Fatherland: A Novel

Workload wouldn't let me post here the review that Fatherland deserves. It's in the same line as Orwell's 1984, equally credible and frightening, sustains suspense till the last page. But while reading it I sensed, rather than felt, there is no so much to celebrate in the fact that Allied countries defeated German Fascism. And that is because what occurs today with Neoliberalism, with so-called Globalization, has facilitated the arising of a monster much more pervasive and destructive of the humanity that once upon a time inhabited humankind. Back then, a blind adoration for the Fuhrer and a vicarious life through HIS figure was fomented. Today it is a blind adoration of technology created for entertainment and living vicariously through "stars", reality shows and the like. It is easy, today more so than ever, to identify the Monster as hydra-like, multifacetic, embodied in all the multinational corporations that today threaten the future of humanity in humankind. I could easily trace a parallel between the despising of human beings, their being deemed disposable, and the way that so-called First World, industrialized, neoliberal free-marketism threatens and actually destroy the ecology and the well-being and human rights of millions of children, women and men immersed in violence sustained by free-marketism and war-mongering. As a Mexican, I can personally attest to this becoming true in my country and a lot more little nations, Like in Fatherland, there seems to be no escape. Hopefully there will be great souls who find a peaceful, courageous way to overthrow the Monster, who find the way for all of us little beings to escape. Fatherland is a soulful, socially conscious work behind a thriller, one that has left a permanent mark in me and, I hope, in many others who can perceive what I call "the parallels".

A body is found. A high ranking official. A policeman gets increasingly involved in a targeted-assasination-cover-up that goes to the highest levels of government.....

That's your plot - standard fare, all the way. Of course what makes this above the average is that Harris has set it in a 1960s Nazi Germany, a foreign, exciting, dangerous, brooding setting that really makes the book work. Also Harris uses such WW2 illuminaries as Heydritch as real characters, which adds to the frission. So with some real characters (it really helps if you've read, as Harris clearly has, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer), interesting German titles (SS Sturmbannfuhrer makes a change from "Detective") and a menancing atmosphere, it really does work well.

Like other Harris novels, this has a mix of fantasy and history. The premise of the book, thank Heavens, is fantasy, but the book is based on truths during WWII in Germany. The characters are rich, the story is engrossing and the book is hard to put down. My eyes rolled in my head while I was reading it, 14 hours at a time.!!Although I have aKindle, this book was in hard copy and I bought it anyway. Glad I did.

Excellent plot lines include the imagined state of Northern Europe after the German victory of WW 2, and the personal consequences of this on the inhabitants of Germany itself and visitors to the country. That one "good man" and a foreign journalist could effect a major blow on the political system is the moral theme of the novel and the clear writing style enhances that.

Let me straightforward! I wasn't convinced at all with the ending... leaving that aside I think it was a round book, somehow predictable but with one (not more...) good twist.

I would have liked to have a more elaborated picture around the overall concept of Germany being the winner of WWII.

Only 3 stars. Let's go for the man in the high castle.

Somehow they managed to abridge out all of the alternative history from this alternative history thriller. You'll never know anything about how the United States won the war against Japan and Germany won the war against Russia from listening to this abridgment. They took all of the history out and left a very uninteresting murder mystery. Oh, and Colonel Clink does a lousy job with the voices in his narration.

I highly recommend this book as a introduction to what it is like to live in a fascist state where loyalty to the fatherland, the dictator and the party comes first. There's only one "right" way to think, and citizens of the victorious Germany don't ask too many questions, they keep up appearances, and buy in to the collective lie that instead of mass extermination, Jews were simply relocated to the eastern realms of the empire and are happy farmers there. Detective Xavier March investigates garden variety murders, and does his job with a paint by numbers approach. We sense his weariness, and the feeling that he is living a hollow life. He reads the newspaper backwards, starting with the personal ads where men look for obedient Aryan women to bear offspring, and then to the sports section, which March considers the only truthful and factual information in the lot.

When he reluctantly takes the call to investigate a suspicious death, which turns out to be a high level member of the party, March's investigation leads him to a conspiracy that he is determined to expose. Even at the cost of having his party loyalty questioned and the threat of being deported to the hinterlands.

I recommend this story as a primer of what we may be in store of, unless we all wake up.

What’s not to like?

Some reviewers have complained that it’s unrealistic for the Germans to not know what happened to all the Jews who were “sent east” and to not really care. However, I found very realistic the fact that they kind of know but don’t really know. They talk about “going up the chimney.” But in a totalitarian state, they also know it’s sometimes best to “let it go” and not ask questions.

I felt like Harris deliberately used a number of the cliches of hard-boiled detective fiction. One of them is that detectives smoke a lot. However, Nazis opposed smoking. They were not only concerned with making the human race pure by eliminating Jews, gypsies, gays, etc., they also wanted to keep the body pure by not putting harmful chemicals in it, not exposing it to radiation, etc. (details in The Nazi War on Cancer). And they encouraged getting out into pure nature, hiking and exercising. The omnipresent smoking was, I felt, the one historical flub.

Berlin, 1964. President Kennedy is about to arrive on a state visit. Meanwhile, the city bustles with preparations for the Führer's 75th birthday. Yes, Hitler. For in Harris's celebrated counterfactual novel, Germany has won the war. I came to this after reading CJ Sansom's recent DOMINION, set in a postwar Britain that has become a satellite state of a victorious Germany, and Sansom acknowledges Harris as his master. But given how much Sansom devotes to the political situation, I was surprised that Harris almost underplays it. The map of the Greater German Reich in the frontispiece shows the country extending far beyond Moscow to the East, but its other borders remain much the same. It is not until well on in the book that we get any clues about what has happened to the countries of Western Europe.

