Forum:Coup d'Etat

I can't help feeling very disappointed by this year's installment. In TBS HT seemed willing to throw out the playbook and give us a radically different version of WWII. But rather than think through the ramifications of everything he'd introduced, HT seemed to set to work reversing everything before we'd had the chance to play with it. It almost reminds me of Philip Roth's Plot Against America. Yes, the "Let's get everything back to where it was before" resolution wasn't anywhere near so complete; but on the other hand, Turtledove's "The Master of Alternate History" while Roth was just dabbling.

The Actual Coup
My biggest complaint was the coup d'etat. To name THE ENTIRE BOOK after one particular event and then have that event occur offstage--even though we had a POV who was perfectly positioned to observe it!!--is unspeakably lame. The only step down from there would be if Willi or Theo or Hans-Ulrich suddenly said "Gee, sure is a shame that the Brits left weeks ago, isn't it?"


 * This is definitely where HT's 100% everyman approach to this series is hurting it, although I'm resigned to it at this point.


 * He was inching away from that, with Walsh a conspirator, Peggy a politico, and Weinberg a commisar. Now he's doing a lot more than inching back to it in two of the three cases. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Having you in the position to act as spoiler set my expectations lower, actually. So while I disappointed, I wasn't DISAPPOINTED by how HT handled it. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Kind of like a miniature version of when I got the advanced copy of TG all those years ago, right after we took this place over, and with two or three months to go, everyone at the Better Board got to watch me come to the gradual realization that nothing was going to happen.


 * In this case, though, you certainly managed to catch up to me quickly all of a sudden. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

The build-up to the coup was not much better. All we really got was Walsh pitching the idea to Wavell (and I'm annoyed by the fact that I can't figure out how to pronounce his name).


 * Probably WAH-vel. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * That's what I go with more often than not, though sometimes I move the v- to a -v and call it WAHV-el. Sounds too much like "waffle." Occasionally I make it a long A, though I'm sure that's not right. Sometimes I call him wa-VELL, though it would probably be spelled "Wavelle" if that were correct. (I used to know a guy named Ravelle.) Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * We have a suburb in Brisbane called Wavell. We pronounce it WAY-VIL. Mr Nelg


 * And a check of the history states that the suburb was named for the general. So WAY-vil it is. TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, nice. Thanks, Nelg. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Wavell said no, then reconsidered for God knows what reason.


 * Well, he didn't say "No, get the fuck out." He'd obviously been thinking about it, as Walsh pointed out. And he didn't blow the whistle on Walsh. That probably means Wavell had been thinking about it, maybe even in contact with some other officers, but didn't feel now was the time, and certainly saw no reason to commit to Cartland's conspiracy. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Right, but he had to work through some issues internally. It would be nice to have gotten at least a hint as to how and why he did so. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

And I'd like to know who else was involved on the military side. Neither HT's characterization of Wavell nor anything I've seen in the historical record suggests he had the force of personality to lead a military junta by himself. Some name-dropping was sorely needed, though I'll admit I probably wouldn't care if it weren't for this project.


 * Yeah, I agree. Wavell was evidentally enough of a leader that he was tasked with speaking to the King, but that doesn't mean he was the leader. Again, Turtledove's tropes work against him. This would have been the perfect time to break with the "follow X POVs to the bitter end" approach and have a few omnscient narrator or at the least, one-off POVs for the coup. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * There is that. It's possible the real leader decided to stay holed up. And I'm amazed the real leader wasn't Cartland. He's now both an MP and a captain, and the latter seems to count for more than the former. Now leaving aside all sorts of other issues, I have to think that people would be a lot less leery about the provisional government if it were run by sitting MPs, especially civilians, than they are with martial-law-imposing Army officers who've never won nor stood for elected office in their lives. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I can see that certain officers may not be inclined to take orders from Cartland. He's a dynamic personality, but he's also pretty young. The failure to mix the civilian in with the martial is one of those common failures of coups. TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I guess. It kind of feels like the Army walked out onto the stage while Cartland was singing his song, shoved him out from behind the mic, and took over the show. And it also feels like he doesn't mind in the least. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * And while breaking out of the fixed-POV format would have been valuable here, it's very likely that HT's too set in his ways after all these years. But the thing is, there's no reason Walsh had to get arrested. (No out-of-universe reason; we know it was trumped-up charges in-universe.) I'm picturing HT saying "Oh shit, I don't know how to write a coup! How can I avoid needing to do so? I know! I'll sideline Walsh!" Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd hoped that, after MwIH and LA, where he played with POV structure, we'd get a little more variety.


