Roedecker
Banned
Robert Harris wrote a novel that was published in 1992 titled Fatherland. I know its been mentioned before on the boards. It was even made into a TV movie for HBO.
But for those who don't know about the novel, here is the premise: Nazi Germany won World War II and conquered Europe and the Soviet Union, the United States got out of the war in Europe and went on to defeat Japan by itself. By 1964, the U.S. and the "Greater German Reich" are the two superpowers of the world and locked in a Cold War. By that year, Hitler is still alive and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. is the President to the United States.
My challenge that I'm proposing here is for someone to create a timeline of the Fatherland universe from 1942 to at least 1964.
Using Wikipedia, I gathered a great deal of information about that world that was revealed in the book. Hopefully it will help people put the timeline together:
The German armies on the Eastern Front launch a major offensive into the Caucasus in 1942, cutting the flow of oil to the Red Army. With its armies immobilized, the USSR surrenders in 1943. German intelligence learns that the British are reading their Enigma code, and sends false intelligence to lure the British fleet to destruction. The U-Boat campaign against the United Kingdom increases, starving Britain into surrender or armistice by 1944. The United States does not invade Europe and withdraws its troops from Britain prior to 1944, and instead concentrates on defeating Japan. Germany tests its first atom bomb in 1946, and also in 1946 forces the U.S. to sign a peace treaty after firing a V-3 missile that explodes above New York City to demonstrate Germany's ability to attack the U.S. with long-range missiles. Having achieved victory, Germany annexes Eastern Europe and much of the USSR into the Greater German Reich, and corrals the rest of Europe into a pro-German trading bloc, the European Community. The surviving areas of the USSR are deliberately left alone to fight an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural mountains, according to the Nazi belief that a continual war will hold Nazi society together. By 1964, the United States and the Greater German Reich are caught in a Cold War and an arms race to develop more sophisticated nuclear weapons and space technology.
The novel takes place from April 14 to April 20, 1964, as Germany prepares for Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday celebrations. A visit by the President of the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy, is planned as part of a gradual détente between the United States and the Greater German Reich. The Holocaust has been explained away to the satisfaction of many as merely the relocation of most of the Jewish population to the East into areas where communication and travel are still very poor, explaining why it is impossible for most of their relatives in the West to contact them. Despite this, many Germans are aware - or suspect - that the government has somehow permanently eliminated the Jewish population.
The Greater German Reich stretches from Alsace-Lorraine in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Poland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, European Russia, and the areas ceded by Germany under the Treaty of Versailles have all been annexed directly into the Reich. Major cities in the expanded Germany include old German cities such as Berlin (has a population of 10 million in 1964) and Hamburg, but also include newly-annexed cities such as Moscow, Tblisi, Ufa, St. Petersburg, Krakow, and Sevastopol, which has been renamed "Theodorichshafen". Berlin has been extensively remodelled as Hitler's "capital of capitals," designed according to the wishes of Hitler and his top architect, Albert Speer. By 1964, the city boasts gargantuan Nazi monuments such as the Great Hall (which holds over 150,000 people), a mammoth arch inscribed with the names of the German soldiers killed in the two World Wars, and vast, severe, granite civil buildings including Hitler's vast palace, the Grand Avenue lined with captured Soviet artillery, and the headquarters of the powerless European Union.
The rest of Europe, excluding Switzerland, has been corraled by Germany into a European Economic Community, formed from the nations of Norway, Sweden, Finland (which has absorbed Karelia from Russia), Denmark, Iceland, the United Kingdom (which has absorbed Ireland), France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Italy (it is unspecified if Mussolini is still in control of Italy), Yugoslavia, a greatly expanded Hungary which has absorbed Slovakia and much of neighbouring Romania, which has returned to its pre-1918 borders, Bulgaria, Albania, an expanded Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey. A European Parliament is based in Berlin but is virtually powerless. At the European Parliament building, the flags of the member states are dwarfed by a large swastika flag, symbolising the immense power that Germany has in the E.C. of 1964. The nations of the E.C., despite being nominally free under their own governments and leaders (such as General Franco and Edward VIII), are closely watched by Germany. Their military forces are only just sufficient to police their empires, they are under constant surveillance by Berlin, and the rest of Europe is subordinate to Germany in all but name. For unknown reasons, Switzerland has not been annexed by the Reich and is not a member of the European Community. As a result, Switzerland in 1964 is the only free country in Europe.
