The idea of writing a story about the Germans winning World War II actually dates back to before the war. In 1937, Murray Constantine—a pseudonym for Katharine Burdekin—published Swastika Night , envisioning Britain under the future dominance of Nazi overlords after Hitler’s victory in a Twenty Years War. The defeat of Germany in the actual war did little to dampen interest in such stories, and if anything the popularity of this storyline has increased with the passing years.
This premise has inspired novels, short stories, TV shows, movies, comic books, websites and satirical articles. True, other periods and events have also been dealt with in alternative history books. Kingsley Amis imagined in The Alteration (1976) a world in which the Protestant Reformation had never happened. In The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Michael Chabon constructs an alternative universe in which the Jewish homeland is Alaska instead of Israel. In Stephen Baxter’s Voyage (1996), John F. Kennedy survives an assassination attempt, and sets in motion a project to send a spaceship to Mars.
But these are exceptions to the norm. The most popular alternate histories typically involve Hitler and Nazis. “Within the general field of alternate history, this counterfactual scenario has arguably been explore more frequently than any other historical theme,” notes Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, who published a book-length study of the sub-genre, The World Hitler Never Made , in 2005. Yet he notes that he has encountered “deep-seated resistance to alternate history as a genre worthy of study.” When he spoke about it at conferences, “prominent scholars raised epistemological, methodological, and even moral objections.” Some went so far as to dismiss these stories as the work of a “lunatic fringe.”
Yet historians have indulged in precisely this kind of musing over alternative outcomes since the time of Herodotus, who wondered what might have happened if the Persians had defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon. Perhaps this is the most vital function of historical research, that speculative moment when we are forced to contemplate the different scenarios that might have happened in the past—and, by implication, could still take place in the future. These works, even when partaking of the phantasmagorical, are not pure fantasies, but spurs to sober reflection.
Such is certainly the case in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004), a novel that describes an alternative history in which Charles Lindbergh, an ardent isolationist, defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and steers the nation on a course that seems disturbingly aligned with Nazi and fascist currents in Europe. In an odd turnabout, Roth’s reimagining of 1940s America is now viewed most often as an unsettling harbinger of the country’s future, rather than as fanciful speculation on its past. Yet that’s precisely why these alternative histories deserve better treatment than they have received at the hands of highbrows defending the literary gates against genre barbarians. They aren’t really about the past, despite all indications to the contrary.
Roth’s story is told from the perspective of the Roth family of Newark, New Jersey. The characters are drawn from the author’s own childhood, and include his parents Herman and Bess and his brother Sandy, supplemented by a wide range of actual historical figures from the period. But other elements are pure invention—for example, Philip’s cousin Alvin, who loses a leg while fighting with the Canadian army against Nazis and returns to New Jersey a broken man. These individuals, both famous and otherwise, grapple with the changed circumstances of America under Lindbergh, and the attendant rise of hostility against those accused of trying to get the country involved in the war—the British, the Roosevelt wing of the Democrats and, above all, American Jews.
Roth realizes that a story about Nazis taking over the United States could easily turn into something cartoonish and outlandish—more suitable for a cheap action movie rather than serious literature from a contender for the Nobel Prize. So he puts considerable effort into constructing a plausible chain of events, a series of circumstances that might propel the nation of Washington and Lincoln into a more authoritarian stance. Roth wisely understands that fear, rather than ambition, is the most powerful instigator of such shifts. We may associate Nazis with a zeal for world conquest, but in most democracies the greatest lure in convincing people to give up their freedoms and protected rights to an iron-fisted regime isn’t imperialistic tendencies—at least not in the current day—but the fear of chaos and disruption. Indeed, the more affluent and comfortable a society is, the more likely it is to embrace extreme measures to maintain ‘safety’ (a word that deserves more deconstructing than it has received to date).
That’s the situation that propels Lindbergh to the White House in Roth’s novel. He raises alarm about the cost of entering the war, and reminds the public about the casualties and expenses that resulted from America’s participation in the First World War. From there, it’s only a small step to demonizing the insidious forces that want to involve the United States in the new conflict. Only a few prominent Americans—notably journalist Walter Winchell, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and former President Franklin Roosevelt—are willing to speak out in protest.
The Roth family watches in alarm as events spiral out of control, and although they consider leaving the country to resettle in Canada, they finally decide to stay and hope for the best. The government’s first programs—aimed at integrating Jews more deeply into American life—seem innocuous, at least in their initial stages, but gradually reveal a more ominous agenda. The program starts with breaking down the group solidarity, family ties and political clout of this segment of the population, but eventually evolves into race riots and gang violence.
Roth draws the reader in with the quasi-autobiographical tone of the opening chapters, and the verisimilitude of this narrative adds to the tension of the subsequent calamities. For most of the duration of The Plot Against America , the step-by-step breakdown in civil liberties seems like something that could plausibly happen in the United States. Roth hardly takes a misstep until the later stages of the book, when he suddenly shifts into a rapid-fire third person account in the present tense—in the style of a radio news broadcast or journalist’s dispatch—of the daily progress of events. It’s only at this juncture that the novel begins to resemble a sci-fi alternative history book, built on concepts rather than plausible narrative flow.
But Roth wants to convince us that this is more than an exercise in imaginative excess and even adds a lengthy appendix to the novel filled with cited sources as well as facts, dates and figures. Sad to say, this attempt to shore up the credibility of the novel perhaps does more to undermine it. This powerful story can stand on its own, and is weighed down by the insertion of these scholarly addendums.
Despite these minor shortcomings, The Plot Against America deserves inclusion on the short list of classic alternative histories, warranting comparison with the definitive works in this subgenre by Philip K. Dick, Michael Chabon and Kingsley Amis. And, as noted above, its lessons seem far more timely than those broached in these other books. The very plausibility of Roth’s plot development and its avoidance of exaggerated effects, at least for most of the book’s duration, may make it less suitable for film and TV adaptation than, say, The Man in the High Castle . But this same commitment to narrative realism is likely to give this volume more staying power than other exercises in alternative history.
Frankly, I’d like to see a day when this book wasn’t quite so relevant. Alas, I fear that won’t be the case any time soon.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature and popular culture. He is the author of ten books. His most recent book is How to Listen to Jazz (Basic Books).