For the first half at least, this does not read like a political novel so much as a police procedural. The protagonist is Xavier March, former U-boat captain, now a detective inspector with the Berlin Kripo. Although he holds the honorary rank of SS Sturmbannführer, March is essentially a loner, an "asocial" in Party parlance, a non-joiner who follows lines but does not toe them. He reminds me very much of Arkady Renko in GORKY PARK by Martin Cruz Smith; Harris is absolutely in Smith's league, or John Le Carré's before him. The body of an elderly man turns up in the water near Berlin's most exclusive neighborhood, and March takes the case almost by accident. But soon he finds himself tangling with people very high up in the Gestapo hierarchy, and finds himself fighting for his career and even his life, variously aided by old friends from his U-boat days and a beautiful American journalist.

Harris creates a police state that is essentially an extension of its familiar prewar form, now spared the ravages of war. But it is also a state that has been able to maintain a tight control of its secrets; most of the horrors that came to light at Nuremberg and beyond are here still shrouded in darkness. It requires a shift of imagination for the modern reader to conceive a postwar situation where, for instance, Auschwitz is no more than a name on a map. Harris manages to pull it off, partly by his carefully controlled pacing, partly by his meticulous use of real people and events, documenting much that really happened. But this is more than a brilliantly-researched book; it is also a magnificently inventive thriller and rightly the foundation of Harris's considerable reputation.

Spoilers. Heed this – this book is worth reading, but it hinges on some twists you don’t want to know about.

Lots of thriller conventions – this moved so like a movie, and it’s no surprise that it was made into one soon after its publication in 1992. The love interest is so clichéd – this young dream girl who is, of course, smart and sassy, but also can’t help but fall for our older, craggy, cynical leading man – as they run from the authorities in a race to track the MacGuffin. A forty-something Harrison Ford would be made for this world-weary maverick cop, failed marriage behind him, who won’t play the political game with his by-the-book superiors, but hangs on to his job because he’s actually a sharp detective with such an impressive war record. And any of a number of the legion of attractive twenty-something starlets could fill the role of the wild young spirit that reawakens his hope. The tension and pacing steadily builds, with minor victories and threats becoming graver, until the inevitable climax. You could look at the structure of this story and write it off as a by-the-numbers unit airport-novel unit mover.

However…

Harris does this really well. And, while some conventions really have been done to death (although Joseph Campbell might say that story equals convention), there is a reason for their popularity. Sure some manifestations are pretty much only conventions, or even hints of conventions where they don’t even do the work of creating them but just leave it to the reader/viewer to do the work (“OK, here’s the girl, you know the drill – do we have to spell it out?”). March is a strikingly typical hero in terms of trappings and adjectives, yet Harris still builds him, giving him intelligent and biting lines, painting him initially getting annoyed with the girl and trying to shake her off, creating scenarios where he can show integrity without stupidly exposing himself (well, except for one poignant moment), and his final reading of betrayal and consequent choice is a triumph (and, finally, a departure from the Hollywood ending – which was completely available and valid, but would have been less profound, if more immediately gratifying). Charlotte is less textured, but while she is essentially an accessory, she’s not merely one.

Interesting that I haven’t even got to the unsubtle hook of the book, unashamedly shouted on the front cover of my edition, “What if Hitler had won?” But that’s all it’s really played for – a hook (a wonderfully effective hook – Harris said he managed to buy a very nice house out of the proceeds of this book) – and I think Harris was particularly clever in the way he used it. This could have been a novel for trainspotters, with names, events and locations being dropped constantly – but it’s not. It’s a thriller, and Harris never lets the diverting context overwhelm the pacing and the conventional characters and detective/conspiracy story. A victorious Germany is always kept in the background. Harris shows great self-control in not giving in to the cheap titillation of trading blows or bullets or invective with Hitler or Goebbels or Himmler: indeed, I don’t think we actually meet any celebrities – this is a story about our little guy hero. We have patches of straight from Orwell totalitarian lifestyle: deliberately constant war context to justify claustrophobic government control and paranoia in its citizens; austerity for the populus with ludicrous government spending on monuments and indulgence for the elite; the subversion of infant loyalty from parents to the state. There are little sixties historical treats – a Kennedy in office, a popular band out of Liverpool – but Harris doesn’t pose for the WW2 buffs (“Hey, check out my research. Pretty good, huh?”) – he gets his audience in with the effective Nazi teaser, but then keeps them turning pages with a rattling good thriller plot.

There were some holes, probably the largest that the guy holding the MacGuffin chose to pin all his hopes on the relatively powerless daughter of a US State Department official. With all his cronies dying around him, why Luther came back into Germany when he had the very documents that would get him to the US from a neutral country, and seemingly with no plan for being searched at the airport…? Well, it’s obvious why – it set up the killer conclusion, March’s clever insight and brave sacrifice: dramatically killer, logically dodgy. And the conclusion is particularly satisfying because Harris, as well as not giving the guy the girl and a sunset/parade/beach/penthouse, doesn’t spell out the victory. We’re not even sure Charlie made it out, but there’s enough hope for us given March’s clever diversion and her careful journalism noted throughout the investigation. We’ve had these sort of happy ending treats so often they have lost much of their flavour – this is refreshing.

