The Iron Dream

Lord of the Swastika opens in the year 1142 A.F.—"After Fire", the global nuclear war referred to as the "Time of Fire" which brought about the end of the civilization of the technologically advanced "Ancients" and the current despoliation of most forms of life. The gene pools of almost all life forms are corrupted by the radioactive fallout. Few examples of the baseline human form can be seen, and most of humanity are mutants with blue skins, lizard scales or parrot beaks, or wizened half-breed mutants and normal-seeming but inhuman "Dominators", who desire to rule the ruined world with their mind-controlling powers.

The pure and strong young "Trueman" (so named for the lack of mutations in his DNA) Feric Jaggar returns from the outlands of Borgravia where his family was exiled by the treaty of Karmak with the surrounding mutant states to his ancestral land, the High Republic of Heldon, which was founded on the principles of killing mutants and keeping humanity pure. He arrives only to find its rigor slackened and corrupted by the "Universalists", pawns of the sinister Dominator country Zind, which seeks to corrupt Heldon's pure human gene pool into the mutant diversity that rules the rest of the world. Indeed, in the very first portion of Heldon that Feric enters, the customs fort where entrants are tested to see whether they are pure and free of mutation, he is outraged that mutants are being allowed into Heldon on day-passes, that the fort is under the spell of a Dominator, and that the tests are so lax that impure specimens are being granted citizenship.

In Heldon proper, Feric dines in the "Eagle's Nest" tavern, and mulls over the question of how to change this situation. Should he enter politics or the military? Feric witnesses the oratory of Seph Bogel, leader of the Human Renaissance Party, who speaks eloquently but ineffectually to the crowd about the need for human purity. Fired by his words, Feric is inspired to take control of the listening crowd and leads a mob to the same border post, there to slay the Dominator (or "Dom") who had quietly disguised himself as a clerk to sway the immigration decisions in favor of mutants. At Bogel's invitation, he assumes leadership of the Party, which Feric later renames The Sons of the Swastika, and the two travel on to Walder—the second city of Heldon—to meet the party inner circle and begin the great task.

Their journey is interrupted when their steam-powered vessel is waylaid by the outlaw petrol-powered motorcycle gang, the Black Avengers. Jaggar, however, senses that these men may be of use to his cause and challenges their leader, Stag Stopa. The rules of the Black Avengers only allow a member to challenge the leader, and so he and Bogel are taken back to their headquarters for Feric to be initiated. Feric acquits himself mainly in the drinking of ale and in running the gauntlet of torches on a motorcycle. He and Stopa duel with truncheons, and Feric's truncheon breaks. Desperately he reaches out and picks up the "Great Truncheon of Stag Held" lying nearby—which can only be wielded by a descendant of the last true King of Heldon, Sigmark IV. The Black Avengers immediately pledge fealty to him, and become the "Knights of the Swastika".

From this event, Jaggar assumes a hereditary right to be the leader of Heldon and embarks on a violent crusade for genetic purity, drawing a massive following, staging outdoor rallies and raising an army personally loyal to him. He is elected to the Council and stages a coup d'état when he forces the Council to admit to treason and a Zind plot against Heldon. Confirming his suspicions, the Universalist member of the Council turns out to be a Dom. Feric summarily executes him with the Great Truncheon. Jaggar coerces the Council into granting him complete executive power and then has them shot. Immediately after assuming power Jaggar puts down an imminent coup by Stopa, who has been corrupted by the fleshly pleasures of Zind.

Backed by the army and the adoring multitudes, Feric sets about the great task of re-invigorating the military, ordering the production of tanks and fighter jets, the establishment of the Swastika Squad (SS)—a legion of the purest and most manly men that can be found via the "Classification Camps", which examine all citizens of Heldon (killing the Doms and sterilizing or exiling all relatively impure humans). After repelling a Zind attack through Wolack, Heldon annexes its western and southern neighbors, beginning with Borgravia. In the course of the Helderisation of its neighbors Jaggar orders, at the suggestion of Bors Remler, that all mutants are to be euthanised rather than exiled.

