Fatherland (novel)

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Title Fatherland
First edition cover
First edition cover - pre publication copy
Author Robert Harris
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Thriller, Alternate history novel
Publisher Hutchinson
Released 7 May 1992
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 372 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN ISBN 0-09-174827-5 (first edition, hardback)

Fatherland is a bestselling 1992 thriller novel by the English writer and journalist Robert Harris, which doubles as a work of alternate history. The novel is based on the premise of a world in which Nazi Germany was triumphant in World War II, in a similar way to Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story begins in Nazi Germany in April 1964, in the week leading up to Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday. The plot follows detective Xavier March, an investigator working for the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei, in this timeline an arm of the SS), as he investigates the suspicious death of a high-ranking Nazi in Berlin. As March uncovers more details he realises that he is caught up in a political scandal involving senior Nazi party officials, who are apparently being systematically liquidated under staged circumstances.

March meets with Charlie Maguire, a female American journalist also determined to investigate the case, and the two travel to Zürich to investigate the private Swiss bank account of one of the murdered officials. Ultimately, the two uncover the horrific truth behind the staged murders — the Gestapo is eliminating the remaining officials who planned the Holocaust at the Wannsee Conference of 1942, to safeguard an upcoming meeting of Hitler and Joseph P. Kennedy, President of the United States, by ensuring that details of the secret Holocaust are not revealed. Maguire heads for neutral Switzerland with the evidence, hoping to publish it in the American newspapers, but March is apprehended by the Gestapo.

In the cellars of Gestapo headquarters, March is tortured but does not reveal the location of Maguire. The authorities stage a rescue, intending to track March as he catches up with Maguire. March, though, realises what is happening and instead leads the authorities in the opposite direction.

The Gestapo catches up with March at the unmarked site of Auschwitz's completely dismantled extermination camp. Believing that Maguire has crossed the border into Switzerland (whether she really does or not is unspecified), he searches for some sign that the death camp was real. As the Gestapo agents converge upon him, his fingers find a brick.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Fictional

  • Xavier March. A detective in the SS, March (nicknamed "Zavi" by his friends) is a 42-year-old divorcee living in Berlin. He has one son, Pili, who lives with March's ex-wife, Klara and her partner. Both of March's grandfathers died in the First World War, his father was mortally injured serving in the Kaiserliche Marine[verification needed], the Imperial German Navy, and his mother was killed in a bombing raid in 1944. March served on a U-Boat in the war and was expected to rise very high in the Navy, becoming a U-Boat captain in 1946. After the war, his marriage ended quickly and he now has access to his son once every two weeks. By 1964, his family life is empty and subsequently he is a workaholic, but displays signs of dissent, has not been promoted since 1954, and is unknowingly being watched by the Gestapo. He is disillusioned with Nazi society and displays more human qualities than many of his colleagues.
  • Charlotte "Charlie" Maguire. A 25-year-old American woman, Maguire lives in Berlin reporting for The New York Times. Maguire, the daughter of a high-ranking American diplomat, is not accepted in German society as she does not conform to Nazi ideals. Maguire easily outsmarts March, and frequently questions his plans. Midway through the novel, she and March fall in love and begin a relationship.
  • Frederick Jost. A reluctant SS cadet, 18-year-old Jost discovers the corpse which triggers March's investigation. Jost is the personification of the "new" German society — he hates Nazism, is very unhappy with his life and society in general, and rebels against conformist Nazi society in many small ways. He is unpopular with his fellow recruits in the Sepp Dietrich SS Training Academy and is suspected of homosexuality, a capital crime in the Reich. Midway through the novel, Jost disappears as part of a plan to derail March's investigation.
  • Paul "Pili" March. The 10-year-old son of Xavier March, Pili lives with his mother and her partner in a bungalow in the suburbs of Berlin. Pili is a "Pimpf", a member of the Jungvolk — the junior section of the Hitler Youth for boys between the ages of 10 and 14 — and adheres strongly to Nazi principles, a secret disappointment to his father. Later in the novel, Pili denounces his father to the Gestapo, believing that he is doing the right thing.
  • Max Jaeger. March's Kripo partner, Jaeger is 50 and lives with his wife and four daughters in Berlin. He and March have shared the same office since 1959 and are good friends. Jaeger is less intelligent than March and seems happy to tag along behind him. On the surface, Jaeger seems to be a model Nazi citizen, having a large family and regularly attending Party meetings, but it is revealed that Jaeger is probably just as disillusioned as March. At the end of the novel, Jaeger drives the getaway car that rescues March, but it is revealed that Jaeger was the one who had betrayed March. It is unknown what the Gestapo do with Jaeger in the end.
  • Walther Fiebes. Fiebes is a detective working in VB3, the sexual crimes division, along the corridor from March's office. He is a loner and is secretly deeply insecure about his racial heritage. Due to his lonely personal life, he is something of an alcoholic and is always seen with a bottle of schnapps nearby. Fiebes spends all of his time at work, investigating (Party-defined) sexual crimes cases including rape, adultery, and interracial relationships. Throughout the novel, Fiebes is always portrayed as a pervert, taking great delight in investigating lewd cases.
  • Rudolf "Rudi" Halder. March's wartime friend, Rudi is a historian working at the immense Central Archives, helping to compile an official history of the German military on the Eastern Front. Rudi helps March find certain documents relating to the Wannsee Conference, but upon realising what he has uncovered, is too frightened to help March any further.
  • Karl Krebs. The antithesis of Globus (see below), Krebs is a polite, charming, well-educated young officer in the SS, hated by his superior officer, Globus. As part of March's interrogation, he cares for March following his beatings and offers March the chance to confess and put an end to the torture. Krebs is shocked and terrified when March shows him evidence of the Holocaust, but it is ultimately revealed that this is an act, and that Krebs is in league with Nebe.

