West and East: The War That Came Early (War That Came Early (Del Rey Paperback)) [Paperback]

Follows on from "Hitler's War" in which World War II started in 1938 after the Munich peace talks fail ...

"The War that came early" is yet another alternative version of World War II from Harry Turtledove. It is quite astonishing that he can still find new perspectives from which to write about that war, but he does. "Hitler's War" was more enjoyable than I expected, and this second book, which was a bit more disciplined in its' writing, was if anything better.

In the opening paragraphs of the first book Turtledove made two changes in real history, and the series works from there. First, in 1936 General Jose Sanjuro wasn't killed in a plane crash and consequently Sanjuro rather than Franco becomes leader of the Nationalist side in the Spanish civil war. Secondly, during the Munich negotiations, Henlein (leader of the Sudeten Germans) was assassinated, giving Hitler an excuse to press for even more punitive terms against Czechoslovakia. In this history Chamberlain and Daladier finally recognised that Hitler was determined on war, and suspected that he had actually ordered Henlein's murder himself. They found the spine to tell Hitler that if he invaded Czechoslovakia Britain and France would honour their obligations to the Czechs. Hitler orders the invasion of Czechoslovakia on the spot, and the war started a year earlier than in real history.

There was (and is) a commonly held view, at the time of Munich and subsequently, that the democracies were not ready for war in 1938 and Germany was. When I was a boy my father summarised this view in seven words after I asked him why Chamberlain did not stand up to Hitler at Munich: he answered "We would have lost the war then."

This series is entertainment rather than a serious academic study, but it tries to address the question of whether that view is right, by projecting through what might have happened. Because in real history there were a number of developments such as the Nazi-Soviet pact between 1938 and 1939, the lineup of countries on each side is not identical.

And the book looks at the kit which would have been available to countries in an earlier war. Both Britain and Germany would have been forced to make more use of armoured vehicles armed only with machine guns (Bren carriers and the Panzer I), or very light tanks (most of the tanks available to the Wehrmacht in 1938 were Panzer Is or the barely more powerful Panzer II), and biplane fighters and bombers would have been used much more by all sides.

In real history, German war plans in 1938 for war against France were based on a slightly updated version of the Schlieffen plan which had been tried and failed in 1914. However, at the start of the war a copy of those plans fell into British hands. Knowing this, the Germans changed their strategy to the "Manstein Plan" for a punch through the Ardennes, and this was the strategy which succeeded brilliantly and knocked France out of the war in 1940. "West and East" starts after the Schlieffen plan has been tried again with pretty much the results which most military historians think would have resulted if the Germans had been daft enough to stick with it.

As usual for a Harry Turtledove book, the war is seen through the eyes of a large number of fictional viewpoint characters, one or more from each of the countries involved. This time these include an American woman caught in Prague by the outbreak of war who is still trying to get home, a Jewish family in Munich, a German panzer wireless operator, infantryman, stuka pilot, and U-Boat skipper, British and Japanese sergeants, a Czech corporal who is now fighting with the free Czech forces in France, etc. The brother of the Jewish girl viewpoint character is hiding from the Nazis by having enlisted in the Wehrmacht under a false name, and in the second book Turtledove is keeping us guessing about whether he is the driver of the Panzer II in which a Wehrmacht viewpoint character is radio operator. Major historical figures like Hitler and Churchill get mentions as they impact on the lives of the main characters.

Turtledove's homework on the tactical capabilities of equipment available to the armed forces of all sides in 1938 is mostly pretty good, though in two instances in this book, weapons systems achieve results which range from the unrepresentative to the exceptionally improbable. The first is when a submarine intervenes in a battle between surface ships.

Submarine-launched torpedoes of the WWII era were often deadly against slow-moving targets, but using them to hit anything moving faster than 20 knots was extremely difficult. This especially applied if the target was changing course frequently, as warships in battle usually did. (For an accessible account of how WWII-era cruisers could make themselves harder to hit by enemy gunfire without ruining the accuracy of their own gunnery, read C.S. Forester's magnificent novel "The Ship.)"

