“Zigeuner” is a science fiction story by Harry Turtledove and was published on “Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine” in August 2017. The story is set in October 1944 of an alternative timeline with indistinctive differences from ours. The story is told in third person and the protagonist is Joseph Stieglitz, a German SS officer in charge of an ethnic cleansing operation aiming at Zigeuners—Gypsies in German language in Hungary, a member nation of the Axis Power. Although the story’s timeline appears to be the same as ours in the beginning, uncanny facts have been gradually unveiled as the author expands on the dialogues of characters. And in this story, the author discusses humankinds in the war with perspectives rarely being used.

        The story begins with Joseph standing in a drizzle that “speckled the lenses of the SS officer’s steel framed spectacles”. By mentioning the spectacles, the author infers that Joseph is an administrative officer stationed far from the frontline. The sky of this drizzly day is described as “gloomy”, and the prospects of the war is also gloomy; it is fall 1944. An entire German Army Group had just been wiped out by the Soviets’ offensive in the summer, and they kept driving the Germans out of their invaded territory; soon the Germans would fight them in Poland and Hungary, and eventually in Germany. In the meantime, believing that the Soviets would eventually reach the border of Hungary and invade the country, Admiral Horthy of Hungary betrayed Hitler by secretly signing a peace treatment with the Soviets. Horthy’s plan had been eventually discovered and Hitler replaced him with Ferenc Szalasi and his Arrow Cross Fascist followers. Joseph is tasked to transfer a settlement of Gypsies to a convoy of trucks and they are going to be sent to a concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He entered his “Kubelwagon”, a type of jeep car used by Germany. By this point, everything in the story’s timeline appears to be exactly the same as ours, but as more details being revealed as the plot develops, the setting eventually becomes uncanny and ironic.

        The author begins describing Joseph’s thoughts after roughly introducing the setting. In most medias and stories depicting Nazi atrocities in WWII, the Nazi criminals are depicted as barbaric executioners and they fanatically refuse to accept Germany’s lose of war. This commonly-used perspective has created a disparity between the Nazis’ cognition and their inventions during the war. It is unreasonable that people who could develop the first jet plane put into mass production could not realize the inevitable failure of Nazi ideology. In “Zigeuner”, however, the author states that Joseph and his colleagues actually knows the tide of war has become irreversible and he could think nothing other than “realizing the war was lost”. Joseph’s values is based on Nazi ideologies, which depicts the enemies of Germany as “untermannsch”—inferior races. Despite the fact of realizing his country is losing deep in his subconscious mind, Joseph’s fixed set of values as an officer stop him from accepting the truth. And Joseph suffers from trying to stop him from thinking the possibility that Germany could lose the war. Similarly, one truck driver in charge of transferring the Gypsies to concentration camps’ rationality also conflicts with his values. He has to numb his brain with alcohol all the time.

        “Zigeuner” also shows how the alteration of individuals’ situation could affect people’s fate in unexpected ways. After Joseph arrived at the settlement where Gypsies are located, he started a conversation with a Hungarian soldier with “graying hairs and the beginnings of a wattle under his chin”. The soldier’s appearance reminds Joseph that he is relatively older than most soldiers and may have even served in the army of Austro-Hungary in WWI. Soldiers like him had fought against the Russians under the assistance of the Germans in that war and it is likely that the old Hungarian man could speak German. By this point, the alternative timeline still has no distinctive traits on the surface. However, the first major difference appears as the Hungarian man states that Hitler was among the Germans who had helped Hungarians fighting against the Russians. In real history, Hitler was a German soldier deployed to France in the Great War. The alteration of the location of Hitler’s service has led to an uncanny situation; after witnessing Gypsies in Russian service sabotaging German facilities and creatin unnecessary German casualties, Hitler had developed hatred on the Gypsies instead of the Jews. Consequently, Gypsies have been dehumanized by Nazi propaganda and become the primary victim of the genocide while the Jews remain to be German citizens.

        Later, when Joseph began transferring the Gypsies to the convoy, he tried to convince the Gypsies that they are suspected of stealing things from the locals and needed to be relocated for questioning. But the Gypsies seems to be “nobody’s fool” and are aware of the Germans’ true intention. They are unwilling to move out from their settlement. Joseph has no choice other than pointing guns at the Gypsies to force them to leave. The author further highlights the fact that the Gypsies are aware of their fate of being wiped out by including the description of a Gypsie girl. The girl has a puppy and she forces the dog to leave before stepping onto a truck, meaning she knows what would happen to her and her dog after the Gypsies get transferred. Joseph comments the Gepsies’ actions by “when all your cards were bad, how many brains you had did even win you a pfennig”. Just as what Joseph has commented, the story tries to convince its readers that the situation of individuals plays a more important role than their wit in determining their fate. When individuals enter a rivalry against major powers, they could typically do nothing to alter their fate.

        The fact that Jews no longer being targeted by Hitler already seems dramatic, but this science fiction story does not reach its climax until the last page of the story. After sentencing the inevitable death of the Gypsies by sending them to the convoy, Joseph feels guilty and goes to have a conversion with a field chaplain who has a Star of David hanging on his neck. It is finally unveiled that Joseph Stieglitz, an officer of the SS notorious for wiping out Jewish population in real history, has a Jewish identity. Though Jews are not Hitler’s target in this timeline, they are still among the minorities of German society under the public’s discrimination. Joseph finds himself stressed after dealing with the Gypsies, who also lived as social minorities until Hitler rise into power in the story’s timeline. For the readers, it is even more dramatic to see how a simple alteration in the Great Dictator’s military career could make victims in real history become perpetrators persecuting certain ethnic groups in the alternative timeline.

        “Zigeuner” discusses human thoughts and the role of individuals’ situation from unique perspectives. The author’s use of indirect descriptions gradually unveils details crucial to the understanding of the story’s setting and ensures that the readers remain surprised.