A gripping, thrilling and powerful alternative history, depicting what happens to Britain when it is defeated by the Nazis – making a sort of trilogy with Kingsley Amis’s Russian Hide-And-Seek (1980) and Robert Harris’s Fatherland (1992).
SS-GB
In this alternative universe, Hitler successfully carried out Operation Sealion, a sea-borne invasion of England, their unstoppable Army fighting its way up from Portsmouth, from points along the South Coast, up through Kent and Surrey into London and through to Essex, where last ditch defending allowed some of the forces to make an escape by sea. By February 1941 it is all over and Britain has capitulated: Churchill has been executed, King George VI is in the Tower, a puppet government has been installed and various elements of the government machine have been taken over by the relevant Nazi departments, the Wehrmacht, the SD, the SS, the Gestapo.
Now it is a cold foggy September and Deighton paints a persuasive picture of a run-down, rationed, dirty and dingy country, covered in unrepaired ruins, reminders of the devastating battle which the English, eventually, lost.
Archer of the Yard
Against this setting Inspector Douglas Archer of Scotland Yard (now answerable to the cunning affable Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman of the SS) is assigned a new murder case, a young man shot dead in an antiques shop in Shepherd’s Market, Mayfair. He has made the preliminary steps when he’s surprised to learn that an abrupt, no-nonsense SS officer, Standartenführer Huth, arrives from Berlin with orders from the great Himmler himself to personally supervise the investigation. Huth and Kellerman are quickly revealed as enemies at daggers drawn as Archer finds himself drawn into a high-level, fast-moving, cunningly plotted and conceived battle of wits.
The plot has all the twists and turns of Deighton’s classic early Harry Palmer novels, now told in a much clearer, no-nonsense prose. Key developments include:
- Archer realising there are various fishy aspects to the Shepherd Market murder. He discovers the antique dealer was not Peter Thomas, as claimed by neighbours and his card, but some kind of scientist, probably named Spode, and that the place is a rendezvous for the British Resistance.
- At a classy party of arriviste spivs and salesmen, Archer meets four senior members of the Resistance and learns their plan is to release the King from the Tower of London and smuggle him somewhere where he can validate the Free Government represented by General Connolly (a General de Gaulle figure) who is struggling to gain recognition in Washington. Big stakes. Enormous stakes.
- At this swanky party he also meets (for the second time) American war correspondent Barbara Barga, ‘the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen’ who, in a James Bondish scene, he dances with and she immediately wants to go to bed with him; which they do, later that night, at her flat. From that point on they are an item in a very dangerous town, full of factions all plotting against each other. In fact, despite falling love with her Archer finds himself asking, Whose side is she on? The Resistance, it seems, at some points; or is she an agent for the American government…?
- Soon afterwards Archer finds weird astrological diagrams in Huth’s papers which he is then explicitly told refer to experiments with radiation and an atomic bomb. The British had been conducting research into such a bomb but SS Reichsführer Himmler will only take the idea seriously if it is wrapped up in the black magic, astrological voodoo which he is partial to. As the tortuous plot proceeds Archer learns of the intimate link between the atomic secrets and the King’s release: Resistance leader (and pillar of posh society) Colonel Mayhew is promising the Wehrmacht the former, if they can arrange the latter…
- Late one night Huth takes Archer on a madcap motorbike-&-sidecar ride to his ruined house in Cheam, where the fighting on the approach to London was fiercest and where nearly everything was destroyed. Here Huth shows him, tied to the wrecked double bed in his former bedroom, the tortured carcass of the young detective Archer had tasked with finding out more about the Spode brothers and a certain Professor Frick. This is to show Archer that the Resistance means business, and that they are after Archer himself for being a collaborationist.
- This is confirmed later that day when someone follows Archer through the foggy streets of London – at first he thinks it’s a shadow set by Huth – but who then tries to assassinate him by stabbing him on the escalator of the Piccadilly Circus tube, the longest on the system. In a grim struggle among screaming commuters, Archer is cut with the knife before kicking and punching the assassin who tumbles the full length of the escalator crushing his skull.
That takes us to about half way through this elaborate and action-packed novel. There are many more twists and turns before its bitter and disillusioned climax.
Backdrops
Many thrillers feature a backdrop of events which build to a symbolic climax. Here, not dominating but trucking along in the background, is the preparations being made across London for a week-long pageant celebrating Nazi-Soviet Friendship, a major highlight of which is the digging up of Karl Marx’s coffin from his grave in Highgate Cemetery. Dignitaries fly in from both dictatorships, von Ribbentrop for the Nazis, Molotov representing the Soviets. With a certain inevitability the carefully stage managed event turns into a slaughterhouse when a massive bomb explodes, killing many of the dignitaries and sparking a massive crackdown by the Army, in which Archer’s deputy and former girlfriend are seized, and which significantly ratchets up the tension and the stakes everyone is playing for.
Nazi bureaucracy
Part of what makes the book feel so authentic is Deighton’s fluent display of his immense knowledge of German wartime organisation under the Nazis. Deighton had already displayed an awesome grasp of technical and administrative expertise in his 1970 documentary novel, Bomber. SS-GB comes between his historical factual books, Fighter (about the Battle of Britain) and Blitzkrieg (about the rise of Hitler up till Dunkirk). The breadth and depth of Deighton’s factual research shines from every page and underpins a novel which is, ultimately, about the labyrinthine and convoluted relations between the various warring factions with the Nazi state.
Thus Archer confirms to his Resistance contacts that the SS man Huth might actually want the King to be spirited out of the Tower as it, and he, are guarded by the Wehrmacht who would be plunged into such ignominy that his arch-enemy Kellerman would probably have to resign and the SS would step in to run things previously administered by the Army. Certainly, Huth has made clear that every detail of the investigation must be kept absolutely confidential and known only to himself and Himmler (!). But this doesn’t stop Archer reporting back key developments to Kellerman, keeping all his options open in case Huth somehow fails and falls. And all the time he is trying to puzzle out the true motives of the enigmatic Colonel Mayhew of the Resistance who seems to be playing all the sides off against each other…
Harry Palmer
In his astute manipulation of conflicting superiors, as well as his ongoing puzzlement about what’s really going on, as also in his dry wit and his shrewd assessment of men and situations – even when he repeatedly discovers he’s got it wrong – Archer reminds me very much of the unnamed narrator (‘Harry Palmer’ for movie purposes) of The Ipcress File. He’s cool company to keep. This is a great book.
Books & Boots 