Customer Reviews

The War That Came Early: Hitler's War

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this in the mistaken view (hope really) that it was not yet one more endless series from the Harry Turtledove heavy book building industrial complex. I was wrong. It is apparently the first volume of a new alternate history series based upon the interesting premise that the Munich talks in 1939 fall through and Hitler gets the war that he (thinks he) wants rather than having to wait until the following year as historically occurred. From that premise, the author launches a workmanlike and reasonably plausible account of the resulting war - to include its most likely outcome within the time frame alloted for this first volume. As noted, the writing is easy to read and the story not without interest. The only problem for me being that I had just recently finished reading a small collection of memoirs of World War I and II infantrymen - American, British, and German - and Turtledove's version of infantry warfare actually pales by comparison to the reality. The failure herein of fiction to keep up with history surprised me, however realistic this story might be otherwise. If you are a Turtledove fan, you will enjoy the book and the series, I hope you do. Personally, I'm getting off of the bus at this stop, thanks anyway.

What if World War Two broke out a year earlier, during the Czech Crisis of 1938? That is the premise of Harry Turtledove's new alternate history novel, Hitler's War. Germany invades Czechoslovakia in September 1938. As a result, Britain, France and the Soviet Union declare war on Germany. Poland more fearful of Stalin than Hitler, ends up going to war against the Soviet Union.

I found this novel an enjoyable read. There are a few subtle differences in the politics of the time. For example, although the Soviet Union is fighting against the Nazis, they are not quite allies with Britain and France.

The action takes place mainly in Europe, with a bit of attention given to the Japan and the Soviet Union's ambitions in the Far East. There is a rarely a dull moment in the storyline, which is a real roller coaster ride, with a large cast of characters.

Unfortunately, which such an vast amount of characters, it is hard for the author to go too much in-depth about each one, but as this is the first volume of series, I am sure we will learn a lot more about them, in future installments.

Harry Turtledove has done some extraordinary work in alternate history. "How Few Remain" is amazing. But now that Turtledove is a full-time writer and no longer a history professor, he is very often given over to a painfully mechanical and repetitive writing. There's an awful lot of that in "Hitler's War". In his best books, Turtledove researched historical characters and used them convincingly to drive his plot lines. In this one, we have a quick glimpse of the collapse of the alternate Munich conference, and are promptly dropped into watching the alternate history unfold before a bunch of everyman characters scattered around Europe and Asia, none of whom has any role in actually shaping events. One German character has a moment where you think he might have changed the course of the war, but no, of course he doesn't. Apart from the fact, beaten repeatedly into our heads, that they wear different colored uniforms, his French, German, British, Czech, Russian, characters are largely interchangeable. I've lived a lot of my life in France, and Turtledove's French characters don't sound very French to me. Turtledove picks two or three superficial distinguishing national details and pounds them into the ground. And when he gets it wrong, it's really, really annoying.

For all that, I did read through to the end. Turtledove has a genius for posing the question, "suppose this had happened differently...", and the premise for this novel/series is interesting enough where I wanted to know what was going to happen. I probably won't bother buying the next in the series, though.

Mr. Turtledove launched a new series with this book. As usual, he did an excellent job of research and created some interesting characters. His technical descriptions are correct, when it comes to armor, weapons, aircraft, and tactics. His descriptions of the combat itself are not too realistic, which is a good thing as it would be too difficult to read without a bout of depression setting in. The style of this, as in his other series, is more about the what if than the detail and horror and that makes them more readable.
This is not a great work of fiction, but it is a very competent bit of writing by a true professional. He captures the spirit of the common soldier and keeps the action moving except for interludes of humanizing his characters. The editing in this work is better, but there is still too much repetition of phrases. All in all, I highly recommend this book.

Ol' HT is always first-rate even when he's off his game and this time he
is a bit off - but so what! HT is ALWAYS worth reading but HT is probably right about the consequences of Chamberlain's failure to dither
and all that came from that.

Harry Turtledove, the unchallenged master of alternative history scores a bullseye with his latest epic saga! Starting in a Spain just as their Civil War germinates, Turtledove's latest book quickly picks up speed and plunges you into the world of a war that could potentially have happened.

From the battlefields of Spain, to the marshes of northern Poland, and the frozen far far east, the reader is plunged head first in the War That Came Early. The scope of this first book, in which the British and French stood their ground against Nazi aggression at Munich (where, historically, they caved to Hitler's demands to carve up Czechoslovakia) is dazzeling. The detail, though, is pure Turtledove, and quite realistic; by the time you're done reading it, you almost have to check yourself to remember that it did not actually happen this way.

As almost always, the author quickly dispenses with the political reasons for the conflict and goes straight for the action. And like always, he focusses on the common soldier on both sides, and the innocent civilians who are caught up in the malestrom.

That's what gives this story such depth. It's not simply a story of war, it's the story of people, whether its the perspective a brave and patriotic (but politically naive) German dive bomber pilot and his cynical tail gunner, a French polis, a British Tommy, a dedicated Japanese soldier, a Jewish German, or a trapped American woman, you see the war unfold before your eyes and theirs. It's this realism that makes the narrative so compelling and moves the story along, never quite sure of the outcome, which always remains in doubt until the final pages.

