Yesterday's Tomorrow

Yesterday's Tomorrow, Part 1, is the start of a novel whose main character lives an academic life in contemporary Boston but, when he sleeps, has what might be thought to be dreams in which he is present in Nazi Germany. Professor Andy Spencer, the main character, teaches History at Harvard and is at work on a challenging book. He is behind on the book, and the publishers have threatened not to give him further extensions of the deadline. The book, like his academic work-and now his dreams-concerns Nazi Germany. The book's thesis concerns the loss of World War II by Germany. Hitler had essentially subjugated all of Europe and was on a roll, when he decided to invade Russia. It is generally accepted that this decision to bring Russia into the war is why Germany lost the war But the book that Andy is writing maintains that Hitler didn't decide to invade Russia. The idea had been suggested, and Hitler in fact put it aside. Others within Germany brought about the invasion of Russia. The reason? So that Germany would eventually lose the war (after massive casualties in Russia and elsewhere) and the world would be saved from Germany's fascist dominance. The problem with this hypothesis is that Andy can't find people from the era to back it up. He is involved with a few shady characters who arrange for him to have access to a former Nazi leader still alive in Costa Rica. But this is of no avail. Other contacts are in the works, perhaps to contemporary Nazi groups. Andy needs evidence to support his thesis, and so far hasn't been able to find it. But in his "sleep," Andy finds himself in Nazi Germany. He is involved in what happens there, is tortured, gets shot, and yet. he manages to escape. But after each adventure he eventually wakes up in his bed in Boston, uninjured. He discusses the dreams with Nate, his psycho-therapist friend, who at first thinks Andy is just over-stressed, but after Nate's Holocaust-surviving grandmother-in-law to be shows him a photograph from the era of a man who looks strikingly similar to Andy, Nate starts to consider the possibility that there's more to Andy's experience than just a dream. Andy meets a young woman in the dream who he's attracted to. Disguised as a senior Nazi officer, Andy saves her from assassination, and then helps her to locate her family, which has just been transported to the Warsaw Ghetto. After reuniting the family and celebrating a Seder with them in what are effectively their prisoners' quarters, with its atmosphere of poverty and impending doom, Andy leaves that world to come back to his contemporary life. (He has no control over when he returns to his contemporary life.) Historically, few people in the Warsaw Ghetto, and few Jews in general, survived the holocaust for long after the date of Andy's last visit. And so Part 1 ends on a cliff-hanger with Andy's urgent need to go back again.