[edit] Historical personalities

  • Odilo Globocnik. A middle-aged, unintelligent, and violent SS officer, Globocnik (nicknamed "Globus") is deeply angry at what he sees as a "softening" of Nazi society, which he blames for his stagnant career. Globus is a sadistic torturer and murderer (it is widely known amongst his colleagues that during the war he suffocated people in his basement with the exhaust from a submarine engine), and conducts the murders of several officials in Berlin on behalf of the Gestapo. Globus particularly dislikes March for being more intelligent than him, and after March's apprehension by the Gestapo, Globus takes over March's interrogation and torture, administering several brutal beatings. Despite his war record and rank within the SS, Globus' career is in decline, prompting him to blame his intelligent colleagues such as Krebs and March.
  • Artur Nebe. The highly intelligent chief of the German police force, Nebe by 1964 is an old man living in a sumptuous apartment in Berlin. He admires March and tries to protect him from the Gestapo, even allowing him to leave Germany to travel to neutral Switzerland. Nebe seems to be a strong supporter of Nazism. He arranges March's "rescue" from Gestapo headquarters, but March quickly realises that Nebe is not really on his side and has set him up.
  • Reinhard Heydrich. Having survived his assassination attempt in 1942 (which in reality led to his death), Heydrich has risen by 1964 to become Reichsführer-SS and heir-apparent to Adolf Hitler upon his death. Blond-haired, athletic, handsome but depraved, Heydrich trusts Nebe but does not like Globus, and instructs Nebe to allow March to pursue his investigation as he suspects that March has damning evidence against Globus. It is suggested that Heydrich had Himmler assassinated in order to succeed him as head of the SS.
  • Other historical characters referred to in the book include Adolf Hitler, the elderly Führer of the Greater German Reich; Hermann Goering, said to have died in 1951; Heinrich Himmler, said to have died in a mysterious airplane crash, probably due to sabotage, in 1962; Joseph Goebbels, who is still in charge of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry (and, in a scene witnessed by March, apparently continuing to have affairs with actresses), Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth II are living in exile in Canada; Edward VIII and his consort Wallis reign as Emperor and Empress of the British Empire; Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (and not his son John F. Kennedy) is the President of the United States; Karl Dönitz is Grand Admiral of the Kriegsmarine; and Charles Lindbergh is the U.S. Ambassador to Germany.

