kevin_carson 's review for:

Fatherland by Robert Harris

5.0

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About the most plausible "Nazis win WWII" alternate history I've seen. Point of divergence is the German Spring 1942 offensive, which takes Stalingrad and rolls up the Volga to encircle Moscow. Britain subsequently falls -- King Edward and Queen Wallis take the throne, and George & family flee to exile in Canada -- and all of Western Europe is given nominal independence and Finlandized under the European Economic Community. OTOH it was absolutely ruined in the film adaptation, which dumbed the story down to appeal to the "USA! USA! Hoo-raw!" crowd by making D-Day the point of divergence -- betraying a level of historical illiteracy beyond belief. The movie also downplayed Joe Kennedy's Nazi sympathies and removed the ambiguity at the end, instead depicting him as abandoning the summit with Hitler when he saw evidence of the death camps.