Swastika Night

Book 138: S.F. MASTERWORKS

by Murray Constantine

Genres: Science Fiction; Alternative History sci-fi; Dystopian

Synopsis

SWASTIKA NIGHT takes place seven hundred years after Nazism achieved power, by which time Adolf Hitler is worshipped as a god. Elsewhere, the Japanese rule the Americas, Australia, and Asia. Though Japan is the only rival superpower to the Nazi West, their inevitable wars always end in stalemate. The fascist Germans and Japanese suffer much difficulty in maintaining their populations, because of the physical degeneration of their women. The protagonist is an Englishman named Alfred on a German pilgrimage. In Europe, the English are loathed because they were the last opponents of Nazi Germany in the war. Per official history, Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won the war. Alfred is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. He is shocked that Hitler was a small man with dark hair and a paunch. And his discovery may mean his death...

Release date: August 11, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 210

Sample

INTRODUCTION

by Michael Dirda



Written in 1935 and first published in 1937, Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night envisions one of the darkest futures in all of dystopian fiction. Seven hundred years from now, the Nazi empire controls Europe, the Middle East and Africa (while the Japanese rule the rest of the world). Hitler is worshipped as a Teutonic god, and pictured as seven feet tall, blond, blue-eyed and golden-haired. The Jews have been eradicated. The few remaining Christians are shunned as unclean beasts. Women, all women, are kept in pens: their heads are shaved bald, they wear formless gray sacks, and their only purpose in life is to produce sons for their masters. Each little girl grows up knowing that she is but a piece of dirt, a clout, a less than nothing. From an early age, the younger women are taught ‘that they must not mind being raped.’

By now, it is inconceivable that the sex could ever have been beautiful or intelligent, while the very concepts of marriage and a traditional family seem repulsive, except to the despised Christians. Centuries before, the male hatred for feminine erotic power – ‘it was beneath the dignity of a German man to have to risk rejection by a mere woman’ – insidiously coupled with a traditional female desire to please men, resulted in the universal ‘Reduction of Women.’ The new program wasn’t just imposed, it was eagerly embraced.

In consequence, civil society – now entirely masculine – has grown homosocial, and actual homosexuality is widespread. Three major classes exist: the Knights, who carry out the functions of priests, judges and overlords, the militarized Nazis, consisting of soldiers, civil servants and commoners, and everyone else. The

values espoused in this world are summed up in a creed pronounced during services at the Holy Hitler chapel:



‘I believe that when all things are accomplished and the last heathen man is enlisted in His Holy Army, that Adolf Hitler our God will come again in martial glory to the sound of guns and aeroplanes, to the sound of the trumpets and drums.

‘And I believe in the twin Arch-Heroes, Goering and Goebbels, who were found worthy even to be his Familiar Friends.

‘And I believe in pride, in courage, in violence, in brutality, in bloodshed, in ruthlessness, and all other soldierly and heroic virtues. Heil Hitler!’



Swastika Night opens when two friends reconnect in Germany after a five-year separation. Hermann is a handsome, slow-witted farmworker who had once been detailed to England, where he met Alfred, now ostensibly on a tour of the Nazi holy places. This English airplane technician is unusual: not only can he read, but he also possesses intelligence, self-confidence and a quiet dignity. Hermann is only really happy in the Englishman’s company: ‘Oh, if only Alfred had been by some miracle born a German and of knightly class, how he, Hermann, would have adored to serve him, to be his slave, to set his body, his strong bones and willing hard muscles between Knight Alfred and all harm – to die for him.’

Soon after they meet again, the pair escape together to a special pool deep in the woods where they can quietly bathe and talk. But their idyll is short-lived: nearby they discover a boy soprano from the local church choir trying to force himself on a Christian girl of 12 or 13. This sight sends Hermann, who has indulged in daydreams about the angelic blond lad, into a berserk rage. Simple rape would be fine, but not this disgusting act of bestiality. Christians, after all, aren’t truly human. The pretty chorister has irrevocably polluted his German purity. In short order, Hermann beats and kicks the boy into a pulp.

The Nazi feels no guilt. Indeed, the law is wholly on his side since the girl was not only a Christian but also underage. Still, the incident attracts enough attention so that the local Knight grows interested in the case and, even more so, in the visiting Alfred. Almost immediately,

this shrewd old nobleman detects the inquisitive and independent character of the Englishman. He actually invites Hermann and Alfred into his home, but then the von Hess family has long been noted for its eccentricities.

