seem to play a central role in the way in which descendants relate to their inherited past and descendant position. This is particularly evident in the divergence observed in second-generation narratives. While NS children writing in the 2010s often adopt defensive and victim-oriented positions, emphasising their own and their families’ suffering, Westlie (2008) and Mühleisen (2015) take a more critical and historically informed approach, in line with the dominant memory culture of the 2000s onwards. One factor that may help explain this divergence is the author’s year of birth: most NS children were born before or during the war and experienced direct postwar exclusion and bullying, whereas Westlie and Mühleisen, born around 1950, grew up with some temporal distance and strained relationships with their fathers, which may have enabled more reflective engagement. Another relevant factor is NS children’s associations founded in the 1990s and discursive frameworks that may have shaped their narratives under the influence of familial perspectives and the memory frameworks of their parents’ generation. A comparison between NS children and third-generation narratives reveals a difference in the way in which family loyalty and affection manifest: as defence and justification among the former and as emotional ambivalence and identity work among the latter. More broadly, the differences between these groups reflect whether the trauma and pain are rooted in the postwar reckoning through external stigmatisation, exclusion and fractured family life or in the war itself through inherited guilt, implication and haunting.

Tensions between personal, familial and collective memory are central to the way in which descendants experience and negotiate their position. The degree to which they feel a sense of belonging to the national community and memory culture influences the way they process their family histories and their position in relation to them. Writers like Normann (1987) and Stridsklev (2019) openly oppose the dominant national narrative and express frustration at the silencing of their own versions of the past. Others—such as Jackson (2014), who writes from a third-generation perspective—describe the emotional difficulty of engaging with their family histories from within the national narrative. They adopt its moral framework and experience pain and ambivalence because their family histories represent the side associated with betrayal, violence and war crimes. Whether descendants embrace or reject the national memory culture, having a family history on the “wrong” side remains a difficult experience. While these narratives cannot represent descendant experiences in general, they offer unique insight into the emotional and moral complexities of perpetrator legacies. These texts also provide insight into the cultural memory shaped and negotiated through them.