The War That Came Early: The Big Switch [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

This is the third book in a series which speculates about what might have happened if World War II had started in 1938 after the Munich peace talks failed.

The books in the series to date are:

1) "Hitler's War"

2) "West and East (War That Came Early)"

3) This book, "The War that came early: the Big Switch"

"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.

In the opening paragraphs of the first book Turtledove made two changes in real history, and the first two volumes in the series work 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 did order 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, both at the time of Munich and subsequently, that the democracies were not ready for war in 1938 while 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 the first two books tried to address the question of whether that view is right, by projecting through what might have happened, taking account of the fact that the lineup of countries on each side was not identical, how far rearmament had actually gone on each side, and of the military and naval kit which would have been available to the combatants from 1938.

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 such as the Panzer II: 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. In "Hitler's war" the Schlieffen plan is 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.

By the start of this book it the Germans have clearly failed to secure the rapid victory against France which they actually achieved in 1940, and are slowly and painfully being driven back, though their armies are well inside French territory: meanwhile in the East the Germans and Poles are gradually driving the Russians back.

At this point Turtledove posits a further "What if" change in events from the real World War II - what if there was a change around in the pattern of alliances?

Now if you were to ask me whether such an event was remotely likely I would have to say definately not, particularly in the timeline depicted in this series. It is hardly likely that the same people who showed more spine and a greater willingness to stand up to Hitler in the first book in this series than they did in reality, would then diverge from historical events in quite the opposite direction as they do in this book. Having said that, there was an element within certain countries, small minority though they were, who argued for the course of action which those countries take in this book. Which makes this a legitimate "what if" to ask, particularly if you don't pretend that it would be a given: and Turtledove does go out of his way to make clear that there would also have been people who strongly opposed that course of action, inferring that it could not have happened without the death of one particularly important historical figure.

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 at the start of the third book is still trying to get home, a Jewish family in Munster, a German panzer wireless operator, 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 and third books Turtledove keeps us guessing about whether he is the driver of the Panzer II in which one of the Wehrmacht viewpoint characters is radio operator. Major historical figures like Hitler and Churchill get mentions as they impact on the lives of the viewpoint characters.

Turtledove's homework on the tactical capabilities of equipment available to the armed forces of all sides between 1938 and 1940 is mostly pretty good, though he is open to challenge on how representative his battle scenes are in a small number of cases. The main one in this book, continuing a storyline from the second volume, concerns the effectiveness of cannon-armed ground attack aircraft.

Both the Germans and Allies historically deployed ground-attack aircraft designed to destroy tanks. The Germans really did have a "Panzerbuster" variant of the Stuka armed with 37mm guns JU87-G, similar to the aircraft flown by a viewpoint character in this book, and other anti-tank aircraft such as the Henschel HS129: the RAF deployed a Hurricane variant with 40mm anti-tank cannons, and later in the war used rocket-firing Typhoons.

But the main impact of such aircraft on enemy armour, whether they carried with airborne anti-tank guns or anti-tank rockets, was to slow the enemy down and kill unarmoured targets: they never managed to kill large numbers of tanks.

Without the precision guidance systems developed later in the 20th century, or the ability to throw vast numbes of shells as the Gatling cannon on a modern A10 Warthog aircraft can, it was simply not possible to get the accuracy with air-to-surface weapons which was needed for a decent chance of destroying an armoured, moving target. However, the psychological impact of being attacked from the air was considerable even for armoured units, and WWII air attack could and did cause significant casualties to unarmoured targets like infantry, artillery, and supply units.

One famous incident where witnesses from both sides agree that air attack stopped an armoured assault cold took place at Mortain in 1944. Several squadrons of RAF Typhoons and USAF P47s really did halt a major German thrust, but their claim to have destroyed 200 enemy tanks was wrong by a factor of about twenty.

A military survey of the Mortain battlefield shortly afterwards found the wreckage of only 46 knocked-out German tanks and other AFVs, of which no more than NINE had damage consistent with having been hit by the weapons used by the Allied fighter-bombers: another seven tanks had been abandoned intact. The British investigators found that the vast majority of wrecked AFVs had damage more consistent with hits from the weapons used by the American ground troops they were facing.

This absolutely does NOT mean that the air attack had no effect: all participants on both sides agreed that it had been decisive. Interviews with captured prisoners confirmed that some inexperienced panzer crews had bailed out when they came under heavy air attack. And for every tank knocked out by air attack, several support vehicles such as ammunition wagons and fuel tankers were indeed destroyed from the air.

The point is that a successful, massive air strike had its main impact through a dramatic effect on morale, causing armoured and unarmoured german units to take cover, through killing significant numbers of the infantry, artillery and support units essential to the armoured advance, and persuading nearly as many green panzer crews to abandon their vehicles as were actually knocked out, rather than by killing large numbers of german tanks. Though to be fair to the fighting men on both sides, the Typhoons and P47s did kill enough AFVs to make the action of panzer crews in taking cover quite rational and in no way cowardly!

The JU 87-G1, which was the real historical aircraft most closely corresponding to the Panzerbuster Stuka in this book, carried six rounds for each of its two 37mm anti-tank guns. It was exclusively deployed on the Eastern Front, apparently because the Western allies usually had air superiority and all Stuka variants were hopelessly vulnerable to Allied fighter planes. Most of its successes against Russian tanks were obtained by attacking Soviet tank columns from behind and penetrating their thinner rear armour. To be fair to Turtledove, this book does refer to the stuka's extreme vulnerability to fighters and to the pilot manouvering to hit Soviet tanks from behind.

However, the scenes in both "The war that came early: West and East" and this book, where an anti-tank stuka zips round above a battlefield swatting Allied or Russian tanks like flies, killing three or four targets per sortie without apparent regard to either ammunition constraints, or the difficulty of actually scoring a hit, are not very representative.

