In the Presence of Mine Enemies
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In the Presence of Mine Enemies (ISBN 0-451-45959-8) is a 2003 alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. The novel is expanded from a short story of the same title. The story is set in Berlin beginning in the year 2010 in a world in which the United States remained isolationist and Germany won the Second World War. Most of the world has been divided between the Axis powers. Nuclear weapons have been used against the USA.
The story is centered on Heinrich Gimpel and a small group of Jews who have managed to survive the Holocaust by keeping their identities as Jews secret.
The events of the book take place against a backdrop similar to the last days of the Soviet Union, with characters recognizably based on Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, among others.
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[edit] Characters
- Heinrich Gimpel. A civilian working as an analyst at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters in Berlin. He is one of the few surviving Jews left in the Reich and keeps his origins a secret from his colleagues. Heinrich and his wife Lise have three children: Alicia, Francesca and Roxane.
- Lise Gimpel. The wife of Heinrich Gimpel. Like her husband, she is also a Jew.
- Alicia Gimpel. The ten year old daughter of Heinrich and Lise Gimpel. She learns her true origins on the night of her tenth birthday when confronted by her parents and a few other Jewish friends.
- Susanna Weiss. A Medieval English scholar at the Friedrich Wilhelm University. She is also one of the few, surviving Jews left in the Reich.
[edit] Viewpoint characters
- Heinrich Gimpel is an officer—or rather, a uniformed accountant, since he does not really feel like a soldier—serving at the Wehrmacht HQ in Berlin. (Turtledove seems to delight in portraying accountants as action heroes. He has a whole family of them in his Darkness series—and showing how an accountant's solid good sense could be the key to survival in dangerous situations.)
Heinrich is careful and meticulous about keeping up his masquerade—originally even from the reader, who goes through nearly a whole chapter before finding that Gimpel is a hidden Jew and a leader of the secret Jewish community. Gimpel's specific army job is to monitor the American payment of tribute to Germany, and detect the frequent attempts to avoid payment.
Though he has no reason to sympathize with the Nazi Germanic Empire, Gimpel performs his job very thoroughly, in fact finding some intellectual challenge in it—a bit like George Orwell's Winston Smith, who hates the regime yet enjoys the work of thoroughly falsifying the historical record. Ultimately, Gimpel is far more fortunate than Smith, who was eventually unmasked and broken by the Thought Police. Gimpel's own arrest was due to no more than a friend's wife denouncing him as a Jew without knowing he really was one, simply because he resisted her sexual advances—and he manages to wriggle out of it and resume his daily routine and his masquerade. An especially poignant scene is when Gimpel hears on the news about three Jewish families being discovered—and immediately killed—in a remote Serbian village. While his face shows nothing unusual and his voice continues a bantering small talk with a colleague, inside his head he goes voicelessly through the Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer. Gimpel is eventually released from custody with the help of a SS major, who casually remarks to him: "You find us in the strangest places."
- Alicia Gimpel, Heinrich's (at the start of the novel) ten-year-old daughter is the oldest of three sisters. At the beginning of the book, she is initiated into the secret that she, and other family and friends, are Jewish. She is stunned, but gradually comes to accept it. Highly intelligent, she is able to perceive the flaws in the logic of some of the Reich-mandated lessons she must learn—and parrot—in school. Much of the history we learn in the book comes through scenes in her classes.
[edit] Setting
[edit] World politics and geography
[edit] Political alignment
In a brief school scene when the children are studying a world map, much about the world of that day is revealed. Marked in deep red (presumably, the same shade as in the Nazi flag) are the vast territories formally annexed as an integral part of the Reich, which include Germany's real world boundaries plus Austria, Bohemia and Moravia and everything eastwards from there, through the former Poland and Soviet Union until deep into Siberia, the Caucasus, and India, (which logically would include also Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and presumably Tibet if it has not been annexed by Japan) and also Iran and the parts of the Middle East not granted to Italy. Most of Africa (the former British, French and Belgian colonies) is also an integral part of the Reich. It is implied that a few Russians still survive in Eastern Siberia, but without strength for generations to come to challenge Germany—it is unclear if Germany or Japan occupies them. Most of the western part of the former Soviet Union has been ethnically cleansed to make way for German farmers—but local insurgents survive.
In addition to the Reich itself, the "Greater Germanic Empire" (which boasts of being the largest in the history of the world) includes two other sub-categories. There are occupied but not formally annexed countries, marked in pale red, which include France, Britain, the USA and Canada (and probably also Denmark and Norway). There are also "allies" which get the privilege of having their own colour in the Nazi maps, among them Sweden, Finland, the nations of Iberia and the Balkan, and presumably (though not specifically stated) also Switzerland. Allies outside Europe include South Africa and the countries of Latin America. Several of the allies (Italy, Spain and Portugal) have sizeable colonies of their own, in Africa and (for Italy) in the Middle East—but that in no way makes them truly independent of Germany.