In this future the only books allowed are technical manuals and the so-called Hitler Bible. All historical documents were destroyed centuries earlier, along with most works of art. But in the seclusion of his study, the Knight shows his two guests an actual photograph of Adolf Hitler. Hermann ‘saw a group of four figures, two a little behind, two in front. The central figure of the picture was smallish (the two behind were taller than he), he was dark, his eyes were brown or a deep hazel, his face was hairless except for one lank piece a little longer which fell half over his forehead. . . . The little man was almost fat. He had, oh horror! an unmistakable bulginess below the arch of the ribs. He also had a paunch.’

Horrible, yes, but worse awaits. In the photograph Hitler gazes with smiling admiration at a young stripling, ‘with long plaits of hair so light that it must have been yellow falling forward over his shoulders and down over his chest, a noble open forehead, large blue or light grey eyes, a square jaw and a wide mouth open in a half smile, just showing big white strong front teeth. . . He looked, to Hermann’s staring, protruding eyes, more noble, more German, more manly, despite his youth, than the small dark soft-looking Lord Hitler.’

When told the truth, Hermann cannot believe that he is actually seeing a beautiful young woman. There is an even greater shock to come. The old Knight doesn’t just possess this forbidden photograph, he also owns a book. Written by one of his ancestors, its pages record all that this earlier von Hess could remember about the history of the world before the fabricated myths and legends replaced the truth. The parchment volume has been passed down from father to son for generations, for centuries. Now, though, von Hess is growing old and his own three sons have all been killed in an airplane crash. More than anything, the book must be preserved: Through it the stagnant world of Nazi patriarchy and oppression could be overturned.

Katharine Burdekin was born to an upper middle-class English family in 1896, married a barrister, gave birth to two daughters and in 1922 separated from her husband. After 1926 she lived with a female

companion. During her lifetime Burdekin produced a dozen novels, some – including this one – under the pen name Murray Constantine. It is said that Swastika Night, like her other fiction, was scribbled in a white heat over just five or six weeks. After World War II, though, her writing failed to interest contemporary publishers. When Burdekin died in 1963, she left behind many manuscripts, notably that for her feminist utopia, The End of This Day’s Business (which finally saw print in 1989).

After the nightmarish customs and casual brutalities of its opening pages, Swastika Night slows down and grows distinctly talky, as Alfred and the old Knight, or Alfred and a Christian elder, discuss religion, history and sexual politics. Yet even in the book’s more ideological second half, strong scenes abound, most memorably that in which Alfred discovers an unsettling affection for his baby daughter. Still, Burdekin’s main concern is a critique of totalitarianism and, especially, of hypertrophied masculinity. Gradually Alfred comes to recognize a revolutionary truth: that women deserve to be regarded as full human beings.

Despite its tendency toward didacticism, Swastika Night retains its power to shock. The depiction of the lowing herds of women, the deification of Hitler, the cult of pure German blood, the militarization of society, the blotting out of the historical past, the ever-present possibility of savage violence – all these are quite unforgettable. It remains astonishing that Burdekin could extrapolate such a vivid Nazi future as early as the mid-1930s. Above all, though, her book drives home the monstrous consequences – for everyone, not just the victims – in the dehumanization of a race, religion or an entire sex. Like so much science fiction of the 1930s, Swastika Night isn’t actually predicting the future, but trying to prevent it.

Michael Dirda, April 2016



Michael Dirda is a literary journalist whose books include the 2012 Edgar Award-winning On Conan Doyle and several collections of essays, most recently Browsings. He can be reached through his website: www.michaeldirda.com.

CHAPTER ONE

THE Knight turned towards the Holy Hitler chapel which in the orientation of this church lay in the western arm of the Swastika, and with the customary loud impressive chords on the organ and a long roll on the sacred drums, the creed began. Hermann was sitting in the Goebbels chapel in the northern arm, whence he could conveniently watch the handsome boy with the long fair silky hair, who had been singing the solos. He had to turn towards the west when the Knight turned. He could no longer see the boy except with a sidelong glance, and though gazing at lovely youths in church was not even conventionally condemned, any position during the singing of the Creed except that of attention-eyes-front was sacrilegious. Hermann sang with the rest in a mighty and toneful roaring of male voices, but the words of the Creed made no impression on his ear or his brain. They were too familiar. He was not irreligious; the great yearly ceremony of the Quickening of the Blood, from which all but German Hitlerians were excluded, roused him to frenzy. But this, being only an ordinary monthly worship, was too homely and dull to excite any particular enthusiasm, especially if a man was annoyed about something else. Not once had he been able to catch the eye of the new solo singer, who with the face of a young Hero-Angel, so innocent, so smooth-skinned and rosy, combined a voice of unearthly purity and tone.