The argument over this is complicated because the viewpoint character in the book, stuka pilot Hans Rudel, appears to be based on a historical german pilot with the same name who was the most decorated german serviceman of the war, really did fly JU-87 G variants from Kursk onwards, and was credited by the Luftwaffe with knocking out a very large number of soviet tanks and other targets.

Ironically, in real history Rudel's luftwaffe bosses initially thought that he did not have the necessary skills to fly combat missions as a pilot, and did not allow him to do so until Operation Barbarossa in 1941, some years after his fictional counterpart was swatting tanks in this series of books.

Since only the winners have the opportunity to do the sort of after-action analysis which the allies conducted after Mortain, we will never know for certain whether Rudel really did destroy anything remotely like the number of soviet targets that he thought he had. However, both allied and german witnesses agree that USAF and RAF air power really was decisive both at Mortain and in many other places, while it is manifestly evident that Rudel and his fellow anti-tank stuka pilots failed to halt the Red Army at Kursk or subsequently. There is no evidence whatsoever that german air attacks were more effective than allied ones - if anything, the reverse is the case.

So even if Rudel really was as effective as he thought he was, and Turtledove presents him as being in this book, the average german stuka pilot clearly wasn't remotely that good - for which Brits, Americans and Russians can alike be very grateful!

Mind you, these scenes were told only from the Luftwaffe viewpoint, and perhaps like the allied pilots at Mortain the German pilot thinks he has killed more enemy tanks than he really has. Occasionally Turtledove gives both sides of the same battle: perhaps in a future book if Turtledove wants to restore perspective one of his soviet characters may be present when the panzerbuster stuka attacks, and report that when the pilot thinks he has killed several tanks, in fact he has damaged one and driven the rest into cover.

I've gone into some detail about the effectiveness of WWII air attack because this aspect of the book seemed a bit unrepresentative and annoyed me, but fortunately this is not typical of the quality of the techical and tactical analysis in "The big switch:" most of it is much better than that.

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)). He's also done a parallel history following pretty much the real track, in a world where technology uses magic rather than engineering (known variously as the Darkness, Derlavi, or 'World at War' series) which starts with Into the Darkness. There is an alternative World War II in his massive ten volume history of a Confederate States of America which survives for nearly a century following a Rebel victory in the US Civil War, and in which the same roles as in the historical WWII are carried out by different people - this is the "Settling Accounts" quartet. Finally there is a pair of novels, "Days of Infamy" and "End of the Beginning" which explore the possibility that Japan might have backed up the air strikes on Pearl Harbour with a land invasion of Hawaii.

Having done so many alternative versions of World War II, you would think he would find it impossible to say anything new about them or maintain the reader's interest. There were some negative reviews of the first book - mostly along the lines of "good concept, poor execution" and I suspect that not all readers will enjoy this as much as I did. One minor weakness is that, ironically, the viewpoint characters in this series somehow do not seem quite as "real" to me as those in the fantasy WWII series set in a magic world often did.

Turtledove also has a bad habit of repeating the same information time after time, and there is some of that in this series, from how hard machine-gunners often found it to surrender, to how junior enlisted men were wise not to argue with noncoms.

But overall I enjoyed reading all three books in this series and can recommend them.

Harry Turtledove's newest volume in his "War that Came Early" series picks up where his last book, The War That Came Early: West and East, left off with a war grinding on in the harsh winter of 1940. Both Germany and the Soviet Union find themselves facing two-front conflicts, and with the focus increasingly on the clash with each other, their leaders are willing to let go on the other front. For the Soviets, that means allowing Japanese triumphs in Siberia. For the Germans, however, a more radical move is attempted: convincing their opponents Britain and France to change sides and join the Nazis in their war against Communism. Yet as the prospects of an alliance grow increasingly likely, the question posed by Winston Churchill seems increasingly pertinent: can the proverbial lambs lie down with the Nazi lion, or are they just setting themselves up to be consumed in turn?

Longtime fans of Turtledove's alternate history novels will find much that is familiar within the pages of his latest book, as he describes the experiences of a cast of characters struggling to survive in a world where history takes a dramatic new turn. Yet the series does not measure up to his best efforts. The main flaw here seems to be one of characterization: unlike his Timeline-191 series, which offered a range of characters from different backgrounds and positions, nearly all of the characters in this series are enlisted men fighting in the war he described. This has the unfortunate effect of homogenizing the people and the action, as well as creating a similarity of perspective that limits his ability to offer exposition of the broader events that define alternate history. The problem is not without a solution - Turtledove has demonstrated in the past an ability to transition new characters into ongoing series - but he will need to do so soon or face squandering the effort he put into developing his latest alternate world.

sorry, but as a longtime fan of Turtledove, I have come to rely on his insight into the machinations of humankind and his characters. whether relying on science fiction and fantasy like extraterrestrials and time travel, or simply taking a subtle change in history and exploring it to its logical conclusions, Turtledove made sense within the confines of his own writing.

Here he takes a dynamic (European battle for hegemony and the longstanding uneasiness felt by the UK and France about Germany's rise and rearmament), and suddenly throws it under the bus and adopts this Big Switch. Makes no sense ... for one, the French were invaded and would not have jumped into bed with Hitler, for another, if the premise of the book is that Chamberlain had a backbone and stood up to Hitler in 1938, why would he suddenly join sides with him for no reason? Finally, the notion that UK and France would opt to join the military campaign against Russia rather than just seek an armistice and liberation of the Northern and Western European occupied countries, seems wholly unreasonable and fails the basic test of Turtledove readers: is this believable within the world created by the author?

the answer, sadly, is no.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 31 reviews  3.5 out of 5 stars