In the years before the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939, Adolph Hitler was a very lucky man. That's because he mostly got his way without firing a single shot as he made land grabs across Europe. The Allied powers of France and England seemed more than happy to appease him, and Hitler, in turn, was more than happy to oblige with fresh demands once he got what he wanted.
But what if things had gone differently? What if, for example, Hitler had not gotten everything he wanted so quickly, and in fact had to fight for his territorial expansion earlier than history tells us he did? Such is the premise of Hitler's War, the latest work by alternate history master Harry Turtledove. Here, Turtledove posits World War II beginning a year earlier than it in fact did.
It is September, 1938. At a soon to be infamous conference in Munich, Hitler is making demands on England's Chamberlain and France's Daladier. But before German forces can walk into Czechoslovakia unopposed, the Fuhrer receives word that the leader of the Sudeten Germans, Konrad Henlein, has been assassinated by Czech radicals. This is the trigger for war, and Hitler believes that now is the time to strike.
And so, instead of blitzkrieging Poland unopposed in the fall of 1939, the Germans get bogged down fighting the Czechs, France, and England a year earlier. Eventually, the war spills over into the low countries and France proper, but the lightning-fast assaults never materialize. The famous surprise attack through the Ardennes does not work so well as it would in 1940. And so, World War II starts to look more like World War I all over again.
Things are different in other areas, too. In Spain, General Jose Sanjuro does not die in a plane crash, and instead survives to lead the pro-fascist forces there. The Soviets, eager for a land grab of their own, attack Poland, which becomes an ally to the Nazis instead of a victim. And a cabal of Wehrmacht generals tries to take down Hitler, which leads to a purge of the German officer corps by the SS. Hitler's War ends with a the German assault on Paris petering out, and an allied counter-attack just getting under way.
As has become Turtledove's style, Hitler's War is peppered with a polyglot of characters from around the world, some of them real, most of them fictional. Hitler himself has a few appearances, and we also see U-boat commander Julius Lemp, Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Jose Sanjuro, and Konrad Henlein among the historical characters.
Turtledove's array of fictional characters is robust as well, though most of them seem rather flat and we can't really get much attached to any of them. Perhaps that's because we're still early in an obviously unfolding series, and the author is too busy bouncing around with events to do much character development (though there is just a smidge). Then too, the plot doesn't flow nearly so well as in other Turtledove series (for example, the Timeline 191 epic or the Worldwar series).
Where Turtledove does excel is with his factual data, and we get to know the weapons of war here almost as if they were characters in their own right. Stukas, Hurricanes, Panzer I and II and Matilda tanks all get a detailed treatment, and they're intricately woven into the fabric of the story. And with good reason, too, because they change the very nature of the story. For example, because France is invaded in late 1938 instead of May, 1940, the Germans have only the lightly armed and armored Panzer Is and IIs to go up against the much larger French and English tanks. Missing are the Panzer IIIs with their 50MM cannons that proved to be the difference in real history (and still at times had to be employed in packs to take out the more heavily armored enemy tanks).
Despite several flaws, there are enough interesting events going on here to make this reader hunger for more. That's because the great promise of Hitler's War is as a setup for a broader series, which it almost certainly appears to be. Obviously, this is the first part of a larger work, something Turtledove is famous for. And despite the fact that the Germans are not having such an easy time of it in France, this alternate telling of World War II may not have such a quick ending, since Turtledove has posited a Japanese attack on Russia, perhaps in lieu of the assault on Pearl Harbor. That puts the Soviet Union in the middle of a two front war, and possibly leaves the United States out of the fighting, something that leaves the reader to wonder: What If?
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