Months later, his scientists report that they are near to rediscovering the secrets of atomic bombs, but that Zind is making efforts to dig up relics of the Ancients, which might salvage its own complement of nuclear weaponry. Noting the damage such weapons had done, Feric orders such research ended, and determines to wipe out Zind and every last Dom before they can unleash the Fire. Soon enough, Zind begins to rally its troops from their reverse in Wolack. The final invasion of Zind is hard fought: the main Helder force, under the command of Lar Waffing, takes the southwestern oil fields needed for resupply, while the secondary force fights a delaying action against the vast bulk of the Zind army to the north towards the Zind capital, Bora. Needless to say, the forces of Heldon prevail and the Zind army is destroyed and burned, down to the last mindless "Warrior". The central city is reduced to a cinder in a firestorm (akin to the bombing of Dresden in our world).

The last Dom, apparently a leader and with immense mental powers, is discovered hiding in a command bunker. The Dom has anticipated military defeat and, before Feric has the pleasure of killing him, triumphantly reveals that the Doms had salvaged and rearmed one of the ancient nuclear weapons. It is a doomsday weapon, and he triggers the failsafe. After Feric and his cohorts have evacuated Bora, a cobalt bomb detonates, and as the Dom planned, its fallout utterly corrupts the gene pool of Heldon. If any of its citizens, including Feric, reproduce, they will produce the mutants that they had previously sought to obliterate.

Feric orders the sterilization of the entire Heldon nation, including himself, and, in a final desperate gamble, orders the SS scientists to redouble their efforts to develop the next Master Race from cloning the perfect specimens of the SS. Eventually they succeed and millions of the new master race are produced in 'reproduction works' to complete the cleansing of the Earth. At the novel's close, Heldon has mastered interstellar travel. As a consequence, an initial starship, full of 300 of these seven-foot, blond, super-intelligent all-male SS clones in suspended animation, is launched into space to initiate Heldon's own galactic empire. The SS clones also have a clone of Feric to lead them. This inaugural rocket is launched on a voyage to Tau Ceti and will become the first of many.

The Iron Dream won critical acclaim, including a Nebula Award nomination and a Prix Tour-Apollo Award. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in a review that: "We are forced, insofar as we can continue to read the book seriously, to think, not about Adolf Hitler and his historic crimes—Hitler is simply the distancing medium—but to think about ourselves: our moral assumptions, our ideas of heroism, our desires to lead or to be led, our righteous wars. What Spinrad is trying to tell us is that it is happening here."[3] Le Guin also stated that "a novel by Adolf Hitler" cannot "be well-written, complex, (or) interesting", as this "would spoil the bitter joke", but also asked why anyone should "read a book that isn't interesting", arguing that the bad prose of "Hitler's" book may have been due, in part, to the poor quality of Spinrad's own prose.[3]

Leslie Fiedler proposed that Spinrad be considered for the National Book Award in 1973, but apparently won no support from his fellow award judges.[6]

In 1982, the book was "indexed" in West Germany by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien for its alleged promotion of Nazism. Spinrad's publisher, Heyne Verlag, challenged this in court and, until the ban was overturned in 1987, the book could be sold, but not advertised or publicly displayed.

The American Nazi Party put the book on its recommended reading list, despite the satirical intent of the work.[7] In Spinrad's own words:

To make damn sure that even the historically naive and entirely unselfaware reader got the point, I appended a phony critical analysis of Lord of the Swastika, in which the psychopathology of Hitler's saga was spelled out by a tendentious pedant in words of one syllable. Almost everyone got the point... And yet one review appeared in a fanzine that really gave me pause. "This is a rousing adventure story and I really enjoyed it," the gist of it went. "Why did Spinrad have to spoil the fun with all this muck about Hitler?"[4]