So despite the cliché and this plot quibble, overall I enjoyed the ride, partly because he can write, and partly because Harris never let the context undermine/overwhelm the engaging plot movement. I was also occasionally surprised by particularly effective dialogue, characterisation and the stunning climactic twist.

"Fatherland" is, in my opinion, one of the better alternate reality stories ever written, though it majorly only addresses "current day" 1964 Germany (and the world, at large) and only provides a snippet, really, of how the Nazi's may have won. Regardless, this story by Robert Harris deals with a chilling version of what could have been.

The reader is introduced to this setting as preparations are underway to celebrate the Fuhrer's 75th birthday, along with a planned meeting with President Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and does so in a compelling and realistic manner. During this time a dead body is discovered outside of Berlin that starts an investigation by a seasoned professional policeman, Xavier March. What ensues is anything but normal or business as usual. The corpse is identified as a former high-ranking Nazi, Josef Buhler, and as March digs deeper he becomes involved in quite a political scandal, eventually tying in more dead bodies of former Nazis.

Though the Gestapo seizes control of the case and closes it, March becomes allied with an American journalist, Charlie Maguire (a female), who desires, just as much as March, to find what lies at the end of the trail. The plot and various subplots intertwine beautifully as the pair are on their way to uncovering what would be the most massive government cover-up of all time, bar none. A conspiracy to beat all conspiracies.

The version of the 1960's which Harris artfully paints includes an incredibly rebuilt Berlin, proud and powerful, with warring between the Nazis and Soviets, a continuing German-U.S. cold war, and more. As with most any alternate history story the reader must let go and let it happen. In some ways this is much harder to do with "Fatherland" simply because of the subject matter.

Harris' use of both fictional and real characters (and their development and interaction) along with the events that he portrays, result in a book that will keep you turning pages to discover how it all turns out. The end is definitely not what you would expect.

I found it impossible to read this without comparing it unfavorably with the late Philip Kerr's novels about his German policeman Bernie Gunther.

It has many of the same locations and characters and the plot, about a honest policeman who is a member of the SS trying to solve a series of murders carried out by high-ranking Nazis, is also familiar. There's also an unconvincing romantic sub-plot.

However, whereas Kerr had the stamina to produce about a dozen Gunther books – some excellent, some not so good – Harris's effort peters out about halfway through after a good start. Harris could also have made more of the setting in which the Germans won the Second World War and dominated Europe. Still it is quite a good read.

Berlin, 1964. President Kennedy is about to arrive on a state visit. Meanwhile, the city bustles with preparations for the Führer's 75th birthday. Yes, Hitler. For in Harris's celebrated counterfactual novel, Germany has won the war. I came to this after reading CJ Sansom's recent DOMINION, set in a postwar Britain that has become a satellite state of a victorious Germany, and Sansom acknowledges Harris as his master. But given how much Sansom devotes to the political situation, I was surprised that Harris almost underplays it. The map of the Greater German Reich in the frontispiece shows the country extending far beyond Moscow to the East, but its other borders remain much the same. It is not until well on in the book that we get any clues about what has happened to the countries of Western Europe.

For the first half at least, this does not read like a political novel so much as a police procedural. The protagonist is Xavier March, former U-boat captain, now a detective inspector with the Berlin Kripo. Although he holds the honorary rank of SS Sturmbannführer, March is essentially a loner, an "asocial" in Party parlance, a non-joiner who follows lines but does not toe them. He reminds me very much of Arkady Renko in GORKY PARK by Martin Cruz Smith; Harris is absolutely in Smith's league, or John Le Carré's before him. The body of an elderly man turns up in the water near Berlin's most exclusive neighborhood, and March takes the case almost by accident. But soon he finds himself tangling with people very high up in the Gestapo hierarchy, and finds himself fighting for his career and even his life, variously aided by old friends from his U-boat days and a beautiful American journalist.

Harris creates a police state that is essentially an extension of its familiar prewar form, now spared the ravages of war. But it is also a state that has been able to maintain a tight control of its secrets; most of the horrors that came to light at Nuremberg and beyond are here still shrouded in darkness. It requires a shift of imagination for the modern reader to conceive a postwar situation where, for instance, Auschwitz is no more than a name on a map. Harris manages to pull it off, partly by his carefully controlled pacing, partly by his meticulous use of real people and events, documenting much that really happened. But this is more than a brilliantly-researched book; it is also a magnificently inventive thriller and rightly the foundation of Harris's considerable reputation.

Spoilers. Heed this – this book is worth reading, but it hinges on some twists you don’t want to know about.

Lots of thriller conventions – this moved so like a movie, and it’s no surprise that it was made into one soon after its publication in 1992. The love interest is so clichéd – this young dream girl who is, of course, smart and sassy, but also can’t help but fall for our older, craggy, cynical leading man – as they run from the authorities in a race to track the MacGuffin. A forty-something Harrison Ford would be made for this world-weary maverick cop, failed marriage behind him, who won’t play the political game with his by-the-book superiors, but hangs on to his job because he’s actually a sharp detective with such an impressive war record. And any of a number of the legion of attractive twenty-something starlets could fill the role of the wild young spirit that reawakens his hope. The tension and pacing steadily builds, with minor victories and threats becoming graver, until the inevitable climax. You could look at the structure of this story and write it off as a by-the-numbers unit airport-novel unit mover.

