The Ultimate Solution
Encyclopedia
The Ultimate Solution is an 1973 alternate history by journalist and former Playboy
interviewer Eric Norden, set in a world where the Axis forces won World War II
and partitioned the world between them, and is noted for its particularly grim tone.
, the protagonist being a New York policeman
charged with finding a Jew who is reported to have suddenly appeared in the city decades after all Jews are thought to have been exterminated. (There is a reference to a kind of second Wannsee Conference
, held at Buckingham Palace
in Nazi-occupied London after the extermination of European Jews had been completed, setting up the extension of the Final Solution
to the rest of the world; the last few hundred Jews are mentioned as having been discovered and killed by relentless Einsatzgruppen
hunters in 1962, having hidden at the ruins of Angkor Wat
in Cambodia
).
The society described and taken by the protagonist as normal is as such: Blacks
and Slavs being raised at "laboratories" and "farms" where their vocal cords are cut at birth and having the legal status not of slaves but of "domestic animals"; naked Black gladiator
s fighting to the death at the Madison Square Garden
(the Roman
"thumbs up" or "down
" are modernised into green and red buttons, with a computer making the tally and automatically electrocuting the losing gladiator); children encouraged by TV programs to torture and kill animals; policemen routinely carrying mobile torture
kits for "on the spot interrogations" and having the power of extrajudicial execution against "Enemies of the Reich"; body parts of murdered Jews on sale at souvenir
shops, with "collectors" trying to have "a complete collection" of samples from all extermination camps; Christianity
(and presumably other religions as well) suppressed in favor of Odinist
temples. At the time of the plot, following the recent death of Benito Mussolini
who had to some degree resisted Nazi policies, the Germans are contemplating "a change in the racial classification of Italians", and North Italians are desperately trying to save themselves by sacrificing "The Sicilian Ayarabs" to the Nazis.
Former extermination camps are open to the public as "national shrines" - not to commemorate the victims, as in our world, but to glorify the murderers and present them as heroes. What we know as the inoffensive town of Croton-on-Hudson is in this world an American Auschwitz
where the Jews of New York
and the East Coast
perished (another camp is mentioned in the Rocky Mountains
, for the West Coast
). At the entrance to the town, an Elks Club
sign proclaims proudly: "Welcome to Croton-on-Hudson, home of the Final Solution
! Here perished four million enemies of the Reich." Norden is careful to describe how Nazi doctrine in this world merges with the "American way
": a neighboring town whose inhabitants gave refuge to escaping Jews was totally destroyed and its inhabitants massacred, like Lidice
; its site was then covered with asphalt and made into a huge parking lot, and later an enormous shopping center was erected on the spot.
In an inversion of the normal conventions of a detective book, the "respectable" society is murderous, but when the protagonist starts digging deeper into the underworld, he discovers, hidden but still there, what we would call decent or even heroic people: first, old men still playing chess
at the tables in Washington Square
; a former Roman Catholic priest
who had once broken under Gestapo
interrogation
and who dreams of a second chance to die as a martyr
(the detective protagonist grants him his wish); a member of the underground, known as "Patties" (from George S. Patton
, who together with Douglas MacArthur
was executed in the "St.Louis Trials") still carrying on a desperate anti-Nazi fight against all odds; finally the hunted Jew himself, who turns out to be from our own world, having fallen into this nightmare world by the worst of bad fortune. The protagonist finally kills him - not out of anti-Semitism
which he does not really feel (he was born when Jews had already become a literally dead issue) but in a kind of "kindness" since sending him on to Berlin
would have only provided him some torture before being killed.
At the end of Norden's book, the "Cold War
" between the Nazis and the Japanese
seems ready to turn into World War III
. In the power struggle over the legacy of the completely senile Hitler, a putsch overturns the (relatively) moderate faction of Albert Speer
, known as "Axists" because they want to maintain the Axis agreements with Japan
. Power is seized by Reinhard Heydrich
and the most fanatical "Contraxists", who are determined to destroy "the degenerate Yellow Race" even at the price of an all-out nuclear war
in which Germany itself would be annihilated. Thus, having presented the reader with this world, and letting the few characters who tried to present even a token and ineffectual resistance all be killed off, Norden ends the book with the entire world about to end.
Gavriel David Rosenfeld, in his book The World Hitler Never Made (2005), suggests that Norden might have been inspired to write his novel by a ten-day-long interview he conducted with Albert Speer
, which was published in the June 1971 edition of Playboy. During the interview, Speer commented to Norden, "If the Nazis had won, [people] ... would be living in a nightmare". Rosenfeld sees Norden's novel as a morally informed critique of the 1970s "Hitler Wave" of renewed interest in Nazism which followed the publication of Speer's Inside the Third Reich
.
