- “If Hitler is God, so I am. But it’s obviously more sensible to think neither of us is. More modest too.”Alfred
Swastika Night is a 1937 British dystopian novel by Katherine Burdekin, who published the book under the pen name Murray Constantine.
In the 27th century, the world is divided into two super-states: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, who both won the Twenty Year War seven-hundred years ago and divided the world among each other in the aftermath. Germany is run in a feudalistic manner, Hitler is worshipped as a tall, blond god with superpowers who won the war alone.In the midst of this, there is Alfred, an English aviation engineer. As a non-German living in the Greater German Reich, he is a member of one of the lower classes – but still not as terribly lower-class as the women, who are, well…nothing but BreedingSlaves. On a Pilgrimage to Germany, he meets his old German friend Hermann again – and the Knight Friedrich von Hess, a member of the ruling class. And the Knight has something to give them…a Dark Secret his dynasty passed down over the generations. Alfred, who dreams of seeing his country liberated, starts getting hope…
The novel can be considered the Ur-Example of Alternate-History Nazi Victory, especially since it came out in 1937, even before the Second World War. Nevertheless, it predicts both the war and the Holocaust.The book had quite its fans back in the day. One of the book’s fans was a dude named George Orwell, who used it as an inspiration for his own famous Dystopia. While fairly unknown nowadays, it still retains its power of shock and was considered “Nineteen Eighty-Four’s lost twin” by one review by The Guardian. This has its reasons: in both dystopias, there are less than a handful of super-states with a similar ideology, history is rewritten and language deliberately distorted, few books exist that aren't regime propaganda, and one single secret book is the only witness to the truth about the past.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- A God Am I / A God Is You: Hitler is worshipped as a tall, muscular and hyper-masculine blond god in the state religion. Goering and Goebbels are also venerated as his Angel-Heroes.
- Alternate-History Nazi Victory: Maybe the Ur-Example and especially interesting from the point that it still predates World War 2 and was therefore originally written as a Dystopia.
- Alternate History Wank: Britain was apparently the place that held out longest against the Nazis in the Twenty Year War. Therefore, English people are especially oppressed and hated. Nowadays, England is nevertheless considered the best workplace for the Knights – just because it is so cool to be with the English.
- Alternative Calendar: Not only are years counted based on Hitler (we currently have the Year of Hitler 720), but the months have also been renamed to honour high-ranking Nazis (though the only one we see is "Himmler", which was once June).
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Hermann beats a Hitlerian teenage boy to a pulp after he witnesses him raping a Christian preteen girl. Not because of the rape – because Christians are officially considered animals, and therefore, he committed a disgusting act of bestiality.
- Breeding Slave: The role of any woman in the Greater Germanic Reich’s society.
- Childless Dystopia: Implied to be in store soon in the future. The birthrate is already decreasing massively due to the oppression of women, especially too less girls are born to keep a population, and this will presumably continue if society doesn’t start to treat women as human beings again.
- Crapsack World: You either live in Nazi Germany or in the Japanese Empire, there are literally no other countries anymore than these. And both are frequently warring and The Empire. While Japan is “only” a militaristic dictatorship, Nazi Germany has re-established a feudal system, wiped out all the Jews on the planet, persecutes everyone who doesn’t adhere to the state religion (mainly Christians) violently and preaches a highly revisionist version of history. Women have to be ugly, live in pens, aren’t considered human and have no other societal role besides Breeding Slave. A single book is the only thing left behind of the old world, and humanity is a Dying Race due to the horrifying oppression of women perpetrated by the Nazis.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Downplayed with Hitlerism. Following its lore, Hitler was the son of God the Thunderer who lived as a human but was also a god in his own right. The religion calls its temples churches or chapels, believes in Hitler’s ascension from Earth to heaven and awaits Hitler’s Second Coming. Nevertheless, he is worshipped as a War God and wasn’t born to a mortal woman, but “exploded” from God’s head.
- Diesel Punk: A Dystopia with at best 1940s technology.
- Doublethink: Knight von Hess is very used to doing this. He always has to say things he knows aren’t true because he secretly keeps the true history.
- Dying Race: Humanity, since not enough girls are born to keep the numbers up and death rates highly surpass birth rates.
- Dystopia Is Hard: The religious wars Germany wages against Japan mainly mean a lot of work for the ruling class and weaken the economy. Hitlerism is in danger of losing its credibility because humanity is a Dying Race and at the same time, the world doesn’t look like Hitler’s Second Coming is somewhat near at all because there are still millions of heathens out there. And due to the oppression of women, there aren’t enough girls born anymore, and the Knights have frequent stressful meetings in which they try to find the exact reason, ways to cover it up and counter-measures – things they aren’t really successful doing.
- The Empire: Both super-states fall under this category. In case of Germany crossed with The Theocracy.
- Empire with a Dark Secret: That Hitler wasn’t a god, but a mere human and the whole religion of Hitlerism is nothing but a big scam. Also, that girls and women were considered human once and had at least some basic respect within society.
- Feudal Future: Hitler founded the Knights, a nobility that originates from the immediate families of the most loyal Nazis. The Führer is always one of them, they have the power in the Reich, and the von Hess family also kept the true history over the centuries. Enforced to show the regression inherent in Nazi ideology.
- Fictional Religion: Hitlerism, the state religion of Germany. It revolves around the worship of Adolf Hitler as a god, and Goebbels and Goering are worshiped as Angel-Heroes at Hitler’s side. Lenin, Stalin, Roehm and Karl Barth are considered SatanicArchetypes. The religion’s clerics are called Knights, and it espouses martial virtues like bravery, bloodshed and ruthlessness and views its male believers as its “Holy Army”. Women are considered ritually unclean and aren’t even taught the main doctrines besides that they are unclean and only valuable for childbearing. All churches point to Hitler’s sacred aeroplane that is exhibited in Munich. The main character Alfred embarks on a holy pilgrimage to Germany to see a holy forest and Hitler’s sacred plane in the beginning.
