The Good, the Bad and the Collaborators: Swedish World War II Guilt Redefined in Twenty-First-Century Crime Fiction?

Abstract

In recent decades, it has become public knowledge among the post-war generations that Sweden was not as neutral during World War II as had been previously claimed.1 This belated realization has been dealt with in different ways in the Swedish public arena, to which crime fiction is an important contributor. Swedish crime fiction has a long tradition of conveying social criticism, and continuously scrutinizes topical issues. It is currently the most popular fiction genre in Sweden, and attracts a large Swedish (and international) readership.2 Accordingly, crime fiction is an important voice in the Swedish public arena. One of the increasingly popular themes in Swedish crime fiction has concerned the memory of Sweden’s role during World War II. Through these late twentieth and early twenty-first century fictional depictions, Swedish crime writers have taken part in reshaping Swedish collective, or social, World War II memory into a history that lets Swedes feel better about themselves and their past. In this chapter, Swedish crime fiction from the first decade of the twenty-first century will be examined in order to identify how this is done.KeywordsPolice OfficerNazi RegimeRacial HygieneMurder VictimNazi IdeologyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.