Attendees of the Wannsee Conference such as Adolf Eichmann are mentioned but, as part of the plot, are already dead, mostly of unnatural causes.

[edit] The world of Fatherland

[edit] History

Throughout the novel, Harris gradually explains the historical development of the society. According to the novel's version of history, the German armies on the Eastern Front are stopped at the gates of Moscow at the end of 1941. Defeated in battle but not demoralized, they launch a second major offensive into the Caucasus in 1942, cutting the flow of oil to the Red Army. With its armies immobilised, the Soviet Union surrenders in 1943.

Around the same time, German intelligence learns that the British are reading their Enigma code, which is leading to the sinking of their submarines. They withdraw their submarines from the Atlantic temporarily and send false intelligence to lure the British fleet to destruction. The U-Boat campaign against the United Kingdom resumes, starving Britain into surrender by 1944. Winston Churchill, King George VI and other prominent British officials are forced into exile in Canada, and Edward VIII regains the throne.

The United States does not invade mainland Europe, and presumably withdraws its troops from Britain prior to 1944, and instead concentrates on defeating Japan. Germany tests its first atom bomb in 1946, and fires a "V-3" missile that explodes above New York City, to demonstrate Germany's ability to attack the continental United States with long-range missiles. Following this demonstration of power, the United States signs a peace treaty with Germany, leaving the Third Reich as one of the two superpowers of the world.

Having achieved victory in Europe, Germany annexes Eastern Europe and most of the western Soviet Union into the Greater German Reich. Following the signing of the Treaty of Rome, Western Europe and Scandinavia are corralled into a pro-German trading bloc, the European Community. The surviving areas of the USSR become engaged in an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural Mountains. Military leaders and Nazi officials choose to keep up the guerilla war because it amounts to hands-on training that keeps the Wehrmacht sharp and versatile. By 1964, the United States and the Greater German Reich are caught in a Cold War and an arms race to develop more sophisticated nuclear weapons and space technology.

The novel takes place from April 14 – 20, 1964, as Germany prepares for Hitler's 75th birthday celebrations. A visit by the President of the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy, is planned as part of a gradual détente between the United States and the Greater German Reich. The Holocaust has been explained away to the satisfaction of many as merely the relocation of most of the Jewish population to the East into areas where communication and travel are still very poor, explaining why it is impossible for most of their relatives in the West to contact them. Despite this, many Germans are aware — or suspect — that the government has somehow permanently eliminated the Jewish population.

[edit] Greater German Reich and international politics

Fatherland's 1964 Europe
Fatherland's 1964 Europe

The first few pages of Fatherland feature two maps; one of the city centre of Berlin, and another showing the extent of the massively expanded Greater German Reich. The map shows Germany stretching from Alsace-Lorraine (Westmark) in the west to the Ural Mountains and the lower Caucasus in the east.

The Reich has retained Austria (now known as the "Ostmark"), the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (former Czechoslovakia), and Luxembourg (now named "Moselland"). In the East, Germany has annexed Poland, and Russia west of the Urals has been divided into five Reichkommissariats: Ostland (Belarus and the Baltic states), Ukraine, Muscovy (from Moscow to the Urals), and Caucasus, along with Generalkommissariat Taurida (Southern Ukraine and the Crimea).

Major cities in the expanded Reich include old German cities such as Hamburg and Berlin (the largest city in the world, with a population of 10 million in 1964), but also include newly-annexed cities such as Moscow, Tiflis, Ufa, St. Petersburg, Kraków, Rovno, Riga, Danzig, Melitopol, Gotenburg (Simferopol) and Theodorichshafen (former Sevastopol).