However…

Harris does this really well. And, while some conventions really have been done to death (although Joseph Campbell might say that story equals convention), there is a reason for their popularity. Sure some manifestations are pretty much only conventions, or even hints of conventions where they don’t even do the work of creating them but just leave it to the reader/viewer to do the work (“OK, here’s the girl, you know the drill – do we have to spell it out?”). March is a strikingly typical hero in terms of trappings and adjectives, yet Harris still builds him, giving him intelligent and biting lines, painting him initially getting annoyed with the girl and trying to shake her off, creating scenarios where he can show integrity without stupidly exposing himself (well, except for one poignant moment), and his final reading of betrayal and consequent choice is a triumph (and, finally, a departure from the Hollywood ending – which was completely available and valid, but would have been less profound, if more immediately gratifying). Charlotte is less textured, but while she is essentially an accessory, she’s not merely one.

Interesting that I haven’t even got to the unsubtle hook of the book, unashamedly shouted on the front cover of my edition, “What if Hitler had won?” But that’s all it’s really played for – a hook (a wonderfully effective hook – Harris said he managed to buy a very nice house out of the proceeds of this book) – and I think Harris was particularly clever in the way he used it. This could have been a novel for trainspotters, with names, events and locations being dropped constantly – but it’s not. It’s a thriller, and Harris never lets the diverting context overwhelm the pacing and the conventional characters and detective/conspiracy story. A victorious Germany is always kept in the background. Harris shows great self-control in not giving in to the cheap titillation of trading blows or bullets or invective with Hitler or Goebbels or Himmler: indeed, I don’t think we actually meet any celebrities – this is a story about our little guy hero. We have patches of straight from Orwell totalitarian lifestyle: deliberately constant war context to justify claustrophobic government control and paranoia in its citizens; austerity for the populus with ludicrous government spending on monuments and indulgence for the elite; the subversion of infant loyalty from parents to the state. There are little sixties historical treats – a Kennedy in office, a popular band out of Liverpool – but Harris doesn’t pose for the WW2 buffs (“Hey, check out my research. Pretty good, huh?”) – he gets his audience in with the effective Nazi teaser, but then keeps them turning pages with a rattling good thriller plot.

There were some holes, probably the largest that the guy holding the MacGuffin chose to pin all his hopes on the relatively powerless daughter of a US State Department official. With all his cronies dying around him, why Luther came back into Germany when he had the very documents that would get him to the US from a neutral country, and seemingly with no plan for being searched at the airport…? Well, it’s obvious why – it set up the killer conclusion, March’s clever insight and brave sacrifice: dramatically killer, logically dodgy. And the conclusion is particularly satisfying because Harris, as well as not giving the guy the girl and a sunset/parade/beach/penthouse, doesn’t spell out the victory. We’re not even sure Charlie made it out, but there’s enough hope for us given March’s clever diversion and her careful journalism noted throughout the investigation. We’ve had these sort of happy ending treats so often they have lost much of their flavour – this is refreshing.

So despite the cliché and this plot quibble, overall I enjoyed the ride, partly because he can write, and partly because Harris never let the context undermine/overwhelm the engaging plot movement. I was also occasionally surprised by particularly effective dialogue, characterisation and the stunning climactic twist.

"Fatherland" is, in my opinion, one of the better alternate reality stories ever written, though it majorly only addresses "current day" 1964 Germany (and the world, at large) and only provides a snippet, really, of how the Nazi's may have won. Regardless, this story by Robert Harris deals with a chilling version of what could have been.

The reader is introduced to this setting as preparations are underway to celebrate the Fuhrer's 75th birthday, along with a planned meeting with President Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and does so in a compelling and realistic manner. During this time a dead body is discovered outside of Berlin that starts an investigation by a seasoned professional policeman, Xavier March. What ensues is anything but normal or business as usual. The corpse is identified as a former high-ranking Nazi, Josef Buhler, and as March digs deeper he becomes involved in quite a political scandal, eventually tying in more dead bodies of former Nazis.

Though the Gestapo seizes control of the case and closes it, March becomes allied with an American journalist, Charlie Maguire (a female), who desires, just as much as March, to find what lies at the end of the trail. The plot and various subplots intertwine beautifully as the pair are on their way to uncovering what would be the most massive government cover-up of all time, bar none. A conspiracy to beat all conspiracies.

The version of the 1960's which Harris artfully paints includes an incredibly rebuilt Berlin, proud and powerful, with warring between the Nazis and Soviets, a continuing German-U.S. cold war, and more. As with most any alternate history story the reader must let go and let it happen. In some ways this is much harder to do with "Fatherland" simply because of the subject matter.

Harris' use of both fictional and real characters (and their development and interaction) along with the events that he portrays, result in a book that will keep you turning pages to discover how it all turns out. The end is definitely not what you would expect.

This is the iconic alternate history novel, and I doubt a richer and more thorough book on a world in which Nazi Germany won World War II will ever be written. Robert Harris knew the history he was writing about, and he did a masterful job of creating this alternate 1964, in which an aging Adolf Hitler still rules supreme as Germany's Fuehrer. The Nazis- and Hitler in particular- did not make certain mistakes that they did in our timeline, and thus the Third Reich endured, breaking the Allies apart as the Americans withdrew, the Soviets were pushed east of the Urals, and the rest of Europe was given "independence" but answered to Berlin in all but name.

