If Hitler Comes

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This novel was first published by Faber in August 1940 under the title, The Loss of Eden . It was then reissued by the British Publishers Guild (a wartime cooperative venture), in March 1941, with the more arresting and overt title, If Hitler Comes: A Cautionary Tale . It was a work of speculative fiction with a moral purpose. It was a counterblast to the waverers, to those of a defeatist mien who could convince themselves an arrangement between Great Britain and Nazi Germany wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. The original Faber book description asks, 'What would it be like in England, if, after a premature peace on plausibly equal terms, we found that this ''peace'' had merely delivered us completely into Hitler's hands?' It continues, 'The imaginary New Zealand journalist, writing retrospectively as an eye-witness from the security of the Antipodes, tell us what happened - or rather what might have happened. And so precise and logical does he make the narrative, so real the characters, so vivid the scenes, that in reading we are almost persuaded that it did happen. Then we say: ''Nothing could be worse than that!'' In their foreword and dedication, the authors, Douglas Brown

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