this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Today I Learned

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Author Len Deighton has passed away, and his obituary on the BBC mentioned his novel SS-GB (1977) (I read it in the 80s, and saw the miniseries maybe 8~9 years ago) predated fellow alternate history Fatherland (by Robert Harris, 1992) by multiple years.

I thought "surely The Man in the High Castle (1962) and The Iron Dream (1972) preceded both" and started wondering when was the first alternate history with a Nazi victory.

Turns out it was in 1937! The book was Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (although she used the pen name Murray Constantine & the author's true identity was only uncovered in the mid-1980s).

It has been described as "the most original of all the many anti-fascist dystopias of the late 1930s" and contains many elements seen a decade later in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: the past has been destroyed and history is rewritten, language is distorted, few books exist apart from propaganda, and a secret book is the only witness to the past.

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[โ€“] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

This sounds fascinating, thanks for sharing. Will definitely try to read Swastika Night (even though I've spoiled it for myself by reading the Wikipedia entry!)

Also, in looking for info about this book, I discovered one called We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin which sounds very interesting too.

[โ€“] klu9@piefed.social 1 points 3 days ago

You're welcome :)