“Fatherland”, by Robert Harris

 

338 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0679412731

Fatherland is a detective novel by English writer and journalist Robert Harris. Set in an alternative 1964 in which Nazi Germany won World War II, the story’s protagonist is Xavier March, a U-boat veteran and an officer of the Kriminalpolizei (the Criminal Police, “Kripo” for short), who is investigating the murder of one Josef Bühler, a Nazi government official who participated in the Wannsee Conference, in which the Final Solution to the Jewish Question – that is, the murder of all Jews everywhere – was decided. The central conceit of Fatherland is that the familiar pattern of history – the Allies won, the Axis lost and justice was served – is not necessarily the only pattern; in reality, there is no such thing as destiny, no outcome is inevitable and the forces of evil are just as likely to win as the forces of good.

In Harris’ dystopian world in which the swastika flies over all of Europe, German forces were victorious everywhere, driving what is left of the Soviet Union beyond the Ural Mountains, bringing North Africa and the Middle East under its boot and forcing the rest of Europe into an alliance of satellite states, Britain included, what with its King Edward VIII and Queen Wallis. While the United States cannot be defeated, with the surrender of the UK, D-Day doesn’t happen. The conceit behind the book is a nightmarish one: not only that the Nazis have won, but that, with the old leaders dead or ageing and a smoother new generation taking over, détente with this monstrous regime becomes necessary – monstrous, because with nothing to stop them, Nazi plans and desires carry on to their horrible, inevitable conclusions.

Fatherland was clearly influenced by Orwell’s 1984, every writer’s template for the workings of a totalitarian society: Germany is in a state of perpetual war with the hordes of Russia, while on a personal level March’s son is a Proper Li’l Nazi. But this Nazi state is not the perfect tyranny of Orwell’s nightmares, where even the most private rebellion is inevitably noticed by the authorities: American radio stations are prevalent, the urban youth grow their hair long and wear unconventional clothes and, although pop music is deplored, even the Beatles have played in Hamburg. This is, after all, a work of alternative history, not allegory. Harris also twists the genre of the police procedural in which the police detective has been transposed into a nightmare situation: to find out the terrible truth that has been hidden from Germans as well as from the rest of the world.

The best speculative fiction focuses on the pursuit of small but multiple differences; while Fatherland is not the first work of fiction to imagine the Germans as victors in World War II it is, perhaps, unique in the author’s dedication to fleshing out just what this nightmare world may have looked like. Thank God the Good Guys won in real life.