In Berlin, in the autumn of 1940, an SS unit consisting of “suitably qualified technical experts” was made ready to travel to Madagascar to ascertain, among other things, landing sites, the scope for camp construction, and the “total absorption capacity” of the island. It never left. When peace with the British didn’t come, the plan stalled. In the months after, minds in Berlin were diverted by the looming invasion of Russia.
This corresponds with the conclusion Hans Jensen draws in his study of the subject: If Hitler won the war, it would mean exile to Madagascar for the Jews. If he lost, extermination.* In the parlance of alternative history, this is a “point of divergence.” To state my own view, I suspect that if the Nazis had succeeded in conquering western Europe in 1940, including a settlement (of whatever kind) with Britain, a serious and determined attempt to ship the continent’s Jews en masse to the Indian Ocean would have been undertaken, even if the project was never fully realized.
Intermittent discussion of the Madagascar Plan continued through 1940 and 1941. It was officially abandoned on 10 February 1942, when Rademacher received the order ending the program from Hitler. Several weeks earlier, at the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich had put in motion a more murderous fate for the Jews.
* * *
Many other elements in this novel are also based on fact.
Hitler intended to rebuild Berlin on an imperial scale after the war and to name his capital “Germania.” The first phase of construction, including the Great Hall, was due for completion by January 1950.
The Nazis had extensive plans for Africa, wanting to reacquire the colonies they lost after the Versailles Treaty and to conquer a swath of new territory stretching from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. For a fuller discussion of this subject, see my “Author’s Note” in The Afrika Reich (Henry Holt, 2013).
Germany led the world in atomic research during the 1920s and ’30s. However, the purging of Jewish scientists from German universities, combined with Hitler’s suspicion of what he described as “Jewish physics,” curtailed the Nazi program to develop a weapon. The uranium for the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II came from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo that Hochburg visits.
Kraft durch Freude (KdF), the Nazis’ leisure organization, became the largest tour operator in the world.† By 1937 it was organizing vacations for 1.4 million people; its cruise liners took Germans to destinations as varied as the Norwegian fjords and the oases of Libya. In Prora, on Germany’s Baltic coast, the KdF built the biggest hotel in the world: a prototype for things to come. Its ruins are well worth a visit and are as gargantuan as this novel suggests; it takes a good hour to walk from one end to the other. After the war, the KdF intended to expand its network of hotels to the Crimea (“our Riviera,” as Hitler described it), Sweden, Argentina, and Africa.
If Germany had defeated the Soviet Union, it is likely that a protracted guerrilla conflict would have continued east of the Ural Mountains. Hitler was “delighted by the prospect,” believing that it would be the proving ground for a generation of Nazi youths. The discussion of the Madagascar Plan above refers only to the Jews of western Europe. The Nazis differentiated between them and the “Ostjuden”—eastern and Soviet Jews—whom they deemed inferior and more dangerous. The plan was to force the Ostjuden on death marches across Siberia, to exile in Birobidzhan, in the far east of Russia. Birobidzhan had been created by Stalin in the 1930s as a Jewish enclave; Hitler planned to make it his eastern dumping ground. It is difficult to imagine the extremes of Birobidzhan: monsoons in the summer, thirty degrees below zero in the winter. A community of four thousand Jews lives there today.
The Nazis’ repugnant medical experiments on Jews are documented elsewhere. Of relevance to this book is their obsession with twins. Between 1943 and 1944, for example, fifteen hundred pairs, including young children, were experimented on in Auschwitz, mostly with fatal results.
Globocnik was involved with building projects on a scale comparable to the ones I’ve imagined in Madagaskar. In 1940, he oversaw the construction of a “Jew ditch” at Belzec, Poland. Intended as a defense against Soviet attack, it was to be 54 yards wide and 325 miles long (though only 8 miles were ever completed). He wanted 2.5 million Jews to work on it, moving the earth by hand, though in a memo Heydrich limited him to “a couple of hundred thousand.”
In 1948, a team from Électricité de France went to Madagascar to survey the island’s waterways for hydroelectric development. One of the key rivers they identified was the Sofia near Mandritsara, though concerns were raised about silting. To date, no dam has been built.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I was lucky to visit Madagascar during the research for this novel and would like to thank the many people I met and who shared a little of their lives with me, in particular:
Helen Cox of Reef and Rainforest for helping to organize the trip; in Antananarivo (Tana), Oliver at Soci-Mad; in Antsohihy (Antzu), everyone at Hôtel Anaïs for their hospitality; in Mandritsara, Dr. David Mann, Dr. Adrien Ralaimiarison, and Robert and Christine Blondeel; at Diego Suarez naval base, base captain Commander Randrianarisoa Marosoa Nonenana and his executive officer, Commander Vaohavy Andriambelonarivo Andasy. Most important, for their comradeship, insight, and humor over the many miles we traveled together, my driver Radimbiniaina Harison Zoé, and my guide and translator, Ramarolahy Tafita Mamy. Misaotra betsaka!
