Fatherland characters

Also known as Zavi

Appears from the start

A Berlin criminal-police investigator with the SS rank of Sturmbannführer. Divorced and increasingly estranged from Nazi public life, he is known for following evidence farther than his superiors find convenient. The discovery of an elderly man's body in a lake draws him into a politically protected series of deaths.

Also known as Charlie

First appears in chapter 10

An American journalist in Berlin before President Kennedy's planned visit to Hitler. Curious, direct, and less constrained by the Reich's rules than German reporters, she becomes involved after receiving information from a missing official and joins March in pursuing the story.

Appears from the start

March's partner in the Kriminalpolizei. More conventional and cautious than March, he understands that murder inquiries involving senior Party figures can become dangerous and repeatedly urges attention to the political limits of their work.

First appears in chapter 6

A senior Gestapo officer widely known as Globus. Forceful, intimidating, and closely connected to the regime's security apparatus, he takes control of the investigation once the dead man's identity reveals a matter the state wants contained.

First appears in chapter 7

The national chief of the criminal police and March's powerful superior. Urbane and difficult to read, he has survived decades within the SS system and gives March limited room to work while protecting his own position.

Also known as Pili

First appears in chapter 4

March's ten-year-old son, who lives with his mother and has absorbed the state ideology taught by school and the youth movement. He admires official uniforms and regards his father's skepticism as a troubling failure of loyalty.

First appears in chapter 4

March's former wife and Pili's mother. She has built a life that conforms more comfortably to the Reich and considers March's distance from their son's political upbringing irresponsible and dangerous.

First appears in chapter 2

A former State Secretary in the occupied Polish administration whose body is recovered from a Berlin lake. His senior wartime service and apparently comfortable retirement make the circumstances of his death unusually sensitive.

First appears in chapter 11

A former Foreign Ministry official who has tried to contact American representatives with information valuable enough to threaten the coming diplomatic agreement. His disappearance connects the murdered officials to events the Reich erased from public history.

First appears in chapter 15

March's friend, a researcher familiar with state archives and the physical transformation of Germany's conquered territories. His knowledge helps March interpret scattered records that official history has made deliberately obscure.