- Final Solution: The book predicts the Trope Namer, that also happened here – but much more successful than in reality. Jews are nothing but an ominous thing of legend in the book’s present.
- Forever War: Germany and Japan, the last two countries on Earth, are enemies with each other and frequently fight each other in shorter wars, but they always end in a stalemate.
- Future Imperfect: Hitler is remembered as a Physical God who wasn’t born in a normal way and was blond, tall and had supernatural powers. He is said to have won the Second World War all by himself. Justified since this view is doctrine in the state religion.
- Future Slang: Downplayed. “Man-Child” is the usual word for son, “girl-child” the usual word for daughter.
- The Hero Dies: Hermann is killed in a final fight against Nazi soldiers sent to arrest him and Alfred, and Alfred succumbs to his injuries sustained in the final fight in hospital in the end – but not before finding an heir for the history secret himself.
- Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: The story is set in the Year of the Lord Hitler 720. Since it is said that the Twenty Year War was seven-hundred years ago, we can presume that the year of the start of the war became the new year zero. If the Twenty Year War also started in 1939, the book would be set in our year 2659.
- Illegal Religion:
- Judaism was exterminated along with its adherents a long time ago and is nothing but an ominous legend in the book’s present.
- Christianity is terribly persecuted, but still around as the religion of a caste of social outcasts that is considered lower than worms.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: The chorister at Knight von Hess’ Holy Hitler chapel has long, silky, blonde hair and is rather handsome. Implied to be the usual aesthetic invoked by Hitlerian choristers.
- Modern Stasis: Even seven-hundred years in the future, technology is barely different compared to the 1930s. Justified by the Nazis’ dislike and hampering of science. Also enforced by Burdekin’s theory that oppression will inherently lead to stagnation in humanity’s technological and social development.
- Motherhood Is Superior: A Deconstruction. Since the Nazis exaggerated this trope so much in their ideology, women are only allowed to exist since they are needed for reproduction, and are nothing but BreedingSlaves by now – well, Breeding Slave is maybe not even the right word, more something like “breathing Uterine Replicator”.
- In-universe, this is nevertheless inverted – men aren’t allowed to know who their mother is, and it is viewed as a special sign of Hitler’s godhood that he didn’t have a mother. Knowing your mother would be considered a great shame when you are a male German.
- Never Learned to Read: Implied to be the case for most people in the Greater Germanic Reich. Women aren’t allowed to learn things anyway, and Alfred is one of the rare exceptions among men since he needed it for his job as an aviation technician. It wouldn’t be very useful anyway, since there aren’t many books around anymore; only technical manuals and the Hitler Bible are even available.
- No Heterosexual Sex Allowed: Downplayed. Homosexuality has become the norm for men, since they cannot have contact with women for anything else but reproduction, but many of them want a spouse anyway. So they settle for male partners. Nevertheless, they still have straight sex for reproduction.
- No Woman's Land:
- Women in the places ruled by Germany aren’t considered human, have to live in ghettos that are sometimes called “pens”, their hair is shaved, they have to wear ugly, bifurcated clothing and they are literally only kept around for reproduction and can’t have contact with men for anything else but the latter. The men are conditioned to consider it unthinkable to ever love a woman in some way. Sons are ceremonially taken from their mothers and given to the fathers to raise when they are eighteen months old, and they aren’t allowed to ever see them again. Knowing your mother is considered shameful for a man. Alfred is puzzled to see that there was in fact a time in which girls and women were more than BreedingSlaves to society.
- The book is also a Deconstruction of the trope. There aren’t enough girls born to be able to keep the numbers up, meaning the population numbers are in free fall, nobody knows how to get along with women anymore, most people stay therefore childless and since most men of course still desire a partner, homosexuality has become the norm among them, some of them look rather feminine and they raise their sons themselves.
- Old Media Are Evil: Most books are banned. There are only two kinds of books still around in the Reich: technical manuals and the Hitler Bible.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Knight von Hess’s sons all three died in the same plane crash.
- Passing the Torch: Knight von Hess has no surviving descendants, so he seeks someone else as his heir for the secret of the true history of the Reich’s beginnings. Alfred later passes the knowledge on to his son Fred, who escapes with the book in the end.
- Pilgrimage: The story starts off with the English protagonist Alfred going on a Hitlerist pilgrimage to Germany. There, he visits a holy forest and Hitler’s sacred plane and listens to sermons.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Inverted. Rape is viewed as something good and a show of physical fitness and willpower. The concept of consent is all but abolished for straight sex between adults. Rape is only a crime when the victim is a girl younger than sixteen – and this rule is about race and exists to avoid damage in the growing reproductive organs and therefore the birth of malformed babies in the girls’ future.
- Saintly Church: Played with. While they are illegal, persecuted and a place for outcasts in the present, churches in the past are said to have been one of the early perpetrators of what the Nazis are doing to women.
- Testosterone Poisoning: Inherent in the whole world created by the Nazis. Physical strength, bravery and readiness to fight are praised traits, no weakness, illness, diplomacy or love is allowed to be around and Meekness is Weakness anyway. Only men (who aren’t of the Christian minority) are even considered human.
- The Theocracy: A major instrument to rule Germany is Hitlerism, the state religion. The Knights, who are basically the ruling class in Germany, also serve as head priests who preach about Hitler’s divinity and great deeds to men – and to the women about why they are only worthy of bearing men’s sons and that they shall be thankful for that.
- War Was Beginning: The Twenty Year War. While the Nazis established their empire in Germany already before, it just really became The Empire by winning the war.
