Fatherland (novel)

Fatherland
Cover of the first UK edition
Author(s)	Robert Harris
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Thriller, alternative history novel
Publisher	Hutchinson
Publication date	7 May 1992
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	372 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-09-174827-5 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC Number	26548520

Fatherland is a bestselling 1992 thriller by the English writer and journalist Robert Harris. It takes the form of a high concept alternative history set in a world in which Nazi Germany won World War II.

The novel was an immediate bestseller in Britain. It has sold over three million copies and has been translated into 25 languages.

Plot summary

The story begins in Nazi Germany, the Third Reich 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 Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), as he investigates the suspicious death of a high-ranking Nazi, Josef Bühler, in the Havel, on the outskirts of 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 murdered under staged circumstances. In fact, as soon as the body is identified, the Gestapo claims jurisdiction and orders the Kripo to close its investigation.

March meets with 'Charlie' Maguire, a female American journalist who is also determined to investigate the case. They both 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 (of which the German people are not generally aware) at the Wannsee Conference of 1942. This is being done in order to safeguard an upcoming meeting of Hitler and President Joseph P. Kennedy by ensuring that the crimes of the Nazi regime are not revealed. Maguire heads for neutral Switzerland with the evidence, hoping to expose it to the world. March, however, is denounced by his ten-year-old son and apprehended by the Gestapo.

In the cellars of Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, March is tortured but does not reveal the location of Maguire. Kripo Chief Arthur Nebe stages a rescue, intending to track March as he meets with Maguire at their rendezvous in Waldshut-Tiengen on the Swiss/German border. March realises what is happening and heads for Auschwitz, leading the authorities in the wrong direction.

The Gestapo catches up with March at the unmarked site of Auschwitz's completely dismantled extermination camp. Knowing that Maguire has had time to cross the border into Switzerland, March searches for some sign that the death camp was real. As the Gestapo agents close in on him, March uncovers bricks in the undergrowth. Satisfied, he pulls out his gun while leaving the readers to draw their own conclusions.

Characters

Fictional

• Xavier March. A detective in the Kriminalpolizei with the concurrent honorary rank of Sturmbannführer (major) in the SS, March (nicknamed "Zavi" by his friends) is a 41-year-old divorcé living in Berlin. He has one son, Pili, who lives with March's ex-wife, Klara. March's father was killed serving in the Imperial German Navy in WWI and his mother died in a British bombing raid in 1942. March commanded a U-Boat in WWII. He married after the war, but the marriage steadily deteriorated afterward. His military service helped him rise through the police ranks to detective. By 1964 he is unknowingly being watched by the Gestapo for what they perceive to be his half-hearted allegiance to the Nazi regime - for example he has refused to contribute to the 'winter-relief', and has never applied to join the Nazi Party like others of his rank and age.
• Charlotte "Charlie" Maguire. A 25-year-old American woman, Maguire lives in Berlin reporting for the obscure news agency World European Features. Midway through the novel, she and March fall in love and begin a relationship. Maguire comes from a political family but is something of a tearaway.
• Hermann Jost. An SS cadet, 19-year-old Jost discovers the corpse which triggers March's investigation. Midway through the novel, Jost disappears. The official explanation is that he has been sent to the Eastern Front.
• Paul "Pili" March. March's ten-year-old son, Pili lives with his mother and her partner in a bungalow in the suburbs of Berlin. Pili is a fully indoctrinated member of the Jungvolk — the junior section of the Hitler Youth for boys between the ages of 10 and 14. Later in the novel, Pili denounces his father to the Gestapo, all the while unaware of what they will really do to him.
• Max Jaeger. March's friend and Kripo partner, Jaeger is 50, lives with his wife and four daughters in Berlin, and is disinclined to question 'the system'. At the end of the novel Jaeger drives the getaway car that rescues March, but it is revealed that he was the one who had betrayed March.
• Walther Fiebes. Fiebes is a detective working in VB3, the Kripo's sexual crimes division, along the corridor from March's office. Fiebes seems to relish his work investigating (Party-defined) sexual crimes cases including rape, adultery, and interracial relationships.
• Rudolf "Rudi" Halder. March's friend and a crewman on his U-boat, Rudi is now an historian working at the immense Central Archives, helping to compile an official history of the German military on the Eastern Front.
• Karl Krebs. Krebs is a well-educated young officer in the Gestapo, and an example of the typical modern SS-trained officer functionary.