I believe, sang all the men and boys and the Knight in unison, in God the Thunderer, who made this physical earth on which men march in their mortal bodies, and in His Heaven where all heroes are, and in His Son our Holy Adolf Hitler, the Only Man. Who was, not begotten, not born of a woman, but Exploded! (A terrific crash from the organ and the drums, and all right hands raised in the Salute acknowledged that tremendous miracle.)

From the Head of His Father, He the perfect, the untainted Man-Child, whom we, mortals and defiled in our birth and in our conception, must ever worship and praise. Heil Hitler,

Who in our need, in Germany’s need, in the world’s need; for our sake, for Germany’s sake, for the world’s sake; came down from the Mountain, the Holy Mountain, the German Mountain, the nameless one, to march before us as Man who is God, to lead us, to deliver us, in darkness then, in sin and chaos and impurity, ringed round by devils, by Lenin, by Stalin, by Roehm, by Karl Barth, the four arch-fiends, whose necks He set under His Holy Heel, grinding them into the dust. (With a savagery so familiar that it could hardly be called savagery all the male voices growled out the old words.)

Who, when our Salvation was accomplished, went into the Forest, the Holy Forest, the German Forest, the nameless one; and was there reunited to His Father, God the Thunderer, so that we men, the mortals, the defiled at birth, could see His Face no more. (The music was minor, the voices piano and harmonised, with a sweet and telling effect after the long unison.)

And I believe that when all things are accomplished and the last heathen man is enlisted in His Holy Army, that Adolf Hitler our God will come again in martial glory to the sound of guns and aeroplanes, to the sound of the trumpets and drums.

And I believe in the Twin Arch-Heroes, Goering and Goebbels, who were found worthy even to be His Familiar Friends.

And I believe in pride, in courage, in violence, in brutality, in bloodshed, in ruthlessness, and all other soldierly and heroic virtues. Heil Hitler.

The Knight turned round again. Hermann turned round and sat down gratefully to resume his contemplation of the golden-haired chorister. He was a big boy to have still an unbroken voice. He must be above fourteen. But not a glint of golden down had yet appeared on his apple-cheeks. He had a wonderful voice. Good enough for a Munich church, yes, good enough for a church in the Holy City, where the Sacred Hangar was, and in it the Sacred Aeroplane towards which all the Swastika churches in Hitlerdom were oriented, so that the Hitler arm was in the direct line with the Aeroplane in Munich, even though thousands of miles lay between the Little Model in the Hitler chapel and the Thing Itself.

Hermann thought, “What’s the boy doing here, then? On

a holiday, perhaps. He is not a Knight’s son. Only a Nazi. I can make acquaintance with him without risk of a snub. Except that he is certain to be popular and rather spoilt.”

The old Knight, after a few preliminary coughs (he was inclined to bronchitis), was now reading in his pleasant knightly German the fundamental immutable laws of Hitler Society. Hermann hardly listened. He knew them by heart, and had done since he was nine.



As a woman is above a worm,

So is a man above a woman.

As a woman is above a worm,

So is a worm above a Christian.



Here came the old boring warning about race defilement. “As if any man would ever want to,” thought Hermann, listening with half an ear.



So, my comrades, the lowest thing,

The meanest, filthiest thing

That crawls on the face of the earth

Is a Christian woman.

To touch her is the uttermost defilement

For a German man.

To speak to her only is a shame.

They are all outcast, the man, the woman and the child.

My sons, forget it not!

On pain of death or torture

Or being cut off from the blood. Heil Hitler.



In his pleasant old husky voice the Knight delivered this very solemn warning, and went on to the other laws.



As a man is above a woman,

So is a Nazi above any foreign Hitlerian.

As a Nazi is above a foreign Hitlerian,

So is a Knight above a Nazi.

As a Knight is above a Nazi,

So is Der Fuehrer whom may Hitler bless)

Above all Knights,

Even above the Inner Ring of Ten.

And as Der Fuehrer is above all Knights,

So is God, our Lord Hitler, above Der Fuehrer.

But of God the Thunderer and our Lord Hitler

Neither is pre-eminent,

Neither commands,

Neither obeys.

They are equal in this holy mystery.

They are God.

Heil Hitler.



The Knight coughed, saluted the congregation, and lifting the sacred iron chain that no man not of knightly blood might move, he went up the Hitler arm and, turning sharp to the left, disappeared into the chapel. The worship was over.

