Adolf Hitler was a democratically elected leader in a democracy. Therein lies the heart of the problem.

World War II left Europe in ruins, not just structurally, but also morally, and the moral bankruptcy was perhaps worst in the countries that had chosen to ally themselves with Germany. Today, Nazi Germany is seen as aggressive and fiercely racist threat to democracy, but during its rise to power many saw it as the promise of a better future. Comparatively small nations could – if siding with Nazi Germany – look towards a prosperous future in the Greater German Reich, which the Nazi party would govern for the millennium to come.

In Guilty of Guilt, Arnstad takes the reader on a journey through a Europe that shuns the shadows of the Third Reich that still linger. It is a continent, which, with the exception of Germany, is unwilling to fully document and face their past. But it is also a Europe where myths, along with selective and revisionist national histories, control the collective memory of World War II – and where fascism prospers to this date.

Arnstad chronicles the history of the Axis powers and allies. Beginning with Finland, the sole democracy to voluntarily fight alongside Hitler, Arnstad moves on to examine Italy and Austria, who assumed the roles of helpless victims overnight. He also elaborates on Soviet Union’s problem and Japan’s history – as well as the role of ”neutral” Sweden. Lastly, Arnstad takes us to Germany, the very heart of European guilt:

In the dead of night, I walk through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. It is simply enormous. The artist has scattered sarcophaguses on a square the size of a city block. They come in waves. Sometimes, I’m able to see the whole square. Sometimes my view is obscured beneath the concrete waves.
It is beautiful.
It is saddening.
It is Europe.

After dissecting Swedish foreign policy during World War II, and the man responsible for creating it, in his acclaimed book Christian Günther – The Player, Henrik Arnstad travels through a Europe consumed by its debate on historical responsibility. The novel employs recent international findings in order to present the reader with a heterogenous yet accessible account of a continent haunted by the repressed memories of mankind’s darkest hour, and becomes a history of morals and memory above and beyond the clichéd narrative of World War II.

Guilty of Guilt has already sparked an international debate far ahead of its publication. It is currently scheduled to be published in Sweden in autumn 2009.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT4vfFCnxyg

To be published by Norstedts, Sweden in 2009.

Norway, Spartacus

Stimulating, thought provoking, morally charged (in a good way) and posing exactly the right questions that should have been asked long ago.
Markku Jokisipilä, PhD. Åbo universitet

In "Guilty of Guilt" Henrik Arnstad refines the moral theme, the question of guilt, national identity and responsibility, with a precision that's impressive. I warmly recommend it.
Mats Holm, Helsingborgs Dagblad

...an engaging and thought-provoking work about a bloodstained piece of forget-and-conceal-history.
Lisa Ahlqvist, Göteborgs Posten