Police in Totalitarian States in Crime Fiction (Part I)

On Monday I posted a review of Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo. The book caused me to think about the problems faced by police working in totalitarian states. In this post and Friday’s post I will be discussing books involving police officers in dictatorships moving from the 1930’s through the 1990’s.

In The Good German by Joseph Kanon one of the primary characters is a policeman who has been an officer during the Nazi rule before and during World War II. Through those years he has hunted criminals for a criminal regime. Is he a good German by chasing criminals for an evil cruel government? Another character, to stay alive, was a greifer, a Jew who found Jews hiding in Berlin.

Should a police officer serve a totalitarian state?

In Mark Mazower’s book, Hitler’s Empire – How the Nazis Ruled Europe the writer sets out how the existing police services before Nazi rule continued as police under the Nazis. While I am sure most dealt with ordinary crimes on occasion in Western Europe and, regularly in Eastern Europe, the regular police were involved in rounding up Jews. It was frightening to Child 44  read how many Eastern European police participated in the Holocaust.

by Tom Rob Smith is set in the U.S.S.R. in the early 1950’s where the nation is still caught up in the iron grip of Stalin. Secret Police officer, Leo Demidov, is shaken when he realizes that he is chasing a veterinarian who has sought to escape Russia when the veterinarian realizes he is under investigation for anyone the subject of a secret police investigation will be found guilty. Demidov suddenly perceives that many of the people he has pursued are not enemies of the state seeking to do harm to the U.S.S.R. Later he is in a Kafkaesque situation where the party line requires he not search for a serial killer of children because the socialist paradise could not have a serial killer. The police have been finding “undesirable” members of the nation guilty of the murders rather than acknowledge there is a serial killer.

What happens to a police officer when the suspect is always guilty and only certain people are criminals?

The officer is no longer an investigator solving crime in such circumstances. He or she has become a mere agent for the state disposing of unwanted or troublesome citizens. There is no objective search for criminals causing harm.

Needle in a Haystack is set in the late 1970’s in Argentina where the Junta is the governing dictatorship. The detective, Perro, is called to a crime scene where there are three bodies. Two of them are young people whose faces have been mutilated by multiple shots to the head. The third victim is a middle aged man who has been shot once in the stomach.

His investigation is immediately limited by the victims. He can investigate the murder of the middle aged man but only if it does not involve the other victims. The two young people have been killed by government death squads and the Junta prevents the police from investigating deaths it has caused.

What happens when the officer only investigates crimes not involving the state?

Respect for police and the Rule of Law is diminished when the police must close their eyes to vicious premeditated murder. Who could have confidence in the police in Argentina to investigate crime?

On Friday I will put up a post continuing the analysis through the 1980’s in the U.S.S.R. and Communist China in the 1990’s.