Berlin has been extensively remodelled as Hitler's "capital of capitals," designed according to the wishes of Hitler and his top architect, Albert Speer. By 1964, the city boasts gargantuan Nazi monuments; the Great Hall holds over 150,000 people at the highest Nazi ceremonies; the enormous Arch of Triumph is inscribed with the names of German soldiers killed in the two World Wars, and straddles the Grand Avenue, an immense boulevard lined with captured Soviet artillery and towering statues of Nazi eagles. The Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate are dwarfed by the vast, severe, granite civil buildings which dominate Berlin's city centre; the Grand Plaza, the sprawling Berlin railway station, Hitler's mammoth palace, the headquarters of the German Army, and the parliament of the powerless European Union.

The rest of Western Europe, excluding Switzerland, has been corraled by Germany into a European Community, formed from twelve nations: Norway, Sweden, Finland (which has absorbed Karelia from Russia), Denmark, Great Britain, Ireland (the listing suggests that Britain has lost Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland), France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy (it is unspecified if Mussolini is still in control). Other countries of Fatherland's Europe include Croatia, a greatly expanded Hungary which has absorbed Slovakia and Transylvania from neighbouring Romania, which has annexed Bessarabia from the old USSR in exchange, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Greece, Iceland, and Turkey. A European Parliament is based in Berlin but is virtually powerless. At the European Parliament building, the flags of the member states are dwarfed by a swastika flag twice the size of the other flags, symbolising the immense power that Germany has in the EC of 1964. The nations of Fatherland's EC, despite being nominally free under their own governments and leaders (such as General Franco and Edward VIII), are closely watched by Germany. The military forces of the "free" nations of Europe are only just sufficient to police the European empires, European nations are under constant surveillance by Berlin, and judging by references in the novel, it seems that the rest of Europe is subordinate to Germany in all but name. Switzerland has not been annexed by the Reich and is not a member of the European Community; by the time the Reich turned its eyes to it, the stalemate of the Cold War was setting in, and Switzerland had become a convenient neutral spot for American and German intelligence agents to spy on each other. As a result, Switzerland in 1964 is the only free country in Europe.

The novel also makes many references to the world outside of Europe. The United States is locked in a Cold War with the Greater German Reich, and since the end of the war in 1946, both the U.S. and Germany have been racing against each other to develop sophisticated military, nuclear, and space technologies. Japan is said to have been defeated by the U.S. in 1945 or 1946 after the United States detonated two atomic bombs on Japanese territory. However, Japan seems to have recovered quickly, and is the host for the 1964 Olympic Games, which are being held in Tokyo. The United States is said to have not participated in the Games since 1936, but is expected to in 1964. China is a weak independent state - a passing reference hints at China being ruled by a harsh government — and Sino-German relations do not seem particularly strong. A greatly-reduced Russian rump state exists, with its capital at Omsk. The United States supplies Russia with weapons and funds, which are used by the Russians to wage an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural Mountains. Although German propaganda plays down the war in the east, the appalling death toll on the Eastern Front is a severe headache for the Reich. Africa and the rest of Asia are still controlled by the old European colonial empires. South America is not referred to in the novel.

The world in 1964, according to the novel.
The world in 1964, according to the novel.

A point left unclear is whether the Holocaust was confined to Nazi-occupied Europe or was extended to the rest of the world, particularly Palestine. In an ironic twist of fate, the Nazis' Holocaust has been erased from history, and instead, Stalin's Holodomor is known throughout the world, due to the Reich's constant relaying of documentaries and academic research on the gulags, famines, and horrors of what the novel dubs "Stalin's Holocaust". While Stalin's atrocities are known throughout the world of Fatherland, the Nazi Party's own crimes have been hushed up. Due to the Nazi victory in 1946, there is no independent Israel and it is assumed that the Middle East and Palestine are still controlled by France and the British Empire. The British Empire appears to be a strong entity and retains its territories in Africa and Asia, although Canada and Australia have split from the Empire and are closely allied to the United States. Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Windsor, who claims the British Crown from Edward VIII, reside in Canada, speaking out against the Greater German Reich, German-controlled Europe, and the puppet British regime.

