The Man with the Iron Heart (Hardcover)

by Harry Turtledove (Author)
Key Phrases: Red Army, Captain Frank, Howard Frank (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this disturbing novel, Turtledove examines the possible responses of the U.S. Army, Congress and ordinary Americans if they had been confronted with asymmetrical warfare after the official surrender of Nazi Germany. In our time line, number two SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was killed in 1942. In this novel we see what might have happened had Heydrich survived and lived to lead a grassroots resistance movement. Borrowing ideas from their late Japanese allies, the fanatics of the German Freedom Front launch a campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. The Russians respond with calculated brutality, while the mother of a slain American soldier pressures President Truman to bring the boys home. The parallels to the current situation in Iraq are obvious but cleverly drawn, leaving readers on both sides of the war debate with much to think about.
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Review
PRAISE FOR HARRY TURTLEDOVE

“Turtledove is the standard-bearer of alternate history.”
–USA Today

Settling Accounts: The Grapple

“[A] magisterial saga of an alternate America . . . a profoundly thoughtful masterpiece of alternate history.”
–Booklist

Settling Accounts: Drive to the East

“First-time readers can jump in and enjoy Turtledove’s richly rearranged cultural and political landscape.”
–The Kansas City Star

Settling Accounts: Return Engagement

“Strong, complex characters against a sweeping alt-historical background.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Settling Accounts: In at the Death,
a New York Times bestseller

“Turtledove pulls out all the stops in a panoramic display of historical speculation. [He] sets the standard for alternate history and once more proves his worth.”
–Library Journal


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; 1 edition (July 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345504348
• ISBN-13: 978-0345504340
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,723 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pales in comparison with his other novels, July 24, 2008

By	Mark Klobas (Tempe, AZ, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

For the past decade, the summer has been the occasion of another entry in Harry Turtledove's "Southern Victory" alternate history series. In it, he explored the eighty years after a Civil War in which the South had won its independence, his last volume, In at the Death (Settling Accounts, Book 4), saw the Confederacy defeated and dissolved after their version of the Second World War. Having apparently finished with the series, Turtledove has moved on to this book. In it, he takes the "Werewolf" resistance movement devised by the Nazis before the demise of the Third Reich and puts it in the hands of Reinhard Heydrich, whom is spared his assassination by Czech partisans during the war.

Benefiting from better planning and more ruthless leadership, the Werewolves unleash a fearsome terrorist campaign against the Allied occupation forces. Soldiers are murdered and mutilated, truck bombs explode, and leading commanders targeted by rocket launcher-equipped fanatics. Readers of Turtledove's earlier series will find his depiction of this similar to that in his earlier novels, when he envisioned disaffected Mormons becoming suicide bombers and conquered Confederates waging a diehard resistance against occupying U.S. forces. But whereas in the earlier novels these elements were only part of the storyline, here they take center stage and form the basis of the action.

When reading the book, it soon becomes apparent that Turtledove draws many of his ideas from the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, both in terms of the occupation and the reaction to it on the home front. Much of it comes across as a metaphor that serves as commentary on modern-day events, one that is much less subtle than in earlier novels. Yet as I read this, I couldn't help but think how much more interesting his premise would have been in a new volume of his "Southern Victory" series, which ended in a place similar to where this novel begins. Perhaps he could not have done what he wanted as easily had he stuck with his earlier series, but this book suffers by comparison from the much more interesting world that he spent so many years cultivating. Longtime Turtledove readers will find much that is familiar and enjoyable within the pages of this book, but in many ways it seems a poor substitute for what he had entertained his fans with in the past.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars His least creative work thusfar, December 8, 2008

By	Daniel Raphael - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like most of Harry Turtledove's writing; his Civil War series is outstanding, and his character portrayals are excellent. This book disappointed me.

The reason for that is that this is almost a direct lift of events in Iraq; it's almost as if he were trying to make us see how the war there should have been conducted (which assumes, of course, that there should have been a war at all). The central conceit of this novel is that instead of having been assassinated, Reinhard Heydrich survived and was designated by Himmler to organize a permanent armed resistance if Germany were defeated. The central themes running through the book are precipitate withdrawal versus sticking it out; suffering now versus greater suffering later; and the obvious foolishness of those who want to "cut and run"--including one major character (mother of a GI killed by the underground resistance after the Germans had surrendered). Hmm--guess who that is? And what about the terrorists--er, I mean, German resistance fighters--who blew themselves up with explosive vests, in order to kill occupying troops? Pretty original stuff, huh?

The whole novel is like that, though I guess the hijacking of planes by the Nazi resistance isn't exactly an Iraq-related technique; that was employed decades ago in our actual history. Again, it's not too imaginative.

There's lots of foul-mouthed realism in the characters of the soldiers of the various occupying countries, though the author's contempt of the French is obvious (gee, that seems familiar, too), as well as for the Russians. Guess who the heroes are? You guessed it.

This book is competently written, save for a few technical errors--but to say that of a work authored by this gentleman is to damn it with faint praise indeed. The way this novel was written, there is obviously going to be a sequel at some point. If Mr. Turtledove is not going to do better than he did with the volume under review, I would suggest he not bother.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Polemical and par for course, August 2, 2008

By	Alt Man (Gainesville, Florida) - See all my reviews

The analysis of the American political scene that Turtledove provides in this book seems accurate: The GOP of 1945-1948 seemed hellbent on opposing Truman's policies no matter how sensical they proved to be. A reading of Cherney's excellent (real) history Candy Bombers shows this. Still, much of the rest of the book was problematic:

1. I have a hard time believing Heydrich could have squirreled away so many weapons, munitions, slave laborers, and built up a huge underground infrastructure without Himmler et alia catching on to it and executing him for defeatism.

2. I also have a hard time believing the Germans would have adopted kamikaze tactics on such a widespread basis, especially when they were not being funded by Heydrich as Al Qaeda has been doing with its followers.

3. By 1948, Truman resoundedly won over the American public on his very unpopular foreign policy. Would the same have happened in Turtledove's Germany? Perhaps.

4. The overt comparisons with Iraq were annoying. Germany had a tradition of parliamentary government, though, and Iraq didn't. This led to huge differences in what did/would happen to both countries post war. Another big diff: Hitler declared war on us (if he hadn't, the GOP probably would have just approved the fight against Japan), while Iraq was a war we started. The differences between post "mission accomplished" Iraq and postwar Germany make the comparisons interesting, but Turtledove overplays them.

I was disappointed with Turtledove's closing comment about that nutty California Senator who made a nutty statement. Yeah, you can find nuts who say nutty things all the time. I hope T was not suggesting that this guy's words were typical of Democratic thought in the post "mission accompished" era in Iraq. I don't know why he put that in.

Finally, the writing: more or less as good or bad as everything else T does. I like a one-series book like this because it's not as repetitive as the books in his series, where he seems to feel the need to remind his prematurely senile readers that, for example, every time Sam Carsten comes along, he tends to sunburn.

All this said, I've read everything T has written for years, but I'm now looking forward more to the works of Robert Conroy and John Birmingham than I am to the works of Mr. T.