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Now, in this thrilling, provocative, and fascinating alternate history by Harry Turtledove, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? What if Hitler had acted rashly, before his army was ready–would such impatience have helped him or doomed him faster? Here is an action-packed, blow-by-blow chronicle of the war that might have been–and the repercussions that might have echoed through history–had Hitler reached too far, too soon, and too fast.
Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell this story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China to members of a Jewish German family with a proud history of war service to their nation, from ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory–and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast.
A novel that reveals the human face of war while simultaneously riding the twists and turns that make up the great acts of history, Hitler’s War is the beginning of an exciting new alternate history saga. Here is a tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, of spies, soldiers, and traitors, of the shifting alliances that draw some together while tearing others apart. At once authoritative, brilliantly imaginative, and hugely entertaining, Hitler’s War captures the beginning of a very different World War II–with a very different fate for our world today.
20 July 1936—outside Lisbon
General José Sanjurjo was a short, heavyset man in his early sixties. He looked from the light plane to the pilot and back again. “Is everything in readiness?” he asked, his tone saying heads would roll if the pilot told him no.
Major Juan Antonio Ansaldo didn’t tell him anything, not right away. Ansaldo was pacing back and forth, his agitation growing with every stride. He watched as Sanjurjo’s aides shoved two large, heavy trunks into the airplane. “Those look heavy,” Ansaldo said at last.
“They hold the general’s uniforms!” an aide said, as if to a simpleton. “On the eve of his victorious march into Madrid, he can’t arrive in Burgos without uniforms!”
Nervously, Ansaldo lit a cigarette. Who was he, a major, to tell Spain’s most senior—and most prestigious—general what to do? He’d placed himself at the disposal of the Spanish state . . . which Sanjurjo would embody, once he flew from Portugal to Burgos to take charge of the rising against the Spanish Republic.
When he flew to Burgos? If he flew to Burgos! The city, in north-central Spain, was a long way from Lisbon. The plane, a two-seater, had only so much fuel and only so strong a motor.
“General . . .” Ansaldo said.
“What is it?” growled the man people called the Lion of the Rif because of his victories in Spanish Morocco.
“¡Viva Sanjurjo!” the general’s men shouted. “¡Viva España!”
Sanjurjo preened . . . as well as a short, heavyset man in his sixties could preen. “Now I know my flag is waving over Spain,” he boomed like a courting grouse. “When I hear the Royal March again, I will be ready to die!”
That gave Major Ansaldo the opening he needed. “General, I don’t want you to die before you get to Spain, before you hear the Royal March again.”
“What are you talking about?” Sanjurjo demanded.
“Sir, those trunks your men put aboard—”
“What about them? They’re my uniforms, as my aides told you. A man is hardly a man without his uniforms.” At the moment, Sanjurjo was wearing a light gray summer-weight civilian suit. He looked and acted quite manly enough for Ansaldo.
“They weigh a lot.” The pilot gestured. “Look at the pine trees all around the airstrip. I need the plane’s full power to take off. I have to make sure I have enough fuel to fly you to Burgos. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Señor. Spain needs you too much to take chances.”
General Sanjurjo frowned—not fearsomely, but thoughtfully. “I can’t fly into Burgos like this.” He brushed at the gray linen of his sleeve.
“Why not, your Excellency? Why not?” Ansaldo asked. “Don’t you think the people of Burgos would be delighted—would be honored—to give you anything you need? Aren’t there any uniforms in Burgos? God help the rising if that’s true!”
“God help the rising.” Sanjurjo crossed himself. Major Ansaldo followed suit. The general took a gold case from an inside jacket pocket and lit a cigarette of his own. He smoked in abrupt, savage drags. “So you think we’ll crash with my uniforms on board, do you?”
“When you’re flying, you never know,” the pilot answered. “That’s why you don’t want to take any chances you don’t have to.”
Sanjurjo grunted. He took a couple of more puffs on the aromatic Turkish cigarette, then ground it out under his heel. “Luis! Orlando!” he called. “Get the trunks off the plane!”
His aides stared as if they couldn’t believe their ears. “Are you sure, your Excellency?” one of them asked.
“Of course I’m sure, dammit.” By the way José Sanjurjo spoke, he was always sure. And so he probably was. “Spain comes first, and Spain needs me more than I need my uniforms. As the pilot here says, there are many uniforms. Por Dios, amigos, there is only one Sanjurjo!” The general struck a pose.
The aides didn’t argue any more. They did what Sanjurjo told them to do. Wrestling the trunks out of the plane’s narrow fuselage proved harder than stuffing them in had been. It took a lot of bad language and help from three other men before they managed it.
Major Ansaldo wondered how many kilos he’d saved. Fifty? A hundred? He didn’t know, and he never would—no scale was close by. But now he would fly with the kind of load the light plane was made to carry. He liked that.
