SS-GB

by Len Deighton

Paperback, 1980

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Genres

Science Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Triad Books (1980), Paperback

Description

In February 1941 British Command surrendered to the Nazis. Churchill has been executed, the King is in the Tower and the SS are in Whitehall... For nine months Britain has been occupied - a blitzed, depressed and dingy country. However, it's 'business as usual' at Scotland Yard run by the SS when Detective Inspector Archer is assigned to a routine murder case. Life must go on. But when SS Standartenfuhrer Huth arrives from Berlin with orders from the great Himmler himself to supervise the investigation, the resourceful Archer finds himself caught up in a high level, all action, espionage battle. This is a spy story quite different from any other. Only Deighton, with his flair for historical research and his narrative genius, could have written it.… (more)

Media reviews

Kirkus' Reviews

If anyone can make one of those if-history-had-been-different concoctions really click, it's Len Deighton--right? Well, almost. The idea is that Germany (SS) invaded and conquered Britain (GB) in 1940, so now it's 1941--ravaged London under Nazi occupation. ... [t]he conspiracies ... are less than

convincing, more than a bit confusing, unsatisfying at the close -- below par for Deighton. But Deighton's feel for atmosphere is unrivaled, and his flair for character has never been surer; the Germans especially are a varied and perversely sympathetic lot. ... You may not much care -- or even understand -- what's going on, suspense-wise, in Deighton's make-believe England; but you'll find it a wonderfully creepy place for a visit.

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— 3 more

Sunday Times

Len Deighton's splendid and, as it at once proved to be, absorbing para-historical novel SS-GB. (They came here in 1941.) With its honour and barbarity, schoolboy's-fantasy uniforms and outlandishly-named ranks, it has always struck me as the most fascinating of all iniquitous organisations. Until

Mr Deighton told me I had no idea that you could be a member of the Gestapo as well as of the SS and still not be a member of the Party... SS-GB is distinguished also by a skill I have never seen so highly developed elsewhere. A large part of the dialogue naturally consists of what is supposedly German presented in English. Any self-respecting author in that position faces the difficulty of keeping his readers reminded that this is indeed the case, that the characters are not simply talking English. The comic-strip or 'Mein Gott!' solution is often to be found a surprising distance up the market... Mr Deighton solves the problem triumphantly by writing fully idiomatic English but now and then deviating into an expression which is just a little wrong for the speaker or the situation, thus evoking in a flash the conscientious 'translator' grappling manfully with a refractory German colloquialism. It must have been fun to write those passages and they are certainly a joy to read. This excellence and others notwithstanding, SS-GB remains an example of what we usually understand by escape fiction; it grips the reader far too firmly and uninterruptably for a straight novel.

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The Observer

Deighton being the sort of realistic writer he is, the nightmare is both more and less frightening than it is, or could be, in a free fantasy of absolute tyranny. The occupying Nazis are human beings, vulnerable men with problems. The occupied Britons are not, except for the small force of the

Resistance, particularly heroic... Cigarettes are damnably dear on the black market. Churchill, it seems, was shot making the V-sign. The Mirabelle is reserved for high officers of Air Fleet 8 headquarters. There is no blackout. Fried turnip slices are sold in the streets. The beer is watery. Business as usual and life going on. This is one of Len Deighton's best.

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NBD / Biblion

In het door de Duitsers in 1941 bezette Engeland ontbrandt strijd om een vitaal rapport over atoomsplitsing tussen de Engelse ondergrondse en diverse onderdelen van de Duitse bezettingsmacht. Ingewikkelde intrige, waarin de thema's ondergronds verzet, spionage, ontvoering, moord, met elkaar

verweven zijn. De tegenspelers - Engels politie-inspecteur en Duits legerofficier - (antihelden) worden psychologisch goed getekend in hun tweestrijd tussen loyaliteit en overmacht. Ook de bijfiguren zijn goed getypeerd. Korte zinnen en suggestief taalgebruik scheppen een sfeer van spanning, onontkoombaarheid, wantrouwen, machteloosheid, in de trieste omgeving van bezet Londen. Goede vertaling. Vrij kleine druk. (Biblion recensie, A. van den Berg-Brandt.)

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User reviews

LibraryThing member john257hopper

This depicts a fascinating and chilling Nazi-controlled Britain following the defeat and surrender of UK forces in February 1941 and the execution of Churchill and incarceration of the King. I would have welcomed it if more of this was in the foreground as the I found the minutiae of the actual

plot difficult to follow. The characters I also found rather uninteresting.