The distinction between the above two categories seems more historical (who had resisted Germany and was subdued by force, and who had fought on Germany's side—or at least jumped on the bandwagon at the right moment) than actual. The "occupied but not annexed" countries do have their own governments and can gain some measure of real autonomy (Britain does so in a very conspicuous way in the course of the book). On the other hand, even "unoccupied allies" must accept considerable limitations on their sovereignty and German interference in their internal affairs, especially in matters of the Nazi racist ideology.
Italy controls an empire around the Mediterranean Sea with territories in the parts of Africa granted to it. Its territories presumably includes its real world boundaries and territories it had annexed including Albania, Greece, Italian East Africa (which would include Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland and Eritrea), Libya and presumably Turkey, the parts of the Middle East not granted to the Reich and Egypt.
There is a mention of the Italians being compelled to perpetrate large-scale massacres of Arabs in their Middle East empire, once Nazi ideologues decided that that was called for—as already in our history they enacted anti-Jewish race laws in 1938, which were not part of Mussolini's original Fascist program. It is unknown if any attempts were also made to genocide the Turks which were also considered inferior by the Nazi racial doctrine.
In our history Finland, while fighting on Germany's side, resisted all pressures to implement anti-Jewish policies—but it is unlikely to have continued obdurate on this point in a world where Nazi Germany was totally supreme. South African Blacks, precisely because of being subject to a home-grown racist regime with its own well-established racial criteria, seem exposed to "no more" than continuing Apartheid, which—since Blacks in other locations were the target of direct genocide—would be definitely the lesser evil under the circumstances.
The most powerful world leader is the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich. Other known world leaders include King Umberto and the Duce of the Italian Empire, British Union of Fascists leader (and no doubt Prime Minister, though he is not referred to as such) Charlie Lynton, King Henry IX of England, the Caudillo of Spain, the Poglavnik of Croatia, the King of Bulgaria, the Perón of Argentina (the name of Juan Perón evidently having been made into the title of the head of state), and the Premier of France. All of these leaders are subordinate to the Fuhrer and their jurisdiction is limited to their own territories (and subject to German interference even there). Many of them represent various local racist, fascist and radical nationalist forces. The source of the new American leaders, and their form of government, is not made clear by Turtledove. ("Charlie Lynton", the Fascist leader in who is the equivalent of the British Prime Minister (and who is inconsistantly referred to as having recently come to power, and having been in power since the mid-Nineties) no doubt refers to real-world United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair, whose full name is Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.)
The only ruler truly independent of the Fuhrer is the Emperor of Japan. While Japan is less powerful than Germany, it does have enough nuclear-tipped rockets to establish a balance of mutually assured destruction. Japan has its own retinue of subordinate rulers, of whom the only one specifically mentioned is the Emperor of Manchukuo (Manchuria). It maintains its Empire, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and especially its stranglehold over the whole of China. In addition it rules Southeast Asia, a large part of the Indian Ocean, Australia, New Zealand and most of the Pacific Islands.
Still, while having "an ocean of slave labor" at its disposal, it concentrates (like the Japan of our history) on developing sophisticated, high-tech technology. It is left unclear whether the Reich stretches up to the Pacific or whether Vladivostok and its environs were taken by Japan (presumably, the Japanese would not like a direct German presence near to their Home Islands). It is unknown if Alaska was annexed by Japan from the United States during the Third World War or it was included as part of the Reich's North American colonial territories.
[edit] Fate of the United States
Germany and its allies defeated the United States in the Third World War of the 1970's, having been the first to develop nuclear bombs. Key American cities like Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and unspecified others were destroyed with they and their surrounding environs being presumably rendered uninhabitable. Other key American cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis and Omaha (which became the US capital) escaped being bombed though they would be occupied by German forces after the war.
Following the conquest of America, the Einsatzkommandos and the local American racists systematically exterminated the American Jewish and Black populations. It is unknown whether this genocide also extended to the Native American and Hispanic populations. It is also unknown if Canada had been acquired along with the US following the Third World War or it had submitted or fallen to Axis occupation at the end of the Second World War.
It is also unclear what the Nazis used to constitute their usual puppet regime in the United States. The US has to pay an annual tribute, which is an important source of income for the German economy. The US economy is also mentioned as having undergone a hyperinflation following the war with the US Dollar fallen from its place as a major world currency. The U.S. evades such payment wherever possible.
