Customer Reviews

The War That Came Early: West and East

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have read almost everything Turtledove has written from the recasting of the Byzantine Empire to the various alternate history series. A lot of these series were very well-written and interesting. I was looking forward to this series, because it has always seemed one of the major missed chances in history that Germany wasn't confronted in 1938. Several of the panzer divisions that crushed France two years later were equipped with Czech tanks that Chamberlain made a gift of to the Nazis.

With this second book, the idea has fizzled out and been overwhelmed by Turtledove's focus on detailed examination of the smoking habits of a dozen or so minor characters who have minimal importance in the scheme of things. About half the 448 pages are devoted to descriptions of the characters smoking, which is tedious beyond belief.

A good alternate history series needs to have a balance between the plotlines of ordinary characters who show what's happening in the trenches, and some material from the POV of high-ranking or close to high-ranking characters so we can see the more interesting developments of strategy. This series has only the low level characters, with the only one drawn from history (if you can call his autobiography history, rather than fiction) being Hans Rudel, the Stuka pilot.

This will the the last book in the series I purchase, and I have to regard the money paid for this volume as not well-spent.

"It's a tough life being an everyman character in a turtledove trilogy" sighed Vaclav, the Czech cliché as bombs fell all around.

"How do you think I feel" muttered Cpl Von Typicalgerman-name "I expected to be a hard bitten cynical war veteran in a King Tiger in 1945 and instead I'm a hard bitten cynical war veteran and its only 1938. Also, I wish to point out that I am in a PzII, a great let down, I may say."

"Don't get me started boyo, I mean, pal, I mean chum" groaned an allegedly Welsh soldier "look, he calls me Walsh, why not Llewelyn, or Griffiths something that actualy is Welsh as opposed to sounding like it. And another thing, I don't even sound welsh, see? I talk all posh I do. I bet I dont even know the words to Cwm Rhondda and I dont mention rugby once".

"Way to go Tommy" commented the cut out german landser "I'm supposed to be a german but why do I speak like a yankee gangster or a US marine?"

"Perhaps a lot of US Marines and gangsters were germans? or because Turtledove is trying to emphasise the common experience of the horror of war?" mused the US Marine who had done nothing so far apart from drink and sleep around and felt very nervous because obviously something bad was going to happen to his white Russian girlfriend who was very pretty even though she was made of cardboard.

Meanwhile, "Heheheh" muttered the voice of the Author "you think this is bad, I can do entire trilogies of trilogies! For you the short war book is over!"

I tried to like it but really you can switch in chapters from the WW2 era of the aliens books and I dont think you'd notice. Mr Turtldove is asleep at the wheel.

West and East is another in the alternative history genre in which Harry Turtledove specialises. The catalyst for this different course for the Second World War is the assumption that, rather than appeasing Hitler (as, of course, he did in reality) the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, stands up to the German dictator. This is the second in the series of novels which charts the course of the war describing what might have happened in the event that the War began almost a year earlier than it, in fact, did.

Turtledove follows his well tried format of viewing the course of events through the eyes of a number of combatants and other participants. It would be all to easy to construct a muddled mess of a novel, since none of the story lines are very directly related. This is a trap which Turtledove avoids, mainly by ensuring that our interest in each strand of the story is artfully retained. Each of the characters is sufficiently well drawn to pique our interest in them as individuals. Furthermore, his knowledge of the technology of the period lends further interest and credibilty to the possibilities he outlines. The background to the story line is presented in a way which repays the obvious amount of research he has undertaken.

All in all, this a first class example of the genre which I recommend to all alternate history fans and those who simply enjoy a thrilling novel.

Enjoy the read!

I am in total agreement with the other reviewers who found this novel lacking. Sorry, Harry, but with an alternate history I need to know more about how the grand strategy of the war changed. What is the Churchill - Chamberlain dynamic, how does the US view Japan, who went after Hitler? This novel is essentially an All Quiet on the Western Front spread over the western front, the eastern front (1)(Germany -Russia), the eastern front (2) (Japan - Russia, the southern front (Spanish civil war) and the non-front (US - Japan) in China. Since each front has two sides and two sets of grunts, everything gets simplified so that it seems the same on all fronts. Everyone freezes in the winter, every front seems to turn into something very closely resembling the trench warfare of WWI, everyone either hates or dislikes their senior officers or non-coms, etc. Oh, yeah, everyone also complains about the quality of the tobacco.

I assume at some point there will be an Italian or North African front to add to the confusion, although how he is going to have soldiers complaining about wet trenches in North Africa holds some interest. Global weather change?

In alternate history, you are very interested in changes in the over all strategy of the war and then want to see how these changes played out on the grunts. Here its all grunts, too many grunts, in too many places effectively doing the same things and complaining about the same things. By the way, Rudel survived the war flying to the end. He lost a leg and kept flying winning 11 decorations some specially designed by Hitler. The guy killed so many Russian tanks that it is incredible. See his autobiography Stuka Pilot. Its more fascinating than this book.

I liked "Hitler's War" the first in the series now called "The War That Came Early". In that book, World War Two got kicked off in 1937, when no one was really ready for it. Now in this book it's 1939, and there's a lot of things happening. The Japanese are trying to cut of Vladivostok, the Germans are in France, Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Soviets are fighting a two-front war they can't handle, and Nationalists and Republicans are going at it hammer and tongs in Spain, while the USA remains above it all, carefully neutral.

I found this book to be a nice improvement over the last one. Some of what I criticized in my review of that book, like the repetitive nature of some of the text, is absent here. The characters have also gotten a lot more interesting their plights are more entertaining.

