Customer Reviews

The Man with the Iron Heart

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

Harry Turtledove is a master at creating fascinating counterfactual scenarios, scenarios so compelling that they have often hidden certain unfortunate truths, namely:

1) Turtledove constantly creates scenarios which his writing talent can't match. His writing is intelligent, but his creativity writes checks which his writing talent can't cover. Beating around the bush, let me expose a related sad truth;

2) Turtledove is not a good writer. Oh, he's an intelligent writer, but I find that:
a) He creates lousy characters;
b) Never uses a chisel when he can find a piledriver; and
c) Always has actions in his books which defy logic or reason.

3) He is determined to tell the story he wants to tell, and will hit points A, B, and C, and won't let logic, reasoning, human nature, historical reality, or the laws of the universe of his own literary creation get in the way of the political point he is determined to make.

None of his books are character driven. He has a lot of characters, which tends to obscure that we really don't know much about these characters. They only exist to move the story forward without any real character development. None of Turtledove's characters have ever felt real to me. I don't like his characters, and I've realized why: He often creates interesting characters, but there's always an artificiality about them that wouldn't be tolerated in less intelligent books. I like characters who resonate with reality, and none of Turtledove's characters manage that trick. No, his books are plot driven, with the characters inevitably smashed up by the inevitability of Turtledove's agenda.

Suicide bombings are not a part of Western culture. Even today, decades after the publicity of suicide bombers from the middle east, it has not crossed over into Western culture. The Japanese were prepared to die for the Emperor out of religious obligation; there was no such paralell in Germany. There were German fanatics, to be sure, but Turtledove wants to comment on recent political history by placing it in the past, and nothing like logic, reasoning, reality, history or human nature will ever stand in his way! Fanatics come in different variations, and what Turtledove ignores is what suiciders have in common is that suicide = heaven.

Turtledove is undeniably intelligent, but he's gotten to the point where he's simply doing intelligent versions of the old SNL skit of "What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?" His intelligence can't hide his inadequacies as a writer.

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.

I had high hopes for this book, being the first Turtledove book I had read. As I love alternate history and as it is so often very bad, I was looking forward to reading a book by one of the supposed best authors in the genre. However, I found myself bitterly disappointed, for many reasons.

The setup is as follows: SS General Reinhard Heydrich survives his historical assassination in May 1942, and a few months later, after the German defeat at Stalingrad, asks his boss Heinrich Himmler for permission to set up an armed resistance movement in the event Germany is conquered. Cut to two years later, as Germany falls to the Allies and the Soviet Union, and Heydrich's Werewolf underground movement is launched.

My first problem quickly becomes clear after only a few chapters: The story is an EXTREMELY heavy-handed allegory about the Iraq/Afghanistan War. The Allies and Soviets become bogged down in a war of occupation against Werewolf, who use suicide bombs liberally, as their leader Heydrich hides in a cave (or salt mine, to be pedantic). Sound familiar? There's a clear Cindy Sheehan parallel as a main character, President Harry Truman often has George Bush quotes crammed in his mouth, and at one point the Werewolves hijack a transport aircraft and crash it into the Eiffel Tower. Subtle.

My second main problem is how the various sides are portrayed. Evidently, the Werewolves must plan really well, because every single operation they ever attempt goes off entirely flawlessly, with the Americans and Soviets completely stumped as to what to do. Allied and Soviet soldiers are all portrayed as clueless boors, as are all the characters who want the Allies to "cut and run" from Germany. The latter is clearly an indication of Turtledove's polotical beliefs, and the former isn't exactly the best way to engender likable (or realistic) main characters from those sides.

There are lots of other minor problems, like how dialogue is forced and unnatural, or the gratuitous (and somewhat unrealistic) amount of swearing and ethnic slurs Turtledove puts in his character's mouths, or the smaller historical anomalies that he ignores/misinterprets, but they don't require going into detail. I will say that of you want a good WW2 alternate history book, pick up 1945: A Novel by Robert Conroy. It's about the hypothetical invasion of Japan, and it's better in essentially every way.

