Fatherland, by Robert Harris

Consider what the world would have been like should the Nazi's not have been defeated. Imagine what Germany, or the mighty Third Reich, would have become and how the political lines that divide today's nations would have consolidated. In this exercise, we could imagine that the Reich would have taken most of Eastern Europe, that 12 European nations would have remained political units on their own (though somewhat friendly to the Reich), that the Cold War would have happened not between the USA and the USSR, but instead between the USA and the Reich. As it happened throughout most of the WWII, imagine that the citizens of the Reich never quite got to know the complete truth about the National Socialist Party's ideology and actions and that today it is 1964.

Now, in this scary universe, consider an officer of the SS who's not so keen on climbing up the socio-political ladder, who doesn't quite care about The Party, who's a free-thinking individual. Imagine that he is charged with investigating the deaths of prominent political figures and that this investigation risks uncovering a terrifying truth that, although widely-known in our reality, remains just a suspicion in the minds that inhabit this alternate universe. These are the premises of "Fatherland".

At the same time that this book reads like a thriller, it is an interesting exploration of "what could have been" if history had taken a different turn. As a thriller, it is very effective, intelligent, and enjoyable. Given what we know today about the holocaust, we know exactly where the plot is leading, but that doesn't matter much. What matters is the trip through this alternate history, and it's a heck of a trip.