Swastika Night

Infobox Book |
name = Swastika Night
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of the Feminist Press edition of "Swastika Night"
author = Murray Constantine
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Dystopian Novel
publisher = Victor Gollancz Ltd
release_date = 1937
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 287 pp
isbn = 093531256-0
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Swastika Night" is a futuristic novel published by "Murray Constantine" in 1937 and republished in 1940. Its author's name was a pseudonym for Katharine Burdekin. "Swastika Night" was a Left Book Club selection in 1940.

The novel is based on Hitler's claims that Nazism would create a "Thousand Year Reich". Despite its similarity to an alternate history novel, the text, written prior to World War II, plays out in a way which is extreme though believable, considering the peculiar character of the Nazi State. At the time of writing, the book was not an alternate history but rather a plausible future history, which did not come true.

The novel bears striking similarities to Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", published more than a decade later: the past has been destroyed and history is rewritten, language is distorted, few books exist apart from propaganda, and a secret book is the only witness to the past.

Plot summary

"Swastika Night" occurs seven hundred years after Nazism achieved power, by which time Adolf Hitler is worshipped as a god. Though no major character is a woman, the story concentrates on the oppression of women, portraying the Nazis as homosexual misogynists. Christians are marginalized, Jews eliminated, and women disenfranchised — deprived of all rights.

(In the writer's time, the 1930s, it was far from obvious the Nazis meant to exterminate all Jews — not even to the Jews themselves; the Wannsee Conference had not yet occurred, and though Hitler's anti-Semitism was already well-known due to "Mein Kampf", it was far from self-evident that he would go that far.)

Germany and Japan won the "Twenty Years War" (analogous to World War II), the time it took the Nazis to subdue the Soviet Union. The protagonist is an Englishman named "Alfred" on a German pilgrimage. In Europe, the English are loathed because they were the last opponents of Nazi Germany in the "Twenty Years War". The story correctly postulates the air power's importance in war. One of the religious sites Alfred was to visit was the "Sacred Airplane", which, according to long-established dogma, Adolf Hitler piloted on a mission to Moscow, thus achieving victory.

The drastic rewriting of history, after living memory of Hitler, or the time when meaningful resistance to Germany existed, is the logical extension of Burdekin's contemporary view of Nazi Germany. Per official history, Adolf Hitler is a tall, blond god who "personally" won "The Twenty Years War". Alfred is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. First, he is shocked that Hitler is a small man with dark hair and a paunch. The crowd seem more interested in the girl; this does not fit the world view of Hitler as god. The photograph's most shocking betrayal of myth is the girl's appearance. Alfred believed her to be a boy — the attractive figure has a proud posture and long, blond hair — and is appreciated by the crowd. Women have developed self-loathing, becoming pathetic beings who have difficulty performing their sole, utilitarian function: reproduction.

Elsewhere, the Japanese rule the Americas, Australia, and Asia, to the borders of European Russia and Persia. Though Japan is the only rival superpower to the Nazi West, their inevitable wars always end in stalemate. The fascist Germans and Japanese suffer much difficulty in maintaining their populations, because of the physical degeneration of their women. In the event, the SS murder Alfred, yet he passes the truth about Nazi history to his surviving son.

Bibliography

*Katherine Burdekin: "Swastika Night": Old Westbury: Feminist Press: 1985: ISBN 0935312560

References

*cite book | last=Bleiler | first=Everett | authorlink=Everett F. Bleiler | title=The Checklist of Fantastic Literature | location=Chicago | publisher=Shasta Publishers | pages=83 | date=1948

ee also

*Pax Germanica
*"Fatherland"
*"It Happened Here"
*"The Man in the High Castle"
*"The Ultimate Solution"
*"1945"
*"In the Presence of Mine Enemies"
*"Collaborator"
*"The Sound of His Horn"
*"Making History"
*"SS-GB"
*"The Plot Against America"
*"The Iron Dream"
*"The Children's War"

External links

* [http://www.feministpress.org/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=55861100401690 Feminist Press]
* [http://www.rbd26.dial.pipex.com/swastika.htm review of the novel]
* [http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521847060&ss=ind "The World Hitler Never Made"]
* [http://www.startrader.co.uk/Action%20TV/guide70s/donquick.htm An Englishman's Castle]