Sansom, C.J. "Dominion"

Sansom, C.J. (Christopher John) "Dominion" - 2011

"The Children's War" by J.N. Stroyar is probably my favourite book ever. Therefore, I was quite pleased to find this book that tells another story about what would or could have happened, had the Nazis won the war. I have always said I am glad they didn't, even though some of my foreign friends might think I shouldn't be thankful Germany lost the war. But that is wrong. Germany didn't lose the war, the Nazis did and that was for the good of everyone, not just the foreigners. My parents who were still quite little when they were elected have been telling me stories that go hand in hand with these kinds of books.

Therefore, well done, Christopher John Sansom. In this novel, we assume that there wasn't a WWII, just a short war in 1939 and that the Nazis won and carried on ruling the world. And what an awful world that was. Just as bad as living in Germany during those years when you weren't a Nazi. You had to hide your feelings from everyone around you, just in case they disagreed with you and reported you. My grandfather made the mistake to warn everyone before the elections and was given quite a hard time afterwards. Luckily, they lived quite remote and he could hide in the nearby bogs.

Back to the book, we follow different kinds of people in Nazi ruled Britain, the followers, the resistance, the Jews, and even some German military guys who come to "help out". We get to know them quite well and follow their stories, their hopes and their dreams.

It was extremely interesting for me to read all this, imagining my grandparents in a time like that. Maybe someday I will come upon a great book about the German resistance in those hard times.

Best quote:
"Whenever a party tells you national identity matters more than anything else in politics, that nationalism can sort out all the other problems, then watch out, because you’re on a road that can end with fascism."

From the back cover:

"1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers, and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk. As the long German war against Russia rages on in the east, the British people find themselves under dark authoritarian rule: the press, radio and television are controlled; the streets patrolled by violent auxiliary police and British Jews face ever greater constraints. There are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House. Defiance, though, is growing.

In Britain, Winston Churchill's Resistance organisation is increasingly a thorn in the government's side. And in a Birmingham mental hospital an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, may hold a secret that could change the balance of the world struggle forever. Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, secretly acting as a spy for the Resistance, is given by them the mission to rescue his old friend Frank and get him out of the country. Before long he, together with a disparate group of Resistance activists, will find themselves fugitives in the midst of London’s Great Smog; as David’s wife Sarah finds herself drawn into a world more terrifying than she ever could have imagined. And hard on their heels is Gestapo Sturmbannfuhrer Gunther Hoth, brilliant, implacable hunter of men . . .

At once a vivid, haunting re-imagining of 1950s Britain, a gripping, humane spy thriller and a poignant love story - with Dominion, C.J. Sansom once again asserts himself as the master of the historical novel."