Fatherland : Alternate History with a Point

The 1992 novel by Robert Harris is a great example of the otherwise generally mediocre “Germany won WWII” alternate history premise. By removing the regime from its current almost mythologized status as a unique and singular evil, instead portraying it as merely a repressive state in a Cold War, Fatherland illustrates an uncomfortable truth about realpolitik and atrocities.

CORRECTION: Somehow I put up a picture of Bormann when I was talking about Buhler.

And my own book, not alternate history, Ninti’s Gate is available on kindle and in paperback,

00:00 Intro
00:55 The Case
02:20 Out of Myth, into the Mundane
06:13 Detente and Bureaucracy
09:11 HBO’s Adaptation
10:01 Ignoring Inconvenient Truths

[feralhistorian]

CORRECTION: Somehow I put up a picture of Bormann when I was talking about Buhler. The error is entirely mine.

[walnzell]

Robert Harris was absolutely right. No one would've cared. Even ongoing genocides do not persuade nations to cease trade and cooperation. The machine keeps moving.

[QuizmasterLaw]

I only saw the film.
"little bastard called the gestapo"'
Glad to see the book had some historic accuracy!

[doublep]

The japanese manga/ anime Jin-Roh would be another interesting ''alternate history'' story, that features different security/police forces who are antagonizing each other. It's also set in the 1960's in a Japan that was taken over by their Nazi allies.

[adamlove]

This was the first Alternate History novel I ever read not written by an author named Turtledove or Forstchen. I was just entering my 20s at the time, and it was my introduction to a more realistic portrayal of amoral bureaucracies and the self-interest of populations. At the time, the open-ended nature of the ending left me a bit confused and deflated, but of course I now understand how much more realistic and sophisticated it was than the work of the other authors I'd enjoyed in my teens.

As you say, HBO's adaptation was fine for what it was, a less sophisticated but still engaging story. To this day, though, I have to laugh at the fact that the screenwriters decided we needed to see Rutger Haur die in the rain.

Again.

[toby]

When I read Fatherland as a teenager one scene that oddly stuck with me was when March and his son were on a guided tour of the Reich's ridiculously big buildings and war memorials. The narration mentioned that the tour guide had to come into work with a cold that day. It mentions how she was clearly struggling to get her lines out with the proper flair and she even wipes her snotty nose on the sleeve of her uniform when she thinks no one is looking. It was such a weirdly normal moment, with this woman who probably had a couple of kids and bills to pay having to come in sick to a boring, tedious job she hated...which was showing off the Nazis's self important monuments.

[historynerd]

US v nazi Cold War scenario is always so much more interesting then the man in the high castle scenario .
TNO is my favorite version of this kind of world with its three way Cold War and warlord Russia

[chriscooper]

I also prefer the book's ending: March realizes he's won a personal victory, not somehow undone all the horrors he's just learned about.

[drsuchomimus]

This isn’t too different from how the United States, UK and France rehabilitated Turkey in the wake of WWI. Once the Kemalist govement came to power and both sides came to a political agreement, any mention of the genocide of Ottoman Turkish minorities was basically gone until revived in the 1960’s.

[darktower]

You're one of my newest favorite channels. I've been going through your library over the last few weeks. I love your breakdowns, analysis and historical lessons. I really appreciate the work you do. Thanks!

[SpaceMonkey]

Your opening analysis on the place of WW2 in the creation of the modern world and the myth of Nazism as a 'singular evil' is spot on. I expect you will attract a lot of criticism over that, but well done for saying what many of us have been thinking for years.

[modelermark]

I agree that the book was much better than the movie - mainly due to its "Hollywood Ending."

One movie scene in particular was when Pili was looking at an American magazine (I think it was "Life" or "Look, ") that his father had confiscated from Charlie McGuire, featuring an advertisement for the March of Dimes, and depicted a boy with crutches who had survived polio. Pili said he thought it was sad that the boy was in that condition, and asked in all innocence why the Americans simply didn't "put him to sleep" the way Germany would have done. Xavier March replies with a story about an angel that didn't really answer the question. In my opinion, this was a classic "missed opportunity" that the screenplay adaptation wasted.

Thanks for your thoughtful analysis!

No pressure, but I'm looking forward to your take on S. M. Stirling's "Peshawar Lancers" in the hopefully near future . . . .

196th Like.

[paulsillanpaa]

Kind of reminds me of "V for Vendetta" (the graphic novel, not the movie), where one of the key characters is a police officer investigating the bombings carried out by 'V.' He serves the fascist government, and (at first) sees V as a dangerous terrorist & madman, but he's not a committed ideologue like a lot of the other government characters. More than that, he's old enough to remember what Britain was like before the war...

[jameskalevra]

Really appreciate you including the bit about ww2 being the foundational myth of the modern era. A book "return of the strong gods" goes into this quite well, but definitely isnt althist.

[danielrudolf]

Fatherland is one of the best alternate history novels ever written. It's a meticulously researched book with a very plausible vision of how a post-WWII Nazi Germany might've been like. Unlike such drug-fueled sheer lunacies like The Man in the High Castle.

[DAGDRUM]

I love the Fatherland novel. Identical in plot to Len Deighton's SS-GB published 14 years earlier the two books couldn't be farther apart. In both an English detective admired for his investigative prowess by the occupying Germans is asked to look into a crime but when it's discovered a Nazi committed the act the detective is told to back off. Neither one does.

[alanpennie]

*March is divorced and living alone with limited visitation rights*.
Of course he is.
He's a detective.

[RogerBuffington]

One of the best "if the Germans won the war" novels out there. Engrossing and well-written, and probably about as realistic an alternate history scenario as can be had. The novel is really good and the HBO film is quite good as well, with superb music by Gary Chang.

[andreasl_fr]

I think people tend to forget tha NS Germany (and this goes for any society, past or present, that plays the role of ultimate villian in your society´s grand narrative) was a real place inhabited by real people, and the average person was more or less the same as you are.

[Supertroy]

Most folks are completely ok living in Omelas.

So nothing happened.

World War II being the creation myth of the modern world is interesting because it is both a literal Combat Myth, and a version of the Classic Combat myth where an old god is threatened by chaos monster, and a young upstart god goes to bat, kills the chaos monster and then builds the world out of the guts of the slain monster.