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13 more

LibraryThing member daschaich

Minireview: The murder of a nuclear physicist in Nazi-occupied 1941 London sets off even deadlier power struggles both between and within the Wehrmacht and the SS, which the British Resistance tries to exploit to rescue the imprisoned King George. Caught in the middle is skilled Scotland Yard

detective Douglas Archer, who needs to convince all sides to keep him alive while he investigates the murder. The plot is engagingly intricate and complicated, and much of the imagery of occupied Britain is captivating. The characters, however, seemed sketched out around stock mystery novel figures, which kept me reading from a distance.

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LibraryThing member libraryhermit

My first books that I read by Len Deighton were Game Set and Match. I liked them much better than this one. I guess this just indicates that I like books that are purportedly about the real history rather than ones about the what-if type of hypothetical history. But all that does not matter because

Len Deighton is one of the best spy novel writers that I know of. I have not delved into the works of all the big authors in this genre yet. So from a limited field of candidates, about the only other author that comes close to Deighton for quality--and I admit I do not know them all yet--is John le Carre.
I guess it could have really happened that the Germans took over Britain, and it is easy for me to say that I can not believe the likelihood of it, since I was not there during the blitz and all of the privations of the war. So I should just hold my tongue and accept that this is a very realistic book about the war, even if it did not happen.
The next section of this review might not be relevant to most of you, unless you are baffled by time the same way I am. Like all of us who are library visitors, I give the new acquisitions rack a careful scan every time I walk in the door. When I first saw this book, I assumed it was a brand new book from Len Deighton, and picked it up because Deighton is one of my favourites. Because of the fresh condition of the book, I made the mistaken assumption that it was freshly penned. It was not until quite a bit later that I found out that it was a reissue with a new cover of a work from earlier decades. It probably makes no difference, but I always try to see if a book about a remotely historical period has enough clues in it such that I could guess what year or decade it was written in. For example, does a book about the year 1941 written in 1980 read any differently text- and style- and diction-wise than one written in 2009?

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LibraryThing member Speesh

I think reading a classic Len Deighton must be like watching one of the old master painters in action. There's the preparation, the background, the deft brushstrokes, building up layer on layer of colours and nuance in perfect harmony. And then you finally take a step back, reveals a masterpiece.

Or

maybe it's like watching a master magician? There's slight of hand, deception, concealment and finally slapping of the forehead 'oh, you got me!'

That apart...

SS-GB is set in 1941 and the book opens with a 'copy' of an 'official' German document. OK so far. It's just that it is in fact 'the instrument of surrender…of all English armed forces in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland including all islands.' This happened in February 1941. It's now November. Churchill has been executed. King George VI is in the Tower of London - and not as a visitor. The SS are now running the province of England. And to make matters worse…there's suddenly a murder case for Superintendent Douglas Archer of Scotland Yard to solve. A routine one, a black-marketeer murdered in London, of the open and shut kind, it would seem. But if the case is so routine, why have the Germans, Himmler himself no less, sent an SS Standartenführer Huth over from Berlin to take control? Huth is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, confident to arrogance and especially irritating if you're the nice General Kellerman, with a taste for all the trappings of the English aristocracy and are trying to run Scotland Yard as your own little fiefdom. But as the story progresses, one begins to wonder who is outmanoeuvring who here. It all boils down to a trial of strength between the German Army and the up-starts, as they see them, at the SS and SD. And Archer, a thoroughly able and professional Policeman, gets caught in the middle. His professionalism means he will solve the case, no matter who does or doesn't want him to. And the 'doesn't' doesn't always come from where you might expect it to.

SS-GB builds up with matter of fact, nothing unusual about this, description of how things are in the wrong kind of post-war Britain. Deighton has created a thoroughly believable world here, with all the sights and sounds - and smells - brought vividly to alternate life. He describes a horrendously war-torn Britain, its population bombed and blitzed into submission and run (rings round) by the Germans. As it would have been, had it been that way. But, look under the surface, as Archer with the help of his rather more typical, flat-footed colleague Harry Woods is forced to do as the investigation progresses, and we find that perhaps not everyone has actually surrendered. What Len Deighton has created here is not just a look at how things might have been, a simple description of the situation - as he imagines it - would suffice there. He has created a rather more subtle, layered and nuanced look at both the German's inner power struggles and the British attitude to 'getting on with it' no matter what. It is a world that I found myself so taken in by, that I sometimes had to almost tell myself it didn't really happen this way.

If I had to try really hard and pick a nit (and it really feels like telling Leonardo Ms Lisa's smile should be a little brighter), it would be that the main man Douglas Archer does seem to have got used to working for Germans and integrated into all things German, very quickly, given that this novel takes place only a matter of nine months after their victory. I could well have missed the bit that said he was (previous to being a Policeman) a German scholar or spent his formative years in Germany, but it was one little thing that bugged me (see the link with 'nit' there?)

