Fatherland

March drives to his ex-wife’s home. He knocks and sees Pili looking at him out the window. After several moments, Pili lets him in.

March says goodbye to Pili. He tells him that he’ll hear bad things about his father, but they’re untrue. When Pili doesn’t answer, March starts to leave; however, Pili stops him and asks him to look at his drawing for the parade.

In his room, Pili works on his drawing of a fight from the war. He abruptly stops and then pulls out old books from the war. He asks March to read the captions to him, which describe the different fighters. As March does so, he realizes that it’s a strange request. However, he continues.

After reading for several minutes, March realizes that everything is quiet. He tries to get up and leave, but Pili grabs his legs and begs him to stay. At that moment, the windows implode, and men with guns rush into the room. March is knocked to the ground. Pili stands over him, assuring him that he’ll be taken away to get better.

Globus stands over March. He punches him in the stomach and then the kidneys, demanding to know Charlie’s whereabouts. When March refuses to answer, Globus has him transported back to the headquarters, where he’s left alone in a cell.

Krebs takes March to an interrogation room. To March’s surprise, Krebs knows about his presence during the shooting of Luther and about the briefcase he retrieved from the airport. However, March denies everything, insisting that he was simply following Charlie. He hopes he can delay long enough to let Charlie get away, despite the impending torture. He can tell that Globus must not know of his visit to the archives and therefore doesn’t know what information he found.

Globus then arrives and makes Krebs leave. When they’re alone, Globus remarks on his annoyance at Krebs for being too intellectual, like March. He tries to get March to answer his questions. When March refuses, Globus has March’s arm held down on the table and smashes his hand with a baseball bat.

When March sees his hand, he faints. Over the next few hours, he occasionally regains consciousness. He’s repeatedly kicked and asked the same questions.

When March finally wakes up, a doctor is repairing his hand. He’s forced into a chair by Krebs, then is given a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Krebs sits across from March, reading March’s notes that they found in the car. He asks what some of the notes mean, and March explains things like the materials for the gas chambers, the number of Jewish people deported, and the total number (11 million) that the government hoped to kill.

Krebs is visibly distraught at the information. He insists that he didn’t know, but March argues that, deep down, they all knew.

Because Krebs is the one that searched the car, Globus still doesn’t know about the existence of the notes. Krebs explains to March that he thought he was investigating missing artwork. He thought Luther’s death was the end of it, until he got a call that Luther was meeting Charlie. When March asks how he knew, Krebs shows him a transcript from a wiretap of Charlie’s conversation with Luther on the payphone.

March explains the involvement of the three men in the order to deport and kill the Jews. Their biggest concern was that no written order had come from Hitler (they were just acting on the word of Heydrich and others), so they documented everything to protect themselves.

March continues to explain the documents. He also explains the deaths of each of the men from the conference where the decision was made, ending with Luther. The information makes Krebs increasingly agitated, since he doesn’t want to be implicated. When March refuses to stop talking, he grabs the documents and throws them into the stove, lighting them on fire.

Globus continues torturing March, who begins yelling out the names of the camps, causing Globus to stop briefly. However, he then spits in March’s face, insisting that they’re just names and no one will believe the truth.

Later, Krebs takes March from his cell. He’s handcuffed and put into the back of a car. Krebs sits next to him and tells the driver to take them to Columbia House.

Partway through the drive, Krebs yells to the driver to pull over because March has urinated in his pants. He forces March out of the car and down an alley next to an abandoned church. March hears Nebe’s voice in the darkness, scolding him for not coming to him with the information that he found. Instead, Krebs informed Nebe of what was happening.

Krebs gives March his gun, instructing him to pretend he stole it from Krebs. He then points March to a car waiting down the alley. Nebe begs him to get the information out so that the truth can finally be known and then disappears. March runs to the car where Jaeger is waiting.

As Jaeger drives, he tries to make conversation with March. All March can think of is the transcript from the wiretap. He can’t clear his head from the pain and the drugs. He rolls down the window and hears a faint noise he can’t place in the distance.

Looking around the car, a high-end Mercedes, March asks Jaeger where he got it. Jaeger tells him that he rented it. In response, March calls him a bad liar and then points Krebs’s gun at him. He realizes that Krebs and Nebe set him up: They were hoping he would drive to see Charlie. He forces Jaeger to give him his gun and then threatens to shoot him if he doesn’t follow his instructions.

March directs Jaeger onto the autobahn. He has him travel east, in the opposite direction.

March asks Jaeger how long he has been working with the Gestapo. He realizes that Jaeger was originally supposed to be called to Buhler’s body, but March took the call on his day off instead. Jaeger reported everything March was doing to Globus, leading to the disappearance of Jost and the tapping of Charlie’s calls, even from the payphone.

While March talks, Jaeger reaches over and grabs the gun. March pulls it away, putting a hole in the roof when it goes off and causing Jaeger to swerve off the road. He barely manages to maintain control.

Jaeger tells March that he felt like he had no choice. Globus was telling him what to do, and he had to follow his orders, especially to protect his wife and children. March doesn’t respond.

A few hours later, March and Jaeger arrive at the Oder, a river on the border of Germany and what was once Poland. March thinks back to the beginning of World War II when Germany invaded Poland. He recalls Globus’s words, that “nothing [is left of Auschwitz] anymore, not even a brick” (332). He has Jaeger continue to drive and then stops him when he spots an old railroad track.

March gets out of the car. He handcuffs Jaeger to the steering wheel and then begins walking. When he looks back, he sees several cars that have joined Jaeger’s and hears the helicopter overhead. He ignores them.

At just after nine o’clock in the morning, March thinks of Charlie. He imagines her leaving the hotel and going to the border into Switzerland. He continues to walk, searching the ground.

March finds a broken brick in the grass. He looks around, spotting dozens more across the ground. Relieved, he imagines Charlie passing into Switzerland without being searched. As he looks at the sun, he knows “for an absolute, certain fact” (335) that Charlie has escaped.

Someone yells for March to stop, but he ignores them. Instead, he pulls the gun from his waistband, checks to make sure it’s loaded, and then moves into the trees.