Customer Reviews

After the Downfall

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Harry Turtledove posits a typical Nazi soldier, in the last days of the defense of Berlin in 1945...Hasso Pemsel...who is supposed to defend to the death the ruins of the old Berlin Museum. All of the antiquities have supposedly been taken to safety in bunkers, but he finds a big rock that he hides behind, taking refuge from the Russian sharpshooters. He sees the information sign is still there, and it says that the big rock is the Omphalos stone, from the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He crawls on top of it and disappears.

He of course, reappears in an alternate reality...sort of a cross between Andre Norton's first Witch World novel and A Connecticut Yankee, with gorgeous Goddess priestess, who literally throws herself on her back and spreads her legs for him.

The story is an allegory about the Nazis and the way their beliefs about "untermenschen" made them vulnerable to the Russians, and by extension, to the Jews they were so busy exterminating.

Pemsel first works for King Bottero, whose tall, blonde people have invaded and subjugated the smaller, darker Grenye. All except for the nation of Bucovin. Bucovin is Russia without the communism...and its leader, Lord Zgomat, is a dead ringer for Lev Trotsky had he lived to run Russia.

Pemsel teaches the Lenelli what they are willing to learn about new tactics, and they initially have success in invading Bucovin. Then Pemsel is captured.

His Nazi nose is rubbed into the fact that the Lenelli are not kindly conquerors, and that the Bucovins are fighting to save their lives and their homes-- and are just as much people as the Lenelli, or as Pemsel himself, is...or, he reflects, as the Jews in his vanished home world must be.

There's lots of action to cloak the allegory, and Turtledove is at his best in his characters... King Bottero is Mussolini in a big blonde way, for example. There are the two noncoms...one Lenello, Orosei, and one Bucovin, Rautat, who are really well drawn three-dimensional characters.

This is one of Turtledove's best books in a while.

I strongly recommend it.

Walt Boyes
Associate Editor
Jim Baen's Universe magazine
www.baens-universe.com

Another exploration by Harry Turtledove of what happens when people who are not wholly evil find themselves fighting on the wrong side, and of whether there is anything they can do about it ...

The story begins as the Russians are over-running Berlin in 1945. Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel and what's left of his once-proud unit are in the City Museum, surrounded by overwhelming numbers of tough Red Army soldiers who have a score to settle with the Germans after what the Nazis did to Russia.

In between dodging bullets in what he expects to be his last minutes of life, Hasso notes an inscription on an ancient stone which gives him the impression that the stone was supposed to be a gateway to other worlds. As an act of gallows humour, he sits on it - and his astonished Feldwebel sees him disappear. The NCO leaps, too late, for the stone himself, only to be cut down by Russian bullets. To the advancing Red Army soldiers who loot and rush past his body it is only another stone.

Hasso Pemsel finds himself in a completely different place - and the first thing he sees is a tall, magnificently beautiful, blonde woman fleeing from three men, armed with crude weapons, who are pursuing her with obviously hostile intent. Without thinking he acts to rescue her, and this is not too difficult as his sub-machine gun works perfectly in this new world (at least while it still has ammunition.)

The lady insists on thanking Hasso, there and then, in the most intimate way that a beautiful woman can thank a man for saving her life, and then shows him the way to her people's capital.

As he learns their language, Hasso discovers that this is a world of magicians, spells and unicorns, but no technology. His lady friend is regarded by her people as a Goddess incarnate - a bit like the Dalai Llama, except that this woman is much sexier and has nothing to do with non-violence. Her people are engaged in a war to the death with another nation, and welcome him as a recruit to their army who can advise on more effective ways to fight the enemy.

But Hasso soon becomes uncomfortable with the atrocities which his new country inflicts on anyone who gets in their way - crimes which his actions in winning battles for them are helping to bring about.

As Hasso's concern grows, both at the evils he sees and the overconfidence of his new comrades, he also begins to look with a new light at the actions of his former country, Nazi Germany. Has he again found himself on the wrong side, and is his new country going down the same evil course to disaster ?

