Fatherland

Rating:
Summary: Original Masterpiece With Something For Everybody
Review: I was immediately intrigued with the premise behind Robert Harris' novel Fatherland. What would have happened if Hitler's Germany had won World War II? The reader is taken to Berlin, 1964, which has become a sort of Shangra-la for Europe. U.S. President Kennedy has agreed to come to Berlin for a peace summit, and the capital is swarming with tourists and citizens ready to observe the 75th birthday of Hitler. During all this, though, the body of a high-ranking Nazi is washed up on a shore. Detective Xavier March, a former U-boat captain and SS Sturmbannfuhrer, is dispatched to investigate. His investigation uncovers an old conspiracy among high-ranking Nazis. March, who is not the cold, unhuman Nazi that is common in his country, teams up with an American Journalist, Charlotte Maguire, to find proof and escape alive.

There were many good things about this book. Its setting is very realistic and depressing, its characters range from the intrepid March to the evil Globus, a former Concentration Camp commander who is determined to end March's investigation, to Maguire, the journalist who wants the truth. Although I enjoyed the book very much, I would have liked more details on the resolution of the war, but this book will both frighten and delight. I loved this book and think that you will love it too.

Rating:
Summary: Murder mystery, Nazis make a good, not great, weekend read
Review: Having just returned from Northern and Eastern Europe where I spent time in Berlin and Poland (the setting for "Fatherland"), I was pleased to find this book at a friend's house the other day. And so I plopped down on a lawn chair and read the whole thing, straight through, yesterday afternoon. I fully admit that I am a sucker for techno/action/spy/anything-WWII novels and this was no exception. Harris is a fine enough writer who has come up with a interesting plot that reminds me of some novels I've read involving alternate US civil war outcomes. Of course you have to stretch your imagination a bit, but isn't that the point? I'm sure that those who love the bulk of mass-market novels out today realize that much of what they read is less-than literary genius, but fun nonetheless. Harris' hero, Xavier March, is likeable, yet not loveable and the other characters fill their necessary plot roles as well as any supporting figures in such books. His descrip! ! tion of a 1964, Nazi-ruled, capital of Europe, Berlin is right on (at least as Albert Speer would have had it) and his concentration camp lessons (i.e. detailed descriptions of how Hitler and his cronies came up with and planned the "final solution") are chilling. Throw these elements together with a murder mystery and you've got a most enjoyable book.

Rating:
Summary: Alernative Universe
Review: In "Fatherland," Harris paints a fascinating picture of a Europe as it might have been reshaped and defined by German victory at the end of World War II. It takes place in 1964, when Hilter's 75th birthday approaches. The story unfolds against the backdrop of preparations for this great event - which will include a visit to Berlin by none other than President Kennedy - President JOSEPH Kennedy, that is. The story takes us from a run of the mill accidental death to a crime that could bring an end to the existence of this perfectly-modeled Aryan society, not to mention world harmony. Caught in the midst of this maelstrom, a German officer struggles with his conscience. And with his love for an American journalist, threatened by powerful forces that want to sustain the existing power. The novel intrigues by suggesting, in a sinister way, that history is written by the winning side. And I liked the ending, as well: it may not be happy, but it is uplifting.

Rating:
Summary: Fatherland is Chilling, Thrilling Look at What-If
Review: Berlin, 1964.
20 years have passed since Germany's victory over the Allies in World War II. Adolf Hitler has been in power for 31 years, his 75th birthday nears, and a summit meeting between the Fuhrer and President Kennedy has been announced.
This is the intriguing scenario presented by British journalist-novelist Robert Harris in his first novel, Fatherland.
Harris' novel, unlike Peter Tsouras' Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944, doesn't offer us a very detailed 'alternative history' of the Second World War, which perhaps would have been the easy way out for a lesser writer. Instead, Harris smartly teases us with little glimpses at how Germany could have won the war while still losing its collective soul.
Fatherland's plot revolves around Xavier March, a former U-boat skipper who has joined the German police, which has been under SS control since the mid-1930s. On a rainy April morning, March has been called to investigate what seems to be a routine incident ' a corpse has been found in the Havel River near the area where high Nazi party officials have their mansions.
Of course, if you have read political-police thrillers such as Gorky Park or Archangel, you know there will be nothing routine about this investigation. For this corpse's identity is none other than Doctor Josef Buhler, one of the earliest Nazi party members and former state secretary in the General Government, the part of Poland directly annexed by the Third Reich during the war. Before long, March (who is not a Nazi party member, just a dogged investigator) will follow Buhler's seemingly routine death down a dark and winding path that will lead him to Germany's darkest and best kept secret of all.
For history buffs, this book is a fascinating look at what a mid-1960s Nazi Germany might have been like. Harris paints a chilling portrait of a country still at war with what remains of the Soviet Union while in a cold war with a nuclear-armed United States. Berlin is imagined as Hitler and his architect Albert Speer would have rebuilt it at war's end (in the frontispiece there is an artist's rendering of Hitler's vision for his capital), and readers will shudder with horror to see how far the Nazis' indoctrination of children extended.
Harris keeps things going at a brisk pace, never boring readers or insulting their intelligence. His fictional characters interact with historical characters (although, of course, their fates ended up differently in real life, thank goodness) in a believable fashion. Of course, this type of novel requires willing suspension of disbelief, but it is well-written and, in the end, eye-opening.