[edit] Fate of other occupied nations
There is also mention of large-scale massacres of Poles, Russians and Ukrainians, declared to be "Untermenschen", as well as of Arabs who were defined as "Semitic as Jews". It is implied that the Reich and the Italian Empire also committed genocide against the Negro populations of Africa and enslaved the survivors. However, while policy towards the Jews was completely implacable, aimed at killing every last individual (as determined in the Wannsee conference), of other "subhuman" groups such as the remaining Slavs, Arabs and Negroes populations were retained as the source of slave labor.
References to the exact situation of the Russians and Ukrainians at the time of the book are a bit contradictory. In one place it is mentioned that "the surviving Russians were pushed far east of the Urals', i.e. that the whole of European Russia and a bit of Siberia was "ethnically cleansed" and its population—in the hundreds of millions—killed or deported, dwarfing anything which the Nazis (or anybody else) perpetrated in our history. Yet in another place there is a reference to considearable activity by "brigands" (i.e. guerillas) which is intense enough that forts need to be built for protection of the German settlers (German schoolchildren are required to build models of such forts). This implies a considerable surviving Slavic population among which guerillas could gain support, despite undoubtedly draconian retaliations by the Nazi authorities; such population would presumably consist of peasants reduced to the status of semi-feudal serfs, as was the Nazi plan for the Slavs in our own history.
Czechs as well as Croats and Bulgarians are treated relatively better despite being Slavs too, with Croats savagely persecuting the Serbs. In this timeline, Serbs appear to be subject to severe racial discrimination with rebellions harshly put down and dissidents either executed or used as slave labor. Iranians and Indians, having been declared "Aryans", avoid persecution and some are invited to study at German universities.
[edit] History of the Reich
Following the death of Adolf Hitler at an unknown date after the end of the Second World War which saw much of Europe, Africa and Asia divided among Germany and its allies, Himmler assumed the office of Fuhrer. In an analog to the Cold War, the Reich and Japan competed for world dominance with the United States of America during the 1960s and 1970s. This eventually led to the Third World War which resulted in America suffering defeat at the hands of its enemies including the destruction of key cities through the use of nuclear missiles and the deaths of a third of its population, including Jews, Negroes, and other races deemed inferior by the Nazi conquerors. An Axis-friendly government was installed in Omaha with tribute being paid annually to the Reich.
In 1985, Himmler died, although some believed he had actually died in 1983 and that a junta of SS and military officials had ruled until Kurt Haldweim was chosen as successor. Haldweim is almost certainly meant to be Kurt Waldheim who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992. Like Haldweim, Waldheim was born in Austria, has a birthday just before Christmas, served in Carinthia, and will be 91 in late 2009. Unlike his predecessors, his policies were less harsh and while not making any overt changes to the policies of the Reich, angered some members of the old guard by going (very relatively) a bit "soft." The situation described in the part about Heinrich Gimpel's detention: people arrested by the SS are treated harshly but not subjected to endless torture, and have some real chance of their lawyer getting them out, seems to derive from his time rather than Hitler or Himmler's. Haldweim seems to be an analogue to Leonid Brezhnev. His rule is a time of stagnation where the regime, like its leader, grows "senile".
The process of reform begins in Britain. The British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley's party which in this history was Britain's ruling (and only) political party since the Nazi conquest after World War II, starts cautious moves to get as independent as possible of German domination—parallel to the Hungarian Communist Party in the later years of Brezhnev. The revival of democratic ideas is at first cloaked as being adherence to Nazi ideals in their purity, specifically the assertion that Hitler supported democracy in the first edition of Mein Kampf and that his purported democratic ideals had been later falsified.
This is followed by the coming to power of a Gorbachev-like, reform-minded Fuhrer named Heinz Buckliger in Germany itself. Buckliger makes a speech to the party leaders gathered at Nuremberg, whose exact text is kept secret but in which, according to widely circulating rumors, the new Fuhrer denounced his predecessors and stated that in the past the Reich committed crimes. The model for this is actually not in the career of Gorbachev but in the more shallow reforms of Khruschev who denounced the crimes of Stalin in a secret session of the party congress.
Gradually, partial reforms create some degree of freedom of speech for discussion of hitherto-forbidden subjects, and somewhat ease—though by no means remove—the German yoke over dominated "Aryan" countries in West Europe and North America. Reactionary opposition gathers around the still-powerful SS, while the populist Gauleiter of Berlin, Rolf Stolle, comes up as the champion of accelerated reforms—analogous to Boris Yeltsin, who started as Communist Party leader in Moscow.