The story's protagonist is Xavier March, SS-Sturmbannfuehrer and detective of the Kriminalpolizei, and a veteran of the U-boat service during World War II. He was a patriot who served honorably and with distinction, and for a time he was a rising star. But divorce, refusing to join the Nazi Party (a necessity for upward mobility in a nation where the Party controls everything, one way or another) and an increasingly irreverent and cynical attitude have stalled March's career. Maybe he believed in the Nazi ideology once, but he doesn't anymore. I was particularly impressed by a scene where March is in a room where everyone is singing the German anthem, and "March's lips moved in conformity with the others, but no sound emerged." Nonetheless, March is still a sharp and capable detective, and when the body of an important and well-to-do man washes up on the shores of a Berlin lake, he quickly takes notice when the man turns out to be an old NSDAP member.

It seems a little hard to believe that a career policeman and war veteran would side so readily with an American journalist who, like him, is given to asking more questions than the Nazi state approves of. But given how he has no promotion prospects, is estranged from his former wife and his son, and is tolerated at best by the more enthusiastic Nazis around and above him, maybe it makes sense. I didn't care much for some aspects of the latter half of the plot, such as the romance subplot between March and the American journalist- it just went on a little long. But Robert Harris never loses sight of this picture he has of a very different world in which Germany was winner-take-all in the Second World War, and in his development and detailing of that world, he is superb. The first half of the plot is stronger than the second, but I had no difficulty staying with it all the way. March's motivations for facing such increasingly extreme risks and danger- asking questions and poking around in a country where neither is smiled on by the ever-present State is a great recipe for a short life- are something of a mystery to me. But then, they may have also been a mystery to him. With little to lose and a natural desire to go hunting for the truth, March set out to find out why an old Party man died so mysteriously and finds out that and so much more, whatever it costs him along the way.

This is a fascinating book. It truly is. One of the best things about it, as I have repeatedly said, is its rich development of this world where the Nazis won everything in World War II some twenty years in the past. Harris brings up things that I had never considered, but inevitably would have happened had Hitler triumphed. The first generation of Nazi military and political leaders- Goering, Hess, Hitler, Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler, etc.- are now dead or growing old, such as Hitler at age 75. Replacing these WWI vets and former street brawlers are university-educated men who at most knew the Second World War as an exciting challenge as young men in the Hitler Youth. The men increasingly running the Nazi state are men who have grown up in a stable, orderly society. It is becoming a question of "Has he got a degree?" rather than "Has he got guts" as SS general "Globus" Globocnick complains at one point in the story.

The Hitler Youth is alive and well and still encourages loyalty to the State above all else, but the novelty has worn off somewhat. World War II ended in the West but has dragged on for twenty years in the East, and while no one dares question it publicly, Harris gives indications that morale is beginning to sag, that the German people are getting tired of trains bringing dead soldiers back in the middle of the night. Hitler knows at least some of this, hence the change in Germany's cold stance towards the United States and Berlin's working to forge an alliance between the two. Hitler's vision of keeping the people "on their toes" with a never-ending war is not working out as planned, and the Nazi state is losing its edge even as it reigns in total triumph. Whether it will survive or fall in the end is left to our imagination, but hints are given, and the same goes for March and his and Charlie Maguire's efforts to uncover the truth- and once they do, to reveal it to the world.

This book has its flaws, but they are fairly minor. If you want to take a look into a world that came frighteningly close to happening- the Allied victory in Europe was not as inevitable as we like to think it was, 70 years later- this is absolutely the book for you. If you want a good detective/mystery novel, look no further. "Fatherland" is well-deserving of its strong reputation and is a must-read for anyone who is a fan of alternate history.

The irony of a murder investigator working inside the Third Reich in an alternative history has been used before in Len Deighton's SS-GB. Again, the investigator even falls in love with an American journalist. However, in my view, for all its faults Harris's Fatherland is superior to SS-GB in every way.

The year is 1964, and the Beatles are touring Nazi Berlin. Western and Eastern Europe have both fallen to Hitler, though desultory guerilla war continues in the Urals. Britain has been starved into submission by U-Boats, the Nazi sympathiser Joseph P Kennedy sits in the White House, and Berlin has been transformed by the architectural dreams of Albert Speer. And Europe is entirely "Judenfrei".

The benefit of this book over SS-GB is that it concentrates on the long term effects of Nazi victory. Anyone imagining an alternative history of World War 2 might be able to imagine the first days after Nazi conquest (which is where Len Deighton prefers to focus), when analogies to what happened in Occupied Europe can safely be imagined.

However, what happens when you go into an era when the Nazis are so entrenched that they seem as "normal" as the Iron Curtain in our own reality? This is where the more interesting - and disturbing - speculation can begin.

First of all, there is obviously the question of the completion of the endlosung der Judenfrage. It may be that the Holocaust was more severe in our reality on the Eastern Front, because that was the principal target for the Nazis. However, the shipping of so many Jews from Western Europe, as well as the gathering of data on Western European Jews, obviously means that the Nazis would eventually have exterminated the Western Jews as well.

In Fatherland, the Final Solution has liquidated 11 million Jews rather than the 6 million in our reality, including the Jews of Western Europe. The death camps, in the same locations as in our reality, have been shut down and demolished, their task fully completed.

Second, there is the question of the fate of Eastern Europe. Hitler wanted Lebensraum in the East; as much of a slaughterhouse as Eastern Europe was in our reality, Hitler's eventual plans were to be incredibly severe. In Fatherland, Poles and other Eastern Europeans form a slave class working for their Aryan masters.