The book is criticized as being too "farfetched", as many subjects in the book contradict real-life Nazism and some find it hard to believe that America could be occupied so easily. In the view of some critics, Norden - a radical opponent of the Vietnam War
and other aspects of official US policies - might have meant to present to fellow Americans their reflection in "a very dark mirror" rather than portray a realistic alternate scenario of how WWII might have ended.
In support of the latter view can cited such features as that except for one German appearing briefly in the first chapter, all Nazis in the book are Americans, including the members of the SS and Gestapo, the concentration camp guards and commanders etc. Specifically, the commander of the extermination camp where the New York Jews were killed is presented as a kind of "All-American Boy", universally regarded as a hero, and who did it "not for hatred of Jews, but because it was a job which needed to be done". Further, these Nazis use typical colloquial American expressions while on their Nazi business ("If we don't catch that Jew fast, we're up shit creek"); members of the New York Police Department use the term "The Feds" when referring to the Gestapo; and they are proud of the Reich's space program and of having landed the first man on the Moon.
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
interviewer Eric Norden, set in a world where the Axis forces won World War II
Axis victory in World War II
An Axis victory in World War II is a common concept in alternate history. World War II alternate histories are one of the two most popular points of divergence in the English language...
and partitioned the world between them, and is noted for its particularly grim tone.
Plot summary
The book is written in the form of a police proceduralPolice procedural
The police procedural is a subgenre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several...
, the protagonist being a New York policeman
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
charged with finding a Jew who is reported to have suddenly appeared in the city decades after all Jews are thought to have been exterminated. (There is a reference to a kind of second Wannsee Conference
Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...
, held at Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
in Nazi-occupied London after the extermination of European Jews had been completed, setting up the extension of the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
to the rest of the world; the last few hundred Jews are mentioned as having been discovered and killed by relentless Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
hunters in 1962, having hidden at the ruins of Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu,...
in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
).
The society described and taken by the protagonist as normal is as such: Blacks
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
and Slavs being raised at "laboratories" and "farms" where their vocal cords are cut at birth and having the legal status not of slaves but of "domestic animals"; naked Black gladiator
Gladiator
A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...
s fighting to the death at the Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
(the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
"thumbs up" or "down
Pollice verso
Pollice verso or verso pollice is a Latin phrase, meaning "with a turned thumb", that is used in the context of gladiatorial combat. It refers to the hand gesture used by Ancient Roman crowds to pass judgment on a defeated gladiator....
" are modernised into green and red buttons, with a computer making the tally and automatically electrocuting the losing gladiator); children encouraged by TV programs to torture and kill animals; policemen routinely carrying mobile torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
kits for "on the spot interrogations" and having the power of extrajudicial execution against "Enemies of the Reich"; body parts of murdered Jews on sale at souvenir
Souvenir
A souvenir , memento, keepsake or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. The term souvenir brings to mind the mass-produced kitsch that is the main commodity of souvenir and gift shops in many tourist traps around the world...
shops, with "collectors" trying to have "a complete collection" of samples from all extermination camps; Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
(and presumably other religions as well) suppressed in favor of Odinist
Germanic Neopaganism
Germanic neopaganism is the contemporary revival of historical Germanic paganism. Precursor movements appeared in the early 20th century in Germany and Austria. A second wave of revival began in the early 1970s...
temples. At the time of the plot, following the recent death of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
who had to some degree resisted Nazi policies, the Germans are contemplating "a change in the racial classification of Italians", and North Italians are desperately trying to save themselves by sacrificing "The Sicilian Ayarabs" to the Nazis.
Former extermination camps are open to the public as "national shrines" - not to commemorate the victims, as in our world, but to glorify the murderers and present them as heroes. What we know as the inoffensive town of Croton-on-Hudson is in this world an American Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
where the Jews of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and the East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
perished (another camp is mentioned in the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
, for the West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
). At the entrance to the town, an Elks Club
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is an American fraternal order and social club founded in 1868...
sign proclaims proudly: "Welcome to Croton-on-Hudson, home of the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
! Here perished four million enemies of the Reich." Norden is careful to describe how Nazi doctrine in this world merges with the "American way
American way
The American way of life is an expression that refers to the lifestyle of people living in the United States of America. It is an example of a behavioral modality, developed from the 17th century until today...
": a neighboring town whose inhabitants gave refuge to escaping Jews was totally destroyed and its inhabitants massacred, like Lidice
Lidice
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...
; its site was then covered with asphalt and made into a huge parking lot, and later an enormous shopping center was erected on the spot.