The men and boys moved in an orderly drilled way out of the church. Hermann suddenly wished it was the custom to hurry and barge and jostle. That boy was going to get out long before he was. Then he’d have vanished, or be surrounded by other men. What hair! Down to his waist nearly. Hermann wanted to wind his hands in it and give a good tug, pulling the boy’s head backwards. Not to hurt him much, just to make him mind.

Somebody near the door barked out an order:

“Come on, men. The church is wanted for the Women’s Worship. Hurry. Don’t dawdle there.”

Hermann was very willing. He was not now in the least curious about the Women’s Worship, when once every three months they were herded like cattle into the church, tiny girl-children, pregnant women, old crones, every female thing that could walk and stand, except a few who were left behind in the Women’s Quarters to look after the infants in arms. The women were not allowed to go further into the church than the Goering and Goebbels arms; they were not allowed to enter even these less holy hero chapels; they had to stay jammed up in half the body of the Swastika, and they were not allowed to sit down. Even now two Nazis were busy clearing away the chairs the men had used. Women’s rumps were even more defiling to holy places than their little feet, and they had to stand while the Knight exhorted them on humility, blind obedience and submission to men, reminding them of the Lord Hitler’s supreme condescension in allowing them still to bear men’s sons and have that amount of contact

with the Holy Mystery of Maleness; while he threatened them with the most appalling penalties should they have any commerce with the male Untouchables, the Christian men, and with milder punishment should they, by word or weeping, or in any other way oppose that custom, that law so essential to Hitler Society, the Removal of the Man-child.

Hermann, when a light-hearted youth of thirteen, had once hidden in the church during a Women’s Worship, impelled partly by curiosity, and partly by a wicked un-Nazi feeling of resentment at exclusion, even from something very low and contemptible. He would have been severely punished had he been caught; publicly shamed and beaten to unconsciousness. He was not caught, but the sinful act brought its own punishment. He was terrified. The mere sight of so many women all in a static herd and close by him—not just walking along the road from the Quarters to the church—with their small shaven ugly heads and ugly soft bulgy bodies dressed in feminine tight trousers and jackets—and oh, the pregnant women and the hideousness of them, and the skinny old crones with necks like moulting hens, and the loathsome little girls with running noses, and how they all cried! They wailed like puppies, like kittens, with thin shrill cries and sobs. Nothing human. Of course women have no souls and therefore are not human, but, Hermann thought afterwards, when his boyish terror had given way to a senseless boyish fury, they might try to sound like humans.

The small girls cried because they were frightened. They didn’t like going to church. It was a quarterly agony which they forgot in the long weeks in between, and then it seized them again. They were terrified of the Knight, though that particular one was mild enough. He never bellowed and stormed at them as some Knights did in some churches. But he had such power over them—more than the Nazis to whom they must render such blind obedience. The Knight could order them to be beaten, to be killed. And then nearly always their mothers were crying at this quarterly worship, and that made the daughters worse. Perhaps one had just had her little boy taken away from her at the age of eighteen months, fetched by the Father in the usual ceremonious way (“Woman, where is my son?” “Here, Lord, here is your son, I, all unworthy, have borne——”), and where was he

now? his baby limbs in the hard hands of men, skilled men, trained men, to wash him and feed him and tend him, and bring him up to manhood. Of course women were not fit to rear men-children, of course it was unseemly for a man to be able to point to a woman and say “There is my mother” — of course they must be taken away from us, and never see us and forget us wholly. It’s all as it should be, it is our Lord’s will, it is men’s will, it is our will. But though a woman might go through the whole ceremony of Removal dry-eyed and not make a moan, and even utter the formal responses in a steady voice, and though she might refrain from weeping afterwards, yet, when she got into the church at the next Women’s Worship, she would be certain to break down. All together, women fell into a sort of mass grief. One worked on another, and a woman who had not suffered from a Removal for several years would remember the old pain and start a loud mourning like a recently bereaved animal. The more the Knight told them not to, the harder would they weep. Even the bellowers and stormers among the Knights could not stop women crying at their worship. Nothing could stop them, short of killing them all.

The Knight came out from the Hitler chapel and stood watching the women and girls being driven in by a Nazi. Already the sniffles were beginning; already some of the younger children, at the mere sight of him, before he opened his mouth, set up loud cries of terror. With perception clouded by traditional fear, they could not see that his face was benign and rather noble, with the possible cruelty of his large hooked no. . .