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    Hitler's War
    Hitler's War
    Hitler's War
    Audiobook17 hours

    Hitler's War

    Written by Harry Turtledove

    Narrated by John Allen Nelson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 10, 2009
    ISBN9781400183883
    Hitler's War
    Author

    Harry Turtledove

    Harry Turtledove is an American novelist of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Publishers Weekly has called him the “master of alternate history,” and he is best known for his work in that genre. Some of his most popular titles include The Guns of the South, the novels of the Worldwar series, and the books in the Great War trilogy. In addition to many other honors and nominations, Turtledove has received the Hugo Award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the Prometheus Award. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a PhD in Byzantine history. Turtledove is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos, and together they have three daughters. The family lives in Southern California.

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    Reviews for Hitler's War

    3.5/5

    76 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Introducing all the characters and establishing their personalities made this a little slower than the following chapters.
      Still Turtledove is the best at alternative history there ever was or ever will be. I love his tales. Lots of accurate information regarding the weapons and tactics.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      Typical Harry Turtledove formula writing. Stretches one or two books of plot into three books by constantly repeating the same statements over and over from one chapter to the next. Maybe he thinks all his readers have dementia. Anyway this book follows his formula to a tee. If you have read one Turtledove series you pretty much have read them all. Mindless time killing read which is sometimes what I want. Would not, say again, not recommend buying book outright. A read and throw away pulp work.
    • 2/5
      More me being not fair, but not so interested. Very facile and very fast reading, but, you know: historical fiction. He picked a perfect point in time, "Munich" didn't happen. Chamberlain and Daladier did not appease and Hitler goes to actual war a year early. The book jumps to every country and what's going on with some characters. Ah, well. Good enough, but not for me.
    • 1/5
      For the past sixty years, the name “Munich” has been synonymous in the historical imagination with the craven surrender of Czechoslovakian territory in return for a peace settlement that proved illusory. But what if it had turned out differently? What if, instead of postponing the Second World War for a year, the conference in Munich between the European leaders had failed? What if war broke out over Czechoslovakia instead of Poland? This is the premise of Harry Turtledove’s latest alternate history series.

      In it, Turtledove tries something new; instead of positing a single point of divergence, he imagines two: the avoidance of the plane crash in 1936 that killed the Spanish general Jose Sanjurjo and allowed Francisco Franco to take over Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, and the assassination of Sudeten German leader Konrad Heinlein in the midst of the Munich Conference. Turtledove uses these to create a different Second World War, one in which Germany begins the conflict without some of the advantages they would enjoy a year later, and with the Soviets fighting against the Nazis from the outset.

      In narrating this conflict the author uses his usual technique of using the experiences of a series of fictional soldiers and civilians to depict events. While some fans will find this familiarity comforting, it gives the distinct sense of the novel as nothing more than another by-the-numbers alternate history work in the Turtledove mold, with little outside of the premise that is original. This would matter less if the novel were up to his earlier standards, yet it is not. Character development is particularly lacking. Unlike his earlier novels, there is little description of their backgrounds; instead they are simply dumped into the novel, with their experiences and views leaving them often indistinguishable from one another.

      The result is a subpar start to what is otherwise an enjoyably different take on the sub-genre of alternate-Second World War scenarios. Ending as it does in the middle of the conflict, a sequel that will move events forward, possibly even wrapping them up, is to be expected. Hopefully the follow-up will be embody more of the enthusiasm and energy that has been a hallmark of Turtledove’s best work, lest his new series be written off as a failed opportunity with a new premise.
    • 2/5
      This is a what-if about the Munich Conference blowing up, and the effect on the European War that would have ensued. In this case, the Soviets weigh in early, and the USA has not that much to do. But the Japanese are also fighing the USSR at the time and so the USA gets its Pacific War. It is entertaining for WWII buffs.
    • 3/5
      A fun read and very a typical "Turtledove" novel. The Alternative History pivot 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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      This reads like a really long comic book story, without the pictures. There is very little apart from the relentless action; no character development, analysis of the characters actions, little of the wider context, and little reason given for the alternate history. But, that's not really why you'd read it, is it? It certainly made a long coach trip go a lot quicker, and I finished the nearly 500 pages without ever thinking that I might give up, something I've done with much more literary books. I'm not an expert on WWII, so I missed the historical figures that Shrike58 spotted, although even I noticed when Orwell and Kruschev walked across the frame. For me this is more of a cheeseburger than a steak, but sometimes you really fancy a cheeseburger.
    • 4/5
      I'm not that great a fan of Turtledove's alternate history epics, but to begin World War II as a result of Neville Chamberlain's failing to stave off Hitler's aggression aganist Czechoslovakia was a concept that interested me, particularly seeing as you read Turtledove's novels mostly for the high concept. That said the book is quite relentlessly war from the ground up, as there is little effort made to imagine the decision processes of the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Daladier. I'm also interested to see that relatively few real-life personages that I recognize make it into the book as point of view characters, most notably the U-Boat commander Frtiz-Julius Lemp and the Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel. But is it any good you ask? I give it a provisional thumbs-up, as Turtledove kept my interest enough to make me want to see what he does next.
    • 3/5
      The concept is interesting and some of the historical differene closely linked with real historical figures, but very Turtledove formulaic, so not much new here.