Nazifantasier. Anden Verdenskrigs forbrydere i nyere dansk litteratur

Despite Denmark’s peripheral role in the Second World War, this historical period occupies a significant place in Danish historiography as well as in popular history and in the arts. Certain contemporary Danish novelists have set out to go against the Danish mainstream narratives centered around the victims of Nazi atrocities or resistance heroes, and instead focus on Nazi war criminals and other morally ambiguous figures. It is a type of novel defined in this chapter as Nazi fantasy. The chapter examines two examples of Nazi fantasy, Simon Pasternak’s Dødszoner (2013) and Nils Schou’s Bordtennis i Auschwitz (2011). Both authors experiment with the potential of literature to probe the consciousness of Nazi war criminals, exploring aspects of psychology, emotional life, and moral stance. The chapter’s analyses are based on two overarching tensions in the two novels: first, the relationship between narrative history and cultural history, which simultaneously evokes recognition and alienation in the reader, and, second, the tension between monstrosity and normality in the characterization of the Nazi war criminal, which simultaneously calls for and denies reader identification.