“If your Excellency will take the right-hand seat . . .” he said.
“Certainly.” Sanjurjo was as spry as a man of half his age and half his bulk.
After Ansaldo started the motor, he ran through the usual flight checks. Everything looked good. He gave the plane all the throttle he could. He needed to get up quickly, to clear the trees beyond the far edge of the bumpy field.
When he pulled back on the stick, the nose lifted. The fixed undercarriage left the ground. The bumping stopped. The air, for the moment, was smooth as fine brandy. A slow smile spread across General Sanjurjo’s face. “Do you know what this is, Major?” he said. “A miracle, that’s what! To fly like a bird, like an angel . . .”
“It’s only an airplane, sir,” said Ansaldo, as matter-of-fact as any pilot worth his pay.
“Only an airplane!” Sanjurjo’s eyebrows leaped. “And a woman is only a woman! It is an airplane that takes me out of exile, an airplane that takes me out of Portugal, an airplane that takes me away from the hisses and sneezes and coughs of Portuguese. . . .”
“Sí, Señor.” Major Ansaldo knew how the general felt there. If a Spaniard and a Portuguese spoke slowly and clearly, or if they wrote things out, they could generally manage to understand each other. But Portuguese always sounded funny—sounded wrong—in a Spaniard’s ears. The reverse was also bound to be true, but the pilot never once thought of that.
And his important passenger hadn’t finished: “It is an airplane that takes me back to Spain, back to my country—and Spain will be my country once we settle with the Republican rabble. It is—what does Matthew say?—a pearl of great price.” He crossed himself again.
So did Juan Antonio Ansaldo. “You have the soul of a poet, your Excellency,” he said. General Sanjurjo smiled like a cat in front of a pitcher of cream. Ansaldo did, too, but only to himself; a little judicious flattery, especially flattery from an unexpected direction, never hurt. But he also had a serious point to make: “I’m glad you chose not to endanger the plane—and yourself, a more valuable pearl—with those trunks. Spain needs you.”
“Well, yes,” Sanjurjo agreed complacently. “Who would command the forces of the right, the forces of truth, against the atheists and Communists and liberals in the Republic if anything happened to me? Millán Astray?”
“I don’t think so, sir!” Ansaldo exclaimed, and that wasn’t flattery. Astray, the founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion, was a very brave man. Colonial fighting had cost him an arm and an eye. He still led the Legion, whose war cry was “¡Viva la muerte!”—Long live death! Men like that were valuable in the officer corps, but who would want such a skeletal fanatic leading a country?
“Bueno. I don’t think so, either.” Yes, Sanjurjo sounded complacent, all right. And why not, when he held the rising in the palm of his hand? He couldn’t resist throwing out the name of another possible replacement: “Or what about General Franco?”
“Not likely, your Excellency!” Again, Major Ansaldo meant what he said. No one had ever questioned Francisco Franco’s courage, either, even if he wasn’t so showy about displaying it as Millán Astray was. But the plump little general was no great leader of men. With Sanjurjo’s personality, he could stand beside—could, at need, stand up to— Mussolini and Hitler. Franco? Franco had all the warmth, all the excitement, of a canceled postage stamp.
“No, not likely at all,” General Sanjurjo said. “Once I get to Burgos, the true business of setting Spain to rights can begin.”
“Sí, Señor,” Ansaldo said once more. The light plane droned on: toward Spain, toward Burgos, toward victory, toward the birth of a whole new world.
Legion
Posted November 11, 2009
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Let me start by saying Harry Turtledove is an amazing author and definatly go and read some of his other books. Just not this one. It starts out plausible but quickly becomes frustrating. The main problem I had was being expected to believe that a czech soldier escapes from his defeated country and goes to France to fight the nazis. If you read the book you'll know what i'm talking about. All in all I was desappointed by Harry Turtledove but will still read anything new he writes.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.DrTomCA
Posted August 15, 2009
Harry Turtledove has long been a favorite of mine. I rarely wait for a paperback edition of his alternate history novels. I can't; they're too damn good. But "Hitler's War" was a disappointment for me. The characters are sketchy with little or no resolution for most of them at the end. Unless you are a serious student of history, and are thoroughly aware of the world political situation in the late 1930s it will be easy for you to get lost. There was too much information and too little character/plot movement in one book. This would have been an excellent basis for a short series of books but, alas, it didn't happen. I will, of course, continue to read his most excellent books, but I cannot recommend this one.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I have been a long-time Harry Turtledove reader. His early works were creative, imaginative, and page-turners. However, his recent works have been extremely disappointing. He still does good character development, creates a credible "what if" world, and can hold the readers interest. However, in this like his last four or five books, it just seems as if he looks at the number of pages he's written and says "well, that's two hundred and eighty pages so I'll just quit and send it to the publisher now". His recent books have all ended abruptly, no conclusion and no resolution. Not even a paragraph with a glance and what the future in this alternative history might be. Will there be a sequel? Who knows? Sometimes he writes one, more often in recent years he doesn't. When I finished this book, it no longer left me wanting more - it was more like never again! This is probably the last book I will buy from an author that I used to look forward to every new publication.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.In 1938 England and France were prepared to tear away the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and cede it to Germany until the leader of Sudeten Germany Konrad Heinlien takes refuge in Germany. A Czech assassinates him giving Hitler the excuse to invade. Neville Chamberlain and Messer Daladier refuse to sign the treaty that Hitler offers them. Hitler declares war.
