So the Nazis have won after all
IN the BBC adaptation of Len Deighton’s SS-GB, it is 1941 in London and the Nazis are in charge, having won the Battle of Britain. And while there has been a lot of comment on the apparent inability of many viewers to hear what the actors are mumbling (I’ve had no problem with this, by the way) there has not been a word about a deeper question which struck me right from the start of this imagined history: how many viewers are unaware that this is indeed imagined history, and not just a straight period drama based on actual events?
It might once have seemed a crazy question, but then crazy is the name of the game these days.
Consider, for example, the kind of people who have ambitions to spend some time in the Big Brother house — how many of them do you think would know for sure that London was not under German occupation in 1941? How many would care one way or the other?
The triumph of the far-right in Britain today can partly be attributed to declining standards of education, which was evident after the Brexit referendum when some “Leavers” seemed unaware what this “voting” thing was all about, having previously voted only on issues such as Kerry Katona’s performance in the Bush Tucker Trial, perhaps leading them to believe that they could have another crack at the old Referendum the following week.
So let us not be assuming any more that everyone looking at Deighton’s otherwise excellent story is fully in possession of the basic historical facts. And then let us ponder the magnificent timing of this production, and what it means to a people who are once again, shall we say, struggling in their relationship with the Germans, with Europe as a whole.
For the unfortunates who have happily handed their destinies over to the fine sensibilities of Nigel Farage, SS-GB will look like a perfect illustration of what happens when the Germans get too full of themselves — it feels to them like they have won the War all over again, if War is the right word for what is essentially a process of self-destruction.
And for the Remainers the idea that Fascism has triumphed may be viewed in this drama series as a fictional construction, though in truth it is what they are seeing all the time, in the present tense, on the main evening news.
This is it, the Nazis never got to London, or to Washington, but their ideas are now achieving a level of acceptance unknown since the Fuhrer was knocking them out in the bierkellers in the 1930s.
But is SS-GB any good? I am finding it exceedingly good, but then by a certain measurement Deighton is my favourite author. As a child on holidays I would see him occasionally in the village of Blackrock, Co Louth where he lived for a couple of years. He was the first famous writer I ever saw, and I am still full of admiration for his creation Harry Palmer, the working-class “anti-James Bond”, famously played by Michael Caine in The Ipcress File.
Weirdly he wrote SS-GB in Tuscany, near the town of Barga (there’s a character in it called Barbara Barga), to which I was sent last year on a gruelling assignment by this paper’s travel section — an astonishing coincidence there, I felt, as I strolled through that Tuscan dreamworld reflecting on the fact that between us, Deighton and I have sold millions of novels.
Though over time, when you add it all up, his share of that combined total would probably be just a tad bigger.
He has just turned 88, and suddenly his work is not just popular again, it has struck some strange note of recognition in a world in which the bad guys seem to be winning all the time — not that it was ever much different, it’s just that these days we seem to be getting the worst of guys.
So in SS-GB we see this Nazi administration making itself at home in the great thoroughfares of London, and after a while it feels quite normal, really. In fact, after about 10 minutes, you hardly even notice it.