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Summary: HISTORY BECOMES REALITY
Review: Fatherland puts the "what if" equation into reality, as did George Orwell's 1984. This book clearly makes the reader respect what we, as a socity, should learn what history is all about. Think God, this is only a novel. And, a very good one.
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Summary: Chilling vision of what might have been.
Review: Akin to George Orwell's "1984", "Fatherland" is a chilling vision of what might have been. A Berlin police officer investigates a murder which leads to the discovery of the holocaust a then unknown event to the rest of the world. Harris's story is less a murder investigation than a look at what a grey and depressing existance life would have been like under the Third Reich.
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Summary: Great rip off of Gorky Park
Review: I liked fatherland . I also liked Gorky Park. Its practically the same book: An oppressive society with a politicized view of law . An investigator of" normal' crimes is assigned to solve a crime probably better left to the higher order (political) police agency. The investigator is different there are whispers of his being anti-party. he is fair , rational incorruptible .There are differnces: in Gorky park the investigator wants the KGB to take the case. Here in "Fatherland "the hero is a Kripo cop(kriminalpolizei) who does not want the Sipo to take his case. Both are manipulated by fatherly higher ups. both are estrange from thier wives. Well, I read fatherland first an loved it. then i read Gorky park. I liked both .
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad - Not Great
Review: There was a lot of blurb on the inside of the paperback saying how brilliant to book was.Well the book certainly had a great deal of atmosphere in the opening chapters. However I felt that after the hero March teamed up with the predictable 'love interest' the book lost its impetus & was quite average. I found the story too linear. Even though it was written in the 3rd person, March was in every scene. It would have been better to write from the perspective of the other characters in the book as well. I also thought the plot was rather flawed - but I don't want to give anything away here. Having said that, it is still pretty entertaining & I read it very quickly which is a good sign for me.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent in two ways, poor in a third.
Review: 1) In a stark and powerful way, Fatherland reminds us to be grateful that the Allies won the War. In this book they didn't. By 1945 Russia and Britain were defeated and the US had made truce. It's now 1964 and the Nazi police state and racial policies have softened very little; Berlin is a chilling place, even for government employees. 2) The book is an exciting murder mystery. I could hardly put it down. I could never guess what would happen next, but it was almost always plausible. (However, I don't read many mysteries; maybe if I did, the events here would be more guessable, or less plausible.) 3) The bad thing: In the end, a key part of the book is the fate of the Jews. All 11 million Jews of Europe have been exterminated, but the Reich denies it, and few people, even in the US, believes the occasional rumors. That nobody believes it is preposterous. True, in actuality during WWII few people believed the ghastly reports seeping out. But that was a shorter period, and it was hard to communicate across battle lines even to people in favored groups. If someone wrote to relatives and the letter came back Addresse unbekannt (address unknown) - as happened when my Aunt sent mail to our Jewish relatives in Berlin in 1940 - that didn't prove that the worst had happened. But in this book it's 20 years later and peacetime. If Germany says it merely relocated all the Jews to the East, and yet can't say where they are, and after all those years not a single Jew can be contacted by their relatives in the US or found (since some travel is allowed), it has to be pretty obvious what happened. The Jews wouldn't *all* have died of disease while traveling East, or have been killed off by local madmen without top-level blessing. And the book's view that the top officials of the Reich could keep this a secret by muzzling a few 2nd-level Nazis is also unbelievable. What about the hundreds of SS guards in the death camps or the historians who would eventually look over the records the Nazis kept so meticulously? So, while the first publication in America of official Nazi documents confirming the Final Solution, and giving the exact method, would no doubt cause a stir in this world, it could hardly come as a surprise or change history. Bottom line: read Fatherland, but for the first two reasons. PS. This book has been translated into German, and those of you who read German might find interesting the reviews of "Vaterland" on Amazon.de. The individual Germans who reviewed it were very positive - higher average rating than on US Amazon. The review quoted from Der Spiegel (the German Time-Newsweek) was negative. Der Spiegel thought the book was anti-German - an implied criticism of today's actual Germany. Well, the book was anti-Nazi for sure, but it says nothing one way or the other about actual Germany. It seemed quite clear that the Germany of the book was fully a fiction. For instance, in an endnote the author points out that the main historical characters alive in the book in fact all died or were executed many years before 1964. And I bet most Germans today are just as happy as we are that the Germany of this book is fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A well-executed, haunting vision
Review: We've all wondered what would've happened if Germany had won World War II. Harris puts it down in words. His book is chilling and engrossing, exquisitely written. Is Harris's vision of a Nazi-controlled Europe the way things would've really turned out if Hitler was victorious? Hard to tell, but his argument is very convincing, and the story is enjoyable nonetheless. A definite triumph.
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Summary: Cop stumbles into Nazi secrets in a 1964 Nazi Europe.
Review: I just could not put it down. A blend of mystery, horror andsci-fi. It left me wishing for more details on the "Hitler wonWWII" fictional scenario. Alas, I am afraid that, in a Nazi dominated Europe, the dirty secret around which the plot centers would not have been much of a secret anymore, so the premise is flawed, but it is a very good read nonetheless.
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Summary: What if the Axis succeeded in World War II?
Review: A rousing good tale concerning a detective in the Berlin "police force" circa 1963 uncovering astonishing information concerning the atrocities committed but never promulgated after the war.
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Summary: Well written, good read, thought provoking.
Review: Evil wins if the sacrifice was for nothing. We should know
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe the best novel I have ever read
Review: I have read all of Harris' works and Fatherland is by far his best. Contrary to many readers, I rather liked the ending.
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