Things come to a head with the announcement of elections which are to be relatively free, but still with a strong racist tinge (candidates need no longer be nominated by the Nazi Party, but must be "Aryan"). Under the leadership of the Reichsführer-SS Lothar Prützmann, the SS tries to stage a conservative coup, holding the fuhrer prisoner in the Croatian island of Hvar and installing former High Commissioner of Ostland Affairs Odilo Globocnik as the new Fuhrer—but are foiled by a manifestation of "people's power" led by the Yeltsin-like Rolf Stolle, to which the Wehrmacht eventually lends its support. The call Deutschland erwache (Germany, Awake!"), an old Nazi battle cry which helped Hitler to power, is in this context used as a call to defend reform and democracy. (The Odilo Globocnik in the novel is described as in his fifties; he may be the son or grandson of the person of the same name in our history.)
The coup is defeated, using—among other things—the anti-Semitic assertion that the Reichsführer-SS and leader of the coup is himself of Jewish blood. (In fact, it is ironically the hidden Jews themselves who started this rumor rolling). In the aftermath, Globocnick is lynched by a mob, followed by public hanging of senior SS members—a kind of savagery which did not follow the failed anti-Gorbachev coup which served as the model. This seems to be a cautionary hint by Turtledove that comparisons could only be taken so far, and that Nazi brutal norms of behaviour may persist even among those who come to oppose the regime.
By the end of the book, after the sweeping reforms and changes, Germany has had free elections, as have had several West European countries, the power of the SS is severely curbed (but the organization is not disbanded altogether), people can speak their mind far more freely, and the Czechs, led by a character referred to as a "playwright" (plainly Václav Havel), are on their way to regaining some amount of independence.
However, Germany is far from giving up its imperial position, with the Wehrmacht strongly opposed to ending the occupation of the United States. Moreover, the racist mindset is far from completely gone (as noted, only Aryans can be candidates in elections), there is as yet no intention of emancipating the Slav and Arab slave populations, and there is no way of knowing if and when the surviving hidden Jews would ever be able to come out in the open—though they clearly breathe a bit more easily. The book ends, as it began, with the secret initiation of a ten-year old Jewish child to the heritage which she must still preserve and keep in utmost secrecy.
Evidently, since the book starts with a situation which could be considered the worst of all possible nightmares, Turtledove considered an unequivocal happy end to be tasteless and inappropriate—especially since, even however enlightened and tolerant Germany may eventually become, the genocide which had been perpetrated would still be irreversible.
[edit] Daily life
As usual in Turtledove's fiction, the emphasis is on a realistic depiction of the daily life of ordinary people. Unlike other depictions of a Nazi-victorious world which are litanies of horrors and perversions, in Turtledove's version horror might be just around the corner but most people just live quite ordinary daily life. Even hidden Jews, who must live a daily masquerade in which the smallest slip could spell disaster, can still find themselves entangled in small-minded academic politics, feel tempted to start an affair with the beautiful wife of a friend, or simply snarl at being stuck in a traffic jam.
Though all Jews are considered to have been exterminated as of 2010 (which is an important factor in the continued survival of the handful of well-hidden Jews), the anti-Semitic stereotypes remain strong in popular culture and official propaganda, and form an important part of education in the schools. Anti-Semitic author Julius Streicher's Trust No Fox in the Green Meadow, No Jew on His Oath and The Poison Mushroom are universally read by German children—the Jews feel obliged to buy them for their own children, as doing otherwise might arouse suspicion. The Hitler Jugend and Bund Deutscher Mädel are also still compulsory for all children in the German Reich, with their roles having changed little since their foundation. Towards the end, it becomes clear that the Hitler Jugend is changing, and gearing more towards preparing citizens for responsible adulthood, than for the army. It can be assumed that the Bund undergoes a similar change.
It is unclear how deep the hatred of Jews in the Reich actually runs, with no (as they think) living Jews to hate. When several characters are investigated on suspicion of being Jewish or of Jewish blood, the investigators do not seem that enthusiastic. The interrogators who grill Alicia about her father are easily distracted into sexual comments about his accuser, to the horror of the child, and to the interrogators' amusement. A neighbor says sympathetically to her mother when she says that she wants her husband home: that even if she were Jewish, she'd want that.
School is used by the Reich as a tool to control and indoctrinate its citizens from young. Corporal punishment through the paddle is practised in schools and is used to punish various actions including disrespect to superiors, not doing school work, and for (depending on the teacher) being unable to correctly answer verbal questions posed by teachers in the classroom. School covers much of the year with the only major holidays being the end-of-the-year two-week break between Christmas and New Year's Day and another week-long break after Easter Sunday. The remainder of the year is school though one day holidays occur on an infrequent basis.
