Hitler's War

June 29, 2009
Alternate historian Turtledove (The Man with the Iron Heart
) brings the deprivations of war to life in this vision of a very different WWII. After Konrad Henlein is assassinated in Czechoslovakia in 1938, France and England refuse to condone Hitler's plans for annexation, so he invades instead. American Peggy Druce, caught behind the lines, gets a firsthand look at the period military hardware and nationalistic mindsets that Turtledove so expertly describes, though readers looking for more characterization or plotting may be disappointed. Action in the Spanish Civil War and on the Mongolian border muddy the waters, possibly setting up for a clearer plot in subsequent volumes. Until Turtledove reveals more of the direction this scenario will take, there is little to differentiate it from many of his other novels.

August 15, 2009
The 20th century's world wars have provided Turtledove with ample material for his alternate histories (e.g., "The Great War" tetralogy). His latest series ponders what might have happened if British prime minister Neville Chamberlain had refused to allow German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. As in previous books, the author tells his tale through a series of alternating minisagas that follow select fictional and historic characters through his narrative arc. VERDICT The author's mastery of the ever-widening ripples that small changes make in history is unchallenged, his storytelling always gripping, and his research impeccable. Certain to appeal to alternate history and World War II aficionados. [Library marketing campaign.]

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2009
Turtledove is always good, but this return to World War II, one of his favorite turfs, is genuinely brilliant. Suppose Britain and France had not folded at Munich, and the Sudeten Crisis had led to war? In Turtledoves alternate history, a Czech soldier fights to the last before fleeing to Poland and then France, while a traveling American wife fights the German bureaucracy, as tenaciously as the Wehrmacht if not as skilled, to get home. The tankers of the Wehrmacht ride into battle in the modest Mark III, radio-equipped but undergunned, while on the opposite side, a French conscript and a British sergeant improvise a new war effort. Stuka pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel is as brilliant as his counterpart in our time line, while trying to live the clean life of a ministers son. Russian bomber pilots have to fly against the Poles (a German ally), while worrying about the secret police, while in Germany the Goldman family is watchful about everything. And in Peking, the American marines are evacuated to Shanghai, while Sergeant Suzuki, a good and loyal soldier of his emperor, marches into Russian Siberia at the same time the German spearheads are being halted not far from Paris. The characterizations in particular bring the book to extraordinary life and will make most readers hope this is the beginning of another saga.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)