Fatherland

Fatherland is a 1994 American historical drama television film directed by Christopher Menaul and written by Stanley Weiser and Ron Hutchinson, based on the 1992 novel of the same title by Robert Harris. The film stars Rutger Hauer and Miranda Richardson, and aired on HBO on November 26, 1994. Plot A prologue outlines the story's alternate timeline. The failure of the Normandy invasion causes the United States to withdraw from the European theater of the Second World War and General Dwight D. Eisenhower to retire in disgrace. The United States continues its Pacific War against the Empire of Japan, and led by General Douglas MacArthur, it uses atomic bombs for its victory. In Europe, Nazi Germany successfully achieves its invasion of the United Kingdom, which results in King George VI fleeing with his family to Canada and continuing to rule the British Empire. Under Nazi supervision, Edward VIII reclaims the throne in the United Kingdom in 1947, and Wallis Simpson becomes his queen. Prime Minister Winston Churchill also goes into exile in Canada and lives there until his death in 1953. Germany co-opts the rest of Europe, except for neutral Switzerland and the Vatican, into the Greater German Reich, which is abbreviated to "Germania". At least on the surface, German society is largely clean and orderly, and the SS is reorganised into an elite peacetime police force. The state is still embroiled in its perpetual war against the Soviet Union, which is still led by the 85-year-old Joseph Stalin well into the 1960s. The 1960 US presidential election is won by Joseph Kennedy, whose anti-Semitic views have been well-publicized. He gives the Nazi leaders a chance to end the Cold War between both powers and to secure a détente with the United States and its allies in Latin America. In 1964, as Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday approaches. Kennedy heads to a summit meeting in Germany, whose borders are being opened to media from the United States and Latin America.