Historical

• Odilo Globocnik. A middle-aged Obergruppenführer (general) in the Gestapo, nicknamed "Globus". After March's apprehension by the Gestapo, Globus takes over March's interrogation and torture, administering several brutal beatings.
• Arthur Nebe. The chief of the Kripo, Nebe by 1964 is an old man with a sumptuous office in Berlin. Once Nebe ascertains the truth about what March has discovered, he quickly weaves a ruse to dupe March into revealing the whereabouts of the evidence.
• Other historical characters referred to in the book include Adolf Hitler, the elderly and increasingly reclusive Führer of the Greater German Reich. Reinhard Heydrich is now head of the SS and a likely successor to Hitler. Hermann Göring is said to have died in 1951 and Berlin's main international airport was named after him. Joseph Goebbels is still in charge of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Winston Churchill and Princess Elizabeth are living in exile in Canada. Edward VIII and his consort Wallis reign as figureheads of Britain (their exact authority is not stated). Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. is the President of the United States. Charles Lindbergh is the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Briefly mentioned are the Beatles and their recent appearances in Hamburg.

Some attendees of the real Wannsee Conference are central to the plot, although the others are already dead at the time of the novel's events.

Background

Alternate World War II history

Throughout the novel, Harris gradually explains the fictional historical developments that allowed Germany to prevail in World War II. Although not specifically stated, the earliest point of divergence is that Reinhard Heydrich survives the assassination attempt in May 1942 - which in reality killed him - and becomes head of the SS. The Nazi offensives on the Eastern Front ultimately pushed back the Soviet forces, while the D-Day invasion by the Allies failed. Because the Nazis manipulated information for their own ends to serve the war effort, it is entirely possible that the events of Case Blau was not as successful as they claim. The Nazis also discover the British are reading their naval codes and defeats the British fleet. The U-boat blockade starves Britain into submission by 1944.

King George VI and Winston Churchill go to Canada in exile. Edward VIII regains the British throne at the helm of a pro-German puppet government, with Wallis Simpson as his queen. After being forced east, the remaining Soviet forces (still under Stalin) begin a protracted guerilla war.

Germany tested its first atom bomb in 1946 and fired a non-nuclear "V-3" missile that explodes above New York City to demonstrate an ability to attack the continental United States with long-range missiles. The US has defeated Japan in 1945 using its own nuclear weapons. Thus, the US and Germany are the two superpowers of the world.

Alternate post-war history

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. By 1964, the United States and the Greater German Reich are involved in a Cold War.

The surviving areas of the Soviet Union, still led by Stalin, wage an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural Mountains. Mounting casualties (at least 100,000 since 1960, according to the novel) have sapped the German military, despite Hitler's earlier statement (quoted in the novel) about a perpetual war to keep the German people on their toes. The novel describes dead German soldiers being returned to Germany in the middle of the night and German citizens still being encouraged to make contributions to Winterhilfswerk ("Winter Relief") program.

The novel takes place from April 14–20, 1964, as Germany prepares for Hitler's 75th birthday celebrations on the 20th. 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 novel suggests that the Nazi hierarchy is eager for peace because its efforts to settle the conquered Eastern lands are failing, in part due to the American-backed guerrilla war waged by Soviet supporters.

The Holocaust has been explained away officially as merely the relocation of the Jewish population to the East into areas where communication and travel are still very poor, and it is impossible for most of their relatives in the West to contact them. Despite this, many Germans suspect the government has eliminated the Jews.

