Glenn Russell's Reviews > Fatherland

Fatherland, by Robert Harris, a 1992 novel of alternate history conceived as: "What might have happened if the Nazis won World War II?" Set in 1964 Berlin, all the novel's characters are sharply drawn and passionately motivated in decidedly political directions. The author has done his research and knows the Nazi world inside out, sticking with a number of actual high-ranking Nazis such as Reinhard Heydrich and Wilhelm Stuckart imaginatively projected into his fictional Germany. Other Nazis in the novel are consistent with those who followed their Führer back in the day. The novelist's language is as crisp as a Nazi goosestep, making for one fast-paced page-turner.

At the center of the action is Xavier March, homicide investigator with the Nazi SS, applying his detective skills to crack a case quickly spiraling into a complex political drama. Along the way March teams up with young attractive American journalist Charlotte Maguire, thus, this Harris tale is not only alternate twentieth century history but a sexy international thriller.

That’s all I intend to say about plot since my specific interest in reading this novel was to see how all the arts are faring in the land of Hitler and the Nazis thirty years after the war. To this end, below are some quotes along with my comments:

The image of the superior blonde, blue-eyed Ayran is still alive and kicking. We read: “The press portrayed Reinhard Heydrich as Nietzsche’s Superman sprung to life. Heydrich in his pilot’s uniform (he had flown combat missions on the eastern front). Heydrich in his fencing gear (he had fenced for Germany in the Olympics). Heydrich with his violin (he could reduce audiences to tears by the pathos of his playing).”

Hitler despised modern music, actually any music other than ninteenth century classical, usually saccharine operas such as The Merry Widow by Franz Lehár. Most Nazis in 1964 Germany still share their seventy-five year-old Führer’s musical taste. And, alas, there is mention of a group of young Englishmen from Liverpool with their “pernicious Negroid wailings,” a clear example of modern degenerate music, singing I Want To Hold Your Hand.

A tour guide talks about the main buildings of the new Berlin to all the foreigners on a tour bus: “Construction of the Arch of Triumph was commenced in 1946 and work was completed in time for the Day of National Reawakening in 1950.” Actually, that appalling monolithic architecture Hitler envisioned, including the 1000 ft. Great Hall designed by Albert Speer, a building that can hold 150,000 participants, is very much part of the novel. The book’s inner cover has a two page drawing of Hitler’s main buildings, including Great Hall, Grand Plaza, Hitler Palace and the 400 ft. Arch of Triumph.

Other than a slight reference to the subversive novels of such writers as Günter Grass, there isn’t that much mention of literature and for good reason – this is a tightly controlled police state, similar to Stalinist Russia. Any novels or stories that do not adhere to the official party line are deemed subversive, perverted, the products of sick minds. Such was the language used by the Nazis when they staged their infamous exhibit of Degenerate Art in 1937.

When main character March enters the office of a leader of the Gestapo, he observes: “On the walls were prints of Thorak’s sculptures: herculean figures with gargantuan torsos rolled boulders up steep hills in celebration of the building of the Autobahnen. The immensity of Thorak’s statuary was a whispered joke.” Ah, the aesthetics of the Nazis is showing some cracks at the foundation! Thorak was a prime Nazi sculptor, one of Hitler’s very favorites. However, his Nazi versions of cartoon superheroes left many Germans cold back in the 1930s; by the 1960s even the Germans in Harris’ novel could see the silliness of such bloated, muscle-bound monstrosities.

And March views the paintings on another wall: “Schmutzler’s Farm Girls Returning from the Fields, Padua’s The Führer Speaks – ghastly orthodox muck.” How about that - even a no-nonsense, action-oriented SS detective judges the official Nazi art as "orthodox muck." The German Hall of Art (right across the street from the exhibit of "Degenerate Art" featuring such moderns as Marc, Nolde, Kandinsky, Chagall, Grozz) exhibited what Hitler decreed as acceptable art. In the 1930s many art critics judged this Nazi art as, at best, mediocre and by the 1960s, a clearer vision has reached the man and SS officer in the street – all that realist art that Hitler loves is so much schmaltzy crap.

Toward the end of the novel, March and Charlotte Maguire enter an empty elementary school where March makes the observation: “Childish paintings decorated the walls – blue meadows, green skies, clouds of sulfur yellow. Children’s art was perilously close to degenerate art; such perversity would have to be knocked out of them.” The author did his homework. Hitler, an aspiring artist himself as young man (so much will; so little talent), loathed the expressionists painting grass that was not green, skies that were not blue, clouds that were not white – he simply could not enter the imaginative world of a true artist; and he would become violent when someone suggested he had provincial, limited tastes.

This is a fascinating novel on a number of levels. I focused on the arts since this is one of my main interests and as Frederic Spotts demonstrated in his well-researched Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, Hitler valued art as the ultimate end of his world vision. In Harris’ 1964 alternative history, his vision proved to be narrow, lackluster, the product of a totalitarian police state. Thank goodness a 1964 Nazi Germany never became a reality.