Resumo de Fatherland - Robert Harris

What if Nazi Germany had won the Second World War? Robert Harris
speculates on that scenario in this detective story set in Nazi Germany
in 1964.

Xavier March is a homicide investigator with the Berlin
Kriminalpolizei, a division of the SS. A week before Germany and
its empire is set to celebrate Adolf Hitler?s seventy-fifth birthday,
March is called to investigate the death of an old man found floating
in the lake near an exclusive suburb which is home to the party
elite. Who was this man? Was his death a suicide, accident,
or murder? Once the corpse is identified as a member of Hitler?s
old guard and the Gestapo takes over the investigation for reasons of
state security, March has a pretty good idea. Obsessed with the
need to know the truth about this death and about his country, he
continues his investigation despite being warned to quit.

March is helped in his investigation by American journalist Charlotte
Maguire. March not only needs Maguire?s help because she is
intimately involved in the solution to the crime, but also because, on
a personal level, he wants to know the truth about America and needs to
know what is said about Germany outside the country. He simply
does not believe what he has been told by the state?s propaganda
machine. The Gestapo is particularly intent on stopping March
getting at the truth about the murdered man because American President
Joseph Kennedy is about to ally his country more closely with Nazi
Germany. The answers to March?s mystery will reveal the answer to
the greater mystery of what happened to Europe?s Jews and at all costs
the Fuehrer wants that answer buried.

March is further threatened during his investigation by the
deteriorating relationship with his ten-year-old son, Pili. Pili
has been thoroughly indoctrinated by the various Nazi youth groups and
has made it clear that he is ashamed of his father?s unpatriotic
opinions and behaviour. The power of Hitler Youth and the Gestapo
have not diminished since the war.

The author?s speculations are based on thorough research. Many of
the documents included in the novel are real. The brutality and
paranoia exhibited by the Nazis in the book are equally evident in
historical accounts. In the same way, the fate of Xavier March,
the German who dared question that brutality and seek truth, are rooted
in history.

Not only is this a gripping mystery, ?Fatherland? is also a chilling
reminder of the fragility of freedom. The reader is confronted
with images of Nazi victory: British housemaids serving in the
homes of wealthy Germans, Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth living
in exile in Canada, the eradication of Poland and the Balkans, and the
complete extinction of European Jewry. It was so close.

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