 * Those felt a little different, somehow. Maybe because they didn't have the gravity of a multiple-volume series? Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I have a sneaking suspicion your take on his decision to write the coup off-stage isn't too far from the truth. TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I hope I'm wrong, but it's hard to shake that feeling. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * You know, I might walk that comment back. I looked up a couple of other coups.  The Greek colonels launched their coup on April 21, 1967, and pretty firmly had the country by like noon.  We remember failed coups because they are usually elobrately-but-poorly planned fiascos.  Successful coups are usually quick, mostly clean, and abrupt.


 * So I guess what I'm saying is that the approach he took was probably a rational one in the context of the story. It would have been great to know more about WHO was involved and at what level.  TR (talk) 01:18, August 13, 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't mind that it was over quickly. But why did HT deliberately sideline Walsh?  You want to write the entire coup in one scene?  Great.  What will Walsh be doing while he observes it?  Brawling with police?  Throwing up a barricade on Downing Street?  Arresting Wilson?  Accompanying Wavell to the palace?  Hanging out in a backroom somewhere with Cartland or whoever's running the show, receiving reports on a short wave radio?  Oh I know!  We'll have him locked up in a jail cell for no reason, needing to be rescued. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:08, August 13, 2012 (UTC)

Aftermath of coup
The aftermath was more interesting, but we got to see so little of it. I didn't count but I don't think Walsh had any more scenes in the final two thirds of the book than he did in the first third. The unpopularity of the coup is far from what I expected, but there's a lot we can do with that. And the indefinitely delayed elections set an ominous tone promising a descent into military dictatorship. We needed to see far more of that. And we certainly needed it more than we needed Walsh to give us by-the-numbers combat scenes in Egypt. Send Rudel there, or just give us offstage updates.


 * Yes, if HT plays that right, he could create a much different war, and/or a very different UK at the end of all this. Hopefully he does create some crisis there: either the elections don't happen and that leads to a counter-coup or protests or something, or the elections don't produce the desired result. Something. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * The possibilities are endless. Problem is, we also identified endless possibilities for the fall of Wilson's government, and HT essentially gave us "None of the above, it's because the plot requires it." Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

France
Then I thought France's Big Switch Back could deliver the tension that Britain's lacked. The slow build-up showed some promise, but then all of a sudden you've got the green flares coming out of nowhere. Clearly there was some sort of secret agreement in place there, and neither Demange nor Harcourt would have been in position for it, but there still could have been something.


 * Well, the rumors were interesting, and like the British, there could be a solid pay-off there. The fact that the Maginot Line was being extended, that the French were already supplying the Republic not long after the British coup--it does lead me to wonder if Daladier isn't fully in control any longer himself, or if this whole big switch was purely his plan to get the Germans out long enough to rebuild, trading Russian space for French time.


 * Ooh, interesting ideas I hadn't thought of. If Walsh's summary of the Hess Agreement was accurate and complete, anyone with a brain in his head should have seen right through it. I like the idea that Daladier agreed because he intended to set a countertrap within a more obvious trap, even if that kind of cleverness seems to be pretty far beyond him.


 * It would also be interesting if someone other than Daladier is in charge but is keeping him on as a figurehead. That could suggest the French are more interested in keeping due process and legitimate elected governments in place than the British were. I'd have figured France would go autocratic long before Britain. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * This also begs the question as to how aggressively the French will pursue a war with Germany next book. On the one hand, the fact that they're building up the line suggests that they learned something, but that their building up a defensive line might suggest they learned the wrong thing. Personally, I feel as if they're going to repeat the trick of hiding behind the line and waiting for the Germans to come at them. That could work, especially since we only have two books left, and at least half of book 6 will be given over to peace, based on past HT patterns.


 * I agree the French are most likely going to be content to hide behind the Maginot Line. The rest, I'm going to have to ruminate on a bit. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * The French military could take a page out of the UK playbook and overthrow Daladier, I suppose. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * If the military has a coup they'll switch back to Hitler's side. (I guess that would be FourCo?) The high command may not have been fascist, but it wasn't too far off; there's a reason the Vichy government was crawling with generals and WWI heroes.


