The Theory of Cosmic Ice

The Theory of Cosmic Ice is a bulky, multi-authored dissertation whose significance rests less on any scientific argument the novel reveals than on the political work assigned to it. Martin Bormann gives it to his nephew, Angelus Thomsen, and asks him to find out how the Ahnenerbe is pursuing the theory. The book thus becomes an instrument of political intelligence: Bormann does not claim to believe in it, but fears being on the wrong side of a subject that matters to Adolf Hitler. Later, on New Year’s Day, the dissertation lies unattended on Thomsen’s lap as he travels through an industrializing Germany, an image that reduces its grand claims to a neglected object amid the realities of the war.

The Dissertation as a Political Assignment

Bormann introduces the book during a conversation with Thomsen about the Ahnenerbe, which Thomsen initially understands as a cultural research organization and a kind of think tank. Bormann hands him the volume and tells him not to read it at once, but to note its title: The Theory of Cosmic Ice. He then explains that the Ahnenerbe’s meteorology department supposedly makes long-range forecasts, while in reality it is working on the cosmic-ice theory. The dissertation is the tangible evidence of this assignment, a text Thomsen is expected to study so that he can report on the state of the theory’s development inside the organization.

Bormann’s request is not presented as an inquiry driven by curiosity or conviction. He dismisses Himmler’s anthropology and herbalism, and says he does not believe in the theory either. His stated reason for taking it seriously is political: the decisive question is who believes in it. Himmler is sympathetic, and Bormann says Hitler is becoming increasingly keen on it, alongside runes and having his horoscope cast. Bormann therefore wants Thomsen to learn enough to tell him how the theory is progressing. The dissertation’s value, in this exchange, is its access to an evolving field of favor around the regime’s leadership.

A Theory Left Deliberately Vague

The novel gives only an outline of the theory’s supposed content. Bormann begins to explain that it concerns the Aryans, but breaks off before completing the thought; he also mentions a lost continent and says the subject is technical. He does not elaborate. The book is consequently presented not as a body of scientific claims the reader can assess, but as a substantial volume whose contents remain partly withheld. Its physical bulk and technical opacity contrast with the clarity of the political demand placed upon it: Thomsen must investigate the theory and report back.

Bormann attributes an expansive political promise to Hitler’s interest. If the theory can be substantiated and made to stick, Bormann says, Hitler believes Germany’s enemies will lay down their arms and apologize, while the Thousand-Year Reich will receive a mandate from heaven. This is reported as Hitler’s belief, not established as a result the theory could produce. The dissertation’s proposed importance therefore exceeds its disclosed argument. It is made to stand between obscure cosmological speculation and the imagined vindication of the regime, while Bormann’s own caution shows that its practical force depends on who endorses it.

The Book in Transit

On New Year’s Day, the dissertation reappears as a bulky volume lying unattended on Thomsen’s lap in a first-class carriage. Thomsen looks out at the enlarged outskirts of Munich, where meadowland and woodland have given way to foundries, factories, and heaps of grit and gravel. The train sounds the city sirens, crawls into a tunnel, and remains there for more than an hour before gathering speed again. In the harsh sunshine, Germany passes as a torrent of earth tones. The book, which Bormann had framed as politically urgent, receives no attention during this journey.

That contrast changes the object’s narrative weight without supplying new details about its theory. In Bormann’s office, the volume is a summons to investigate what the leadership may believe; in the carriage, it is simply there, physically present but unattended, while the country outside is marked by factories and wartime disruption. The scene does not show Thomsen reaching a conclusion about the dissertation. Instead, its neglect makes visible the distance between a theory promoted as a possible heavenly mandate and the material landscape passing before him.

Ideological Fantasy and Administrative Reality

The book’s place in the novel’s wider political world is sharpened by scenes concerned with the machinery of persecution. In another episode, Thomsen thinks of himself as caught between the Economic Administration Head Office, which presses him to increase the labour force for the munitions industries, and the Reich Central Security Department, which presses for the removal of evacuees. His thought reproduces the regime’s antisemitic framing of Jews as a security threat; it is part of Thomsen’s compromised perspective, not a neutral description. The episode shows how bureaucratic priorities can be expressed as a conflict between labour use and deportation, while the dissertation belongs to a different register of regime activity: the pursuit of an ideological theory that might please powerful believers.

A later conversation in the Tiergarten places this ideological register beside the history and practice of mass murder. Professor Peters identifies 31 July 1941 as a point of authorization, describing a letter drafted by Eichmann and Reinhard Heydrich and signed by Goring. He recounts how a hoped-for territorial solution beyond the Urals and Arctic Circle receded as pressure mounted in occupied Poland, and how the killing expanded from men to women and children. Peters stresses that gas chambers and crematories accelerated the process, but were not its precondition: the killers had the will, and mass killing by bullets and pyres would have continued. The dissertation is not presented as a cause of this policy or as a practical instrument of murder. Its juxtaposition with these discussions instead exposes the distance between fantasies of cosmic vindication and the deliberate, administrative choices behind extermination. The book remains on Thomsen’s lap, unattended; the regime’s violence does not depend on its theory being true.