Definately one of Harry Turtledove's better and more imaginative works - almost as good as "The Guns of the South." Strongly recommended.

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is interesting because a Wehrmacht officer from oour world becomes aware of his prejudices by visiting another world. The funny thing to me about the book is that Bucovin and Suceava are place names in Romania! The Grenye characters have names whose Romanian meanings sometimes fit the characterization (Drepteaza) and sometimes have little or nothing to do with the personality at all (Zgomot! Gunoiul! Otset! and others). I was interested in the story of how our hero dealt with his challenges, and didn't want to go to sleep until I had finished reading it. If you get the paperback edition, it is certainly worth the money, or if the hard cover is on sale. At full price? This is not the sort of literature that one feels compelled to re-read, in terms of sword and sorcery novels. Dar ma bucur c'am citit-o.

Harry Turtledove returns to the world of fantasy with something that isn't- quite- alternative history.


"After the Downfall" tells the story of a German officer during the waning days of World War II. As the Russian hordes are about to assault his position he touches a magical stone (just go with it), and winds up transported into a fantasy realm.


Fans of the "Legion of Videssos" books will recognize the notion of a magical artifact in this world transporting someone into a magical world. It's not exactly an uncommon theme, and though Turtledove's used it before, I'm willing to let him slide on it this time.

The German officer, one Hasso Pemsel, a name so odd I find myself wondering if it's another of Turtledove's puns, arrives in this brave new world and falls in with a group of people who are the Aryan wet dream. Tall, athletic, blonde and utterly convinced they are better than their short, dark, swarthy neighbors who aren't really people, after all, and have no rights to exist beyond those the blondes give them.


Seeing what the blondes do to the darker folk makes Pemsel start to look at his own conscience. Remembering what the Russians did on the Eastern Front, he realizes that these are people, just ones that look quite different. Eventually he's given a choice of switching sides, and spends a great deal more time deciding what to do than he might've expected.

The story is a little more sex-filled than most of Turtledove's books. Unlike most people I don't have a problem with his depictions of sex (which tend to be less graphic than those of violence, and if you want to show the scope of human existence, you really do need both), but there do seem to be quite a few that come off as wish fulfillment. One doesn't want to think a Jewish writer would have a German WWII officer as a Gary Stu, but I do start to wonder at times.

Ignoring that, the story itself is quite good and sets itself up well for a sequel. It is, at the very least, more entertaining and original (well, in some ways, anyhow), than the Atlantis series Turtledove is working on nowadays. I look forward to seeing the next book and what he does with it!

After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove feels somewhat familiar to an experienced reader of Turtledove's work. We have a fantasy world with unusual magic. We have a sympathetic Wehrmacht officer in the mold of Heinrich Jäger from the Worldwar series. We have some speculations on the nature of Gods (Goddesses actually) in a world where belief in them gives them power. We get medieval battle tactics. We get sex.

In this case, however, Turtledove decides to mix them together, add some interesting characters and see what comes out of such alchemy.

Hasso Pemsel is not having a good day. You wouldn't either if you were a German army officer in 1945, with the Russians knocking on the door of the Museum in Berlin you have been, improbably, been asked to guard.

Joking around with his soldiers, he sits on an Omphalos stone...and finds himself in a different world entirely. With his gun, he saves a blond bombshell from a group of pursuers armed with primitive weapons. His reward from the woman for saving her from her pursuers is somewhat unexpected, but it puts him foursquare on the side of her people, the Lenelli, in their own pursuit of lebensraum in a new land. Hasso learns the language, learns how special Velona really is (a sometime avatar of the Goddess of the Lenelli) and joins their struggle against their even more primitive neighbors in a world of medieval weapons and magic. Fortunately, while Hasso's ammo is limited, his knowledge and ability to help his new found friends is not.


Homage to L Sprague De Camp (a la Martin Padway or Harold Shea)? I think so. Wish fulfillment for Hasso? No. Unfortunately, for Hasso, he gets a dose of reality when he gets fully engaged in a war between the Lenelli and the Grenye...