Other than that, SS-GB is a classic partly because it is a great idea well executed and partly because (published first in 1980) I think you could probably argue, that this one kicked off the whole range of 'what if…' novels of the 'what if the Germans HADN'T lost?' variety. I stand to be corrected on that one of course, but even if SS-GB wasn't the first, in my opinion it's certainly the best.

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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

this book is a bit of a mind bender, and that's good. Putting the police procedural into the framework of a Nazi-occupied England was a way of demonstrating Deighton's mastery of the genre, and gave him a chance to reread some of his WWII collection. the book reads well and I recommend it.

LibraryThing member HenriMoreaux

A nice alternate history crime novel. Set in Nazi occupied Britain after Britain loses world war 2, and the Nazis don't invade the Soviet Union.

Douglas Archer, detective, Scotland Yard, has a body with radiation burns, a piece of a prosthetic limb and a conscience that struggles with working under

the Nazi regime.

It's a good crime/police investigation novel coupled with the intrigue and shadows that come with a resistance movement working in an occupied country. Plus there's a conspiracy to free King George V from the Tower of London.

Enjoyable with a realistic air of history despite never having occurred.

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LibraryThing member passion4reading

After losing the Battle of Britain, Britain is now an occupied country, with the Germans assuming superior roles in all offices of influence, including the police. Detective Inspector Douglas Archer of Scotland Yard is not happy with the state of affairs but he keeps his head down, only wanting to

do his job, which causes some of his colleagues to accuse him of being a collaborator. One day he is called to investigate the shooting of an art dealer in Shepherd Market, which at first looks like a routine murder inquiry but quickly turns into anything but. When the Resistance begins to take an interest in Archer, he must decide once and for all where his loyalties lie.

Surely one of the earliest alternative history novels, it surprised me to find out that it was written nearly 40 years ago, as the writing and the plot have barely dated. It is a political thriller with a superb evocation of Britain as it would have been had the Germans not lost the Battle of Britain – the fear and suspicion, and the internal conflict between resisting the Germans and allowing some degree of cooperation are explored convincingly and in great detail. Unfortunately some of the characters' motivations become heavily muddled so that it's not always easy to understand what's going on. (I'm hoping that the current BBC TV series will partially illuminate this side of the novel.) The beginning is quite slow but then the book picks up pace, and there are some genuine surprises in store for the reader. Almost uniquely, the murderer isn't revealed until the very last page, and the solution wouldn't have occurred to me, though it becomes obvious in hindsight.

The author has clearly researched the hierarchy of the German command structure very well, to the extent that the plot was slightly neglected, in my opinion. A glossary in the appendix would have been of enormous benefit to understand some of the power struggles that lie at the heart of the novel. Definitely worth a re-read.

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LibraryThing member john257hopper

This is a re-read, occasioned by watching the BBC adaptation of it that finished last weekend. When I read the novel in 2008, I felt somewhat ambiguous about it; seeing the adaptation and having its imagery fresh in my mind certainly enhanced my appreciation of the characters in particular.

However, I still feel that the plot is too convoluted and in places difficult to follow. The moral ambiguity of many of the characters is mostly welcome though, again, at times annoying (re Mayhew in particular). The novel is well written and the grimy and oppressive reality of a Britain in late 1941 where the Nazis successfully invaded earlier that year and have taken over the country and all its institutions in the space of a few short months, is chillingly stark in its presentation. The atmosphere is just sometimes let down by the details of the actual plot.

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LibraryThing member withnail67

One of the great alt hist novels - fantastic detail and byzantine plot.

LibraryThing member nandadevi

The value of alternative histories - apart from entertainment - is that they allow authors to create the perfect (fictionalised) context to highlight real character and motives. The tensions and animosity between the various elements of an occupying military power might equally have been laid bare

by a detailed study of the German occupation of France, or the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands East Indies. But by using the context of an occupied United Kingdom in 1941, Deighton delivers the history lesson to a local audience in their own language. But, being Deighton, there has to be twenty wheels-within-wheels of conspiracy and obscurification, only for everything to become clear at the end - more or less. Taking notes along the way isn't mandatory, but it'd help.

Deighton is a very accomplished historian of World War II technology and society and you can be sure that he has done his research very well. It's in the little details that he shines, such as his discussions and descriptions relating to the use of motor vehicles by the military and civilians in countries under occupation. It's odd then, that one of the central themes of his novel - the attempts to thwart the Nazi development of nuclear technology - seems to fall a little flat. There's a curious absence of passion for technology in his description of the history and (attempted) development of the Nazi atom bomb. It's as if he is as disinterested as Hitler (seemed to be) in that particular branch of technology. And of course that's another fabulously odd bit of history, but Deighton lets it 'slide on by' without comment.