Since the end of the war in 1946, both the U.S. and Germany have been racing against each other to develop sophisticated military, nuclear, and space technologies. Japan was defeated by the U.S. in 1945 or 1946 after the United States detonated an atomic bomb on Japanese territory. However, Japan seems to have recovered quickly, and is the host for the 1964 Olympic Games, which are being held in Tokyo. The United States is said to have not participated in the Games since 1936, but is expected to in 1964. China is a weak independent state - a passing reference hints at China being ruled by a harsh government - and Sino-German relations do not seem particularly strong. A greatly reduced Soviet rump state exists, with its capital at Omsk. The United States supplies the USSR with weapons and funds, which are used by the Russians to wage an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural Mountains. Although German propaganda plays down the war in the east, the appalling death toll on the Eastern Front is a severe headache for the Reich. Africa and the rest of Asia are still controlled by the old European colonial empires. South America is not referred to in the novel.
A point left unclear is whether the extermination of the Jews was confined to Nazi-occupied Europe or was extended to the rest of the world, particularly Palestine. Due to the Nazi victory in 1946, there is no independent Israel and it is assumed that the Middle East is still part of the British Empire. The British Empire appears to be a strong entity and retains its territories in Africa and Asia, although Canada and Australia have split from the Empire and are closely allied to the United States. Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Windsor, who claims the British Crown from Edward VIII, reside in Canada, speaking out against the Greater German Reich, German-controlled Europe, and the puppet British regime. Since the end of the war between Germany and the United States in 1946, a nuclear stalemate has developed, which seems to overshadow international relations. Germany by 1964 has something of a paranoia of a nuclear war. New German buildings are constructed with mandatory fallout shelters, the Reichsarchiv claims to have been built to withstand a direct missile hit, and despite the catastrophically high death toll on the Eastern Front, the German military is afraid to use nuclear weapons in case they provoke an American nuclear attack on the Reich. It remains unknown if Germany and the United States are the only nuclear powers in the world.
Western Europe has been left relatively unmolested due to Hitler's actual intentions to merely disarm and then ignore Europe following a Nazi victory, and concentrate on the German conquest of western Russia. The United Kingdom, admired by Hitler, has retained and enlarged its sprawling empire, as Hitler has little interest in the world beyond the German border, and relies on the British to keep the peace in Africa and Asia. Having answered the Jewish question, the Nazi Party finds itself without scapegoats to blame for Germany's problems – problems that do not exist, as Germany has risen to become one of the two superpowers in the world.
The bedrock of Nazi ideology is still the policy of blaming subversives for social problems. Homosexuality, incest, interracial relationships (particularly between "Aryans" and Slavs), and Communism have become the new scapegoats for the Nazi Party. The Nazi view of other peoples has also been forced to change. Europe and Russia are under German control, and so the Nazi Party has been obliged to find a new scapegoat, and appears to have spent the early 1960s blaming the United States for causing Germany's problems. This, however, has had to change. Nazi propaganda has previously depicted America as a land of corruption, degeneracy, and poverty, controlled by stereotyped capitalists, wracked by gangsters and communists, with its population crammed into filthy ghettoes, devastated by environmental damage and over-taxation. However, as the diplomatic meeting between Hitler and Kennedy nears, German propaganda is forced to change its image of America to a more positive view. This seriously undermines Nazi ideology. The Nazi Party no longer has any Jews to blame, no Europe, Russia, or America to castigate, and no enemy states left to fight. As a consequence, the Party has no-one to blame for Germany's problems, and the very structure of Nazi society is starting to fall apart.