Finally, there is the sheer amount of detail of a Nazi 1960s. Whether it's the descriptions of Speer's Berlin, a truly incredible pipe-dream, or the image of Nazi satellites and ICBMs, Harris has really performed his research well on this point. There are all sorts of little details too, like radios being forced to play "de-Negrified" jazz, millions of musical chocolate boxes all playing Lehar, the Propaganda-Ministerie's library being mostly a bookburning furnace, and the image of entire families being involved in the Nazi apparatus, like participating in the Hitlerjugend and the Strength Through Joy.

The storyline, for all its hiccups, is also intriguing. Xavier March, the Kriminalpolizei detective, is an ex-Uboat crewman, probably the least offensive branch of the service for our hero to have served in. The idea of a 1960s Nazi murder investigator checking into the sudden murders of all the attendees of the Wannsee Conference is just excellent.

There is no doubt to me that Fatherland is superior to SS-GB. Just read it and wallow in the well-researched details of a victorious Third Reich.

Robert Harris's "Fatherland" is a bleak thriller wrapped in a detective story. Calling to mind some of the great Cold War entertainments ("The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "Gorky Park," etc.), "Fatherland" tells the story of the individual's struggle against totalitarianism - and how destructive that struggle can be.

Our "hero" is Xavier March, divorced father of one and a mid-level detective working in Hitler's Berlin in 1964. Yes, Hitler's Berlin. The conceit of this book is that the Nazis "won" WWII, which has morphed into a Cold War largely being fought on the Eastern Front where Soviet terrorists are funded by the United States. Albert Speer's colossal architecture dominates the Berlin skyline. The SS keep rigid control over the German people. And everybody worships Hitler as a God.

That is, except for March. A born cynic, March is a former U-boat captain who is quietly fighting against the rigid structure of life in the Nazi party. But it's hard, as Naziism seems triumphant - even the American President Kennedy is coming to visit Berlin in a hugely important diplomatic mission representing the first step in the growing relationship between Germany and the U.S. (It's part of Harris's devious mind that President Kennedy is JFK's father, Joseph, who was less-than-critical of the Nazis in real life.)

On the eve of Kennedy's arrival, March finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation in one of Berlin's wealthiest neighborhoods - one reserved for the ultimate achievers in the Nazi Party. As March doggedly pursues his investigation, what appears to be an isolated murder of passion turns into one minor crime in perhaps the most monstrous crime of the 20th century. For March discovers clues confirming some of the darkest rumors circulating through the Reich - just what had happened to all those Jews who were shipped East for relocation?

This is a dark novel, and not for the faint of heart.

But "Fatherland" is impeccably researched, which gives it a realism that makes up for the occasional slow point or two. "Fatherland" does not invoke the Holocaust lightly, but like the novels of Daniel Silva uses its horror to great effect. And it serves as a reminder that even though the victors get to write the history books, they cannot completely eradicate the past and the nightmares it contains.

"Fatherland" is the second novel by Robert Harris that I have read, and it did not dissapoint. Well written and indeed well imagined, Fatherland is a novel about victorius Nazi Germany, and the life in Europe, as well as Germany itself, had Hitler won the war.

Seen from the perspective of a Kriminalpolizei's Major Xavier March, Germany of the 1960's is a cold, unwelcoming police state, in which racism and nationalism persist, where strange Nazi laws rule the land, and in which many countries of today do not exist, swallowed by Hitler's megalomania. Gone are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia and many other countries, while the countries that survived are but sattelites of the German Reich. It is in this state that Stuermbahnfuehrer (Major) March investigates an apparent suicide of a prominent member of the Nazi Party.

March's investigation is interrupted by an SS General, who trumps all the attempts that March makes, making the Major that much more interested in the case. As the case unfolds, March sees that the entire Reich is at stake. March teams up with an American journalist, following a trail of suicides and accidental deaths of all Party members who could impede the upcoming peace talks between Hitler and the American President, Joseph P. Kennedy.

Harris delivered a well written novel, a novel of "what it could have been." It is difficult to write alternate history, but Harris seems to do it seamlessly and effortlessly. A good, entertaining read, based on historical fact, "Fatherland" is another success from an accomplished author.