The Reich's education system is practiced only in Germany with occupied territories and allied states alike being allowed to run their own schools. In the United States, as in our reality, children still get long summer vacations which German teachers point as one of the reasons the Reich had defeated America. It may be assumed that occupation authorities review school textbooks and teachings.
Jews both are and are not part of the surrounding society. They must constantly roleplay, up to and including parroting the anti-Semitic clichés prevailing in the society. They keep as much of their Jewish identity as can be imparted in secret meetings among themselves, with purely oral lore, though a small amount of written Hebrew is taught. With the exception of the Bible—which can be kept openly as Christianity, while not encouraged by the regime, is not forbidden—they dare not have in their possession any books on Judaism, though such books still exist.
Turtledove's depiction of the hidden Jewish community of Berlin obviously draws on the historical experience of the Conversos/Maranos in Spain, who kept a hidden Jewish life (and others, a hidden Muslim life) with discovery leading to burning by the Inquisition; the comparison is explicitly made by one of the characters. However, Conversos could let it be known that their ancestors were Jewish, as long as they themselves were practicing Catholics; Turtledove's hidden Jews, facing the Nazi Race Laws, need to fake their pedigrees for many generations backwards, insert the false data in the Nazi computerized system (which is the responsibility of one of the viewpoint characters, a computer expert) and learn by heart the details of their false ancestors.
All the viewpoint characters were born under the Nazis, and keeping up the masquerade is virtually second nature to them (obviously, less adaptable types would not have survived so long). The point of greatest danger is when a child is told of his or her true identity, which is usually done at the age of ten—considered old enough to keep the secret. Children often react with shock, since like all German children of this society they had been exposed to constant anti-Semitic indoctrination through teachers and children's books. Grown-ups try to soften the shock, by letting children feel that they are privileged to belong to a special exclusive club or secret society.
It is mentioned that the hidden Jews regard it as too dangerous to gather on the Major Holidays and fasts of Judaism, such as Passover and Yom Kippur, and hold their secret gatherings on Minor Holidays such as Purim. That might have the effect that for future Jews the Minor Holidays would become in practice the major ones. Possibly, also when Jews could again build synagogues, they would still celebrate Purim by a semi-secret gatherings in private house—as tradition always tends to turn into ritual what was once a necessity.
Jews in 2010 Berlin must keep up the pretense of being normal German middle class men and women of their time—and in many ways, they are precisely that. Heinrich Gimpel breaks the Reich's supreme law simply by being alive, and he compounds the offence by having Jewish children and teaching them their heritage—yet he is enough of a respectable German that the petty theft of taking multiple papers from a machine without paying for each would be inconceivable. Hidden Jewish characters sometimes say "we" meaning Germany, and celebrate the victory of the German football team—and though they obviously reject the Nazi ideology and practice, they accept as a matter of course the use of euthanasia for terminally-ill babies, and for the senile or feeble elderly. One of the characters, on a visit to occupied London, behaves very much as the arrogant German conqueror (to be sure, it is a perfect protective coloration deflecting any suspicion that she might be Jewish—but it comes quite naturally to her). All this again recalls the Conversos, who for all their secret life shared much of the culture and outlook of 16th Century Catholic Spaniards.
Homosexuals are actively persecuted. Unlike Jews, Gypsies, and other "inferior races" (which are thought to have been wiped out), homosexuals continue to arise, and are hunted by the security police—unless they have political connections which protect them.
Divorce is possible, but rare enough to excite comment and attract notice, and so is avoided by Jews.
The Reichsmark is the dominant world currency and is used throughout the Greater German Reich though most of its member states, territories and allies including the Empire of Japan, Latin America, Britain and America having their own currencies. Germany dictates favorable exchange rates. The Reichsmark is readily accepted (and apparently welcomed) even where not legal tender, much like the dollar today. Britain retains its pre-decimal pound/shilling/pence currency, though the crown is struck in cheap aluminum, rather than silver as before World War II. Given that a taxi ride taken by a character from Heathrow Airport to London costs just over four shillings (just over a fifth of a pound), the pound must maintain significant value. This may be an error on Turtledove's part, however, as the Reichsmark is mentioned as being worth just more than a pound, and we are told that a pay telephone call is fifty pfennigs and a newspaper fifteen. Even granted differences in cost of living, this seems unlikely.
[edit] Technology
The level of technology in the novel is much the same as in the actual 21st century. The Wehrmacht makes use of jet aircraft, panzers, submarines, APCs, assault rifles and a variety of naval warships. An analogue to the real-world NASA in the novel is the Ministry of Air and Space which is mentioned as having planted a permanent outpost on the Moon, carries out a manned landing on Mars and be planning a manned mission to the Jovian moons, which shows that space technology may have advanced. Orbital weather platforms are also mentioned in the book.