As I said above, the novel does have elements seen in Turtledove's earlier work. It would be a mistake to say this was a paint by numbers affair, since he does explore sociological questions in a new way, and some of the mid-rank characters are interesting and well developed (in addition to Hasso, who has the most character growth of course). Turtledove lets us learn more about Hasso's new world in bits and pieces and we get a real sense of what's going on, and the readers sympathies can gradually and naturally change along with the protagonist's. Its not really a spoiler to suggest that the Lenelli-Grenye struggle is very much analogous to the German-Russian portion of the conflict of World War II. The historical allegory is strong, but not overpowering.

I wouldn't start here as a first Turtledove novel.It's not Turtledove's best novel, but fans of Turtledove (like me) who have read a decent spread of his work will certainly enjoy it.

I'm a rabid Turtledove fan, though I tend to stick with his "straight" alt-history stuff. If this is typical of his forays into fantasy/swords & sorcery, I won't be spending any more of my dwindling cash reserves on the rest of his work in that genre.

The story itself was interesting, but the characters seemed a bit undeveloped, and I wasn't drawn in like I was with the World War and Great War stories. After the Downfall felt (to me, at least) as if it were written just to keep the cash flowing.

The latest book by Mr. turtledove follows many of his earlier ones. I have to rate it as very readable. Unlike many trans dimensional stories, Hasso does not convert the backward medieval society into a modern army overnight You can see what is in the future but not overnight.
The characters are not cardboard but multi dimensional, Hasso himself is damaged goods after four years on the eastern front. I can only say, read the book, you will see what I mean. There are a couple of minor glitches but nothing that would make you winch. Nazi Germany was not much on woman's rights, the SS in particular tended to look upon them as Aryan baby factories. Not using it's women wisely as did Russia, the UK and the USA was one of their major failings.

I thought of titling this review "A Connecticut Nazi in King Arthur's Court" but the cover. The cover! One of the awesome, unintentionally(?) goofy book covers in the history of, well, books!

Nazi!!! On a unicorn!!! And yes, by the end of the book, our protagonist, Wehrmacht Captain Hasso Pemsel, does get to ride on the back of a unicorn.

It's also a pretty good read, though far from Turtledove's best. They can't all be masterpieces, and this tale of a wayward Wehrmacht officer magically transported via the Omphalos stone while hunkered down in a Berlin museum besieged by enraged "Ivans" bent on revenge in the last days of WW2 (the Big One) is not a masterpiece. But it is fun.

Hasso Pemsel starts off his adventure in the new dimension by saving a buxom blonde goddess from her swarthy attackers, then immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) bedding her. Or roading her. Like the Beatles song. They did it in the road. They do it a lot. Pemsel likes it a lot. His little soldier convinces his big soldier (the brain) to ally himself to the Aryan looking "Lenelli" but it's only a matter of time before he finds out that the swarthy, obviously sub-human Grenye, are much cooler (and sexy as well). About 50 pages in I was saying to myself, "when is he going to invent gunpowder?" and was not disappointed by the end of the book.

Please understand, this book is NOT a joke, though reading my description you might think so. Turtledove is attempting his usual "fish out of water in another dimension, or alternate time" trick to teach us that Nazis are people, too. And that appearances can be deceiving. And that beauty is only skin deep. And unicorns are cool. And other stuff.

In the movie version, Pemsel would be played by Pierce Brosnan.

Three stars for the book (all in all, an entertaining and not boring read). Ten stars for the cover!

Nazi!!! On a unicorn!!!

In his WorldWar series, In the Balance: An Alternate History of the Second World War (Worldwar, Volume 1), Turtledove explored the possibility that in Nazi Germany during World War 2, there were some (not enough!) decent chaps in the Wehrmacht, who were not outright antisemites, or took direct, active part in the Holocaust. But that was a world spanning saga, in which Germany was only one portion of the tale.