 * Oh, I don't know. Maybe De Gaulle could cultivate a few anti-Germans the way Cartland did? That might give Demange something to do. TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, but it would be a steeply uphill climb. And anyway, now that Daladier's already switched back, what's de Gaulle going to claim as his justification? "We should have abrogated the Hess Agreement even more emphatically than we did?" Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * The rank and file may feel differently, but if they take over, it won't be a coup, it'll be an all-out revolution. Now there's a nice pipe dream to help me get my earlier excitement back. . . . Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * The French do so enjoy their revolutions....TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * That they do, though they haven't had one in a while. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

And of course, the thing about how the Nazis were going to behave themselves in order to keep France happy is a pretty gross mischaracterization of the one company-sized standoff.


 * Thanks Del Rey, although that scene was rather awesome. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * It certainly was. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Pacific War
The Pacific War was handled pretty well; McGill's scenes were interesting and informative, perhaps moreso than anyone else's. (Now there's something I never would have thought I'd say a couple of years ago!) I hope he's not dead. If he is, and he's replaced by someone on another front, we've got no one giving us Pacific War updates. If he's replaced by Joe Orsatti or someone like that--What the hell's the point of that?


 * If Herb Druce had been made a colonel, rather than a civilian efficiency expert, I'd worry about Pete. But, since Herb isn't a colonel, and since the last words of Pete's scene were not "Pete felt the shark's teeth rip into him" or "The last thing Pete saw was the Zero strafing the water", I think the odds are in his favor for the moment. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * True. Now that I think of it, dying as a POV follows one of four avenues: The most common, realizing you're dying; not being dead yet, but realizing that you will be soon (Jeb Stuart in HFR, for instance, or Yaroslavsky in the last book); someone else watching you die (Featherston, Harcourt, and sort of Ussmak); or being a soldier on the losing side at the end of a Stalingrad equivalent (Tom Colleton, some Algarvian schmuck whose name escapes me). McGill is none of these, his final scene reminded me more of that time that Hip almost electrocuted himself. Still, we can't be sure. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Other characters:

I'll miss Harcourt, he was a nice guy. And Demange seemed to have a lot more characterization through most of the book than he'd ever had before. In retrospect that may have been HT preparing him for promotion to POV. He's colorful and entertaining, which actually has me a little worried. I can think of quite a few examples of HT promoting colorful, entertaining characters to POV only to find that they prove far less interesting than they had before. And even if that doesn't happen, I'll still miss Harcourt.


 * I will miss him as well. His death served at least two, and perhaps three purposes. 1) The usual "death comes and it's not fair" trope HT uses; 2) to remind us that Dernen's a hell of a shot--I think his apocalyptic War of the Rats with Jezek is back on; 3)My "perhaps" guess: as an officer, Demange was more in the know about things in France than Harcourt was, and that he'd be more useful to what HT will do with France next volume. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Demange was passing most of the rumors along to Harcourt, and if France is going to continue playing the cloak-and-dagger game, we might as well get one degree closer to the source. The other two--I guess. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

I found I quite liked Weinberg this year. I think it's because HT's changed him somewhat. Now he's a freethinker. A few years ago he was a strict dogmatist. That's why he left such a bad taste in my mouth; we saw a number of characters struggling to maintain some intellectual independence under totalitarian rulers, and then here comes Weinberg having the opportunity for that independence and willingly ceding it to Stalin. But somewhere along the line HT more or less rebooted the character.


 * I think it was when he realized that he was never going to be the Communist La Martellita wanted him to be, and that he didn't want that. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I suppose. Of course, he'd been with the Internationals for some time already before we met him, he must have met the likes of her before. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * He may have met such people, but I doubt he wanted to have sex with them. Also worth remembering that he did run into trouble with her when he was preaching at Delgadillo for not being sufficiently orthodox. So the independent streak's always been sort of there. TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Since W&E it has. In HW he was very into the party line. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Jezek's okay, but his scenes were repetitive. I really don't give a shit if he kills Sanjurjo or not. HT still hasn't given us any sign that the Spanish situation is going to lead to anything worthwhile, and until he does, I just want to see less of it.


