Quick Read: 'Fatherland: A Novel'

Cover for the 1993 paperback edition. (C) 1993 HarTorch Books

On May 26, 1992, Random House published the U.S. edition of Fatherland, the debut of novelist Robert Harris, formerly a writer and editor for the BBC and the newspaper The Observer. Previously known for his non-fiction works (Gotcha! The Government, the Media, and the Falklands Crisis and Selling Hitler), Harris went on to become aa author of novels, most of them which have historical themes. An "alternate history" work along the lines of Alfred Coppel's The Burning Mountain: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan, Fatherland depicts a dystopian version of Germany in 1964 as the victor of World War II in Europe.

Set between April 14-20 in 1964, Fatherland begins with a murder investigation. Berlin Kriminalpolizei (Kripo) detective Xavier March is called to the shores of the Havel River on the outskirts of Hitler's redesigned (by his favorite architect, Albert Speer) capital of Berlin. A corpse of an elderly man has been allegedly discovered by a young SS cadet named Hermann Jost. March questions Jost, who claims to have seen no one else when he came upon the man's dead body during his early morning run.

The corpse, March eventually discovers, is that of Dr. Josef Buhler, a high-ranking Nazi Party official who was a State Secretary and deputy to Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-occupied Poland (aka the General-Government) during the 1939-1946 war. March doesn't quite believe that Buhler's drowning was accidental, but when he starts digging deeper into Buhler's past as a "Golden Pheasant," the Gestapo takes over the investigation and rules that the old man committed suicide.

But March, who served in the German Navy during the war as a U-boat skipper, is not convinced that Buhler's death was self-inflicted. His inquisitive nature and sharp mind - the two assets that make him a valuable member of the Berlin division of the SS-controlled Criminal Police - tell him that there's something more to Buhler's watery demise.

March's quest for the truth becomes a dangerous obsession when two other high-ranking Nazi Party officials, Wilhelm Stuckart and Martin Luther, die within a few days of each other before Hitler's historic summit with U.S. President Joseph P. Kennedy, which is scheduled to take place on April 20, the Fuhrer's birthday.

Joined in his quest by Charlotte Maguire, a somewhat cynical and anti-Kennedy reporter from the United States, March defies his SS superiors and continues his investigation. In the process, he becomes a threat to Hitler's 31-year-old Greater German Reich when his unsanctioned murder investigation starts to unearth the Nazis' deepest and darkest secrets - and publicize the biggest crime in human history.

Europe in Fatherland's alternate version of 1964. The Greater German Reich stretches all the way to the Ural Mountains; the rest of the continent (with the exception of Switzerland) is composed of "independent' vassal states. Beyond Germany's A-A border, a fierce guerrilla war is being fought by the Nazis against the remnants of the Soviet Union in an analogy to the Vietnam War. 

My Take

Fatherland is written in the style of a hardboiled detective novel, set squarely in its "present day" of April 1964 and seen mainly through the eyes of the main character, Kripo Major Xavier March.

As in many stories of the genre, March is dedicated if somewhat cynical, a consummate professional who nevertheless is a social misfit in the conformist, authoritarian regime run by an aging Adolf Hitler and his surviving henchmen. Although he's loyal to his nation and followed his World War I veteran father's footsteps by joining the Navy, he refuses to join the Nazi Party. This not only harms his chances for advancement in the Kripo (which requires its officers to be Party members in order to attain higher ranks), but it alienates him from his ex-wife Klara and his son Paul "Pili" March, a 10-year-old who is a "true believer" in Hitler and his policies.

Unlike, say, Alfred Coppel's The Burning Mountain or Peter Tsouras' Disaster at D-Day, Fatherland does not devote much of its narrative to World War II. Harris does reveal how Germany won the war in this alternate version of history, but he does so in small doses that seem organic to the inner narrative of March's quest rather than as in-your-face excerpts from fictional historical accounts.

This novel is extremely well-written and entertaining. It blends a cast of characters that consists of fictional inventions who share the stage with historical figures whose life details are accurate up to 1942, which is the point of divergence between "real" history and Harris's frighteningly realistic vision of a Europe dominated by Hitler's Greater German Reich.

In addition to Hitler, Joe Kennedy, Buhler, Stuckart, and Luther, here are some of the real persons who exist in Fatheland:

• Reinhard Heydrich
• Charles Lindbergh
• The Beatles
• Joseph Goebbels
• Artur Nebe
• Odilo Globocnik
• Edward VIII
• Wallis Simpson
• Queen Elizabeth II (exiled in Canada)
• Winston Churchill (exiled in Canada)    

Fatherland became an international best-seller, and the late Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Charlie's Wilson's War) bought the movie rights even before it was published. However, he couldn't get a studio to finance it, so the rights went to HBO and a two-part TV movie was made by British director Christopher Menual.