Greater German Reich and international politics

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, stretching from Alsace-Lorraine (Westmark) in the west to the Ural Mountains and lower Caucasus in the east.

The Reich has retained Austria (now known as the "Ostmark"), the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (formerly part of Czechoslovakia), and Luxembourg (now named "Moselland"). In the East, Germany has annexed Poland and Soviet territory 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).

Berlin has been 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 180,000 people at the highest Nazi ceremonies; the enormous Arch of Triumph is inscribed with the names of all German soldiers killed in the two World Wars; and the straddling 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 severe utilitarian 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 European Community.

The rest of Western Europe, excluding Switzerland, has been corralled by Germany into a European Community although the status of the historical Nazi-sympathetic governments of Benito Mussolini and Spain's Franco are unspecified. Eastern European countries dominated by the Germany of Fatherland' include Croatia, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia.

A virtually powerless "European Parliament" is based in Berlin. At the European Parliament building, the flags of the member states are dwarfed by a swastika flag twice the size of the other flags. The nations of Fatherland's EC, despite being nominally free under their own governments and leaders are presumably only just sufficient to police their own territory. European nations are under constant surveillance by Berlin and are subordinate to Germany in all but name.

Switzerland remains independent and is not a member of the European Community. By the time the Reich had turned its eyes to it, the stalemate of the Cold War had settled in and Switzerland had become a convenient neutral spot for diplomacy, and for American and German intelligence agents to spy on each other. Consequently, Switzerland is the last true independent state in Europe.

The United States is locked in a Cold War with the Greater German Reich. Since the end of the war in 1946, both the US and Germany have developed nuclear and space technologies. Japan was defeated by the U.S. after the United States detonated two atomic bombs on Japanese territory. The United States is said to have not participated in the Olympic Games since 1936, but is expected to in 1964.

A passing reference hints at China being ruled by a harsh government. 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 death toll on the Eastern Front is taking its toll. Africa and South America are not referred to in the novel.

Canada and Australia are now allied with the United States. Princess Elizabeth resides in Canada, as does Winston Churchill.

The novel does not make references to the League of Nations or a possible existence of the United Nations. The International Red Cross exists in the world of Fatherland.

The novel describes that since the end of the war, a stalemate has developed between Germany and the United States, which seems to overshadow international relations. New German buildings are constructed with mandatory fallout shelters; the Reichsarchiv (German National Archive) claims to have been built to withstand a direct missile hit. It is not explicitly stated whether Germany and the United States are the only nuclear powers in the world of Fatherland.

Nazi society

In the novel, Western Europe has been left relatively untouched by the Reich^{[citation needed]}, as Germany concentrates on the containment of what is left of the USSR. Although Hitler has taken some steps to soften his image, no substantive changes have taken place in the Nazi regime's basic character. The Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933, the legal bases for Hitler's dictatorship, still remain in effect. The press, radio and the new medium of television are very tightly controlled. Dissenters are dealt with very harshly, often being sent to concentration camps.

In the novel, the bedrock of Nazi ideology is still the policy of blaming subversives for social problems. Jews (see anti-semitism), communists, homosexuals, incest, and interracial relationships (particularly between "Aryans" and Slavs) continue being scapegoats for the Nazi Party. With the extermination of the Jews now completed and most of Europe and western Russia under German control, the Nazi Party appears to have spent the early 1960s blaming the United States for causing Germany's problems^{[citation needed]}. Nazi propaganda has previously depicted America as a land of corruption, degeneracy and poverty. 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. In 1964, the Nazi Party no longer has any internal or external enemies left to fight and as a consequence, 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 produce of their European satellite states and freed from physical labour by thousands of Polish, Czech and Ukrainian slaves. The European nations produce 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. 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. Eastern Europe has been colonized by German settlers (although local partisan resistance movements are still active) and the German population has soared as a result of Nazi emphasis on childbirth. Increasing numbers of Nazi officials are university-educated bureaucrats. The SS serves as the country's police force, and concentration camps are still in existence for political dissidents, with the International Red Cross occasionally given staged inspections.

