Fatherland by Robert Harris
Twenty years have passed since Nazi Germany’s resounding victory in World War II, and the nation is gearing up for Führer’s 75th birthday party and President Kennedy’s impending peacemaking visit.
Berlin Detective Xavier March, a competent but disheartened individual, is investigating a body that washed up on a lake’s beach. The Gestapo directs March to leave the case when a dead guy turns out to be a senior Nazi commander. All of a sudden, separate fatalities occur, and they are not commonplace.
Now completely preoccupied with the investigation, March teams up with a stunning, young American journalist and starts posing difficult questions. If they live long enough to tell the rest of the world about what they find, a horrifying and long-hidden scheme of such shocking and mind-numbing terror would undoubtedly bring an end to the Third Reich.
Fatherland by Robert Harris
Amazon.com
If you’ve read a Robert Harris book, you know that they contain more facts and reasoned speculation than the majority of historical stories. I can’t think of a single Harris book that I wouldn’t suggest to someone who has the patience to sift through a mountain of reliable facts while also being able to see the big picture of the time period from a fictitious perspective.
In this story, Germany has generally prevailed in the war and has sway over most of Europe, yet terrorist organizations continue to prod the empire’s eastern borders. It’s 1962. Adolph Hitler is still alive and well, albeit with the coolness of a contemporary ruler. The largest and most spartan public buildings in the world are being built under the direction of Albert Speer, who has realized his architectural ideas.
The names of the camps at those locations—Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Beec, and Chemno—were never taken over by Allied forces, and the true horror of industrialized genocide was still too horrifying a concept for most human minds to accept. As a result, those names have no historical significance.
But only a select handful was aware of the terrible truth. They are dispersing like flies as well.
That kind of suspense is what Robert Harris is capable of producing. And by reading this made-up story, you’ll learn more about the icy dread of Nazi Germany.