 * Franco's death is all but HT's saying "The Republic's going to win". Plus see above re Dernen vs. Jezek. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * After the latest game of Musical Alliances, we're once again pretty close to OTL: Germany charging into the USSR with only a bunch of odds and sods for allies (the Poles are pretty good but don't have the numbers to help as much as they might--very similar to the Finns of OTL). Britain and Italy fighting in North Africa, with the latter receiving some German help. France at war with Germany but not doing much about it. The US neutral but screaming itself hoarse rooting for the Allies (government policy wise; public opinion may be a different story). A number of small countries occupied by one or another great powers and pissed off about it. Japan fighting China and the ABDACOM countries. Locals in numerous small Japanese-occupied countries torn as to whether they've been liberated or are simply being treated to another flavor of imperialism. The campaigns in SE Asia seem to be identical to the OTL ones, though of course the war against the US is going a little differently.


 * So if we follow the Parallelism Express from here on out (in which case I will definitely call this a wasted opportunity, and a pointless exercise besides) and then go into Early Cold War mode, a Spain where the Republicans won could mean a Soviet foothold in Western Europe. That can be interesting in theory, but I really don't see it being enough of a payoff to justify reading about this interminable, irrelevant sideshow for years and years. Especially since that payoff would come right as the series is ending.


 * Unless this entire six-book series is meant as little more than a prequel for the story HT really wanted to write, about a Cold War where the Warsaw Pact uses its influence in Madrid to make mischief. Oh happy day. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Lemp was boring as ever; now he's got a damned job to do, unlike last year, but we haven't actually seen him do it. All those scenes in the Barents and he never once found a troopship. I guess now that Hitler's declared unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic (Gee, where have we heard that before?) he'll have something better to do next year.

But none of that will change how despicable he was in Narvik. Saying he couldn't, or wouldn't, maintain discipline among his subordinates unless the base commander either forced a lot of prostitutes to come to Narvik against their will or forced a lot of local women to prostitute themselves--what the hell was that? I couldn't believe that HT actually set up that argument in such a way that we were supposed to side with Lemp. The Japanese did that--we saw Fujita take advantage in Myitkyina, which made me think how Lemp would have approved--but that doesn't mean it's something that should be emulated. Disgusting.


 * I have a feeling that this dissatisfaction is foreshadowing the eventual successful coup against Hitler. Coups and revolutions have started for dumber reasons. I don't think we were necessarily supposed to side with Lemp, only understand that Lemp honestly and sincerely believed this stupid plan. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Well there's been quite a lot of foreshadowing about internal challenges to the regime in this series. Thus far none of them have gone anywhere. Wonder what happened to Bishop von Galen? Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of Fujita, his adventures were mildly interesting. They seemed to be taking place in a vacuum, though. He could have been eliminated from the book altogether, and I don't think you'd need to rewrite one word of anyone else's scenes.


 * To an extent. It was nice to see Szulc and Weinstein, and I'm sure they're pretty fucked. I think that while there was no biowar in India this volume, that comes when things get desperate next volume. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Szulc and Weinstein may not be fucked. Three Marines have escaped already, and Weinstein appeared to have been arranging for more. For a little while there I thought one of the Marines would bash Fujita's head in and they'd make a run for it. Then Weinstein would take over the vacated POV slot, fall in with the CCP, and give us a story similar to Moss's in TG. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * If McGill is indeed dead, that might be an avenue. TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I guess, but then where do we get our Pacific news? Transfer Fujita yet again? Maybe; I suspect he'll run out of things to do in Burma before too long. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Peggy's doing what we figured she would, but in all the wrong places. I was hoping she'd go to the big cities and give us a bit of glamor. All those dreary little whistle stops in Pennsylvania, yawn. And I find it hard to believe that suave, worldly Constantine Jenkins got his start in Erie.


 * Yes, she was kind of dull. Hopefully she starts doing cooler stuff next book. Something has to bring the US against Germany, right? Right? TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * No, you're right. The problem is, after something does, that something may just lead Peggy to add a couple of paragraphs to her presentation as she continues to putz around the Alleghenies.

I couldn't care less about her marital woes, but I do appreciate that HT has a second plotline going with her. If all she ever did was give speeches, she'd grow extremely monotonous very quickly, especially in said dreary little whistle stops.

Sarah's domesticity continues to provide, at best, a nice respite from constant military POVs. Not unlike Ealstan and Vanai, except they were a bit more compelling.

But what's with the von Galen thing? Talk about not starting what you finish! (And of course, you were right, TR. Del Rey's cover copy writer was just talking out of his ass.)