According to the main characters, however, German society in the early 1960s is becoming more and more rebellious. An increasing number of people have no memory of the instability that paved the way for Hitler's rise to power. 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. Jazz music is still popular and Germany claims to have come up with a version which is free from "Negroid influence". In spite of the general repressiveness, the Beatles' real-life Hamburg engagements have happened here as well. Germany appears to be under constant attack by terrorist groups, with officials assassinated and civilian airliners bombed in-flight. Religion is now officially discouraged by the state, and Hitler Youth organizations are compulsory for all children. Universities are centres of student dissent, and the White Rose movement is once again active. The Nazis continue with their policies for women, encouraging them to remain in the home and bring up many children, although women are clearly present in the Nazi bureaucracy. Nazi organisations such as Kraft durch Freude still exist and fulfil their original roles. A sprawling transport network covers the entire Reich, including vast autobahnen and railways in the manner of the actually proposed Breitspurbahn system, carrying immense trains.

Technology

The level of technology in Fatherland is much the same as in the actual 1960s, and in some respects, is more advanced. The German military makes use of jet aircraft, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers, while civilian technology has also advanced considerably. Jet airliners, televisions, hair-dryers and even photocopiers are used in Germany.

The novel makes references to the space programmes of the United States and the Third Reich^{[citation needed]}, both of whom appear to possess sophisticated space technology. Although the extent of space exploration is not specified, a conversation between March and McGuire suggests that German boasts about being ahead of the Americans in the Space Race are justified.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Film

Fatherland
Directed by	Christopher Menaul
Produced by	Gideon Amir Ilene Kahn Frederick Muller Leo Zisman
Written by	Novel Robert Harris Screenplay Stanley Weiser Ron Hutchinson
Starring	Rutger Hauer Miranda Richardson Peter Vaughan Jean Marsh Michael Kitchen
Music by	Gary Chang
Cinematography	Peter Sova
Editing by	Tariq Anwar
Distributed by	HBO Films
Release date(s)	26 November 1994 (United States) 27 January 1995 (Germany) February 1995 (Sweden)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£4.1 million

A TV film of the book was made in 1994 by HBO, starring Rutger Hauer as March and Miranda Richardson as Maguire for which she received a Golden Globe Award in 1995 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV. Rutger Hauer's performance was also nominated, as well as the film itself. The film also received an Emmy nomination in 1995 for Special Visual Effects.

