Norman Spinrad: The Iron Dream

Let Adolf Hitler transport you to a far-future Earth, where only FERIC JAGGAR and his mighty weapon, the Steel Commander, stand between the remnants of true humanity and annihilation at the hands of the totally evil Dominators and the mindless mutant hordes they completely control.

Lord of the Swastika is recognized as the most vivid and popular of Hitler’s science-fiction novels by fans the world over, who honored it with a Hugo as Best Science-Fiction Novel of 1954. Long out of print, it is now once more available in this new edition, with an Afterword by Homer Whipple of New York University. See for yourself why so many people have turned to this science-fantasy novel as a beacon of hope in these grim and terrifying times.

Other Science-Fiction Novels by Adolf Hitler:

EMPEROR OF THE ASTEROIDS

THE BUILDERS OF MARS

FIGHT FOR THE STARS

THE TWILIGHT OF TERRA

SAVIOR FROM SPACE

THE MASTER RACE

THE THOUSAND YEAR RULE

THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

TOMORROW THE WORLD

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889.

As a young man he migrated to Germany and served in the German army during the Great War. After the war, he dabbled briefly in radical politics in Munich before finally emigrating to New York in 1919. While learning English, he eked out a precarious existence as a sidewalk artist and occasional translator in New York’s bohemian haven, Greenwich Village. After several years of this freewheeling life, he began to pick up odd jobs as a magazine and comic illustrator. He did his first interior illustration for the science-fiction magazine Amazing in 1930. By 1932, he was a regular illustrator for the science-fiction magazines, and, by 1935, he had enough confidence in his English to make his debut as a science-fiction writer. He devoted the rest of his life to the science-fiction genre as a writer, illustrator, and fanzine editor. Although best known to present-day SF fans for his novels and stories. Hitler was a popular illustrator during the Golden Age of the thirties, edited several anthologies, wrote lively reviews, and published a popular fanzine. Storm, for nearly ten years.

He won a posthumous Hugo at the 1955 World Science-Fiction Convention for Lord of the Swastika , which was completed just before his death in 1953. For many years, he had been a popular figure at SF conventions, widely known in science-fiction fandom as a wit and nonstop raconteur. Ever since the book’s publication, the colorful costumes he created in Lord of the Swastika have been favorite themes at convention masquerades.

Hitler died in 1953, but the stories and novels he left behind remain as a legacy to all science-fiction enthusiasts.

With a great groaning of tired metal and a hiss of escaping steam, the roadsteamer from Gormond came to a halt in the grimy yard of the Pormi depot, a mere three hours late; quite a respectable performance by Borgravian standards. Assorted, roughly humanoid, creatures shambled from the steamer displaying the usual Borgravian variety of skin hues, body parts, and gaits. Bits of food from the more or less continuous picnic that these mutants had held throughout the twelve-hour trip clung to their rude and, for the most part, threadbare clothing. A sour stale odor clung to this gaggle of motley specimens as they scuttled across the muddy courtyard toward the unadorned concrete shed that served as a terminal.

Finally, there emerged from the cabin of the steamer a figure of startling and unexpected nobility: a tall, powerfully built true human in the prime of manhood. His hair was yellow, his skin was fair, his eyes were blue and brilliant. His musculature, skeletal structure, and carriage were letter-perfect, and his trim blue tunic was clean and in good repair.

Feric Jaggar looked every inch the genotypically pure human that he in fact was. It was all that made such prolonged close confinement with the dregs of Borgravia bearable; the quasi-men could not help but recognize his genetic purity. The sight of Feric put mutants and mongrels in their place, and for the most part they kept to it.

Feric carried his worldly possessions in a leather bag which he hefted easily; this enabled him to avoid the grubby terminal entirely and embark directly upon Ulm Avenue which led through the foul little border town toward the bridge over the Ulm by the shortest route possible. Today he would at last put the Borgravian warrens behind him and claim his birthright as a genotypically pure human and a Helder, with a spotless pedigree that was traceable back for twelve generations.

With his heart filled with thoughts of his goal in fact and in spirit, Peric was almost able to ignore the sordid spectacle that assailed his eyes, ears, and nostrils as he loped up the bare earth boulevard toward the river. Ulm Avenue was little more than a muddy ditch between two rows of rude shacks constructed for the most part of crudely dressed timber, wattle, and rusted sheet-steel.

Nevertheless, this singularly unimpressive track was apparently the pride and joy of the denizens of Pormi, for the fronts of these filthy buildings were festooned with all manner of garish lettering and rude illustrations advertising the goods to be had within, mostly local produce, or the castoff artifacts of the higher civilization across the Ulm.

Moreover, many of the shopkeepers had set up street stands purveying rotten-looking fruit, grimy vegetables, and fly-specked meat; these fetid goods they hawked at the top of their lungs to the creatures which thronged the street, who in turn added to the din with shrill and argumentative cajolery.

The rank odor, raucous jabbering, and generally unwholesome atmosphere reminded Feric of the great marketplace area of Gonnond, the Borgravian capital, where fate had confined him for so many years. As a child, he had been shielded from close contact with the environs of the native quarter; as a young man he had taken great pains, and at no little expense, to avoid such places as much as was practicable.

Of course it had never been possible to avoid the sight of the sorts of mutants who crowded every nook and cranny of Gormond, and the gene pool here in Pormi appeared not one whit less debased than that which prevailed in the Borgravian capital. The skins of the street rabble here, as in Gormond, were a crazy quilt of mongrelized mutations. Blueskins, Lizardmen, Harlequins, and Bloodfaces were the least of it; at least it could be said that such creatures bred true to their own kind. But all sorts of mixtures prevailed—the scales of a Lizardman might be tinted blue or purple instead of green; a Blueskin might have the mottling of a Harlequin; the warted countenance of a Toadman might be an off-shade of red.

The grosser mutations for the most part bred truer, if only because two such genetic catastrophes in the same creature ended more often than not in an unviable fetus.

Many of the shopkeepers here in Pormi were dwarfs of one kind or another—hunchbacked, covered with wiry black hair, slightly pmheaded, many with secondary skin mutations—incapable of more strenuous labor. In a small town such as this, the more arcane mutants were less in evidence than in what passed for a Borgravian metropolis.

Still, as Feric elbowed his way through the foul-smelling crowds, he spotted three Eggheads, their naked chitinous skulls gleaming redly in the warm sun, and brushed against a Parrotface. This creature whirled about at Feric’s touch, clacking its great bony beak at him indignantly for a moment until it recognized him for what he was.

Then, of course, the Parrotface lowered its rheumy gaze, instantly gave off flapping its obscenely mutated teeth, and muttered a properly humble “Your pardon, Trueman.”