The Fuhrer also makes use of a Junkers jet airliner named Luftwaffe Alfa which may be an analog to the US President's Air Force One. The Luftwaffe also deploys Me-662 fighters which may be related to the Messerschmitt Me 262 deployed by Germany during the last years of World War II. The famous World War II Soviet tank the T-34 gets a brief mention in the novel and its design appears to have been admired by even the Germans who incorporated some of its features into the Panther tank and caused some problems with the Nazi racial doctrine as in the real world. However, due to the Nazi victory, this is explained away by claiming that the Germans had better tank crews than the Soviets.
Civilian technology has also advanced in a similar way to its military counterpart in the 21st century. Jet airliners, televisions (called televisors), computers, modern cars, microwaves and radios are used throughout the Greater German Reich. The German population enjoys very high living standards, but this comes at the expense of often appalling conditions for non-German populations in the Reich and occupied territories.
Even so, consumer technology is not as advanced in many ways as in our world. Cellular telephones, MP3 players, handhelds, and other small electronics seem unknown. A character carries a handkerchief while Kleenex hand tissues seem unknown.
While the automobile is so common that Berlin is depicted as choked with traffic, none of the adult point of view characters owns one or thinks of owning one. All commute to work on public transportation.
An analogue to the real world Microsoft and the Internet is Zeiss Computing which is also a real world company based in Germany—but it faces stiff competition from later-developed but more advanced Japanese computer technology. While the technology fully exists to create a "world wide web", the regime would undoubtedly be apprehensive of giving everybody the ability to access data and make his or her own information available to others. (Though it is not explicitly mentioned, such limitations may be relaxed following the reforms in the later part of the book.)
The Reich Genealogical Office also has online genealogical records, which can define life and death to persons suspected of being Jewish. (Historically, the Nazis of our history already made use of the pre-computer punch-cards developed by IBM in order to mark out the Jews and eventually arrest them and send them to extermination camps.) (See [1].)
German industry uses Slavic or Arab slave laborers for "dirty" or dangerous work. In one chilling passage, an industrial accident in the Ruhr is reported on TV as having caused the deaths of "Twelve Aryans and an unknown number of Untermenschen". The episode seems to be borrowed from Mark Twain's description of the Old South in Huckleberry Finn, a boiler explosion in a Mississippi River boat is (falsely) reported by Huck, and when an elderly lady asks if anyone was hurt, Huck replies "No, m'm. A nigger was killed.".
[edit] Society
Society in the German Reich differs from that of modern day Germany and Europe. In this alternate timeline, due to the Reich's victory in the Second and Third World Wars, German companies and organizations are dominant with some sharing analogs to real world companies and organizations. Real world German car companies like Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are also mentioned throughout the book. Volkswagens appear to have advanced as in our timeline with its lines being smoother and rounder, engine to the front and trunk to the rear and a water-cooled engine. Another real world company Agfa-Gevaert also appears in the book and has a key role in encouraging Germans to migrate to the Ostlands territories. The real world German airline Lufthansa also appears in the book.
German academics are presented as having a key role in the process of racial discrimination and genocide. The German Institute for Racial Studies which is part of Friedrich Wilhelm University is mentioned as charged with defining which peoples and ethnic groups throughout the vast "Germanic Empire" are defined as "subhuman" and therefore marked out for genocide and/or the life of slave laborers. At its side, as the supposed "smiling face" of the Reich, is located the German Institute for Foreigners which was founded in 1922, and which is charged with instructing those from overseas who were lucky enough to be classed as "Aryans" (such as Iranians and Indians) in the German language and culture. The school appears to parallel Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University.
Academic life (and presumably, other spheres of life as well) are far more male-dominated than in our history. While it is not impossible for a woman to have an academic career, only a few manage it, and such a woman lecturer faces considerable difficulties and needs to engage in petty daily struggles in order to gain privileges which are taken for granted by male colleagues. An assertive woman may face the accusation that she is "not a proper National Socialist woman". However, such attitudes seem to be increasingly regarded as old-fashioned and challenged by younger people. It can be assumed that, even if the reforms unfolding in the course of the book do not go as far as complete elimination of the racist attitudes at the core of Nazi ideology, they are likely to make possible the rise of a feminist movement.
The famous British Broadcasting Corporation is also mentioned throughout the novel with the Reich's counterpart being the RRG. Few details of the RRG's operations are given, and what the initials stand for is not explicitly stated, although it might be Reichs Rundfunk Gesellschaft. A newscaster named Horst Witzleben appears several times in the novel, his "Seven O'clock News" being highly influential. Evidently, Turtledove's projection of how the Goebbels propaganda machine would have developed in the TV Age.