The novel does not make references to the League of Nations or the United Nations. The League was historically suspended in 1939, and due to the historical hostility of the United States and the Third Reich to the League, it is unlikely that the League has been re-established. Due to the novel's timeline diverging in 1943, it is unlikely that the wartime Allies created the United Nations Organization. As a result, it is unlikely that any international organisation, apart from the International Red Cross, exists in the world of Fatherland.

The novel describes that since the end of the war between Germany and the United States in 1946, a nuclear stalemate has developed, which seems to overshadow international relations. Various references in the book suggest that Germany by 1964 has something of a paranoia of a nuclear war. New German buildings are constructed with mandatory fallout shelters, the Reichsarchiv claims to have been built to withstand a direct missile hit, and despite the catastrophically high death toll on the Eastern Front, the German military is afraid to use nuclear weapons in case they provoke an American nuclear attack on the Reich. This situation is analoguous to the Vietnam War, where the United States suffered great casualties, but was unwilling to use nuclear weapons in case it provoked a wider war possibly involving China and / or the Soviet Union. It remains unknown if Germany and the United States are the only nuclear powers in the world of Fatherland.

[edit] Nazi society

The society portrayed in Fatherland is held by critics and historians to be a generally accurate representation of the world that the Nazis would have created following a German victory.[citation needed] Western Europe has been left relatively untouched due to Hitler's actual intentions to merely disarm and then ignore Europe following a Nazi victory, and concentrate on the German conquest of western Russia. The United Kingdom, admired by Hitler, has retained and enlarged its sprawling empire, as Hitler has little interest in the world beyond the German border, and relies on the British to keep the peace in Africa and Asia. Having answered the Jewish question, the Nazi Party finds itself without scapegoats to blame for Germany's problems — though these are few, as Germany has risen to become one of the two superpowers in the world.

In the novel, the bedrock of Nazi ideology is still the policy of blaming subversives for social problems. Homosexuality, incest, and interracial relationships (particularly between "Aryans" and Slavs) have joined anti-semitism and communism to become the new scapegoats for the Nazi Party. The Nazi view of other peoples has also been forced to change. Europe and Russia are under German control, and so the Nazi Party has been obliged to find a new scapegoat, and appears to have spent the early 1960s blaming the United States for causing Germany's problems. This, however, has had to change. Nazi propaganda has previously depicted America as a land of corruption, degeneracy, and poverty, controlled by stereotyped capitalists, wracked by gangsters and communists, with its population crammed into filthy ghettoes, devastated by environmental damage and over-taxation. However, as the diplomatic meeting between Hitler and Kennedy nears, German propaganda is forced to change its image of America to a more positive view. This seriously undermines Nazi ideology. The Nazi Party no longer has any Jews to blame, no Europe, Russia, or America to castigate, and no enemy states left to fight. As a consequence, the Party has no one to blame for Germany's problems, and the very structure of Nazi society is starting to fall apart.

Despite its ideological and moral decline, Germany enjoys a very high standard of living, with its citizens living off the high-quality produce of their European satellite states and freed from physical labour by thousands of Polish, Czech and Ukrainian slaves. The European nations produce high-quality consumer goods for German citizens while also providing services, such as the SS academy at Oxford University and German holiday resorts in Spain, France, and Greece. Products from across Europe and their colonial empires flood into Germany, providing German citizens with a wide choice of high-quality goods. Hitler's crabbed, banal personal tastes in art and music have become the norm for society, creating a stagnant and boringly repetitive cultural atmosphere.

The social structure of Nazi Germany has changed considerably from the 1940s. Military service is still compulsory, but recruits have a choice of service. Eastern Europe has been colonised by German settlers (although local partisan resistance movements are very strong) and the German population has soared as a result of Nazi emphasis on childbirth. Increasing numbers of Nazi officials are no longer the bullies of the 1940s, but well-groomed, intelligent, university-educated bureaucrats. The SS serves as the country's police force, and concentration camps are still in existence for political dissidents, occasionally given staged inspections by the International Red Cross.

