AshehougAgency

My Father's War

Winner of the Brage Prize for non-fiction 2008

”My father and I were never close when I was a child, nor were we close in my youth. I never dared to approach him because I was afraid of touching on the ‘unmentionable’. There was something hidden in him that I did not want to know about. Already from my early teens I was aware that we could not discuss the war and Nazism. It was better to leave things unsaid.”

During the Second World War Petter Westlie was a nazi fighting for the Germans as an SS-soldier on the Eastern Front. When his son Bjørn was old enough to understand the significance ofPetter’s actions, he dissociated himself from his father. Years went by, and gradually Bjørn got the feeling that his father wanted him to know about his past. It turned out that Petter Westlie had recorded his story on tape for his son.

This is the story of an unusual relationship between a man and his father, and about a young Norwegian’s experiences as a soldier in the German attack on the Soviet Union. The author has critically examined all available sources in order to compare his father’s tale with historical facts. He has also travelled in his father’s footsteps in Ukraine, where the invasion forces Petter Westlie belonged to were guilty of murders of hundreds of thousands of jews.

Click here for a sample translation of MY FATHER'S WAR

Praise for MY FATHER'S WAR:

"... the best book written in Norwegian about the SS soldiers on the Eastern Front ... a book (Westlie) was cut out to write, a story transgressing the boundaries between private and universal dilemmas."
(Dagbladet)

"MY FATHER’S WAR is an unusual story of a father-son relationship. Bjørn Westlie examines his own father’s choice to become an SS-soldier on the Eastern front. The result is a different book about the war, following the consequences of the choices Westlie’s father made during the war up to our time.

The book’s mix of historical insight and personal perspective makes it a very good read as well as stimulating to reflection. In sober prose Westlie offers a direct and detailed depiction of his father’s actions. But the book avoids being private, thereby making the material interesting for many, perhaps also young people who haven’t grown up with all the stories from the war."
(From the Brage jury's statement)

First published: Aschehoug, 2008
Bjørn Westlie: Biography and Bibliography

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