I've been a fan of Turtledove since I first came across Great War: American Front, and I can honestly say that, as a history fanatic, I find much of his work to be one thrill ride after another. With Man with the Iron Heart, I once again enjoyed the plethora of characters he creates, and laughed uproariously at the subtle (and not) commentaries and connections he made with the Iraq War/occupation. Nonetheless, I did find several parts somewhat off-putting, and on one or two occasions I found myself wondering out loud how idiotic and shortsighted some of the characters were. Some of the biggest problems I describe below (WARNING: Here be Spoilers):

1) The Cindy Sheehan-esque antiwar character Diana McGraw; I can understand why Turtledove would place such a character in this story to further illustrate his Iraq commentary, but I find it hard to believe that she would not be able to grasp the idea of the Nazis returning with ICBM-like rockets (which WERE on the drawing boards at the time), or that the Russians wouldn't just roll on to the Rhine if they even caught a whiff of Nazism reappearing. I did enjoy, however, the GOP congressman who essentially hijacks her movement to get his party back in the majority; typical move there. I also enjoyed (and didn't immediately catch) the subtle jab at 1940s American anti-Semitism, with the remarks between McGraw and a couple of her supporters after a heated conversation with a returning Jewish veteran (pg. 440)

2) The return of the German physicists to the occupied zones. Given what happened with Operation Paperclip in our history, I find it absurd that the British or the US would allow men with such knowledge to return to their former lives in Germany with such an insurgency as Turtledove describes running rampant. the likeliest outcome would have been their removal, as actually happened, to important positions in either the UK or the US; the rise of Werner von Braun in NASA is evidence enough of that probability.

3) The general antiwar attitude permeating both civilian and military bodies. From what I've studied of the postwar period, there was ample reason to bring home hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as well as countless amounts of materiel, and yet within the next five years, many of those are still (or back) in Europe as part of NATO. Granted, they didn't have a festering rebellion going on as in this book, but the unspoken reason for NATO's existence was, at the time, to "Keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down." Skillful anti-Communist propaganda, as well as genuine (albeit misplaced) fear of nuclear devastation following the 1949 Soviet A-bomb test, was what kept the US in Europe to this day, and did the same all around the world thanks to the idiotic "domino theory", and I find it very hard to believe that Truman wouldn't be able to work both those concerns with members of both parties, and drown out the isolationists.

Overall, I enjoyed this book; it gave me a new angle to observe current events in Iraq, and rekindled my interest in Cold War studies. If not for the issues mentioned above, this would be one of Turtledove's great stand-alone works, up there with Ruled Britannia and the Guns of the South. As it is, Man with the Iron Heart is a decent read, but won't be one of my favorites anytime soon.

Here is another alternative history, set in World War 2. It looks into what might have happened if the Nazis were able to establish a prolonged Alpine resistance to the Allies. An added twist is that this is masterminded by Reinhard Heydrich, a loathsome being who in our timeline was assasinated by Czech partisans. In the book, he survives, and goes on to preposition materials and diehard Nazis for an underground struggle going well past 1945. In our history, there was briefly the phenomenon of Werewolves; principally young Nazi fanatics who were often too young to have already been conscripted into the Wehrmacht or SS. Well, the book extrapolates this, into a coherent organisation with experienced war veterans.

Reading it today in 2008, there is an inevitable subtext. The American occupation of Iraq and perhaps to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. A powerful metaphor that undergirds the book's events. We see the use of suicide bombers, sabotage, and the presence of a sullen population unwilling to admit defeat. To some extent, Turtledove already used such ideas in his long running Civil War series. Where we saw Mormons, Negroes and Canadians availing themselves of these tactics. But in some wise, not as central to the plot as in this book.

Turtledove is very careful here not to place the Nazis in a heroic light. Instead, he tries to highlight the moral problems and ambiguities faced by both Germans and occupiers (mostly American). Some Germans become aware of the atrocities committed by their country, leaving them to ponder whether they should justly struggle against the occupiers. While the question arises whether the Americans should use harsh means to suppress the insurgents, that echo what the Nazis so recently did themselves as occupiers.

