Amazon Book Description
- Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War.
- It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.
- As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth - a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.
- About the Author: Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.
Notes
- There’s an excellent Wikipedia article: Wikipedia: Fatherland (novel). Consequently, I don’t need to rehearse the plot, but only make a few remarks.
- In this counterfactual history, in which Heydrich survives his assassination attempt but Himmler does not, the war is only half-won, but at least not lost, from the German perspective. Western Europe are satellite states and only half of the USSR has been conquered – and there is perpetual war on the frontier as well as partisan activity throughout the greater German Reich. However, Hitler does achieve his primary goals of eliminating the Jews and providing lebensraum in the East for German settlers (most of whom don’t want to go there).
- The resultant Nazi state is somewhat reminiscent of East Germany under the Soviets, though maybe better off and with the SS rather than the Stasi. Speer has built some grandiose but ugly buildings in central Berlin.
- The main conceit of the story is that the Final Solution has been covered up. The Jews were supposedly resettled in the East but were in facts exterminated. All the evidence was supposedly erased, other than some documentation salted away by some conspirators – originally intimately involved in the Wannsee conference and onwards - in a Swiss Bank, as future protection – however the war turned out – as there was no written ‘Feurer Order’. As these original delegates are eliminated by the SS, lest they spill the beans, everything turns on the recovery and publication of these documents. The chief SS officer involved in the investigation was himself involved in the Final Solution.
- Joseph Kennedy – portrayed as a criminal antisemite – is the US President and is about to come to an accommodation with Hitler. Hitherto, the US has been supporting the rump Soviet state. The revelation of the Holocaust could put an end to all this.
- There are several threads that try to make the unbelievable credible. While it might have been possible to eliminate most of the physical evidence, so many people were involved that simply eliminating the top dogs couldn’t have hushed the matter up. It is suggested that much of the work in the crematoria was undertaken by trusted Jews who were themselves later eliminated, but what of the guards? The backstop is that the crimes are so prodigious that no-one would ever believe they occurred.
- The depth of betrayal and double-crossing in the Nazi state is terrifying (and only appears fully revealed at the end of the novel). Even the good cops are bad.
- The novel is certainly a page-turner and I was impressed by the ending, where matters are left slightly unresolved. We don’t really know whether the truth is revealed – in March’s imagination it is – but we don’t know whether this is so in actuality. Nor do we know whether the truth is actually believed. March is himself convinced when he finds some brick foundations of what was once presumably Auschwitz, but I’d doubt a holocaust denier would be perturbed.
- Also, the result of the final showdown between March and the SS is unclear. He’s only armed with a luger in his weak hand, but one hopes that he reserves his last bullet for himself if he’s not killed resisting arrest.
Book Comment
Arrow; 1st edition (1 Oct. 2009). Paperback.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)