This is the story of a young German artist, an ideological mass murderer, a mischievous cartoon hare, and the long, slow, painful climb up out of Hell.
The People's Hare follows the story of Albert Behrens, a young artist living in Berlin on the cusp of World War II. After reading an article in the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, in which Superman is dissected and then vilified by the Nazis (after all, his creator Jerry Siegel is Jewish), Albert decides that the Third Reich needs its own cartoon hero.
Unexpectedly, his idea reaches the desk of Heinrich Himmler, whose spies have noted the recent appearance of a popular animated rabbit in America. Intrigued, Himmler enlists Albert in Nazi Germany's propaganda war and between them, Der Volkshase ("The People's Hare") is born.
The Hare brings fame to Albert, but it all comes with a terrible cost exacted in the prison cells of the Gestapo, the mud and snow of the Russian Front, Stalin's gulags and, ultimately, by the bitter wedge driven between Albert and his lover, fellow artist Renata Sanger.
During the 1960s, Albert escapes to Chile only to become embroiled in that country's Marxist revolution. Determined never to live under Communism again, Albert joins forces with a neo-fascist terrorist group headed by Annmarie Kolb, an eccentric occultist. Of particular interest to them both is Chile's little-known, embryonic Cybersyn project, a forerunner to today's Internet. In Cybersyn, Albert sees the ultimate fusion of mass communication, fascism, and his animated creation—The People's Hare—it is the weapon of the future.