Fatherland

away behind him, islands in time. In '38, he had been called out of his classroom to hear that German troops were entering Vienna and that Austria had returned to the Fatherland. The headmaster, who had been gassed in the First War, had wept on the stage of the little gymnasium, watched by a gaggle of uncomprehending boys.
    In '39, he had been at home with his mother in Hamburg—a Friday morning, eleven o'clock, the Führer's speech relayed live from the Reichstag: "I am from now on just the first soldier of the German Reich. I have once more put on that uniform that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off until victory is secured, or I will not survive the outcome." A thunder of applause. This time his mother had wept—a hum of misery as her body rocked backward and forward. March, seventeen, had looked away in shame, sought out the photograph of his father—splendid in the uniform of the Imperial German Navy—and had thought, Thank God. War at last. Maybe now I will be able to live up to what you wanted.
    He had been at sea for the next few broadcasts. Victory over Russia in the spring of '43—a triumph for the Führer's strategic genius! The Wehrmacht summer offensive of the year before had cut Moscow off from the Caucasus, separating the Red armies from the Baku oilfields. Stalin's war machine had simply ground to a halt for want of fuel.
    Peace with the British in '44—a triumph for the Führer's counterintelligence genius! March remembered how all U-boats had been recalled to their bases on the Atlantic coast to be equipped with a new cipher system: the treacherous British, they were told, had been reading the Fatherland's codes. Picking off merchant shipping had been easy after that. England was starved into submission. Churchill and his gang of warmongers had fled to Canada.
    Peace with the Americans in '46—a triumph for the Führer's scientific genius! When America had defeated Japan by detonating an atomic bomb, the Führer had sent a V-3 rocket to explode in the skies over New York to prove he could retaliate in kind if struck. After that, the war had dwindled to a series of bloody guerrilla conflicts at the fringes of the new German Empire: a nuclear stalemate the diplomats called the Cold War.
    But still the broadcasts had gone on. When Göring had died in '51, there had been a whole day of solemn music before the announcement was made. Himmler had received similar treatment when he had been killed in an aircraft explosion in '62. Deaths, victories, wars, exhortations for sacrifice and revenge, the dull struggle with the Reds on the Urals Front with its unpronounceable battlefields and offensives—Oktyabrskoye, Polunochoye, Alapayevsk . . .
    March looked at the faces around him. Forced humor, resignation, apprehension. People with brothers and sons and husbands in the East. They kept glancing at the screens.
    "People of Germany, prepare yourselves for an important statement!"
    What was coming now?
    The canteen was almost full. March was pressed up against a pillar. He could see Max Jaeger a few meters away, joking with a bosomy secretary from VA 1 , the legal department. Max spotted him over her shoulder and gave him a grin. There was a roll of drums. The room became still. A newsreader said, "We are now going live to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin."
    A bronze relief glittered in the television lights. A Nazi eagle clutching the globe shot off rays of illumination like a child's drawing of a sunrise. Before it, with his thick
    black eyebrows and shaded jowls, stood the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Drexler. March suppressed a laugh: you would have thought that in the whole of Germany, Goebbels could have found one spokesman who did not look like a convicted criminal.
    "Ladies and gentleman, I have a brief statement for you from the Reich Ministry for Foreign Affairs." Drexler was addressing an audience of journalists, who were off camera. He put on a pair of glasses and began to read.
    "In accordance with the long-standing and well-documented desire of the Führer and People of the Greater German Reich to live in peace and security with the countries of the world, and following extensive consultations with our allies in the European Community, the Reich Ministry for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Führer, has today issued an invitation to the president of the United States of America to visit the Greater German Reich for personal discussions aimed at promoting greater