SS-GB is an alternative history novel by Len Deighton, set in a United Kingdom conquered and occupied by Germany during the Second World War. The novel's title refers to the branch of the Nazi SS that controls Britain. It was first published in 1978.
Synopsis
Setting
SS-GB is set less than a year after the British surrender following a successful Operation Sea Lion. In 1940, the Germans landed near Ashford, and Canterbury was declared an open city. The German advance captured London, but a British rear guard around Colchester slowed down the Germans for long enough to enable Royal Navy ships to escape from Harwich. King George VI and Prime Minister Winston Churchill became prisoners of the Germans. The British gold and foreign reserves were shipped to Canada.
In 1941, the British Armed Forces surrendered, Churchill was tried by court-martial in Berlin and executed while the King was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Queen Elizabeth and her daughters Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret escaped to New Zealand while the Duke of Windsor escaped to The Bahamas. A naval officer, Rear Admiral Conolly Abel Smith, formed a British government-in-exile in Washington, DC but struggles to gain diplomatic recognition. Conolly is also forced to fight off an attempt by the Germans to take over the British embassy in Washington.
The United Kingdom still has an unidentified puppet Prime Minister and Parliament, but true power lies in the hands of the German Military Commander GB and the Military Administration Chief GB. Parliament has passed an "Emergency Powers (German Occupation) Act", giving the German authorities executive power over occupied Britain. There is also considerable interservice rivalry between the German Army, the Schutzstaffel and the Gestapo. Hitler held a victory parade in London while Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels were on board the first nonstop Lufthansa flight from London to New York City.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact is still in force and the Soviet Navy was given bases at Rosyth, Scapa Flow and Invergordon. The German Propaganda Ministry claims that the Soviet-German friendship is genuine, but cynics claim that Hitler is using the Soviets to counterbalance the Americans. As part of the German-Soviet Friendship Week, Karl Marx's body is to be taken from Highgate Cemetery to the Soviet Union.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is still the US president and Joseph P. Kennedy the American ambassador. The United States is still officially neutral, the Roosevelt administration is seeking to acquire German atomic research from the Bringle Sands Atomic Research Establishment. The United States had also launched an amphibious invasion of the French colony of Martinique after it sided with the regime of Vichy France. British personnel who managed to escape the German occupation have also enlisted in the US Armed Forces.
Plot
In November 1941, nine months after a German invasion led to the British surrender, Douglas Archer is a detective-superintendent of London's Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard who works on homicide crimes. His boss is SS Gruppenführer Fritz Kellermann, the German head of police forces in Britain. Having lost his wife, Jill, and his home during the German invasion, Archer lives with his son, "Douggie", at the home of Mrs. Sheenan and her son, Bob. Archer's colleagues are Detective-Sergeant Harry Woods and his secretary and lover, Sylvia Manning.
Archer is called to investigate the murder of a well-dressed man at a flat above an antiques shop in Shepherd Market. Although the body has two gunshot wounds, Archer is puzzled by its condition, particularly by what appears to be sunburn on the arm. Archer also finds a prosthetic arm and a return ticket to Bringle Sands, where the Germans have an atomic research facility. Despite stolen identification identifying the man as Peter Thomas, Archer discovers that the man's true identity is William Spode, a British atomic physicist in the German atomic program and secretly involved with the British Resistance.
Since the case is linked to the German atomic program, Berlin dispatches SS Standartenführer Oskar Huth, who arrives to supervise the investigation. Archer soon finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between Huth and Kellerman that is complicated by interservice rivalry between the SS, German Army, Gestapo and Abwehr. Archer becomes romantically involved with an attractive American journalist, Barbara Barga, who is connected to the British Resistance leader Colonel George Mayhew. He also learns that his colleagues Woods and Sylvia are also members of the British resistance.