Kuchkov was a bit more interesting than I'd expected him to be, but there's nothing really unique about him. HT's written guys like that more times than I care to count.


 * True, but it was nice to have a ground troop in the USSR that was Russian. And I liked his 'mat'. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * It certainly was colorful. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Anyone I didn't mention didn't do anything I gave a shit about. My earlier opinions on each of those characters remain unaltered.


 * Rudel seemed like he'd grow. He's staying stunted.


 * Meh. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Mouradian is likeable. It won't surprise me if he wound up in Moscow next volume, flying Stalin to safety. He just seems to be heading that way.


 * I like him, but I like him neither more nor differently than I did a year ago. All I got out of him this book is some chances to read scenes by someone pleasant.


 * But if you're right about his having Stalin on board, then the little man will for a time be completely within Mouradian's power. Stas loves not the regime, so he may decide to do something. Perhaps he'll deliberately crash the plane, figuring that giving up his life is a worthwhile price to pay to eliminate a totalitarian. Which would be an almost-amusing inversion of the first scene of the series. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * And I'm just throwing that out there based on his observations that he's continuing to move east towards Moscow. I think his last scene was something like "he was taking off east of Smolensk, and that couldn't be good."


 * Anyway, I don't see the Soviet drive to Berlin of OTL, not with only two books left. The Germans seem to have figured out the bad winter problem already. That weakness in OTL is probably blunted here. So hell, why not consider the fall of Moscow and Stalin dying in a plan crash? TR (talk) 19:31, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Don't have to tell me twice. I'd also be willing to consider a war where the Germans are driven back and forced to admit they lost, but aren't really beaten. Sarah sort of alluded to the possibility a bit at the end. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:28, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Theo--don't laugh, but he feels more and more like a kindred spirit. Certain of my personality, ah, quirks seem to have been directly imported into him.


 * Sometimes I can sympathize with his desire to be left alone with his thoughts. It seemed dialed up this year, though. I was wondering if he's got some sort of social anxiety disorder. The scene where he had to go back to regimental HQ to try to find a replacement vacuum tube? The prospect of talking with strangers--even a purely business "Do you have this part?"--had him honestly scared to death.


 * Though that made it all the more heartwarming when he did what he did to protect Adi, knowing how much that cost him. Speaking of which, I was thinking about giving that busybody an entry on Minor Fictional Characters, since he's showed up twice now and has had some game-changing potential. We don't have his name, but "Mr Snoopy" is such a brilliant nickname that I'd happily use it. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Dernen grew more interesting again. When he was looking at the moon with curiosity, I thought for sure he was done for. TR (talk) 04:13, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * That scene was magical. After I read it I went on ebay and looked at telescopes. Didn't buy one, but I thought about it. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, and Baatz. I'm glad that bastard's finally gone, and Dernen may grow a bit in the next book now that he can come out of that shadow and be a section commander himself. I'm somewhat unsatisfied by the means of Awful Arno's exit. I always figured Willi or one of his buddies would shoot Baatz in the middle of a large battle and let everyone think the Soviets or the French before them had done it. Dernen being a crack shot would seem to have made it more likely. Turtle Fan (talk) 19:23, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Overall, not a bad book, but very disappointing. Our predictions were for the most part way off. Now I don't expect HT to write what we predict, but when what he writes is far less interesting than our predictions, it's very hard to get excited about the book.


 * Yes, the coup thing was the most frustrating. I still basically enjoyed this one, and I'm still looking forward to 2F, and I am intrigued by what HT has set up here. Ironically, given the way things are, the USSR could still be in a world of hurt before the whole thing is done. Plus Britain could stop being a democracy for a good long while, as could France, and I can't see any Normandy style invasions anytime soon, even if the US and Germany are at war on page one of 2F. But, yes, the centerpiece event of the book taking place off stage kind of left out some of the air of the volume.


 * I worry we're going to start sliding back to the rough parallelism that defined HW. If the premise ends up being "The lists of which countries won and which countries lost is the same as it was in OTL, but the war changes them, and in ways very different from how it changed them in our history," we've still got a worthwhile AH. British politics being as they are is the biggest and most dramatic development along those lines. However, the fact that HT did so little to chronicle them, instead sending Walsh back to some half-assed battle against the Italians where all he can do is recount the same combat- and leave-taking scenes we've read dozens of times before, is not encouraging. Neither is the fact that every time HT teases us with the possibility of Hitler being toppled by a faction within Germany, those anti-Hitlerite forces very quickly become distracted from their work by trying to figure out whether the female prisoner Hamnet Thyssen sent back to the Rulers ever stirred up social unrest with her newfound feminism.