In 1964, winning World War II and achieving domination over all but the United States, the Nazi's Thousand-Year Reich prepares to celebrate Der Fuhrer's 75th birthday. But it's business as usual for SS Detective Xavier March, a U-Boat vet turned police detective. With the holiday looming, March investigates a suspicious death seemingly unconnected with the alternate history of 1964 in which, Deutchland Uber Alles. But March's experiences prowling the North Atlantic have molded him into a natural hunter, and he refuses subtle (and not so) hints to leave the case alone. While a patriot in SS Black, March's instinct's foster suspicions that all was never right in the Reich - over the seeming perpetual resistance to German rule in the occupied and distant East, how knowledgeable German doctors are on the science of how people dies, and mostly (though also most quietly) on the subject of those missing Jews. Estranged from his wife and son, March is in no mood to file things away. With the help of a visiting journalist (a beautiful and plucky American, of course), March's investigation takes him to darkened archives and the offices of high ranking Nazis very much alive in a fully drawn and frightfully convincing world.
"Fatherland" excels not only because of what it does, but what it doesn't. The author resists the temptation to spell out exactly how the Nazis came to win the war, preferring instead to drop tantalizing hints (The Nazis responded to Hiroshima by launching V-3 at NY - thus keeping America out of the war; U-Boats are now nuclear powered, hinting that Dr. Heisenberg finally got it right; remaining nations outside of the Reich's control are happy to lay blame for genocide firmly on the wartime Soviet regime - renowned as it is for its brutality). The biggest twist is that while established history remains a mystery, the mystery on March's agenda quickly becomes no mystery at all - to us: the corpse (ironically identified as a "founding father" when his sole criminal record reveals an arrest in 1922 in a Munich beer hall) is found outside a converted schoolhouse on the Wansee. When the dead man's connection to that location is linked to a meeting there of high-ranking Nazis in early 1942, historically adept readers will realize that March is on the verge of discovering the Reich's guilt for a far larger crime - the crime of the century. March remains appropriately dim, creating one of the finest examples of deductive police work through investigation - Harris refuses to allow the slightest intrusion of our history into his hero's thinking. Instead, March tracks down the other famed Nazis who met suspicious ends and follows a trail that leads him to a Swiss bank. I'm not sure whether the controversy over Swiss banks was as well known when "Fatherland" debuted, in either case, Harris' treatment seems ironic, if not prescient: the Swiss accounts in Harriss's book weren't left behind by the Nazis' victims, but by disloyal Germans possessed by the insane fear that (huh!) Germany might lose the war.
Harris also avoids the urge to recreate the dark gods of the Reich simply by dropping names (Goering, Goebbels, Himmler and most of the Discovery Channel's usual suspects are long gone.) Albert Speer doesn't appear, but the author's drawing of undivided Berlin - monumental and insecure - gives the architect more character than a few lines of dumb dialog. Heydrich (the guy killed by Partisans) appears, but only to add more mystery - March is never sure if Heydrich is actually helping him out of fear of joining the other mysteriously dead Nazis, or marking him for death.
Best of all are the people who populate the vibrant Thousand-year Reich. No revisionist or apologist, Harris nevertheless avoids simple villainy for the inhabitants of the Reich of 1964 - his Germans seem not slightly cowed by fear of their regime yet honestly ignorant of their victims' fate. While a U-Boat ace in 1943, March wore sock not knowing that they were sewn with hair from dead Jews. In the 1990's, we're kept warm with our own complacency on history, and a sense of its immutability (we've watched too many documentaries and war movies to even consider the possibility of Nazi victory). Harris tells us otherwise!

Robert Harris's "Fatherland" is not so much about What Would Have Happened If Hitler Had Won the War as a detective/thriller story that takes place in a 1964 Europe that had been conquered by the Nazis. The plot has been amply covered in previous reviews. It is evenly paced, intricately woven, literate and peopled with multi-dimensional characters one can feel for, or against.

The protagonist, Xavier March, wears an SS uniform, but is uncomfortable with all the moral baggage it carries with it. A nose-to-ground police investigator, he is an outsider within the regime he serves, thus making him that more interesting a character. Add to this his ex-wife and alienated son as fervent Nazis and March's outsiderness is virtually complete, adding to the scale of his David-vs-Goliath struggle against the Nazi regime and the crimes it committed. March's eventual love interest, a young American reporter, is believable as a fun-loving, irreverent snoopy journalist and good-natured foil to March.

The alternative history aspect of "Fatherland" frames the story rather than dominates it, which is as it should be if the reader is to remain focused on the unfolding plot and the developing characters. Revelations on Hitler's foiling the Allies' codebreaking of U-boat ciphers and subsequent subjugation of Britain, his strategic judiciousness in conquering Russia, his exploding a "V-3" rocket over New York to prevent the Americans from dropping A-bombs on the Reich and other alternative war scenarios are devilishly clever thought-provoking devices. Imagine as well a pro-Nazi Pres. Joe Kennedy and U.S. Ambassador-to-Berlin Charles Lindbergh; also pro-Nazi King Edward VIII and consort Wallis Simpson; Churchill in exile in Canada. Also very clever is Harris's using the real-history Soviet-U.S. cold war template with his alternative history of post-WWII U.S.-German relations -- same dynamics, but with different actors.

Harris's spinning of a classic murder mystery into a political thriller is masterfully done. The double-crosses are almost heart-wrenching. And his literate employment of English and smart dialogue make him stand out from the masses of humdrum thriller writers whose use of language is hackneyed and whose ideas of plot action center on jaw-kicking and shoot'em-ups.

"Fatherland's" success as a bestseller is well-deserved for an author who clearly put in 110 percent effort in researching and writing a masterful tale.

The fascination with Fatherland is not the details of the plot, but in the world invoked by the author. It is an alternate world where Nazi Germany defeated England and Russia, and avoiding war with the U.S.A.
The story takes place within this Germany, on the eve of der Fuhrer's 75th birthday. A police inspector is warned off a case by the Gestapo, but his cop intuition tells him something funny is going on. He eventually figures out a connection between a number of former high-ranking Party officials that have all recently died, most under suspicious circumstances. From there, he discovers a coverup of monumental proportions (which I won't reveal), and the race is on to try to get the truth out of Germany before the Gestapo picks him up for "questioning."
This is standard fare that could have been set in any dictatorship of the 20th century, without need to resort to an alternate world where WWII ends differently. However, Harris's victorious Germany is a fascinating creation, all the more so because he doesn't dwell on it. The characters inhabit this world, and we accept it because they do and because it is so plausible. It is clear Harris did his homework in populating his 3rd Reich with a combination of real people and fictional characters that seamlessly intertwine. Armchair historians will recognise many of the names - Speer, Heydrich, Frank, Eichmann - but even some of the lesser-known party officials are well researchered. Checking back in my Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, many of these characters are there, doing what Harris has them doing.
Harris has made some weird choices, such as allowing Heydrich to survive assassination in Czechoslovakia in 1943 - why? It's not like Heydrich is a vital character. But all-in-all it's a fascinating read. Not for the plot details, which are pretty standard, but for the creation of this Nazi Germany that Could Have Been.