This dramatic tension is what makes Hitler's War so compelling; you literally don't want to put it down as each page tantalizes you with more details, like a classy burlesque dancer slowly shedding her garmets. By the time you reach the final page, though, you're ready to cheer along with the hard-pressed French soldier who lets out a whoop as a British Hurricaine fighter swoops in low to strafe the German lines.

It's only when you're done that you realize this is, as Churchill once famously said, not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Where Turtledove takes this, only he knows but with this first novel of an alternate World War II, he has clearly set the bar very high for what will follow.

If Hitler's War: The War That Came Early is not real history, it is because it is better than real history. It is a snapshot, indeed, of a world gone mad, and of the madman that brought it about.

Fraught with tension, and filled with great detail, Turtledove has weaved a very compelling and realistic story as only he can. From the battlefields of Spain and Siberia, from the perspective of a German panzer commander to that of a Jewish family trying to live in the Nazi Reich, the pace never lets up for a moment. It is, quite simply, a terrific and facinating read!

Thank you Harry!

I'm a big fan of Harry Turtledove. While I enjoyed this book it did feel like it was just setting up the ones that will follow, but you have to start somewhere.

The Book Report: The "Master of Alternate History", per his jacket copy, takes on one of the most popular subjects in all of alternative hitory: WWII. Equaled in numbers of treatments only by the American Civil War, WWII is a target rich environment for armchair historians to play with: Operation SeaLion succeeds (invasion of the UK); the 1944 coup against Hitler succeeds; the 1940 US election returns an isolationist President and the UK reaches terms; Battle of Midway goes the other way; Japan doesn't get nuked, much loss of life in conquering it; etc etc etc blah blah blah. Since 2001, I've read the nasty, hostile, but very interesting posts on the old USENET group soc.hist.what-if, so it takes a LOT to get me interested in something about WWII. Turtledove's fame in the field wouldn't be enough to entice me, I assure you, since I can't *abide* one of his most popular series about aliens landing on earth during WWII.

Here, however, we have something that really piques my interest. It's an actual historical possibility: Chamberlain of England and Daladier of France refuse to hand over Czechoslovakia instead of buying themselves a little longer preparation time by waving bye-bye to their ally as they did on our timeline. (The antique USENET convention for representing alternative history events is to do this: *WWII means the MODIFIED version of the war, where WWII is understood to be the one departed from by the modified version; henceforward, if you see the asterisk, that's what it means.) So *WWII starts in 1938, not September 1939. Poland isn't the first country attacked, and in fact ends up allied to Germany in opposition to its very long-term enemy Russia. The *Spanish Civil War (remember now!) is run by a General Sanjurjo, instead of Franco; the man died for his vanity in OUR reality (called OTL in USENET terms, so again: "OTL" = Our Time Line, the world we learned about in history books). This means for some very cogent reasons that the *Spanish Civil War isn't over when *WWII begins, and there are some significant results from that. The *Japanese, busy raping China into submission as in OTL, realize that one of their longterm ambitions is in easy reach: The conquest of Siberia, with its **astonishing** riches, to add to Manchuria. It's all very plausible, and it's all very tidily constructed.

What Turtledove usually does, he does here: He tells his story through the lens of many different viewpoints on all sides of every conflict. He makes sure the reader sees through American, Russian, Czech, French, Spanish, Japanese, Jewish eyes what the causes and results of *WWII are. All that tidy construction feels quite fragmented, and seems to be an excuse for chaos. In fact, this book could simply not have been written had Turtledove not had a tight and complete grasp of the facts he's departing from, in order to create the modified world. His success is close to complete.

My Review: Oh, but the price one pays for following so many, many characters. Nothing ever gets more than set up; the payoff is pages and pages away, several stories of great interest intervening, and sometimes the action sounds quite repetitive because after 40pp the author or his editor thought it'd be a good idea to give a little review of where we left, for examply, Luc Harcourt and Sergeant Demange. Wearing. Action-slowing. Not usually necessary, IM(never-very)HO. But nonetheless, the suspense manages to build, because unlike the OTL history of WWII, the *WWII has events in it we never even heard of! I like that. I like that I can trust Dr. Turtledove to build those events from sound conjectures. And most of the time, I overlook the little inconsistencies (a character bound for Romania suddenly turns up in Berlin, no explanation offered). I like alternative history because I like OTL history, and I like seeing what a storyteller can do with the astoundingly rich vein of material there is in any historical account.

But will this book make converts among those who have not drunk the historical Kool-Aid? No, on balance, I suspect not. I'd never suggest that someone start reading alternative history here. But for those of us already In The Cult, it's a damn good outing and the beginning of a series that promises some very rich rewards.

Harry Turtledove does it again with another interesting alternative history series, this time based on WWII using the actual technology of the time.

The story and characters do seem to follow the same formula of previous series but this is a good read and new readers as well as readers of his other series will enjot it

Typical Turtledove flitting back and forth from one little group of military grunts or civilians to another, showing point of view. A little more background on the military/political scene would have been nice. Way too much repetitious detail on various folks smoking habits. Harry, I got it after the first dozen times, already. Turtledove is a great alt history writer, but this is not one of his better efforts.