Ian's Book Review
"Fatherland"
(Robert Harris, 1995)
As I begin, a word of caution - though I am reviewing Fatherland now, it has been some time since
I actually read the book, so I may mistake or miss some of the details. The gist of the review,
however, should be just as accurate as if I had read it yesterday, as I remember what I liked
and disliked about the book fairly clearly.
Fatherland is an alternate history novel about that most popular of alternate history subjects -
a Nazi victory in the Second World War. Unlike many, it is well done and does not suffer from any
critical plausibility problems. I would, in fact, go so far as to say it is one of the best
alternate history novels I have read (its success as a "mainstream" novel attests to the fact
that it is good enough in terms of story to appeal to people who are not specifically fans of
alternate history).
Fatherland takes place in Nazi Germany in the 1970s. The Third Reich covers Europe and extends
into the middle of Russia, where guerilla warfare has persisted for decades. The protagonist is
a detective investigating a mysterious death, who eventually uncovers long-hidden evidence of
the Holocaust before a summit between President Kennedy and the Fuehrer. The story itself is
thus equal parts hardboiled detective story and spy novel. I've been told that hardboiled
detective stories have been done better, but I'm no expert on the subject and it seems a
fascinating read to me. The one problem with this is the "Holocaust as great mystery" aspect.
Apparently the exact nature of the Holocaust is either completely unknown, or popularly ignored,
within Germany itself and is virtually unknown in the rest of the world. The problem with this is
that, at least in our own history, the Allies did know that the Germans were killing Jews during
the war (if not the true extent of the slaughter), and a significant number of German people knew
even if most did not and even more preferred not to think about it. In reality, the Holocaust is
something the former Allied powers would know about even if they didn't have the graphic evidence
of our own history, and even if it wasn't talked about much in Germany, the fact that the Jews
were killed off rather than resettled is something that wouldn't really surprise most people.
The novel, unlike some alternate history stories, focuses on life in the more "modern day" Third Reich, rather than historical divergences which led to the situation. This is something of a good thing - a German victory in the Second World War is quite an unlikely event, and most attempts to explain how it could happen are inevitably flawed. Fatherland doesn't spend too much time on the details of the victory, although it is mentioned that Germany developed both the atomic bomb, and rockets which could carry an atomic warhead to New York city, forcing a peace with the Americans. The focus of the novel is what life under a victorious Nazi Germany would have been like, and the portrait is both fascinating and a bit chilling. There are obvious parallels to life
under Communism around the same period, due to the similarities of the totalitarian systems, but it is by no means a copy of it. The book also has something of a message, in how the Nazis manage to conceal the Holocaust from widespread knowledge, and
how several decades after the war, America is approaching a detente with the victorious Nazis (rather than the more farfetched scenarios of constant war advanced in many AH treatments of the scenario). Nazism gradually becomes simply a fixture of the world and of life, as Communism did today.
In conclusion, my review of Fatherland is very favorable. The story is excellent and meaningful,
the setting is detailed and compelling, and the historical elements of the alternate history scenario, while often vague, are done in such a way as to avoid committing to any extremely specific course of events which would almost inevitably contain errors in plausibility.