There are some choices Turtledove makes that I might not have (but then again, I'm not a wildly successful author). For example, there's a point in the middle during which there's a chance for one of the major nations involved to change leadership. Had things gone differently than they did in this book, I think it might've made for a more solid story down the line (does a "what if?" question about this book mean I'm indulging in alternate-alternate history?)

This book was much more engrossing than the last one. I really got into it, and was very surprised when I reached the end. That, I suppose, is some of the highest praise I can give. Well, that plus the fact that I can't wait to read the next one!

Turtledove has produced a novel almost totally lacking in what appeals to readers of alternative history, namely an exposition of how the postulated change made a difference. He starts with an interesting concept - what would the effect on history have been if WWII had started a year earlier, but then goes virtually no where with it. The novel is mostly merely a long series of uninteresting small unit military engagements. I don't know how I kept reading it - probably searching in disbelief trying to find the nonexistent substance.

Another entry in another multi-volume saga that drags on forever and goes slowly nowhere. When Turtledove delivers a single, stand alone novel, one is so relieved that perhaps those works get more praise than they deserve. Here, again, we go, deep into a world of "what if" that should be fascinating but is just flat and boring. One dimensional characters, stereotypes, ridiculous dialogue, repetitious writing, and many needless pages. Yes, these are Turtledove specialties and areas where he really excells. Unfortunately, where he fails is in the areas of excitement, freshness, originality, and holding the reader's interest. Here, again, we go...

In Turtledove's alternate history universe, appeasement failed and World War II broke out in 1938 rather than 1939. Hitler's troops, equipped with less capable Panzer IIs, made their bid to conquer France, but fell short of Paris--as they did in World War I. Meanwhile, they've allied with Poland against the USSR, taking on the Russian giant well before the 1941 timeframe in our own universe. With France mounting offensives in the West, the Spanish Civil War still raging, and Russia pushing into Poland, Germany strikes back hard against Russia, sends out its submarine forces against Britain, and invades Denmark and Norway (as they did during the war in our timeline to keep their trade route open with Sweden and presumably to create new submarine bases with which to attack Britain. Meanwhile, Russia and Japan have gone to war following up on the difficulties the two nations were experiencing at the time.

That the west should have confronted Hitler early is a staple of American politics. Author Harry Turtledove turns to this question in THE WAR THAT CAME EARLY series. In 1938, Hitler lacked the modern tanks that led to his successes in Poland and France. Still, his generals had adopted blitzkrieg tactics that effectively used what he had. Turtledove plays around with history, allowing a German bomber pilot to suggest turning his Stuka divebomber into a tank-killer, letting a Czech infantryman become a sniper using an antitank rifle, creating a combined battleship/u-boat force for the Germans, and stretching out the Spanish Civil War thanks to greater French help to the Republican side.

Turtledove has developed an approach to alternate history that focuses on everyman rather than the generals and politicians. In his battles, it's the sergeants and privates rather than the senior officers who make up the action. On the civilian side, it's a young Jewish woman and an American refuge anxious to make her way home from a Czech vacation where she got caught in the war.

Turtledove's approach can work. It's valuable to see the world from the eyes of ordinary people. To see war in its horrors rather than its heroics. And certainly it's valuable and horrible to see Hitler's antisemite practices carried out. Unfortunately, most of the life of the ordinary soldier or refuge is boring and too many of Turtledove's scenes don't really move the war along, don't move character development forward, and don't really grab the reader. Even worse, because nothing his happening, and possibly because it's been fifty or so pages since we last visited with a character, we often get repeated information.

Turtledove is a capable author and he's hit on a really intriguing thought question in his THE WAR THAT CAME EARLY series. It's too easy to assume that Hitler would have failed if he'd been forced into war early--but Britain and France were no less prepared than Germany was, the potential for a more active alliance with Poland, Yugoslavia, Japan and Finland existed, and Hitler's regime depended on his showing continued strength--which would have made backing down virtually impossible. I wish Turtledove had let us see more of how the year-earlier opening of the war would have changed things, replacing some of the more boring scenes of people sitting around complaining about sergeants, worrying about ration cards, or exchanging poor-quality cigarettes.

The second installment in Harry Turtledove's "The War that Came Early" series starts off where the inaugural volume, Hitler's War, left off. A British-French counter-offensive succeeds in driving the Germans back from the suburbs of Paris, leaving the Germans with a two-front war once again. In eastern Europe, the Soviet offensive against Poland prompts the Poles to solicit help from the Germans, while the Soviets find themselves facing a two-front war as well, as a Japanese attack attempts to sever the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Amidst the maelstrom, a cast of ordinary people - men and women, soldiers and civilians - struggle to cope with the changes the war brings to their lives, all the while hoping to find a way to survive the conflict taking place all around them.

Turtledove's latest alternate history novel is a considerable improvement over the first book in the series. Though his characters continue to suffer from the lack of distinct voices, he gives them much more to do this time around, which allows him to develop them in ways that make then far more distinct from one another than they were in the preceding volume. The improvement is such that I find myself looking forward to Turtledove's next installment with far more anticipation than I had for this book, which hopefully will reflect further the qualities that have gained for him the title of "The Master of Alternate History".

It seems Harry Turtledove expects his readers to know a little of the actual history that pertains to the things he writes about. At least it helps to understand what's going on here. Past that, he uses pretty much the same formula in all his alternate histories: spend a few pages of text to tell what happens to one character, then another and then another, and thereby tell the larger tale. That can be fun, but it also can be a bit tedious, especially if it seems the tale is going nowhere. Given a basic knowledge of what happened during the real World War II, one recognizes this as a bridge from the beginning to the end, i.e., he didn't intend to end the story here. He has a lot more to say, and it will take at least another book to say it. Indeed, he may have two or three more books in the pipeline. That suits me. I'll read the next one when it comes out.