The Madagaskar Plan

The Madagaskar Plan is a 2015 alternate history adventure novel by Guy Saville. In this world Britain and the Third Reich have negotiated a peace treaty allowing Nazi Germany to conquer much of Africa. There has been no Holocaust. Instead, the Nazis have implemented their Madagascar Plan, a scheme to deport the Jewish population of Europe to Madagascar. In the novel, five million Jews have been sent to the island.

Following on directly from events in The Afrika Reich, the protagonist Burton Cole returns home to Britain to find his lover, Madeleine, has vanished. Meanwhile Hochburg’s invasion of Rhodesia has turned to disaster and his forces have been driven back across the border to Kongo. Emboldened by his failure, anti-Nazi guerrillas in the north of Kongo have launched a surprise attack leaving Hochburg to fight a war on two fronts. After a conference call with Himmler, Hochburg realises that there will be no reinforcements from Europe. Visiting the Shinkolobwe mine he learns of a superweapon (presumably an atomic bomb, though it is never stated explicitly) that will help him turn the tide of the war. Because of Hitler’s policy banning the development of nuclear weapons, the only people capable of developing a bomb for Hochburg are Jewish physicists exiled to Madagascar. Hochburg travels to the island and comes into conflict with its governor, Odilo ‘Globus’ Globocnik.

Cole has discovered that Madeleine has been sent to the island as a prisoner and smuggles himself there in an effort to find her. He visits the scuppered cruise-liner the Wilhelm Gustloff, which is moored off the island and holds the records of all the Jews on Madagascar and learns of Madeleine’s address in the town of Antzu.