Witzleben is presented as the quintessential opportunist. In the beginning of the book he is skillfully inserting Nazi racist messages into his reading of the news; when the democratic reforms begin, he reports them faithfully and enthusiastically; during the reactionary coup, he serves what seems the new power group (though it is hinted he may have been coerced); once the coup is crushed, he again works for reform...
In the Reich, sports are solely reserved for Aryans and is entirely controlled by the German Federation of Sport which appears to favor German sportsmen to those from other states. Its powers include reserving the right to withdraw from competition with foreign teams and withholding the rights of foreign teams to tour the Reich when relations sour. An example of this includes boycotting Italian sports teams following a riot at a football match in Milan between fans of the home team and visiting Leipzig (somewhat ironic given that in real life, Leipzig is a backwater of German football). Deprivation of the right to tour the Reich and have Reich teams visit can be financially devastating. Germany is mentioned as having won a recent World Cup (presumably in 2006), but is now challenged by a powerful Brazilian team, depicted as multi-racial and including Negroes and Native Americans as members.
Berlin plainly retains the vibrant cultural life it almost always has had. Reference is made to a wildly successful musical echoing the plot of The Producers but centering on Churchill and Stalin, rather than Hitler.
An apparent analogue to F.A.O. Schwartz is Ulbright's. Among its wares are Vicki dolls (a possible analogue to the real world Barbie) and its male counterpart Landser Sepp (an analog to G.I. Joe, which has many military accessories), children's books, various toy models and football, basketball and archery sets. The Vicki dolls are mentioned as manufactured in the United States through the use of prison labour. Like Barbie, these dolls come in different versions including the New Orleans Vicki though keeping in line with the racist policies of the Reich, all products look perfectly Aryan.
Nazi Berlin is a cosmopolitan city, and its residents may enjoy cuisine from all over the world. There is a Japanese restaurant near the government district in Berlin called Admiral Yamamoto, which was named after a Japanese admiral during the Second World War. It is operated by a Japanese student who had come to Berlin several years earlier to do a course in engineering. It serves the typical Japanese cuisine including sushi, sashimi, tempura and "Berlin Rolls", which may be analogous to the real-world California rolls. Similar to California rolls, a Berlin roll is composed of seaweed and rice wrapped around cut, white radish and a piece of Baltic herring. Like California rolls in the U.S., Berlin rolls presumably originated in Japanese communities in Germany. Also worth noting is that Japanese beer is illegal under the medieval purity law Reinheitsgebot. Despite the alliance between the Reich and Japan, the Nazis consider the Japanese to be inherently inferior with no true creativity of their own and point to their so-called decrease in technological advances.
Besides the Japanese restaurant, there is an American restaurant named the Greasy Spoon which serves typical American cuisine including burgers, french fries, cherry pies, brownies. In one part of the story, two of the main characters Heinrich and Lise Gimpel meet with two friends Richard and Maria Klein at the restaurant and are impressed by the food and the alluring dress of the waitress. There are obviously no American fast food chains like McDonalds and KFC with worldwide spread, no doubt due to the economic collapse following the defeat of America in World War Three.
[edit] Locations
Much of the novel takes place in the Reich's capital of Berlin which is filled with great monuments and palaces. It also contains the headquarters of key governmental ministries including Air and Space, Justice, Interior, Transportation, Food, Economics, Colonial, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and the Fuhrer's office. There are also several monuments including the Great Hall, Fuhrer's Palace, Adolf Hitler Platz, Soldier's Hall and the Arch of Triumph.
Much of the monumental architecture described is taken from the plans made by Albert Speer, which in our history the Nazis did not get the chance to implement. A similar description of a Nazi-victorious Berlin, based on the same plans, appears in Robert Harris' Fatherland. Kurfürstendamm, a realworld avenue in Berlin also appears and is an important commercial district in the novel as in the real world. As in the real world, Kurfürstendamm glitters with neon signs and the reflection of the sun off plate-glass windows. (However, Berliners seem to be using the cumbersome full name in daily life, rather than shorten it to 'Ku Damm' as in our reality—possibly reflecting a more formal language in use—or possibly this is Turtledove's attempt to avoid confusing non-Berliners). Berlin is also a tourist destination in this world with many being from the territories of the Germanic Empire, Empire of Japan and Latin America.