Despite its ideological and moral decline, Germany enjoys a very high standard of living, with its citizens living off the high-quality produce of their European satellite states and freed from physical labour by thousands of Polish and Czech slaves. The European nations produce high-quality consumer goods for German citizens while also providing services, such as the SS academy at Oxford University and German holiday resorts in Spain, France, and Greece. Products from across Europe and their colonial empires flood into Germany, providing German citizens with a wide choice of high-quality goods. Hitler's crabbed, banal personal tastes in art and music have become the norm for society, creating a stagnant and boringly repetitive cultural atmosphere.
The social structure of Nazi Germany has changed considerably from the 1940s. Military service is still compulsory, but recruits have a choice of service. Eastern Europe has been colonised by German settlers (although local partisan resistance movements are very strong) and the German population has soared as a result of Nazi emphasis on childbirth. Increasing numbers of Nazi officials are no longer the bullies of the 1940s, but well-groomed, intelligent, university-educated bureaucrats. The SS serves as the country's police force, and concentration camps are still in existence for political dissidents, occassionally given staged inspections by the International Red Cross.
German society in the early 1960s is becoming more and more rebellious. Student protests, particularly against the war in the Urals, American and British cultural influence (including the rise of The Beatles' popularity, already denounced in the official German press), and growing pacifism are all found in Nazi society. Germany appears to be under constant attack by terrorist groups, with officials assassinated and civilian airliners bombed in-flight. Religion is still officially discouraged by the state, and the Hitler Youth is compulsory for all children. Universities, like in 1930s Germany, are centres of student dissent, and the White Rose movement is once again active. The Nazis continue with their policies for women, encouraging women to remain in the home and bring up many children. Nazi organisations such as Kraft durch Freude still exist and fulfill their original roles.
The level of technology in the world is much the same as in the actual 1960s, and in some respects, is more advanced. The German military makes use of jet aircraft, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers, whilst civilian technology has also advanced considerably. Jet airliners, televisions, hair-dryers, modern cars, and even photocopiers are used in Germany. The German population enjoys very high living standards, but this comes at the expense of appalling conditions for non-German populations in the Reich, and German settlers in the eastern provinces.
But for those who don't know about the novel, here is the premise: Nazi Germany won World War II and conquered Europe and the Soviet Union, the United States got out of the war in Europe and went on to defeat Japan by itself. By 1964, the U.S. and the "Greater German Reich" are the two superpowers of the world and locked in a Cold War. By that year, Hitler is still alive and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. is the President to the United States.
My challenge that I'm proposing here is for someone to create a timeline of the Fatherland universe from 1942 to at least 1964.
Using Wikipedia, I gathered a great deal of information about that world that was revealed in the book. Hopefully it will help people put the timeline together:
The German armies on the Eastern Front launch a major offensive into the Caucasus in 1942, cutting the flow of oil to the Red Army. With its armies immobilized, the USSR surrenders in 1943. German intelligence learns that the British are reading their Enigma code, and sends false intelligence to lure the British fleet to destruction. The U-Boat campaign against the United Kingdom increases, starving Britain into surrender or armistice by 1944. The United States does not invade Europe and withdraws its troops from Britain prior to 1944, and instead concentrates on defeating Japan. Germany tests its first atom bomb in 1946, and also in 1946 forces the U.S. to sign a peace treaty after firing a V-3 missile that explodes above New York City to demonstrate Germany's ability to attack the U.S. with long-range missiles. Having achieved victory, Germany annexes Eastern Europe and much of the USSR into the Greater German Reich, and corrals the rest of Europe into a pro-German trading bloc, the European Community. The surviving areas of the USSR are deliberately left alone to fight an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural mountains, according to the Nazi belief that a continual war will hold Nazi society together. By 1964, the United States and the Greater German Reich are caught in a Cold War and an arms race to develop more sophisticated nuclear weapons and space technology.