In an inversion of the normal conventions of a detective book, the "respectable" society is murderous, but when the protagonist starts digging deeper into the underworld, he discovers, hidden but still there, what we would call decent or even heroic people: first, old men still playing chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
at the tables in Washington Square
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
; a former Roman Catholic priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
who had once broken under Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
interrogation
Interrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
and who dreams of a second chance to die as a martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
(the detective protagonist grants him his wish); a member of the underground, known as "Patties" (from George S. Patton
George S. Patton
George Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army officer best known for his leadership while commanding corps and armies as a general during World War II. He was also well known for his eccentricity and controversial outspokenness.Patton was commissioned in the U.S. Army after his graduation from...
, who together with Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
was executed in the "St.Louis Trials") still carrying on a desperate anti-Nazi fight against all odds; finally the hunted Jew himself, who turns out to be from our own world, having fallen into this nightmare world by the worst of bad fortune. The protagonist finally kills him - not out of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
which he does not really feel (he was born when Jews had already become a literally dead issue) but in a kind of "kindness" since sending him on to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
would have only provided him some torture before being killed.
At the end of Norden's book, the "Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
" between the Nazis and the Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
seems ready to turn into World War III
World War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....
. In the power struggle over the legacy of the completely senile Hitler, a putsch overturns the (relatively) moderate faction of Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, known as "Axists" because they want to maintain the Axis agreements with Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Power is seized by Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
and the most fanatical "Contraxists", who are determined to destroy "the degenerate Yellow Race" even at the price of an all-out nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
in which Germany itself would be annihilated. Thus, having presented the reader with this world, and letting the few characters who tried to present even a token and ineffectual resistance all be killed off, Norden ends the book with the entire world about to end.
Criticism
Norden's book, along with others exploring an alternate history where the Nazis won the war, has been cited as a work that "fulfilled an important moral function by underscoring the barbarism of Nazism and clearly reinforcing the prevailing view that a Nazi-ruled world would have been an utterly horrific place."Gavriel David Rosenfeld, in his book The World Hitler Never Made (2005), suggests that Norden might have been inspired to write his novel by a ten-day-long interview he conducted with Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, which was published in the June 1971 edition of Playboy. During the interview, Speer commented to Norden, "If the Nazis had won, [people] ... would be living in a nightmare". Rosenfeld sees Norden's novel as a morally informed critique of the 1970s "Hitler Wave" of renewed interest in Nazism which followed the publication of Speer's Inside the Third Reich
Inside the Third Reich
Inside the Third Reich is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Hitler's main architect before this period...
.
The book is criticized as being too "farfetched", as many subjects in the book contradict real-life Nazism and some find it hard to believe that America could be occupied so easily. In the view of some critics, Norden - a radical opponent of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and other aspects of official US policies - might have meant to present to fellow Americans their reflection in "a very dark mirror" rather than portray a realistic alternate scenario of how WWII might have ended.
In support of the latter view can cited such features as that except for one German appearing briefly in the first chapter, all Nazis in the book are Americans, including the members of the SS and Gestapo, the concentration camp guards and commanders etc. Specifically, the commander of the extermination camp where the New York Jews were killed is presented as a kind of "All-American Boy", universally regarded as a hero, and who did it "not for hatred of Jews, but because it was a job which needed to be done". Further, these Nazis use typical colloquial American expressions while on their Nazi business ("If we don't catch that Jew fast, we're up shit creek"); members of the New York Police Department use the term "The Feds" when referring to the Gestapo; and they are proud of the Reich's space program and of having landed the first man on the Moon.
See also
- The Man in the High CastleThe Man in the High CastleThe Man in the High Castle is a science fiction alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963 and has since been translated into many languages....
- In the Presence of Mine EnemiesIn the Presence of Mine EnemiesIn the Presence of Mine Enemies is an alternate history novel by American author Harry Turtledove, expanded from the eponymous short story. The novel depicts a world where the United States remained isolationist and did not participate in the Second World War, thus allowing victory to the Axis...
- The Sound of His HornThe Sound of His HornThe Sound of His Horn is a 1952 dystopian time travel/alternate history novel by the senior British diplomat John William Wall, written with the pseudonym Sarban. It relates the story of a British naval lieutenant, Alan Querdillon who, after becoming a POW during the Battle of Crete awakens in a...
- Swastika NightSwastika NightSwastika Night is a futuristic novel first published in 1937 and republished in 1940 by Katharine Burdekin, writing under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Swastika Night was a Left Book Club selection in 1940....
- After DachauAfter DachauAfter Dachau is a novel written by Ishmael author Daniel Quinn that was published in 2001.-Plot summary:The story is narrated by a young rich man, heir to a huge sum of money. He devotes his life to an organization called "We Live Again" which investigates the reality of reincarnation...