For answering my questions on pregnancy and childbirth, I thank: Jo Cole, JD Smith, and Cally Taylor. For their help with research and translation: Sebastian Breit, Stella Deleuze, Jennifer Domingo, Elizabeth Ferretti, Oliver Gascoigne, John Smith of the French Foreign Legion, and Tim Vale. For the U.S. edition: everyone at Henry Holt, especially Molly Bloom, Meryl Levavi, Jason Liebman, Molly Lindley, Brooke Parsons, Richard Pracher, Courtney Reed, Stella Tan, and Bonnie Thompson.
Also: William Boyd, Richard Burnip, Linda Christmas, Andrew Dance, Carlie Lee, Laura Macdougall, Sarah-Jane Page, Rodney Paull, Lorrie and Robin Porter, and Aaron Schlechter. Special mention to Ana and Chris Biles for the generous use of their mountain house in Slovenia where an early draft of Part II was written.
Finally, heartfelt thanks to my UK agent, Jonathan Pegg, and my editor at Hodder, Nick Sayers; and in the U.S.: my agent, Farley Chase, for his advice and levelheadedness; and my editor, Michael Signorelli, for his enthusiasm, feedback on the manuscript, and for always finding me a little extra time as each new deadline loomed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GUY SAVILLE is the author of The Afrika Reich, an international bestseller. Born in 1973, Saville studied literature at London University. He has lived in South America and North Africa, and is currently based in the UK. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY GUY SAVILLE
The Afrika Reich
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Maps
Epigraph
Foreword
Part I
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part II
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter T
wenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Part III
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Part IV
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Guy Saville
Copyright
THE MADAGASKAR PLAN. Copyright © 2015 by Guy Saville. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design by Rex Bonomelli
Cover photograph: DIZ Muenchen GmbH, Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy
Author photograph by Ant Jones
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Saville, Guy, 1973–
The Madagaskar plan: a novel / Guy Saville.—First edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-0-8050-9595-1 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-8050-9596-8 (electronic copy)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 2. Madagascar—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6119.A953M33 2015
823'.92—dc23
2014041147
First U.S. Edition: August 2015
Published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
*Capital of the Reich, formerly Berlin.
*Lord Halifax, prime minister after Churchill resigned; he had negotiated peace with Hitler.
*The remnants of France’s army in Africa.
*The common name for Deutsch Westafrika. Hochburg had administered the colony before taking up the governorship of Kongo. It was to the Sahara region of Muspel that the black population had been deported.
*The 1917 Balfour Declaration called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Twenty years later, the Peel Commission suggested the partition of the territory between Arabs and Jews. Neither was implemented.
*One of the native inhabitants of Madagascar.
*Formerly Austria.
*After the Casablanca Conference, and the redrawing of the continent, South Africa remained an independent, neutral state.
*Council of New Europe.
*Peter Witte, ed., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, 1941/42 (Hamburg: Christians, 1999).
*For a detailed explanation of “why Madagascar?” see Eric T. Jennings’s essay “Writing Madagascar Back into the Madagascar Plan,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 21, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 187–217.
*The plan has little to say about the 24,000 French colonists living on the island, other than they would be “resettled and compensated,” and nothing about the 3.6 million native Malagasy.
*Hans Jensen’s Der Madagaskar Plan (Munich: Herbig, 1997) is a comprehensive, book-length study of the plan and was indispensable in the writing of this novel. Unfortunately, it is not available in English. Christopher R. Browning’s The Origins of the Final Solution (London: Heinemann, 2004) was another helpful text. Browning is especially interesting on how the Nazis evolved from a policy of expelling Jews to mass murder during the years 1939–42.
†From a diary entry by Adam Czerniaków, head of the Jewish Council in Warsaw, 1 July 1940.
‡See Mazower’s Hitler’s Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2008).
§Eugene Hevesi, “Hitler’s Plan for Madagascar,” Contemporary Jewish Record 4, no. 4 (August 1941).
*The 10 percent that were permitted mostly filled gaps in the economy. There was an acute shortage of domestic staff during the period, and women willing to go into service were allowed entry—hence why Madeleine works as a maid.
†As quoted from the diary of his private secretary Oliver Harvey, 25 April 1943.
*Compare Goebbels’s diary entry for 18 August 1941, after he’d discussed Madagascar with Hitler: “Since the ’30s there have only been two possibilities for the Führer: in the case of victory, banishment for the Jews; if he fails in his goal and loses the war, sweeping revenge and their destruction.”
†For a detailed account of the KdF, see Strength Through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich, by Shelley Baranowski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).