Here, in After the Downfall, Turtledove explores the idea directly. The protagonist in the book starts off as basically a Nazi. In today's Europe, Pemsel would be considered by many to be such. While Pemsel did not actually murder Jews, his disdain towards them was typical of most Germans, and historically greatly aided the Holocaust. But as the story unfolds, his views change in a plausible way.

There is nothing subtle about the allegory. It is a clear join-the-dots pattern that perhaps yields little to deeper analysis. Somewhat akin to William Golding's Lord of the Flies (50th Anniversary Edition).

The book's battle scenes are competently done. But as I read these, I couldn't help but compare to those in other books that depict modern soldiers training medieval armies, using, for example, an innovation of Swiss pikes by infantry to stop heavy cavalry. Pournelle's Janissaries had better descriptions of conflict along these lines.

After the Downfall (2008) is a standalone fantasy novel. In another world, the Lenelli came from the sea two centuries ago and pushed back the native Grenye. The Grenye could work metals such as copper, brass and bronze, but were only then beginning to work iron. But the Lenelli had steel swords, armor, and some could work magic.

Over the centuries, the Grenye have learned from the Lenelli. They have copied as much of the technology -- and even the architecture -- as they can. Yet the Grenye still cannot work magic. For some reason, however, the Lenelli eastward advance has been stopped in the Grenye state of Bucovin.

In this novel, the Wehrmacht trying to hold back the Red Army from the remains of Berlin. Captain Hasso Pemsel and the survivors of his company are fighting in the ruins of the Old Museum. Inside he finds an old rock labeled as the Omphalos Stone, which is reputed to be a joining place between this world and others. He sits on it and disappears from this world.

Velona is a Lenelli woman who is the earthly avatar of a Goddess. The first time Hasso sees her, she is being chased by three Grenye who are less tired than Velona. Hasso shoots the pursuing Grenye with his Schmeisser. After expressing her appreciation, Velona takes him to the nearest Lenelli castle.

Aderno is a Lenelli wizard. He comes to the castle in response to Velona's message and soon learns that Hasso also has the potential of being a wizard. He also quickly finds out that Hasso is not lying, despite the improbability of his story.

Bottero is King of the local Lenelli. Brought before the king, Hasso is asked if he will swear fealty to Bottero. Hasso thinks about it and then agrees.

In this story, Hasso becomes Velona's lover. He also gets some firsthand experience with the Goddess and learns not to ridicule the idea of deities and avatars. Velona is very passionate in bed and elsewhere. Yet she occasionally has to take part in rites where she and the King rut in public. Hasso is rather peeved at the whole idea.

Hasso contributes several new concepts to the upcoming invasion of the eastern lands that remain in Grenye hands. He starts with operational security, but finds the Lenelli to be rather slow in understanding the principles. Later, he provides some innovative cavalry tactics.

Unfortunately, the Bucovinan learn fast and improvise a counter to the new tactics. They win the next battle and Hasso becomes a casualty. Luckily for him, the Grenye warriors who clean up the battlefield have orders to take him prisoner and he ends up in a Bucovinan dungeon.

This tale follows the gradual change in mental attitudes of a Wehrmacht officer in a strange situation. The similarities and differences of his old world and the new one bring him to some conclusions that would not have been appreciated in Nazi Germany. He begins to see the humanity in all people.

Hasso finds himself in the role of the inferior. Among the Lenelli, he is much shorter than most and he talks funny. Among the Grenye, he is much taller than anyone else and he talks funny. Being on the receiving side of despite and distrust does change one's thinking.

Much of the time, however, Hasso is learning a new language. About the time that he is beginning to be proficient in Lenelli, he is captured and must learn Bucovinan. He does find that the better he speaks a language, the more respect he gets.

The story is interesting enough, but the attitude changes give an extra bit of satisfaction to the reader. Still, Hasso is a soldier and is often involved in war or preparation for war. Conflict runs throughout the book. Read and enjoy!

Recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of armed combat, technology transfer, and romantic entanglements.

-Arthur W. Jordin