The Czechs fight bravely, but are easily overwhelmed by the superior Nazi army abetted by Slovakia independence supporters. The German war machine quickly conquers Holland, Belgium and Lichtenstein. While leaders of both sides map strategic objectives, individuals struggle with the effect of the hostilities. Peggy Druce came to take the waters at Marianske Lazne but ended up a neutral stuck in Berlin unable to go home. The Goldmans always thought they were Germans first and Jews second until the Third Reich destroyed their beliefs. Their son joins the German army under a false name. Besides the prime fronts, there are other local wars like the Spanish Civil War where American Communists fight against Fascist forces. In China, the Japanese have invaded China while American marines have a ringside seat to the pacific Theatre. However, the biggest news is the German blitzkrieg heading towards Paris.
Harry Turtledove once again changes a pivotal point in history and provides his answers to what if Chamberlain said no to Hitler. In HITLER'S WAR, neither side is at full readiness especially the Allies who were stunned when war broke out as they adhered to their belief that they fought two decades earlier "the war to end all wars." Mr. Turtledove shows the impact of war on individuals who are powerless and quickly lose all hope. Although the alternative history premise is fun to follow due to a strong execution, it is the little people who bring heart and soul to the epic of "war what is good for, absolutely nothing: (Edwin Starr).
Harriet Klausner
2 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.A fun read and very a typical "Turtledove" novel. The Alternative History pviot point for this book is that Hitler starts WWII earlier then in our timeline. Here the war starts with an invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as opposed to a free walk-in occupation of Czechoslovakia and a subsequent invasion of Poland in 1939. For some this may seem like a trivial change but this book the first of a series, shows that the geopolitics could be very different. If you have never read Turtledove before, his style is to create his story by moving his dialogues from one setting with a given set of characters to another. This book seems to have a larger set then usually of these setting, so it did take some effort before I felt comfortable recalling the dramas and characters and putting them together in a complete story picture. That said I did very much enjoy Harry Turtledove's history changing ideas in this Alternate History and look forward to reading the next book in the series. The only suggestion I have is that I thought a couple of the settings with respective characters should have been made up of major decision makers (i.e. FDR) to better understand the unfolding of this conflict from a more strategic level. I strongly recommend to all Alternate History fans, History buffs, especial Military History buffs.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.JGF
Posted January 30, 2010
In keeping with the 'what if' and the 'might have been' of human history, Turtledoves latest leaves little wanting for his legoins of fans.
This first in a series examines how WW2 could have started with the land grab of 38' instead of the invasion of Poland in 39'.
As per HT's style, the characters come across as real, with the addition he is not afraid to kill them off in order to advance the plot.
All in all a good read and a tantalyzing example of what to look forward to in this new and exciting series.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 4, 2009
A good read. Allof his books are interesting and alternate history is a good "What If" a few things had been different.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 13, 2009
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Having read almost all of his books, this one left me cold. Almost no plot. Just a series of incident involving various people in a fictitious war. No real ending, Seems like he got tired of writing and quit. Many character situations are left unresolved. Certainly does not live up to my expectations of this author.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 14, 2011
Harry Turtledove does it again with another great alternate history novel.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.OldDog55
Posted October 6, 2011
Turtledove does a great job with developing a story arc. He also does well with details on uniforms, geography, political developments, etc. But his wordsmithing can be a bit grating. Infantry seems to always "lope" behind tanks. Traits for charactars are repeated ad nauseum. They always over-explain their responses or comments. Thus, back and forth conversation is either stitled by excessive analysis, or very cliched wisecracks like a 1930's Film Noir B movie. But if you can endure the prose (and the frequent profanity), the story rewards your patience. This is true for me across all three books so far in his series.
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Posted July 25, 2011
The book is awesome but don't bother w/the electronic format, it's overpriced 3-fold. $11.99 for an ebook is just ridiculous, even for an author as good as Harry Turtledove.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Harry Turtledove is the best alternate history author writing today. His plots are fascinating I have read nearly every book he has written and they are all phenominal.
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Overview
A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war at any cost, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country and pushed beyond its borders. World War II had begun, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared.Now, in this thrilling, provocative, and fascinating alternate history by Harry Turtledove, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? What if Hitler had acted rashly, before his army was ready–would such impatience have helped him or doomed...