Director:
Christopher Menaul Year:
1994 Rating: 6.5
It is 1964. Germany won the war in Europe and defeated
England. The USA dropped out of the war when that happened and turned all
their efforts to defeating Japan which they did with two nuclear bombs. They
have been in a Cold War with Germany ever since. Germany is still fighting
the Russians. Hitler is alive and still in power. The President of the USA
is Joseph Kennedy (an admirer of the Nazis before the war in real life).
The Gestapo and the SS are alive and well in Europe. This is based on the
novel by Robert Harris (have not read this but am a big fan of his books
set in ancient Rome). I really enjoy these alternate history renderings -
whether just by changing history or ones that use time travel to do so. There
have been a few in which Germany won the war - the recent TV series The Man
in the High Castle or SS-GB. It is just fascinating to ruminate on what ifs.
President Kennedy and Hitler are on the verge of a peace treaty and the Germans
have a few loose ends to clean up. About six million of them. A man is found
murdered in a lake and SS Officer Major March (Rutger Hauer) is asked to
investigate. He is making headway when the Gestapo take over the case. The
dead man was once a high ranking Nazi. Another one shows up dead. Suicide.
Again the Gestapo take over. At the same time the American press arrives
to cover the meeting between the two leaders. One of them (Miranda Richardson)
is given an old photo of a group of men and asked to meet someone - the second
man who has been killed. For reasons that make no sense really, she and the
Major team up to investigate - with the Gestapo on their heels.
One has to buy into a few things besides the obvious - that there are decent
ethical SS officers like March and that no one knows of the Jewish Holocaust
- they were just resettled in the east. It is quite tense, well-paced and
there is a chilling scene that made me feel sick when a woman (Jean March)
tells the journalist with glee what really happened to the Jewish people.
Smoke in the air. If Hitler had beaten us to the bomb this would have happened.
History is a messy jumble of potential outcomes. That we are here is sheer
luck.
