Hitler's war
- Автор: Тертлдав Гарри Норман
- Серия: The War that came early #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Альтернативная история
Электронная книга - «Hitler's war». Краткое содержание книги:
Now, in this thrilling, provocative, and fascinating alternate history by Harry Turtledove, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? What if Hitler had acted rashly, before his army was ready-would such impatience have helped him or doomed him faster? Here is an action-packed, blow-by-blow chronicle of the war that might have been-and the repercussions that might have echoed through history-had Hitler reached too far, too soon, and too fast.
Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell this story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China to members of a Jewish German family with a proud history of war service to their nation, from ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory-and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast.
A novel that reveals the human face of war while simultaneously riding the twists and turns that make up the great acts of history, Hitler's War is the beginning of an exciting new alternate history saga. Here is a tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, of spies, soldiers, and traitors, of the shifting alliances that draw some together while tearing others apart. At once authoritative, brilliantly imaginative, and hugely entertaining, Hitler's War captures the beginning of a very different World War II-with a very different fate for our world today.
But the advancing column had stuck its dick in the meat grinder. One tank lay on its side, blown off its tracks by a bomb that burst right next to it. Several trucks burned. Others weren’t going anywhere soon, not with from one to four flat tires or with bullets through the engine block…or with dead or wounded drivers. What bombs and machine-gun bullets had done to the foot soldiers was even worse. And as for that mob of refugees…
A woman who might have been pretty if she weren’t dirty and exhausted and terrified screamed in Dutch or Flemish. She wasn’t wounded-not as far as Walsh could see, anyhow. She was just half crazy, maybe more than half, because of everything that had happened to her.
Walsh had a devil of a time blaming her. A few days ago, she’d been a shopkeeper’s wife or a secretary or something else safe and comfortable. Then the roof fell in on her life-literally, odds were. Now she had nothing but the clothes on her back and whatever was in the cute little handbag she carried. How long before she’d start selling herself for a chunk of black bread or a mess of fried potatoes?
How many more just like her were there? Thousands, tens of thousands, all over Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg and eastern France. And their husbands, and their brats, and…“Oh, bloody hell. Bloody hell,” Walsh muttered under his breath.
Still, civilians weren’t his worry, except when they got in the way and kept him from getting to where he needed to be to do his job. Sorting out his soldiers and keeping them moving damn well was.
Captain Ted Peters came over to him. The young officer looked as if he’d just walked into a haymaker. This was his introduction to combat, after all. Combat, meet Captain Peters. Peters, this is combat . Walsh shook his head. He had to be punchy himself, or his brain wouldn’t be whirling like that.
“Well, Sergeant, I’m afraid you’re the new platoon commander,” Peters said. “Lieutenant Gunston stopped a large fragment of bomb casing with his belly. Gutted him like a sucking pig.”
“Christ!” Walsh said.
“A bit of a rum go, I’m afraid,” Peters said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came down the pike. He did his best to ignore the ammunition cooking off in burning vehicles, the cries of wounded men and women and kids and animals, and the stenches of burning paint and burning rubber and burning flesh and fear and shit.
When the company commander didn’t say anything more, Walsh did: “I should say so! We’ve got ourselves all smashed up, and we haven’t even set eyes on a goddamn German.”
“I did,” Captain Peters answered, not without pride. “One of those dive-bombers was so low when he pulled up that I could see him through the glass of his cockpit. And I got a good look at his rear gunner. The bastard almost punctured me after the plane pulled out of its dive.”
“What are we going to do when we have to fight them face to face, sir?” Walsh asked. “How the devil can we, when it looks like they’ve got more airplanes than we do?”
“We shot down one of their fighters, after all,” the officer said. “I’m sure we’ll do better with practice, too.”
“Right…sir,” Sergeant Walsh said tightly. He wasn’t sure of any such thing. England’s chosen method of fighting seemed to be stumbling from one disaster to the next till she figured out how to beat the set of foes who had been beating her. It worked the last time around only because the USA stuck its oar in the water. Things were moving faster now, much faster. Would-could-muddling through work at all?