According to the main characters, however, German society in the early 1960s is becoming more and more rebellious. Student protests, particularly against the war in the Urals, American and British cultural influence (including the rise of The Beatles' popularity, already denounced in the official German press), and growing pacifism are all found in Nazi society. Germany appears to be under constant attack by terrorist groups, with officials assassinated and civilian airliners bombed in-flight. Religion is still officially discouraged by the state, and the Hitler Youth is compulsory for all children. Universities, like in 1930s Germany, are centres of student dissent, and the White Rose movement is once again active. The Nazis continue with their policies for women, encouraging women to remain in the home and bring up many children. Nazi organisations such as Kraft durch Freude still exist and fulfill their original roles. A sprawling transport network covers the entire Reich, including vast autobahnen and railways carrying immense trains, the largest of which have a very broad gauge of more than four metres, making the luxury trains four times wider than standard rolling stock--as, in real life, planned by Hitler as the Breitspurbahn (forcing the modification of plans for new rail stations) but never implemented.

[edit] Technology

The level of technology in Fatherland is much the same as in the actual 1960s, and in some respects, is more advanced. There is a brief paragraph describing the Berlin-Tempelhof International Terminal, where apparently Lufthansa has purchased 747's, but painted them in the style of pre-war aircraft, in a natural metal finish with a red tail emblazoned with a swastika.

The German military makes use of jet aircraft, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers, whilst civilian technology has also advanced considerably. Jet airliners, televisions, hair-dryers, modern cars, and even photocopiers are used in Germany (even if their distribution is strictly restricted in order to limit anti-regime propaganda). The German population enjoys very high living standards, but this comes at the expense of appalling conditions for non-German populations in the Reich, and German settlers in the eastern provinces.

The novel makes references to the space programmes of the United States and the Third Reich, both of whom appear to possess sophisticated space technology. Judging by a reference made by Maguire, both the United States and the Third Reich launched the first artificial satellites into orbit shortly after the war, from Peenemünde and White Sands respectively. In Maguire's opinion, the Nazis have always possessed, and continue to possess, more advanced space technology than NASA. The extents of space technology in the world of Fatherland are, however, unknown.

The reference to the "V-3" missile in the book seems to be a mistake by the author, the V3 was actually a cannon; the A10 was the planned intercontinental successor to the V2.

[edit] Parallels

[edit] Nineteen Eighty-Four

Fatherland contains many similarities with George Orwell's classic dystopic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (which itself derived many of its historical revisionist themes from Katharine Burdekin's 1937 dystopia, Swastika Night). On a basic level, each of the male writers' novels posits a point of divergence directly related to the Second World War. (It should be noted, however, that Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949, was intended as a prediction and warning of a possible future, and therefore qualifies as science fiction rather than alternate history. Swastika Night was published before the Second World War and so avoids positing any divergence point).

The main protagonists of each novel (Xavier March and Winston Smith) are both disillusioned, middle-aged, middle-class members of society who work for the ruling political party and appear to adhere to the party's principles, but secretly despise their governments. March is divorced, whilst Smith and his wife were said to have had a separation (and moved apart) before the novel begins. In contrast to Smith, though, March still has a family, in the form of his son Pili. Both characters live in fairly rundown apartments (although Smith's apartment is substantially worse than March's). Both lived through the Second World War, and both characters lost their mothers during the war — March's mother was killed during a British bombing raid in 1944, whilst Smith's mother disappeared during a civil war in 1950s Britain. The two characters are also accompanied by similar colleagues. March's colleague Max Jaeger and Smith's neighbour Parsons are both large men of lower intelligence than their counterpart, have large families, and appear to be model citizens. Interestingly, both Jaeger and Parsons are actually opposed to the existing regime.

A central common theme in both books is the hero's determination to dig into forbidden historical events which the regime wants kept secret. Smith encounters the Party's dictum that "The one who contols the past, controls the present", while the Nazi regime of March's time proclaims that "The right history is worth a hundred divisions". When March with his historian friend Halder makes a highly unauthorised expedition into the cellars of the Reichsarchiv, where "the wrong history" is kept, they furtively see a worker pushing a metal cart loaded with paper towards a burning furnace - which strongly recalls the Orwellian "Memory Hole" into which all "inconvenient" papers are thrown to be burned.

