The Gothengau Colony

The Gentle Nazi is an alternate history novel set in 1965, in a Nazi-controlled Europe.  Britain turned its back on France and remained neutral if not friendly to the Third Reich. The Soviet Union has been obliterated, Europe's Jews almost all murdered, and Germany dominates the space race. It is told from the points of view of three German-Americans (Konrad, Petra, and Karl) who migrated from the US to the Fatherland on the same ship almost 20 years earlier. The stark contrast between his Amish upbringing and the murderous regime of the Third Reich creates tension for Konrad, who is caught between two worlds.

When saving a life in 1946 Alabama, Amish giant Konrad took one in return and must run before the electric chair claims him. In New York, Nazi propaganda fools him into jumping on a ship to Berlin, capital of the Third Reich. In 1965, at Gothengau, an SS-run colony in Ukraine, a terrorist rocket attack on Berlin compels soldier-farmer Konrad to focus on his duty: commanding an SS convict battalion. He must flex his muscle for the armed forces or the Holocaust's perpetrators - his superiors, colleagues, and neighbours in Ukraine. Survival means playing both sides, but will the fellow German-Americans he arrived with 20 years earlier join him in his fight and in the process, trigger the dawn of a Fourth Reich?