 * But I'm still interested in the series and looking forward to Two Fronts. Just not with as much enthusiasm as I'd looked forward to this year's book. (And of course, nothing close to the enthusiasm I used to feel back in TL-191's golden days. Reading a Turtledove novel by Del Rey in the late summer does invariably kick up a lot of nostalgia, though.) Turtle Fan (talk) 06:01, August 6, 2012 (UTC)

Cold War
I was thinking about this today when I had to make a solo roadtrip. What will the post-war world look like?

As of right now, the USSR does not look like it's poised to be a global super-power as in OTL. Given HT's publishing schedule, I don't see a western drive doing much more than getting the German-alliance out of Soviet territory. Then, it has to start thinking about getting Vladivostok back.

On the other hand, Stalin is going to have a much better reason to be paranoid of his neighbors and the rest of the world in general, save perhaps the US (which may be giving the USSR stuff again, if that Studebaker is supposed to mean something). He'll be viewing everyone as a possible enemy now, which in turn will make him appear a threat to the rest of the world.


 * Someone said Lend-Lease aid was trickling into the USSR by way of some secondary Pacific port whose name escapes me. I think it was when Walsh was chatting up the Major.


 * But you're right, of course. The Soviets will win the war.  They may extend into some of the territory of the SecCo/ThirCo members who border them directly, but not into Germany itself.  Unless maybe the Westerners conquer Germany outright and give the USSR control of a zone as a way of saying "Thanks for being the only country that was in the fight the whole time" and/or "Sorry we joined SecCo and stabbed you in the back."


 * That, or maybe they win the race to build the atom bomb, but as you say that's an unknown variable, and since HT is being unusually reticent about who's working on it, we should leave it out of the calculus for now. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:30, August 13, 2012 (UTC)

Similarly, I don't think the USA will be in a much better position than in OTL. It will defeat Japan somehow, but I don't think it will be as absolute as OTL, either, especially since the A-bomb is an unknown variable.


 * Granted. Japan's position really is quite strong: They don't need to worry about a Soviet invasion of China, various factors have come together in such a way that prevents ABDACOM from coordinating too closely, the US has no Pacific carriers (though that advantage won't last long), Australia's in even more dire straits than it was at the comparable point in OTL, the political situation in Britain has got to work to their advantage somehow (though notice they've yet to take Singapore, a trick they pulled off in OTL about five months after declaring war on Britain), we haven't had any indications that they're facing any partisan warfare to speak of in the countries they've forced into the Co Prosperity Sphere (though it does appear they took  and are running Burma by force; at this point in OTL, they were still playing nice with a protectorate created by sweet-talking pro-independence leaders), and their nasty secret weapons program is bearing fruit.  And of course there's no evidence the Allies are working on atom bombs.


 * Their defeat won't be like in OTL. It will be closer to it than were any of their three wars against the US in TL-191, which taught the lesson "We might as well attack them, because even if we run out of juice, we can disengage without any consequences."  Somewhere halfway between those two extremes, I'm sure.


 * And if Japan is still holding its own in Siberia after the Allies finish off Germany, if the West is feeling another Red Scare coming on they and Japan might arrange a Medium-Sized Switch. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:30, August 13, 2012 (UTC)

It occurs to me that a fully-developed alternate Cold War is something HT has sort of threatened in the past, but the only one he's actually done is Colonization. Everything else is a side story (AWoD, RftF, Black Tulip) or the aftermath long after the fact (Glad., TV-WS, the various post nuke stories). It might be time for that? Or maybe a World War III that sees the first use of a-bombs, rather than a full-blown nuclear apocalypse. TR (talk) 01:18, August 13, 2012 (UTC)


 * Either or both would be interesting. Of course, we don't even know if HT's got a sequel series planned at all.  But even if he doesn't, he might set the stage for those situations and then lower the curtain, as he did with Darkness--and with TL-191, though Darkness is a better analogy in this case.  (If Gizzi's still out there, wouldn't he be miffed!) Turtle Fan (talk) 06:30, August 13, 2012 (UTC)