What if...
Imagine an alternate World where an ex-soldier named Adolf
Hitler immigrated to the United States from a war ravaged Germany in 1919, looking
for prosperity and opportunity, using his artistic skills (deliberately
overlooked in his native Austria) to create pulp sci-fi book covers in the
golden age of speculative fiction...
The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad, is an alternative history novel that presents itself more as an artifact from another historical dimension, written as though the alternate is the reality. Adolf Hitler, the author of this fictional tale, was an ex WWI German soldier who emigrated to the U.S., became an artist, learned English and found a career writing fantastic stories of fantasy and fiction. World War II never occurred, the Holocaust never happened...The Soviet Union and Communism became the great evil to descend upon the free lands of the Earth. Hitler became a successful American author. His opus magnum, his greatest and most successful story, relegates Nazi Germany to the pages of fiction rather than the infamous historical record. All the trappings and the uniforms of the Nazi regime that haunt the closet of History exist only in costume contests at sci-fi conventions, worn by geeky teens playing a role in a far off fantastical land, ruled by a lord who's emblem is a strange bent cross called the swastika. Pretty groovy, huh?
Iron Dream is a very fun book. It's not really a classic, but it is so "off the wall" and unusual, I think it is worth some time and consideration. Reading the book, you can see the rise and fall of the Third Reich in Hitler’s fantasy, and it really makes you wonder how different the World would be had Adolf had only come to the United States.
Unfortunately, this book is not freely available for the taking, but being a recent work, finding a first edition is not difficult if you so desire. It's freely available in later editions, and there is a Kindle edition as well. The first edition was in paperback, published in 1972 by Avon Books.
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