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.
Sarah Goldman listened from the kitchen as her father and the other professor of ancient history talked. Friedrich Lauterbach had studied under her father. He still felt kindly toward him-this article for Pauly-Wissowa was a case in point. When it saw print, it would go under Lauterbach’s name: he, after all, was an Aryan. But he paid Samuel Goldman for the work, and the family badly needed the money.
Now he said, “Thank you very much. I will type it myself tonight, so no secretary finds out about our…arrangement.”
“Whatever you need to be safe,” Sarah’s father said. “Take a look at it now, if you care to. I have been very thorough.” He was proud of that, too. Yes, he really might as well have been a German-except the damned Germans wouldn’t let him.
“I’m sure it’s fine, Samuel. Who knows your work better than I do, after all?” Lauterbach paused for a moment. “Here-let me give you this.” As he always did, he sounded embarrassed about having to do business this way.
Another pause followed, a longer one. Sarah had to strain to hear her father’s next words, for his voice dropped almost to a whisper: “But this is too much. This is much too much, twice as much as I could have expected for-”
“I’m giving you what I can,” Lauterbach said. “There won’t be any more, I’m afraid, not from me. I got my call-up papers yesterday. That’s why I have to do my typing in a hurry.”
“Oh,” Samuel Goldman said, and then, “Stay safe. I would be with you if I could.”
“You did what you had to do the last time around,” the younger man said. “I know that-you could hardly walk when I studied with you.”
“That isn’t what’s keeping me out now,” Sarah’s father said pointedly.
“And I know that,” Lauterbach answered. “I think it’s…unfortunate. But what can I do about it? I am only one man, and not a very brave one.”
“As long as you don’t tell the Tommies and the poilus, they won’t know,” Sarah’s father said with a wry chuckle. “If I could fool them, so can you. You’ll do fine. I’m sure of it.”
“That makes one of us,” Lauterbach said with a dry laugh of his own. “I’d better go, I’m afraid.”
“True,” Sarah’s father agreed. “If they can prove you’re friends with a Jew, that may be more dangerous than going up to the front.”
“If things were different…” Lauterbach sighed. “But they aren’t, and they aren’t likely to be. Still, you’ve got a pretty daughter.” Three or four footsteps took him to the door. It closed behind him.
He was, Sarah remembered, single. Did he mean…? She shrugged. What he meant didn’t matter, because things weren’t different, and they sure weren’t likely to be. He was dead right about that.
She went out into the front room. Her father stood there, holding the banknotes with the eagles and swastikas. Even the money proclaimed that things weren’t going to be different. Samuel Goldman looked up. “You were listening?” he asked.
“Ja.” Sarah nodded. “Wasn’t I supposed to?”
“It’s all right.” He grimaced. “I don’t know what we’ll do for cash when this runs out, though.”
“Isn’t there anyone else who will let you write for him?” Sarah asked.
“Maybe.” Her father looked-and sounded-dubious. “The others have always been more nervous about it than Friedrich…and who can blame them?” His mouth twisted. “They never paid as well, either. But we do what we can, not what we want to, eh?”
“Ja,” Sarah said again. What else was there to say? She did her best to find something: “Saul brings in a little money.”
“As a laborer.” It wasn’t quite as if her father said, As a pimp, but it was close. He went on, “He has a brain. He should use it. He should have the chance to use it. Or he should be a soldier. He’d make a better one than Friedrich Lauterbach, and you can bet on that.”
“He doesn’t mind so much. Honest, Papa, he doesn’t.” Sarah knew she was right about that. Her big brother had always exulted in his strength on the soccer pitch. Working with his body instead of his brain didn’t humiliate him the way it would have their father.
“Why God decided to give me a water buffalo for a son, only He knows,” Samuel Goldman said, and let it go at that.
The other worry was that, even though the Goldmans had money, they couldn’t buy much. Nobody in wartime Germany could buy a great deal, but Jews suffered worse than ordinary Germans. They could buy only from shops run by their fellow Jews, and those shops always had less to sell than others. Food got worse and worse. Sarah’s mother was a good cook, but disguise could go only so far.
Noodles flavored with nasty cheese didn’t make much of a supper. Sarah picked at hers. So did her father. Saul shoveled in everything in front of him and looked around to see what else he could get.
“You can have mine if you want,” Sarah said. “I’m not really hungry.” The last part of that wasn’t true, but she didn’t feel like eating the mess in front of her.
“Thanks!” Saul said. As Sarah passed him her plate, her mother gave her a dirty look. Hanna Goldman wanted everybody to eat a lot all the time. Maybe the noodles and cheese could have been worse, but they could have been a lot better, too. As far as Sarah was concerned, Saul was welcome to them if he wanted them so much.
And he did. By the way he glanced up after he made them disappear, he could have put away another couple of helpings. But there were no more. He sighed and said, “The coffee will be ersatz, won’t it?”
“Aber naturlich,” Mother answered. “Burnt barley, with a little chicory if we’re lucky.”
“Some luck,” Father said.
“Oh, well.” Saul shrugged his broad shoulders. “The Army isn’t getting much better?”
“How do you know that?” Samuel Goldman always looked for evidence. In better times, Sarah had admired that. Now she wondered whether it made any difference at all. Evidence? What did the Nazis care about that? But they had the guns and the goons. With those, they made evidence of their own.
What could you do if you’d lived by reason your whole life long but reason suddenly didn’t count any more? Could you do anything at all, or were you just supposed to lie down and die?
That was what the Nazis wanted German Jews to do. That the Nazis wanted it was the best reason not to do it, as far as Sarah was concerned. She wished her family had got out of Germany while escape was still possible. But her father clung too fiercely to his Germanness to see the need. He could see it now. Easy enough, when it was too late.
Instead of explaining how he knew, Saul said, “Maybe the British will send planes over tonight.”
“How can you sound so cheerful about it?” Sarah asked him. “They’re liable to blow us up.” With Jews having to shelter in their homes, enemy bombers were more likely to blow them up than anybody else.
Her brother only shrugged again. “They haven’t yet. And the more Nazis they send to the Devil, the better I’ll like it. If I had a gun…”
“Saul,” Samuel Goldman said sharply. “That will be enough of that.”
“Should I turn the other cheek?” Saul retorted. “I don’t see what for. I’m no Christian. They keep reminding me of that, in case I’m not smart enough to figure it out for myself.”
“They’re no Christians, either,” Father said. “Pagans. Barbarians.” He looked disgusted. “And they’re proud of it, too.” A Roman noble talking about wandering Ostrogoths could have packed no more scorn into his voice.
He would have silenced Sarah. Saul still felt like locking horns. “What about the German Christians?” he said. “Their preachers wear Nazi uniforms. Even the Catholics have swastikas in their churches. The students at their universities give the Nazi salute.” His right arm shot out.
“They can call themselves whatever they want. The name is not the thing,” Father insisted. “Trying to make you believe it is-that’s only one more lie.”
“Maybe so,” Saul said. “But we both tried to join the Wehrmacht anyway, didn’t we? And if they’d only let us, we’d be braying ‘Heil Hitler!’ like all the other donkeys in the Reich, wouldn’t we?”