At a famous passage in Nineteen Eighty Four, Winston Smith - having for a moment in his hands an old paper clipping proving the regime's lies - muses that if only this information were to be widely publicised, it would be enough to cause the Party's downfall. But for Winston that is no more than an idle fantasy. No means of such publication exists in either Oceania itself or in the world's other two equally-oppressive regimes - and anyway Winston Smith has no channel of communications with the Eurasians or Eastasians. On the contrary, Xavier March lives in a world where a free press still exists in the United States and Charlie is available to try and pass on to that press the evidence whose publication would at least severely damage the Nazi regime.

In this, as in other aspects, Fatherland might be said to be a rather more optimistic book than 1984. As is well-known, Orwell's book ends with the hero totally broken, having betrayed (and been betrayed by) his beloved Julia and finally learning to "love Big Brother". To the contrary, Fatherland ends with March throwing away his SS cap in an exuberant gesture of liberation and preparing to end his life-the lesser evil of the alternatives at hand.

The ending is certainly personally liberating and offering a message of one man's salvation and/or redemption. Whether on a wider scale Fatherland should be considered an ultimately optimistic or pessimistic novel largely depends on the interpretation of a singular passage near the very end of the book, where March has a kind of vision of Charlie crossing the Swiss border safely, knows "for an absolute, certain fact" that she had gotten away, and also knows that somehow she could for a moment see him preparing for his last stand.

Nowhere earlier in the book was there any hint of March (or any other character) possessing a telepathic or clairvoyant ability. Still, the reader can believe that nevertheless he did have such an ability, hitherto dormant (possibly released by his approaching death and the sense of liberation from the stifling Nazi ideology) and that the vision is therefore genuine.

In that case, Charlie would likely get safely to America (flights into and from neutral Switzerland continued even at the height of the Second World War, and the Nazis never interfered with them). With her journalistic connections she would have a good chance of getting the information published - especially since it is elections year in the US, and the candidate opposing Kennedy (perhaps a Barry Goldwater as fanatically anti-Nazi as the one in our history was anti-Communist?) would likely welcome the chance to thoroughly discredit the incumbent's policy of accommodation towards the Nazis. This would scuttle the Nazi regime's hope of ending its crisis by a rapprochement with the United States, and bring the regime a big step closer to its final collapse.

Alternately, March's vision can be regarded as simply the wish-fulfillment of a dying man, having no bearing on objective reality - in which case it would never be known (short of Harris writing a sequel) whether Charlie actually got away with her precious documents, and whether March's sacrifice achieved more than his personal redemption. Harris' text remains open to both interpretations.

The ending of Fatherland might also be influenced by the ending of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. In both cases, the book ends with the hero preparing for a single-handed battle with Fascists/Nazis in which he is bound to die, but the battle itself is not described - and in both cases, at the closing moment the hero is feeling a kind of exhilaration at needing to have no further worries and dilemmas, and at the knowledge that he is going to die for a cause he believes in and thereby also safeguard the escape of his beloved.

[edit] SS-GB

Fatherland also has some noteworthy similarities to Len Deighton's alternate history novel, SS-GB, though it is set at an earlier moment of the Nazi conquest (1941). There, too, the hero is a police detective trapped in a Nazi-dominated universe and the plot follows many of the conventions of the detective novel, and also there the hero has a love affair with an American journalist and discovers at the denouement the betrayal of a close and trusted colleague. And also SS-GB, despite the sombre tone inevitable for a book taking place in a Nazi-victorious world, ends on a note of cautious optimism: the killing of King George by the Germans would rally the British behind the Resistance, and the Americans would win the incipent nuclear arms race and hence the war which would eventually break out with Germany.