Rating:
Summary: Credit where credit is due
Review: Not a bad read at all. "Fatherland", at first, reminded me of Orwell's "1984", Winston Smith and Xavier March are men who seem similar in attitude. Both are hard working, intelligent fellows who have a nagging sense of doubt in their minds about the society in which they live.

"Fatherland" is all about a conspiracy which is slowly uncovered by March after he discovers a body on what appears to be a usual case. He later goes on to discover that it is the body of a, once, leading Nazi official, one who attended the mysterious Wannsee Conference in January 1942.

It is a little predictable in style and reminds me of 1984, i.e. divorced man in his forty's who wins the women he initially suspected of being his enemy, whilst slowly uncovering the truth of the society in which he lives. Whilst this book may seem a little predictable, I do recommend Harris's work, what I found impressive about "Fatherland" is that Harris uses actual figures from Nazi history, such as Artur Nebe, and Reinhard Heydrich, even though they died in the war. This appealed to me as it incorporated historical people and documents as well.

I recommend "Fatherland" and believe that both this and "1984" will fit together well on your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Premise is intriguing but fails to deliver...
Review: I enjoyed this novel and kept reading day after day because of the intriguing premise that Germany actually won WWII and its empire continued going strong 20 years later.
Frederich March, a police officer, discovers several dead bodies and is soon on a trail trying to find what the deaths of high ranking German officers mean. He is aided by an American reporter who also serves as the love interest but whose main purpose is to get the info out of the country once March discovers the "secret" the novel is based on.

The twists and turns and characters and the pursuit of March by the Gestapo are all intriguing, but as it is with all historical novels, the quality of the novel will be determined by the author's take his own version of events.

What stands out in Fatherland is the entire premise of Germany winning WWII. Many countries don't exist anymore and Germany is a world leader. But most details Harris includes are changes inside Germany, which are quite similar to the way Germany operated before WWII.

In conclusion, the big secret March discovers (which isn't really a secret) is indeed big, but will it destroy the German empire. In this alternate universe, it should, but many evil countries are thriving today that have committed the same atrocities.

Rating:
Summary: Sophisticated thriller set in a post-war Nazi Europe
Review: In 1964, winning World War II and achieving domination over all but the United States, the Nazi's Thousand-Year Reich prepares to celebrate Der Fuhrer's 75th birthday. But it's business as usual for SS Detective Xavier March, a U-Boat vet turned police detective. With the holiday looming, March investigates a suspicious death seemingly unconnected with the alternate history of 1964 in which, Deutchland Uber Alles. But March's experiences prowling the North Atlantic have molded him into a natural hunter, and he refuses subtle (and not so) hints to leave the case alone. While a patriot in SS Black, March's instinct's foster suspicions that all was never right in the Reich - over the seeming perpetual resistance to German rule in the occupied and distant East, how knowledgeable German doctors are on the science of how people dies, and mostly (though also most quietly) on the subject of those missing Jews. Estranged from his wife and son, March is in no mood to file things away. With the help of a visiting journalist (a beautiful and plucky American, of course), March's investigation takes him to darkened archives and the offices of high ranking Nazis very much alive in a fully drawn and frightfully convincing world.

"Fatherland" excels not only because of what it does, but what it doesn't. The author resists the temptation to spell out exactly how the Nazis came to win the war, preferring instead to drop tantalizing hints (The Nazis responded to Hiroshima by launching V-3 at NY - thus keeping America out of the war; U-Boats are now nuclear powered, hinting that Dr. Heisenberg finally got it right; remaining nations outside of the Reich's control are happy to lay blame for genocide firmly on the wartime Soviet regime - renowned as it is for its brutality). The biggest twist is that while established history remains a mystery, the mystery on March's agenda quickly becomes no mystery at all - to us: the corpse (ironically identified as a "founding father" when his sole criminal record reveals an arrest in 1922 in a Munich beer hall) is found outside a converted schoolhouse on the Wansee. When the dead man's connection to that location is linked to a meeting there of high-ranking Nazis in early 1942, historically adept readers will realize that March is on the verge of discovering the Reich's guilt for a far larger crime - the crime of the century. March remains appropriately dim, creating one of the finest examples of deductive police work through investigation - Harris refuses to allow the slightest intrusion of our history into his hero's thinking. Instead, March tracks down the other famed Nazis who met suspicious ends and follows a trail that leads him to a Swiss bank. I'm not sure whether the controversy over Swiss banks was as well known when "Fatherland" debuted, in either case, Harris' treatment seems ironic, if not prescient: the Swiss accounts in Harriss's book weren't left behind by the Nazis' victims, but by disloyal Germans possessed by the insane fear that (huh!) Germany might lose the war.