The only possible problem about the book is whether it will age well. If say 20 years from now, the US is no longer occupying Iraq and Afghanistan (or other countries), and no longer experiencing insurgencies, the book might get embarrassingly dated. Recall those original Star Trek episodes from 66-68 about a pacifist movement in the Federation, or when the Enterprise encounters a planet in civil war between 2 groups, painted half-white and half-black? A current viewer might cringe at the episodes. Could this book engender the same reaction?

Having read almost every Harry Turtledove alternate history, I consider myself a devoted fan and also accepting of his idiosyncrasies, quirks, and deficiencies. Turtledove repeats and rehashes themes constantly and his alternate history takes shortcuts by using actual history as a template that is obviously transparent. Nevertheless, his style and methods usually work to make a good story. Somehow, he is usually very creative, predictable, fascinating, and plodding, all at the same time. I have previously reviewed several of his books favorably. My opinions often increased as I wrote each review with the realization that I really enjoyed the books and the positives far outweighed the negatives. Unfortunately, that is not the case with The Man with the Iron Heart. Turning post World War II Germans into Al Qaeda type fanatics did not work in my imagination. The portrayal of the home front peace movement in the U.S. had no believability either and dragged down the story. Worst of all, the book often bored me and seemed ridiculous at the same time. Perhaps I have reached the saturation point with Turtledove, or more likely, he is tired, rushed, and running out of ideas. Did Turtledove "jump the shark" with this one?

Turtledove does a credible job with this novel with some glaring exceptions which will hit readers over the head repeatedly. Repeatedly is key because this book isn't as repetitious as most he's written. I found it somewhat thoughtful and interesting. However, the most exciting and wonderful thing about this alternate history is it isn't the start of another series that goes on forever and says the same things over and over. Turtledove isn't a great writer, doesn't create characters with much depth, and isn't always creative. But at least this is only a single novel and for that alone it deserves some reward.

On balance, I think Harry Turtledove might have been better advised to put out a second book in his new "Atlantis" series (a genuinely interesting look at what might have happened had the eastern seaboard of North America been split off by tectonic processes from the rest of the continent and ended up in the central Atlantic) instead of this rather disappointing attempt to write a World War II-era analogue for the United States' troubles in Iraq. He writes it well - when keeping to the confines of a single book, he avoids the pitfalls of repetitiousness that he falls into in his mega-series - but then he falls into a different trap, yielding to the temptation to write an op-ed article instead of a novel.

The pity and the shame is that the basic concept is quite interesting: what would have happened if the Nazis had exercised more forethought and prepared their "Werewolf" guerrilla movement well in advance for the postwar occupation, and what if Reinhard Heydrich had survived his assassination attempt? There's ample matter here for a great alternate-history novel, but unfortunately, _The Man with the Iron Heart_ just isn't it. Turtledove spends way too much time on trying to draw what the TV Tropes Wiki website calls "Anvilicious" analogies between what's happening in Iraq and U.S. politics today and what might have happened if the Allies had had to face a well-organized diehard Nazi movement in the months and years following V-E Day. It's pretty clear that he thinks "out now" proponents of ending U.S. involvement in Iraq are making a serious mistake - still a debatable proposition - but he hammers on his point in such a repetitive, indeed clumsy, fashion that even a lot of people who would agree with his hypothesis are likely to end up being bored and irritated.

In this not so subtle parallel of modern fourth generation warfare, Turtledove again weaves and alternative history. He leaves behind his favored series of a post Confederate victory history and weaves a new world of a post Nazi Germany where some refuse to surrender to conventional defeat. Instead, a growing resistance in Germany builds to a fever pitch leading to the inevitable rebirth of the National Socialists. This leads America to the horns of a dilemma between The Forever War or giving up hard-fought gains. It is the same dilemma faced in Vietnam in the late 20th century and now faced in Afghanistan in the early 21st. Did not Mark Twain say that history does not repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes? Turtledove reveals how true that could be with minor twists to what was which turn to what could have been, and what is now.

The characters are believable and easy to relate with. The plot is, in light of the distinct parallels with today's news, somewhat predictable yet immensely enjoyable all the same. As might be expected, the ending leaves one with an obvious opening to sequels whether such are in the works or not. A thought-provoking read that reveals that there are no easy answers and perhaps, in such situations, the choice between two paths may lead to equally unwanted historical consequences. Very well done.