The novel takes place from April 14 to April 20, 1964, as Germany prepares for Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday celebrations. A visit by the President of the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy, is planned as part of a gradual détente between the United States and the Greater German Reich. The Holocaust has been explained away to the satisfaction of many as merely the relocation of most of the Jewish population to the East into areas where communication and travel are still very poor, explaining why it is impossible for most of their relatives in the West to contact them. Despite this, many Germans are aware - or suspect - that the government has somehow permanently eliminated the Jewish population.
The Greater German Reich stretches from Alsace-Lorraine in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Poland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, European Russia, and the areas ceded by Germany under the Treaty of Versailles have all been annexed directly into the Reich. Major cities in the expanded Germany include old German cities such as Berlin (has a population of 10 million in 1964) and Hamburg, but also include newly-annexed cities such as Moscow, Tblisi, Ufa, St. Petersburg, Krakow, and Sevastopol, which has been renamed "Theodorichshafen". Berlin has been extensively remodelled as Hitler's "capital of capitals," designed according to the wishes of Hitler and his top architect, Albert Speer. By 1964, the city boasts gargantuan Nazi monuments such as the Great Hall (which holds over 150,000 people), a mammoth arch inscribed with the names of the German soldiers killed in the two World Wars, and vast, severe, granite civil buildings including Hitler's vast palace, the Grand Avenue lined with captured Soviet artillery, and the headquarters of the powerless European Union.
The rest of Europe, excluding Switzerland, has been corraled by Germany into a European Economic Community, formed from the nations of Norway, Sweden, Finland (which has absorbed Karelia from Russia), Denmark, Iceland, the United Kingdom (which has absorbed Ireland), France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Italy (it is unspecified if Mussolini is still in control of Italy), Yugoslavia, a greatly expanded Hungary which has absorbed Slovakia and much of neighbouring Romania, which has returned to its pre-1918 borders, Bulgaria, Albania, an expanded Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey. A European Parliament is based in Berlin but is virtually powerless. At the European Parliament building, the flags of the member states are dwarfed by a large swastika flag, symbolising the immense power that Germany has in the E.C. of 1964. The nations of the E.C., despite being nominally free under their own governments and leaders (such as General Franco and Edward VIII), are closely watched by Germany. Their military forces are only just sufficient to police their empires, they are under constant surveillance by Berlin, and the rest of Europe is subordinate to Germany in all but name. For unknown reasons, Switzerland has not been annexed by the Reich and is not a member of the European Community. As a result, Switzerland in 1964 is the only free country in Europe.
Since the end of the war in 1946, both the U.S. and Germany have been racing against each other to develop sophisticated military, nuclear, and space technologies. Japan was defeated by the U.S. in 1945 or 1946 after the United States detonated an atomic bomb on Japanese territory. However, Japan seems to have recovered quickly, and is the host for the 1964 Olympic Games, which are being held in Tokyo. The United States is said to have not participated in the Games since 1936, but is expected to in 1964. China is a weak independent state - a passing reference hints at China being ruled by a harsh government - and Sino-German relations do not seem particularly strong. A greatly reduced Soviet rump state exists, with its capital at Omsk. The United States supplies the USSR with weapons and funds, which are used by the Russians to wage an endless guerrilla war with German forces in the Ural Mountains. Although German propaganda plays down the war in the east, the appalling death toll on the Eastern Front is a severe headache for the Reich. Africa and the rest of Asia are still controlled by the old European colonial empires. South America is not referred to in the novel.
A point left unclear is whether the extermination of the Jews was confined to Nazi-occupied Europe or was extended to the rest of the world, particularly Palestine. Due to the Nazi victory in 1946, there is no independent Israel and it is assumed that the Middle East is still part of the British Empire. The British Empire appears to be a strong entity and retains its territories in Africa and Asia, although Canada and Australia have split from the Empire and are closely allied to the United States. Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Windsor, who claims the British Crown from Edward VIII, reside in Canada, speaking out against the Greater German Reich, German-controlled Europe, and the puppet British regime. Since the end of the war between Germany and the United States in 1946, a nuclear stalemate has developed, which seems to overshadow international relations. Germany by 1964 has something of a paranoia of a nuclear war. New German buildings are constructed with mandatory fallout shelters, the Reichsarchiv claims to have been built to withstand a direct missile hit, and despite the catastrophically high death toll on the Eastern Front, the German military is afraid to use nuclear weapons in case they provoke an American nuclear attack on the Reich. It remains unknown if Germany and the United States are the only nuclear powers in the world.