Harris also avoids the urge to recreate the dark gods of the Reich simply by dropping names (Goering, Goebbels, Himmler and most of the Discovery Channel's usual suspects are long gone.) Albert Speer doesn't appear, but the author's drawing of undivided Berlin - monumental and insecure - gives the architect more character than a few lines of dumb dialog. Heydrich (the guy killed by Partisans) appears, but only to add more mystery - March is never sure if Heydrich is actually helping him out of fear of joining the other mysteriously dead Nazis, or marking him for death.

Best of all are the people who populate the vibrant Thousand-year Reich. No revisionist or apologist, Harris nevertheless avoids simple villainy for the inhabitants of the Reich of 1964 - his Germans seem not slightly cowed by fear of their regime yet honestly ignorant of their victims' fate. While a U-Boat ace in 1943, March wore sock not knowing that they were sewn with hair from dead Jews. In the 1990's, we're kept warm with our own complacency on history, and a sense of its immutability (we've watched too many documentaries and war movies to even consider the possibility of Nazi victory). Harris tells us otherwise!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic novel with a delicious flavor of history
Review: I loved this book! It was recommend to our class by a professor, and I went out to check it out. Not only is it a fascinating study of Nazism and the fun "what ifs" of history, but it's a riveting mystery full of excellent characterization, suspense, and rich details of what life in Germany (and around the world) might have been like had the Nazis won WWII. The book tantalizes you with details, making you want more. We have the unique perspective of knowing what actually happened, but the way Harris writes still makes us read faster and faster to get to the wonderful end, so that we can satisify our curiosity at last.

March is a brilliant character, full of personality, and the perfect contrary SS-officer. The book seems so realistic that's it's obvious Harris did his homework, and you feel as if you are really living in that time. It's scary in that the book makes you think that this is how life could have been--how stupid and naiive people could have become--had the Allies lost.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in German history, WWII, the Holocaust, or just wants a good detective story...the novel is written well-enough that even someone who knows very little about history can get a lot out of it.

Rating:
Summary: A great novel
Review: This is a great novel it is very well written by Robert Harris it is very scary and dark novel about how the world would be if Hitler and nazy Germany had won the war. I don't think that most of the things he wrote were really accurate but it was really exciting and after all this is a fiction novel is supposed to be made up. Harris should write more often he is a very talented writer from what I can see in this novel. This book was a page turner from end to finish.

Rating:
Summary: A standard story set in a fascinating alternate world
Review: The fascination with Fatherland is not the details of the plot, but in the world invoked by the author. It is an alternate world where Nazi Germany defeated England and Russia, and avoiding war with the U.S.A.

The story takes place within this Germany, on the eve of der Fuhrer's 75th birthday. A police inspector is warned off a case by the Gestapo, but his cop intuition tells him something funny is going on. He eventually figures out a connection between a number of former high-ranking Party officials that have all recently died, most under suspicious circumstances. From there, he discovers a coverup of monumental proportions (which I won't reveal), and the race is on to try to get the truth out of Germany before the Gestapo picks him up for "questioning."

This is standard fare that could have been set in any dictatorship of the 20th century, without need to resort to an alternate world where WWII ends differently. However, Harris's victorious Germany is a fascinating creation, all the more so because he doesn't dwell on it. The characters inhabit this world, and we accept it because they do and because it is so plausible. It is clear Harris did his homework in populating his 3rd Reich with a combination of real people and fictional characters that seamlessly intertwine. Armchair historians will recognise many of the names - Speer, Heydrich, Frank, Eichmann - but even some of the lesser-known party officials are well researchered. Checking back in my Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, many of these characters are there, doing what Harris has them doing.

Harris has made some weird choices, such as allowing Heydrich to survive assassination in Czechoslovakia in 1943 - why? It's not like Heydrich is a vital character. But all-in-all it's a fascinating read. Not for the plot details, which are pretty standard, but for the creation of this Nazi Germany that Could Have Been.