Captain Peters had no doubts. Or, if he did, he didn’t let them show, which was the mark of a good officer. Walsh didn’t let the privates and corporals he led see his doubts, either-or he hoped like hell he didn’t, anyhow. “All we can do is go on,” Peters said. “We have to clear these civilians out of the way and take up our assigned positions. We’ll have the French and the Belgians fighting along with us. The Boches will end up sorry they ever started this war-you mark my words.”
“Right…sir,” Alistair Walsh said again. No, he didn’t believe a word of it. But you also couldn’t let your superiors see your doubts. You couldn’t even-or maybe you especially couldn’t-let yourself see them.
* * *
Sergeant Ludwig Rothe spotted a truck out somewhere close to a kilometer away. He raised his field glasses to his eyes. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot up his own side by mistake. But the magnified image showed it was a French model, and bound to be full of Dutchmen.
“Panzer halt!” he yelled into the speaking tube.
“Jawohl! Halting,” Fritz Bittenfeld answered. The Panzer II jerked to a stop.
Rothe peered through the TZF4 sighting telescope. It was only two and a half power-downright anemic after the binoculars. But it let him draw a bead with the 20mm cannon. He wouldn’t have opened up on enemy armor from farther out than 600 meters. The panzer’s main armament wouldn’t penetrate serious protection from farther out than that. It would chew up soft-skinned vehicles as far as it could reach, though.
The trigger was on the elevating handwheel, to the left of the gun. Ludwig fired a three-round burst. The Dutch truck stopped as if it had run into a stone wall. Smoke poured out from under the hood. Rothe fired another burst, which emptied the magazine. He slapped in another ten-round clip. The other guys might-hell, they did-use bigger rounds in their main armament, but he could shoot a lot quicker than they could. Sometimes that made all the difference in the world.
Sometimes it didn’t matter a pfennig’s worth. Not far away, another Panzer II burned like billy-be-damned. It had stopped a 105mm shell fired over open sights at point-blank range. None of the crew had got out. That was no surprise-hitting a Panzer II with a 105 was like swatting a mosquito with a table. The Dutch artillerymen who’d fought the gun were dead now, which didn’t do that panzer crew one goddamn bit of good.
“Can we get going again, Sergeant?” Fritz asked pointedly. A halted panzer was a panzer waiting to stop something.
“Wait a second.” Ludwig looked through the TZF4 again. Yes, the Dutch truck was definitely laid up. “Go ahead,” he said.
As soon as he gave permission, the panzer seemed to bound forward. The flat Dutch plains made ideal panzer country. But the buildings and trees up ahead made equally ideal places to hide antitank guns. Even if the Dutch had taken a big punch at the start of the fight, they were still in there swinging.
Ludwig felt a tap on the back of his left leg. He ducked down into the turret. “Was ist los?” he asked the radio operator.
“Bridge up ahead,” Theo Hossbach answered. “We’ve got paratroops holding it. The Dutchmen are giving them a hard time.”
“I bet they are,” Rothe said. They hadn’t been ready for soldiers jumping out of Ju-52s and taking bridges and airports away from them. Well, who would have been? Nobody in the last war fought like that. Hell, in the last war even pilots didn’t wear parachutes. As far as Ludwig was concerned, that meant everybody who’d got into an airplane during the last war was out of his goddamn mind. The panzer commander brought his mind back to the business at hand. “Up ahead, huh? Which map square?”
“C-9,” Theo told him.
“C-9?” Ludwig repeated, and the radioman nodded. Rothe unfolded the map so he could see where he was-or where he thought he was, anyhow. Wrestling with the map inside the cramped turret made him feel like a one-armed paper hanger with the hives. At last, though, he got it open. “Well, Jesus Christ! We’re in C-10 now. Tell ‘em we’re on our way.”
“Will do.” Theo shouted into the microphone that connected the panzer to the platoon, company, regiment, and division commanders. Everybody could tell Ludwig what to do. Half the time, everybody seemed to be trying to tell him at once. But all German panzers came with radios, so they could work together. That hadn’t been true of the Czechs. The Wehrmacht was using captured Czech panzers-the more, the merrier. Before they went into German service, technicians installed radio sets in the machines that lacked them.