Dörte von Westernhagen (born 5 August 1943)[1] is a German writer who wrote a book about her father, Heinz von Westernhagen, an SS functionary and Waffen-SS commander of the Nazi era.
Her book "Kinder der Täter" (The Perpetrators' Children) made quite a round in Germany when it was published in 1987.
[3] The book was immediately recognized as one of the first attempts to get the Nazi children out of their parents' shadow.
In the small-typed appendix she returns to her own childhood memories and those of other German NS-children.
The importance of Westernhagen's work lies in the fact that she was the first European NS-child to discuss her father both as a personally brave man and a war criminal.