Shells move several orders of magnitude faster than torpedoes. So cruisers or destroyers which were trying to dodge enemy salvoes would have been even harder to hit with 1930's unguided torpedoes. Turtledove actually writes into the naval battle in this book that the ships the submarine fires at are doing this. Therefore they would have been moving nearly as fast as the torpedoes while making frequent course changes which would have been unpredictable to any enemy submarine.

In this context, the marksmanship which the submarine brings off in this book would have been astonishing even with the vastly superior "Long Lance" torpedoes which the Japanese deployed a few years later. With the torpedoes actually available in the late 1930's to the navy concerned, the scene is just ridiculous.

The other unrealistic element in the book is a storyline about the development of a "Panzerbuster" variant of the Stuka. This is entertaining and interesting, but is closer to the truth as it describes technical details corresponding closely to those of the real aircraft which the Luftwaffe brought into action four years later, than it is about the tactical effect which this weapon system actually had.

Both the Germans and Allies deployed ground-attack aircraft designed to destroy tanks. But the main impact of such aircraft, whether equipped with airborne anti-tank guns like the Stuka variant on which the story is based, or anti-tank rockets like those carried by Allied Typhoons, was not achieved mainly by actually killing enemy armour.

Without the precision guidance systems developed later in the 20th century, you just could not get the accuracy with air-to-surface weapons which was needed for a decent chance of destroying an armoured, moving target. The most effective tactical air-to-ground weapon at this time was the machine-gun, because it threw enough rounds to have a better chance of actually hitting something.

In fact, specialised ground attack aircraft did have an impact on the battlefield, not by actually destroying enemy tanks, but mainly by slowing them down and by killing their unprotected support units (particularly with machine-guns). Few things are more intimidating than being attacked from the air, and armoured vehicles which came under air attack had a strong tendancy to look for cover. Or, after late-WWII tanks started to sprout anti-aircraft machine-guns, stopping to fire back. The scenes in the book where the anti-tank stuka goes into battle do not realistically reflect this.

The pilot in the book, Hans Rudel, appears to be based on a historical luftwaffe pilot with the same name who, several years later, was to become the most decorated german serviceman of World War II. The real Hans-Ulrich Rudel was indeed credited with destroying a large number of Soviet tanks and other targets, some of them while flying JU-87 G Stuka variants armed with anti-tank cannons, which appear to have inspired the aircraft in this book.

However, in real history Rudel was not allowed to fly combat missions as a pilot until 1941, and served only on the Russian front. So in this book Turtledove has him flying above various battlefields, swatting allied tanks like flies far more effectively than any real german pilot did, two years before the luftwaffe actually let him fly combat missions, in a plane similar to one which wasn't deployed until four years later - and at the rate at which military kit improved during World War II, four years represents a very long time.

These two parts of the book are nonsense, but most of it is much better and more realistic.

Harry Turtledove is not particularly noted for his prose, but he does occasionally manage some great one-liners, and there are one or two highly memorable ones in this book. For example, referring to the German MG34 machine-gun, there is a clever parody of a Shakespeare line, referring to "the slings and arrows of outrageous MG34s." In another good line, the camouflage dazzle paint of British warships is compared to what zebras might have looked like if God had been drunk when he created them.

This is the fifth alternative version of World War II which Turtledove has written. He has previously done a series with aliens from Tau Ceti invading in 1942 (the "Worldwar" series which starts with Worldwar: In the Balance (New English library)). Read more ›

It is like reading a cliche. He is profiting from the popularity of this genre and is turning out drivel. Relying on the idea to sell the book while filling it with the same few pages over and over again. Take the money and run Turtledove. After reading about fifty pages you will ask yourself if anything has actually happened. Don't waste your money

This novel starts where its predecessor Hitlers War finished off. The German offensive in France has stalled, the Soviets are fighting the Poles in easter Poland, and The Japanese are advancing slowly in the far east against Soviet forces. The U.S.A is still pretty much uninvolved.

I found this book like the earlier one, has a large cast of characters, so it is hard to get to know each of them that well, which for me, is this series biggest drawback. There is quite a lot of varying action, though, on sea, air and land, and the book is an enjoyable read. I look forward to reading the sequel.