Important sites in Berlin include the immense Great Hall, built through the use of funds taken from Germany's conquered territories in Europe. It had a dome that reached 200 m high into the sky and was more than 250 m long, making it larger than sixteen St. Peter's Cathedrals. The Great Hall can hold over a hundred thousand people and was the location of the funeral of the deceased Fuhrer Kurt Haldweim. A massive gilded Germanic eagle holding a swastika rests on top of the dome with a blinking red light on it to warn off planes.
The nearby Fuhrer's Palace is the residence of the Fuhrer and is guarded by soldiers from the elite Grossdeutschland Division who are stationed in nearby barracks. They are often seen parading in ceremonial dress and wielding antique Gewehr 98 rifles. However, they are also armed with the latest weapons including assault rifles and modern tanks. The nearby Adolf Hitler Platz is a massive public square similar to the real world Red Square in Moscow and the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It would, as events transpire, also be used by various groups to hold rallies.
The Soldier's Hall is a monument built to commemorate the might of the German military. Its exhibits include the radioactive remains of the Liberty Bell which are stored behind thick leaded glass, gliders used to land troops in Britain, the first Panzer IV to enter the Russian Kremlin and the railroad car at Compiègne in which Germany effectively surrendered to the Allies in 1918 and in which France surrendered to Germany in 1940.
The massive Arch of Triumph is an immense monument modeled on the smaller real-world Arc de Triomphe in Paris and is nearly 170 m wide and 1,700 m deep. Much of the traffic in that district in Berlin flows through this massive arch. Due to the high population of people in Berlin, rapid transit trains (U-bahn) and commuter rail are also used to help ease transportation. One such rail station is South Station which is located near the government offices. According to Speer's plans, this was to anchor the south end of the main boulevard on which most of his monumental structures were to rise. Captured enemy weapons are also displayed outside the station (which in Speer's plans, and presumably in this reality, was to be one of the two main centers for intercity rail) including the wreckage of a British fighter, a Russian tank and the conning tower of an American submarine.
Parts of the story also take place in London, the capital of Britain. During the Second World War, much of London had been destroyed by dive bombers and panzers, and during the last-ditch resistance by Churchill and his supporters. The description suggests a Stalingrad-like resistance, though in this case ending with a German victory—which is certainly the intention which the historical Churchill conveyed in his famous speeches of 1940. Key British buildings including the Parliament building, Big Ben and St. Paul's Cathedral have been completely destroyed with their only remaining legacy being photographs. It is worth mentioned that some areas of the city have been in ruins for over seventy years, due to harsh reparations imposed on the British by the Germans and partisan uprisings which would only be completely crushed by 1970. It is mentioned that German city planners often visit Britain to see how their colleagues deal with building from the clean slate they can never have—in our world, the opposite has taken place, as British city planners watched Germans reconstruct their cities. Heathrow International Airport also serves London in this alternate timeline as well.
The Crown is a hotel which is visited by one of the characters, Susanna Weiss. As its name implies, the hotel is dominated by an enormous crown. The Crown is the meeting place of the British Union of Fascists. The BUF members have a reputation of being violent thugs with a fight involving members of the party which advocated the first edition of the Mein Kampf and their opponents taking place outside and within the hotel. In this alternate timeline, the British people are poorer compared to their German neighbors due to the German occupation.
A second hotel, the Silver Eagle, is the location of the Medieval English Association conference, of which Susanna is a member. It bears a glass and steel eagle on its top. Both hotels are modern, glass-fronted structures. Interestingly, the famed English poet and playwright William Shakespeare and his works are more widely known and published in Germany rather than his homeland partly due to the economic collapse of Britain following World War Two.
[edit] Relevance today
One subplot in the novel involves Alicia Gimpel's discovery that she belongs to a wrongfully despised minority whom she has been taught all her life to passionately hate. The hidden Jews are depicted as singularly patient and enlightened, free of the blind hatred which would have been very natural in the circumstances. Quite a few non-Jewish characters, as seen through their eyes, are sympathetic—even when they adhere to the racist ideology in which they had been brought up. The book is written in a remarkably tolerant and humane spirit, the diametrical opposite of the prevailing mindset in the society described—which is no doubt intentional.[citation needed]
The essential message of the book is quite optimistic, though the ending is cautious and restrained: even under the most nightmarish conditions conceivable, human decency is not crushed forever; even a relentless genocide, carried on unhindered for decades on a worldwide scale, leaves some survivors who maintain their people's heritage. As such, the book can be considered an antithesis to such dystopias as Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four with its conclusion that the world would remain in a condition of "A boot on a face, forever" and that all resistance is doomed to be utterly crushed.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
- Fatherland (novel)
- It Happened Here
- The Man in the High Castle
- The Ultimate Solution
- 1945 (novel)
- SS-GB
[edit] External link
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