[edit] The Man in the High Castle

Although the premise of the two books (e.g., Germany winning World War II) is similar there are more divergences than parallels between the two books. In The Man in the High Castle much of America is occupied by Germany and Japan leaving only a powerless rump state in the Midwest, whereas in Fatherland America has defeated Japan, avoided invasion, and is engaged in a 'Cold War' with Germany. The political background to The Man in the High Castle is a Germany preparing for a nuclear war with Japan; in Fatherland the background is German-American 'Détente'. The Man in the High Castle focuses on the consequences of losing the war for Americans whereas Fatherland focuses on the consequences of winning for Germans. There are however references to advanced German technology, particularly aerospace, in both books.

[edit] Media adaptations

A TV movie of the book was made in 1994 by HBO, starring Rutger Hauer as March and Miranda Richardson as Maguire. The movie explicitly stated that the historical timeline diverged with the German defeat of the Allied D-Day invasion in June 1944, although most experts would agree that in reality the war had already been decided by that time. Eisenhower, it stated, retired in disgrace and the loss of life was so great that the American public turned on the war in Europe and focused on Japan, thus allowing Germany to regroup and defeat the United Kingdom. It also states that in 1964, Stalin is still alive and leading the Russian forces against Germany.

It was also serialised on BBC radio, starring Anton Lesser as March and Angeline Ball as Charlie Maguire. It was dramatised, produced and directed by John Dryden and first broadcast on the 9 July 1997.

[edit] Differences between film and novel

There are numerous disparities between the book and the movie:

  • In the movie, Western Europe is also annexed by the Reich, and the Reich capital, Berlin, is now called "Germania."
  • In a historical introduction set at the beginning, the movie sets an Allied defeat during the Normandy landings of 1944 as its point of departure from normal History. In the book there are three points of departure from the normal timeline: a successful German offensive against the Soviet oilfields of the Caucasus in 1942, the changing of the Enigma codes and the success of the U-boat offensive against Britain in 1944 and the launch of a long-range missile to explode over New York (with the implicit threat of a nuclear attack) in 1946. However, the appearance in the movie of Reinhard Heydrich as Reichsführer-SS implies that the attempt on his life that killed him in 1942 (in real History) has failed, thereby setting another point of departure.
  • The film starts out faithfully to the book with the discovery of the body of Joseph Buhler and then it breaks from the book's set-piece action. For example, the murder of Luther (changed in the film from "Martin Luther" to "Franz Luther," probably to avoid audience confusion with the religious reformer Martin Luther) in the book, which takes place on the steps of the Great Hall, is in the film reduced to a shoot-out in subway station.
  • The section of the novel where March and Maguire travel to Switzerland to trace a bank account opened by Luther is absent from the film version.
  • SS-Cadet Jost is murdered in the film to ensure his silence, whereas in the book he is transferred to a combat unit on the frontlines with the Waffen-SS.
  • Charlie Maguire is just arriving in Germany in the film, but in the book she had been there for many months.
  • A character not in the book (played by Jean Marsh) gives March and Maguire the documents that prove the existence of the Holocaust, rather than the two finding the papers hidden in a Berlin airport as in the book.
  • Instead of going to Switzerland with her pictures and information, Maguire is able to get her pictures to President Kennedy during his trip to Berlin (which in the book isn't scheduled until September). Upon seeing the pictures, Kennedy decides to cancel his meeting with the Führer and return home with knowledge of the Holocaust, which he will presumably publicize.
  • A grown-up Pili gives an epilogue as a voiceover, saying this was the beginning of the end of the Reich, and that most people in the present now knew about the Holocaust and the abuses of Nazism. However, Charlotte Maguire does not survive in the movie. Pili's voice-over suggests that she was captured, waiting in vain for Xavier March, who is fatally shot in the film version.

[edit] Goofs in the film

  • A signature on a photo of Hitler dedicated to one of his admirers does not even remotely resemble Hitler's actual signature.
  • Characters refer to Hitler simply as "Hitler" several times while deference to him in the Third Reich would have demanded them to refer to him as "the Führer".

Robert Harris himself was said to be very unhappy with the film's screenplay.

[edit] Release details

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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