Fatherland proves that even alternate history can succeed in the mainstream. And this book deserves it. As well as an evocative portrayal of a very depressing parallel world, it is an exciting, well-done mystery thriller.
It must be admitted that the point of divergence is not terribly original or realistic: Germany, utilising superior strategy and technology, defeated Russia and forced a peace agreement on Britain in 1944. As a result, Berlin came to dominate all of Western Europe via a monolithic EEU-like organization. The USA remains defiant, however, and a trans-Atlantic Cold War ensues.
Not the most creative historical background, perhaps, but the alternate world is still handled very well. Most of the story takes place in this world's Berlin, where Albert Speers' grand architectural vision has become reality. Vast domes and palaces tower over the city, embodying the triumph of the Nazi way. Adolf Hitler himself continues to rule his nation with an iron fist. But amidst all this imperial grandeur, the population lives a life of bitter oppression. Gestapo informers are everywhere. Anyone who speaks out against the system disappears without a trace. Harris captures this environment very effectively. The paranoia, violence, and claustrophobia of a true totalitarian society really come to life.
The plot takes place in the '60s, as the USA and the Greater German Reich work towards towards friendlier relations. The President and Der Fuhrer are planning a summit meeting. Is it time for a new era of peace?
Then German police detective Xavier March is called in to investigate a death by drowning. What starts out as routine police work suddenly turns very complex when the deceased is found to be a high Nazi official. Then it transpires that, shortly before his death, he was in contact with two other Nazi officials. Soon, one of them turns up dead, too. What seemed a freak accident soon becomes part of a highly suspicious, and highly disturbing, pattern. Xavier March's investigation leads him into the heart of a terrifying conspiracy... a conspiracy of which he himself may well be the next victim.
The plot moves at an energetic pace against the film-noirish background of Berlin, carrying the reader through a fascinating, page-turning alternate history extravaganza.
Fatherland lacks the military and political aspects present in many AHs, which may disappoint some readers. But in terms of adventure and atmosphere, it is top notch.

What if Nazi Germany had won the European war? What would the world of the 1960s look like with an aging Führer still clutching the reigns of power? Those are the big questions that inform journalist and author Robert Harris' debut novel, a genuine page-turner about one German policeman's investigation of a routine corpse who turns out to be anything but routine.

I really enjoyed this novel on many levels. For one thing, it is a compelling thriller involving long-buried secrets, political assassinations, international intrigue, and Gestapo tactics and police state paranoia. The main protagonist, Sturmbahnnführer Xavier March, a surprisingly sympathetic SS officer-by-default whose loyalty to the Reich is far from perfect, finds himself drawn into a web of treachery involving a 20-year old secret that unknown parties will kill to protect.

*Fatherland* is also ingeniously crafted alternate history, in which Albert Speer's larger-than-life architectural visions for Nazi Berlin have been brought to fruition. Descriptions of the titanic Arch of Triumph (40 or so times bigger than the Parisian monument of the same name) and the thousand-foot tall Great Hall vied for my attention against chilling details about everyday life in a racist police state. And of course, there is that decades-old secret March unravels; it has something to do with obscure frontier towns called Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Dachau.

All in all, a well written debut novel that is well worth a read.

Berlin, 1964.
20 years have passed since Germany's victory over the Allies in World War II. Adolf Hitler has been in power for 31 years, his 75th birthday nears, and a summit meeting between the Fuhrer and President Kennedy has been announced.

This is the intriguing scenario presented by British journalist-novelist Robert Harris in his first novel, Fatherland.

Harris' novel, unlike Peter Tsouras' Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944, doesn't offer us a very detailed "alternative history" of the Second World War, which perhaps would have been the easy way out for a lesser writer. Instead, Harris smartly teases us with little glimpses at how Germany could have won the war while still losing its collective soul.

Fatherland's plot revolves around Xavier March, a former U-boat skipper who has joined the German police, which has been under SS control since the mid-1930s. On a rainy April morning, March has been called to investigate what seems to be a routine incident: a corpse has been found in the Havel River near the area where high Nazi party officials have their mansions.

Of course, if you have read political-police thrillers such as Gorky Park or Archangel, you know there will be nothing routine about this investigation. For this corpse's identity is none other than Doctor Josef Buhler, one of the earliest Nazi party members and former state secretary in the General Government, the part of Poland directly annexed by the Third Reich during the war. Before long, March (who is not a Nazi party member, just a dogged investigator) will follow Buhler's seemingly routine death down a dark and winding path that will lead him to Germany's darkest and best kept secret of all.

For history buffs, this book is a fascinating look at what a mid-1960s Nazi Germany might have been like. Harris paints a chilling portrait of a country still at war with what remains of the Soviet Union while in a cold war with a nuclear-armed United States. Berlin is imagined as Hitler and his architect Albert Speer would have rebuilt it at war's end (in the frontispiece there is an artist's rendering of Hitler's vision for his capital), and readers will shudder with horror to see how far the Nazis' indoctrination of children extended.

Harris keeps things going at a brisk pace, never boring readers or insulting their intelligence. His fictional characters interact with historical characters (although, of course, their fates ended up differently in real life, thank goodness) in a believable fashion. Of course, this type of novel requires willing suspension of disbelief, but it is well-written and, in the end, eye-opening.