But if he doesn't solve that conundrum, he sets enough of his own in a typically twisting plot that's as fast paced as some of his best early spy stories. This would make a great movie, perhaps it already has. It's a decent novel, and an interesting insight into occupied Europe under the Nazis, but it missed the boat on an opportunity to expose the deeper truths (and untruths) about the Nazi nuclear program. And for that absence I'd rate it as a good read on a rainy afternoon, but nothing more.

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LibraryThing member MacDad

What happens when one's commitment to their duty conflicts with their loyalty to their country? That is the dilemma facing Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer in Len Deighton's alternate history thriller. A leading member of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad, he finds himself working for the German

occupation in the aftermath of their conquest of Great Britain. This tension becomes unavoidable when Archer is called upon to investigate the murder of a man found in an apartment in Shepherd Market. Though initially unremarkable, the case quickly draws attention from the highest circles of the German government, as Archer finds himself pulled into a dangerous world of political intrigue that forces him to resolve his priorities and take a side - no matter what the cost.

Deighton's book is an dramatic story of intrigue in a world that might have been. He does not explain up front how Britain was defeated or what the point of divergence was, leaving details to trickle out naturally as they would in a normal conversation, without any of the clunky exposition too many writers adopt when explaining the worlds they have constructed. Instead his focus is on the plot and characters, as he constructs a grim yet plausible world in which a depressed population is still coming to terms with their defeat. The mystery itself unfolds gradually, and while some readers may figure out the particulars fairly quickly Deighton still puts together an ending that is difficult to forecast before getting there. Taken together, it makes for one of the best alternate history novels ever written, as well as a suspenseful tale that readers who are not familiar with the genre will enjoy nonetheless.

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LibraryThing member ChuckNorton

In his novel "SS-GB", Len Deighton imagines an alternative history in which Nazi Germany invades and occupies much of Great Britain. The premise is similar to that of "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick, in which Dick describes an America divided between the victorious Axis powers after

the Second World War.

"SS-GB" is set in the late autumn of 1941. Most of Britain is under German occupation and a puppet government, similar to that of Vichy France, has been set up to collaborate with the conquerors. The protagonist is Douglas Archer, a detective of Scotland Yard, who now works under General Kellerman, the chief Gestapo officer in Britain. Archer was already famous as "Archer of the Yard" before the war, although he is personally modest and not a publicity seeker.

But he is sought out, both by Standartenfuhrer Huth, an ambitious young SS officer who arrives on a secret mission, and who drafts Archer and tries to use him in his campaign against Kellerman, and on the other side by the British Resistance. Archer becomes involved in a plot to rescue King George VI from captivity in the Tower of London. This also involves elements of the German army and the Abwehr (military intelligence) that are anti-Nazi, atomic weapons research and contact with the U.S. government, which is neutral but which does not want Hitler to get the Bomb. For those who enjoy the game of "what if" this novel is an intriguing mental exercise in what could have been -and an entertaining read.

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LibraryThing member ubiquitousuk

This book reminded me a lot of Harris' Fatherland. But whereas Fatherland convincingly developed a deeper and deeper web of conspiracy, SS-GB's protagonist is thrown into an increasingly implausible plot. That's a bit of a shame because the raison d'etre of alternate history is the creation of a

fantastical, but believable parallel history. While Deighton's occupied England is rich and believable, the events that transpire there stretched the bounds of plausibility a bit too much for me.

The other thing that bothered me a little is that the initial murder mystery plot-line is carefully developed with plenty of detail and suspense, but eventually falls into virtual irrelevance against the backdrop of the more significant machinations taking place. The connection between the micro- and macro-plots wasn't sufficiently strong for me to be left feeling that the first half was indispensable. That's a bit of a shame, because I had become quite engrossed in that plotline.

Still, an enjoyable read.

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LibraryThing member thisisstephenbetts

My first Len Deighton — very enjoyable, though feels a division below my favourite, John Le Carré (even in his weaker works). The setting is occupied London, in the aftermath of a shorter World War Two where the Nazis won, and the protagonist is a conflicted but professional Scotland Yard

detective. It starts as a normal-enough murder investigation, but with inevitably more significant implications and repercussions. The story is solid, and enjoyable, though slightly overly convoluted at times, mystery. Motivations get very muddied, though there is some realism in that. My worst complaint is that some of the characters — particularly our hero — are a bit wooden. He is described as unemotional by others, but it felt like that was a smokescreen for him not having been written more convincingly. The less said of the unnecessary romance the better. Minor gripes, though. I enjoyed the story, and much of the detail of this particular 'what-if' scenario was done very well.

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