![]() That makes the vision of Britain that Sansom presents so chilling and simultaneously compelling. Hindsight makes it easy to view the war as the only viable option. The horrors of Nazi Germany that are now printed baldly in textbooks and preserved indelibly in the memories of survivors and their families were, at that time, more rumours and whispers than hard truths. Yet it is inescapable that, at the time, a large number of people favoured appeasement. Dominion posits rather that we stuck our heads in the sand, and that’s harder to bear. Alternative history where the Allies lose offers the condolence that at least we fought the good fight. In 1952, when the novel takes place, Britain is still nominally a sovereign power, but it bows often to Germany’s influence, and homegrown Fascism has taken root. In Dominion, Lord Halifax’s accession over Churchill results in a Britain that makes peace with Germany, which leaves the island alone as it prosecutes its war across the continent. Sansom takes as his point of divergence the fateful meeting in which Churchill, Halifax, and Chamberlain decide who will succeed the latter as Prime Minister. Dominion takes a slightly different tack, imagining instead that the war itself was largely averted through appeasement. "What if the Nazis won?" is a compelling question that has been explored many times over. World War II is understandably an attractive point of divergence for writers of alternative history. ![]()
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