Western Europe has been left relatively unmolested due to Hitler's actual intentions to merely disarm and then ignore Europe following a Nazi victory, and concentrate on the German conquest of western Russia. The United Kingdom, admired by Hitler, has retained and enlarged its sprawling empire, as Hitler has little interest in the world beyond the German border, and relies on the British to keep the peace in Africa and Asia. Having answered the Jewish question, the Nazi Party finds itself without scapegoats to blame for Germany's problems – problems that do not exist, as Germany has risen to become one of the two superpowers in the world.
The bedrock of Nazi ideology is still the policy of blaming subversives for social problems. Homosexuality, incest, interracial relationships (particularly between "Aryans" and Slavs), and Communism have become the new scapegoats for the Nazi Party. The Nazi view of other peoples has also been forced to change. Europe and Russia are under German control, and so the Nazi Party has been obliged to find a new scapegoat, and appears to have spent the early 1960s blaming the United States for causing Germany's problems. This, however, has had to change. Nazi propaganda has previously depicted America as a land of corruption, degeneracy, and poverty, controlled by stereotyped capitalists, wracked by gangsters and communists, with its population crammed into filthy ghettoes, devastated by environmental damage and over-taxation. However, as the diplomatic meeting between Hitler and Kennedy nears, German propaganda is forced to change its image of America to a more positive view. This seriously undermines Nazi ideology. The Nazi Party no longer has any Jews to blame, no Europe, Russia, or America to castigate, and no enemy states left to fight. As a consequence, the Party has no-one to blame for Germany's problems, and the very structure of Nazi society is starting to fall apart.
Despite its ideological and moral decline, Germany enjoys a very high standard of living, with its citizens living off the high-quality produce of their European satellite states and freed from physical labour by thousands of Polish and Czech slaves. The European nations produce high-quality consumer goods for German citizens while also providing services, such as the SS academy at Oxford University and German holiday resorts in Spain, France, and Greece. Products from across Europe and their colonial empires flood into Germany, providing German citizens with a wide choice of high-quality goods. Hitler's crabbed, banal personal tastes in art and music have become the norm for society, creating a stagnant and boringly repetitive cultural atmosphere.
The social structure of Nazi Germany has changed considerably from the 1940s. Military service is still compulsory, but recruits have a choice of service. Eastern Europe has been colonised by German settlers (although local partisan resistance movements are very strong) and the German population has soared as a result of Nazi emphasis on childbirth. Increasing numbers of Nazi officials are no longer the bullies of the 1940s, but well-groomed, intelligent, university-educated bureaucrats. The SS serves as the country's police force, and concentration camps are still in existence for political dissidents, occassionally given staged inspections by the International Red Cross.
German society in the early 1960s is becoming more and more rebellious. Student protests, particularly against the war in the Urals, American and British cultural influence (including the rise of The Beatles' popularity, already denounced in the official German press), and growing pacifism are all found in Nazi society. Germany appears to be under constant attack by terrorist groups, with officials assassinated and civilian airliners bombed in-flight. Religion is still officially discouraged by the state, and the Hitler Youth is compulsory for all children. Universities, like in 1930s Germany, are centres of student dissent, and the White Rose movement is once again active. The Nazis continue with their policies for women, encouraging women to remain in the home and bring up many children. Nazi organisations such as Kraft durch Freude still exist and fulfill their original roles.
The level of technology in the world is much the same as in the actual 1960s, and in some respects, is more advanced. The German military makes use of jet aircraft, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers, whilst civilian technology has also advanced considerably. Jet airliners, televisions, hair-dryers, modern cars, and even photocopiers are used in Germany. The German population enjoys very high living standards, but this comes at the expense of appalling conditions for non-German populations in the Reich, and German settlers in the eastern provinces.