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PLOT 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 Kriminalpolizei , 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 escapes to neutral Switzerland with documentary evidence to publish in 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. As Maguire crosses the border into Switzerland, the Gestapo catches up with March, who walks towards the woods at the unmarked site of Auschwitz's dismantled concentration camp, gun in hand, intending either to go down fighting, or commit suicide. CHARACTERS Fictional
Historical personalities
Attendees of the Wannsee Conference such as Adolf Eichmann are mentioned but, as part of the plot, are already dead of natural or unnatural causes. THE WORLD OF FATHERLAND 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 launch a major offensive into the Caucasus in 1942 , cutting the flow of oil to the Red Army . With its armies immobilised, the USSR surrenders in 1943 . German intelligence learns that the British are reading their Enigma code, and sends false intelligence to lure the British fleet to destruction. The U-Boat campaign against the United Kingdom increases, starving Britain into surrender or armistice by 1944 . The United States does not invade 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 also in 1946 forces the U.S. to sign a peace treaty after firing a V-3 Missile that explodes ''above'' New York City to demonstrate Germany's ability to attack the U.S. with long-range missiles. Having achieved victory, Germany annexes Eastern Europe and much of the USSR into the Greater German Reich, and corrals the rest of Europe into a pro-German trading bloc, the European Community . The surviving areas of the USSR are engaged in an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural mountains. 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 Weapon s and Space Technology . The novel takes place from April 14 – 20, 1964, as Germany prepares for Adolf 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. The Greater German Reich and international politics The first few pages of ''Fatherland'' feature two maps, one of Berlin and another of the massively expanded Greater German Reich itself. The maps, supported by parts of the novel, display the size of the Reich, stretching from Alsace-Lorraine in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. Austria , Czechoslovakia , Luxembourg , Poland , the Baltic States , the Ukraine , European Russia , and the areas ceded by Germany under the Treaty Of Versailles have all been annexed directly into the Reich. Major cities in the expanded Germany include old German cities such as Berlin (the largest city in the world, with a population of 10 million in 1964) and Hamburg , but also include newly-annexed cities such as Moscow , Tblisi , Ufa , St. Petersburg , Krakow , and Sevastopol , which has been renamed "Theodorichshafen". 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 such as the Great Hall (which holds over 150,000 people), a mammoth arch inscribed with the names of the German soldiers killed in the two World Wars, and vast, severe, granite civil buildings including Hitler's vast palace, the Grand Avenue lined with captured Soviet Artillery , and the headquarters of the powerless European Union . The rest of Europe, excluding Switzerland , has been corraled by Germany into a European Economic Community , formed from the nations of Norway , Sweden , Finland (which has absorbed Karelia from Russia), Denmark , Iceland , the United Kingdom (the map suggests that either Britain has lost Northern Ireland to Eire , or that Britain has taken over the whole of Ireland), France , Spain , Portugal , Belgium , Holland , Italy (it is unspecified if Mussolini is still in control of Italy), Yugoslavia , a greatly expanded Hungary which has absorbed Slovakia and much of neighbouring Romania , which has returned to its pre-1918 borders, Bulgaria , Albania , Serbia , Greece , 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 large Swastika flag, symbolising the immense power that Germany has in the E.C. of 1964. The nations of ''Fatherland'''s E.C., despite being nominally free under their own governments and leaders (such as General Franco and Edward VIII ), are closely watched by Germany. Their military forces are only just sufficient to police their empires, they 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's eyes turned to it, the cold war with America was beginning and the fear of provoking a destructive nuclear exchange held back the Germans from invading. 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 an Atomic Bomb 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 Soviet Rump State exists, with its capital at Omsk . The United States supplies the USSR 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. A point left unclear is whether the extermination of the Jews was confined to Nazi-occupied Europe or was extended to the rest of the world, particularly Palestine . Due to the Nazi victory in 1946, there is no independent Israel and it is assumed that the Middle East is still part of 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 , whose activity was suspended in 1939 , and so may not have been reestablished. It is unknown if the wartime Allies created the United Nations , and so its existence is never determined. 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 Shelter s, 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 Weapon s in case they provoke an American nuclear attack on the Reich. It remains unknown if Germany and the United States are the only nuclear powers in the world of ''Fatherland''. 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. Western Europe has been left relatively unmolested 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 — problems that do not exist, 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 , Interracial Relationships (particularly between " Aryan s" and Slav s), and Communism have 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 Camp s 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 Autobahn en and Railway s carrying immense trains, the largest of which have a very Broad Gauge of more than four Metre s, making the luxury trains four times wider than standard Rolling Stock . 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 Submarine s, and Aircraft Carrier s, whilst civilian technology has also advanced considerably. Jet airliners, Television s, hair-dryers, modern cars, and even Photocopier s 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. PARALLELS WITH ''NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR'' ''Fatherland'' contains many similarities with George Orwell 's classic dystopic novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four ''. On a basic level, each novel 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.) 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. However, ''Fatherland'' can be said to be a far 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 exhuberant gesture of liberation and preparing for an ultimate confrontation which - while costing his life - would cover the successful escape of his beloved co-conspirator Charlie. Moreover, March has the satisafaction of knowing that Charlie would publish in America the documents about the Holocaust which they both discovered, and that the resulting scandal would scuttle the Nazi regime's hope of ending its crisis by a rapprochement with the United States. Though he would not live to see it, March can die content with having struck a mighty blow which would hasten the regime's end. The contrast with the ending of ''1984'' is indeed so clear as to suggest that Harris was consciously trying to create a counterpoint to that book. 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. PARALLELS WITH ''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 denouncement 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. THE ''FATHERLAND'' MOVIE 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 . Differences with the book There are numerous disparities between the book and the movie:
Robert Harris himself was said to be very unhappy with the film's screenplay. 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 9th July 1997. EXTERNAL LINKS
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