Harris, Robert "Fatherland" - 1992
What an awful thought. Hitler resp. the Nazis had won the war. I always say, the Germans didn't lose the war, that were the Nazis. The Germans effectively won the war. In this book (and in various others, like my favourite "The Children's War") we can all see why.
The story itself concentrates on one particular case. A policemen who is not a fan of the Nazis but still has to wear their uniform for his job, tries to find the secret behind a murder. And with that, he could transform the whole world.
We need people like that everywhere, people who don't just blindly follow some dicatators, even if it is an advantage for them.
I think, right now is the right time to read this book again. Right now, where the Right is on the rise in many, many countries. Too many, if you ask me. How can people forget what it was? Even if you haven't lived during the war, most of us haven't, lets be honest. My parents would have been ninety had they still lived. And they were five when the Nazis were elected, so anyone responsible for the regime must be about a hundred. Not many of them alive anymore. But we have to remember what our parents or grandparents told us and see where we are heading if we elect those idiots that tell us the foreigners are our enemies. Nope, those who want to abolish our hard-earned democracy are.
We should all be happy that the war ended the way it did, this book shows us what could have been had it been different.
From the back cover:
"April 1964.
The naked body of an old man floats in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. In one week it will be Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday. A terrible conspiracy is starting to unravel…
What if Hitler had won?"