Differences

• The film changes the historical time line divergence in the novel to the Germans successfully defeating the Allies during the D-Day invasion in June 1944. Princess Elizabeth and Winston Churchill flee from the United Kingdom to Canada, while Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns in disgrace. With defeating Nazism in Europe now seemingly hopeless, America turns its back on the war in Europe and focuses on Japan, thus allowing Germany to regroup and defeat the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. It also states that in 1964, the 85-year-old Joseph Stalin is still alive and leading a Soviet Union rump state similar to the version in the novel in an endless guerrilla war against Germany. Unlike in the novel, no European Union is formed as Western and Southern Europe are annexed into the Reich, now known as "Germania". Unlike in the novel the German border with the Soviet Union is shown to be the same as it was in 1941 before Operation Barbarossa (apart from the Baltic States which are part of the Reich). This coincides with the film's story of the war ending in mid-1944, by which time German forces had been mostly pushed out of Soviet territory.
• The film starts out showing Jost seeing Bühler's body dumped, not how March inspects the crime scene. Also other episodes that are told in the book to March by the witnesses are shown immediately when they happen in the plot. The murder of Luther (Luther's name is changed in the film from "Martin" to his middle name of "Franz") in the book, which takes place on the steps of the Great Hall, is in the film reduced to a shoot-out in a subway station.
• March and Maguire seem to be older than described in the novel, and they do not have a sexual relationship. In the book there is a Gestapo record on March that shows his distance to the regime very clearly and becomes dangerous to him; Maguire is decidedly against President Joseph Kennedy whom she considers to be antisemitic. These views are changed in the film to reflect more of the Cold War between Germany and America. Maguire is pro-American and rather hopeful for Kennedy's visit, while March expresses the opposite view.
• The most important alteration may be the way in which the Holocaust is revealed to the main characters and to the American public. In the novel, it is March who has an old and genuine interest in the fate of the Jews and who finds out the truth through Luther's documents hidden in a Berlin airport. In the film, Maguire gets the documents from Luther's mistress who does not know about his death and believes that she will later go with him to America. The mistress is radically anti-Semitic and joyfully reveals the murder of the Jews to a shocked Maguire. When Maguire tells this to March in a park, the patriotic March initially does not want to believe the story but the documents, including photographs of murdered people, convince him.
• While the novel arguably has Maguire escape to Switzerland with the documents she is going to publish in America (March has a vision of her escaping, her escape is not described), in the film she passes them to a colleague. In the film the American president is actually visiting Germany (in the book the visit is scheduled only for September). Hitler waits for Kennedy in front of a huge audience, but Maguire's friend breaks through the cordon and presents the papers to the US ambassador and Kennedy just as their motorcade stops for the president to meet Hitler. Kennedy, appearing shocked by the photographs, abruptly leaves the scene. A loudspeaker tells the crowd (and Hitler) that Kennedy is returning to America immediately.
• As in the novel, March is denounced by his son to the Gestapo. However, the ending then diverges from the novel as March is killed by the Gestapo in Berlin while trying to take his son with him to America. The film diverges from the novel as well for Maguire as she is last seen waiting for March and his son so they can escape back to America together. At the end, a voiceover from March's son tells that Maguire was captured by the Gestapo as the revelations of the Holocaust and the lack of a strategic alliance with the USA causes the Nazi regime to collapse.
• Wilhelm Stuckart, another murder victim, was renamed to Walter Stuckart.
• 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 it is said that he was transferred to a combat unit on the front lines with the Waffen-SS. Given the context in which Jost's "transfer" is described, however, most readers would assume that he was murdered by Globus to derail the investigation. In the film March told Jost that he knew his mother.
• Charlie Maguire is just arriving in Germany in the film, but in the book she had been there for over six months.

Radio

The novel 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 9 July 1997. The ending is changed slightly to allow for the limitations of the medium: the entire Auschwitz death camp is discovered in an abandoned state, and Charlie Maguire's passage into Switzerland definitely occurs.

Audiobook

The unabridged audiobook version of the novel was released by Random House Audio in 1993, read by Werner Klemperer, best remembered for his two-time Emmy Award-winning role of bumbling Colonel Klink on the 60s TV series Hogan's Heroes.

Release details

• 1992, UK, Hutchinson (ISBN 0-09-174827-5), Pub date 7 May 1992, hardback (First edition)
• 1993, UK, Arrow (ISBN 0-09-926381-5), Pub date 12 May 1993, paperback

See also

• It Can't Happen Here
• It Happened Here
• The Man in the High Castle
• The Divide
• The Ultimate Solution
• 1945
• SS-GB
• In the Presence of Mine Enemies
• Collaborator
• The Sound of His Horn
• The Iron Dream
• The Proteus Operation
• Clash of Eagles
• Making History
• Swastika Night
• '48
• The Children's War

References

• Hersh, Seymour. The Dark Side of Camelot. Back Bay Books, 1998.
• Leamer, Laurence. The Kennedy Men. Harper, 2002.
• Renehan, Edward. The Kennedys at War, . Doubleday, 2002.

External links

• Fatherland at the Internet Movie Database
• Fatherland, movie trailer