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 so far Saul hadn’t. And if he hadn’t so far, maybe he could keep on doing whatever he was doing and stay free. Maybe. Sarah could hope so, anyhow. She could even pray, and she did, though she didn’t think she was very good at it. Maybe God valued sincerity over style. She could hope that was true, too-and she did.
* * *
A few kilometers up ahead lay a railway-junction town called Hirson. Willi Dernen did his best not to care. Northeastern France had winters almost as beastly as the ones he’d grown up with in eastern Germany. Willi was holed up in a village called Watigny, east of the place that mattered to the fellows with the fancy shoulder straps.
One of these days, they’d order him to go forward. And he would. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but he would. What they’d do to him if he didn’t was certain, and dreadful. What the Frenchmen would do to him after he did might not be so bad. If he was lucky.
For the moment, even the generals could see that advancing through waist-deep snowdrifts was asking to get your dick shot off. German guns pounded Hirson. The French replied, but not many shells came down on Watigny. There were German batteries north and south of the village, but none close by.
About half the people who’d lived here fled before the Wehrmacht arrived. Not all those houses were vacant. French refugees from farther north and east-to say nothing of Belgians and even Dutchmen-squatted in some of them. The Germans took the rest. Before long, they’d probably throw out the squatters, too. For the time being, the officers in charge of security were still sorting out who was who.
People from the older generation remembered the last time soldiers in Feldgrau came through these parts. Some of them were among the folks who’d run away. Others seemed gruffly tolerant of the occupiers. Their attitude said this was nothing new to them. They’d done it once, and they could do it again.
By order of the divisional commander, the local tavern stayed open. The exchange rate was pegged at ten francs to the mark. That made even privates like Willi rich men-or as rich as they could be in a place like Watigny, where getting by was as much as anyone could hope for.
The tavern still had beer and wine, as well as brandy that came in china crocks and was probably homemade. It got you crocked, all right. Willi had found that out by experience. It also left you with a mother of a hangover. Strong French coffee and strong German aspirins blunted a Katzenjammer, though.
Willi and Wolfgang Storch slogged through the snow toward the oasis. Orders were that no German soldier could go in alone. Nobody’d got knocked over the head here. Maybe it had happened somewhere else. Or maybe the High Command was scared of its own shadow. That was how it looked to Willi.
He opened the door. Both he and Wolfgang hurried inside. Then he closed the door again to block the cold wind whining through the streets.
It was gloomy inside, but the fire gave some warmth. Frenchmen sat at a couple of tables, drinking, smoking, murmuring in the language Willi didn’t speak. Corporal Baatz and a couple of other noncoms occupied another. They didn’t try to keep their voices down-they were the winners, after all.
Winners or not, Willi wanted nothing to do with them. A glance from Wolfgang said he didn’t, either. They walked past the underofficers and up to the bar. The man behind it was big, broad-shouldered, and fair. He looked much more like a German than a Frenchman. But a photo on the wall behind him showed him in the uniform of a French soldier in the last war. The patch he wore over one eye didn’t hide all the scarring around the socket. It did explain why he hadn’t got mobilized this time around.
“Guten Tag, Claude,” Willi said, more respectfully than not.
“Guten Tag,” the tapman answered. After he got wounded, he’d spent two years in a POW camp. He’d picked up some German there, and hadn’t forgotten all of it. Other people of his generation had learned it from the Kaiser’s soldiers who’d occupied the area. They still knew bits and pieces, too. “What you want, eh?” Claude went on.
“Beer, bitte,” Willi said.
“Brandy for me, please,” Wolfgang added. They both laid money-German money-on the zinc bar.
Claude sighed, but he took it. What choice did he have? “Go and sit,” he said, pointing to an empty table-shrewdly, the one farthest from where Baatz and his buddies were. “Michelle, she bring.”
“Now you’re talking!” Wolfgang radiated enthusiasm…or something related to it, anyhow. A grin also stretched across Willi’s face. Claude’s daughter was about their age. Like her father, she was large and solid and fair. On her, it looked good.
She came out from a back room. Claude gave her the drinks. She carried them over to the soldiers. “Thank you, dear,” Willi said auf Deutsch. He trotted out one of his handful of recently acquired French words: “Merci.”
“Pas d e quoi,” she answered gravely, and went away. As far as anybody knew, she didn’t sleep with soldiers. Everybody thought that was too damn bad.
Arno Baatz waved his mug. “Fill me up over here!” he called. Claude brought a pitcher of beer to his table and poured the mug full. That didn’t satisfy Baatz. “How come those no-account lugs get the pretty girl and I get you?” he demanded.
Claude’s one eye skewered him like a lepidopterist’s collecting pin. “Because they is-are-polite,” the tapman answered, and he walked back to the bar.
“What? I’m not?” Corporal Baatz yelled, beer-fueled outrage making him even shriller than usual. “You take that back!”
“Nein,” Claude said with dignity.
Baatz jumped to his feet. “I’ll show you, then, you stinking pigdog! Come fight like a man!”
Claude turned around and took one step back toward him: giving himself room to maneuver. Baatz rushed him. Willi wanted to avert his eyes. He couldn’t stand the Unteroffizier, but no denying he was a rough man in a rough trade. He gave Claude one that should have dented a Panzer II. The barman blinked his good eye. Then he swung. His fist caught Arno Baatz right on the button with a noise like a cleaver smacking into a frozen side of beef. Baatz went straight over backwards. The back of his head smacked the stone floor. He didn’t move. He didn’t even twitch.
“Holy Jesus!” Willi said. “Did you kill him?”
Claude took the question seriously. He felt for the noncom’s pulse. “He lives,” he said laconically, and dropped Baatz’s wrist. It fell back limply. Baatz might be alive, but he sure wasn’t connected to the real world. The tapman looked to the other Germans at the corporal’s table. “He hit me first. Please take him away. He is no more welcome here.”
They didn’t argue with him. Nobody in his right mind would have argued with Claude then-not without a Schmeisser in his hands, anyhow. Arno Baatz was as boneless as an octopus as they dragged him out of the tavern.
One of the Frenchmen drinking there sent up smoke signals from his pipe. He said something in his own language. Claude shrugged a massive shrug, as if to say, Well, what can you do? Willi guessed the customer had warned him he would get in trouble.
“We’ll say he started it,” Willi volunteered.
“It’s the truth,” Wolfgang agreed.
“Danke,” Claude said. “For official business, this is good. For not official business…” He spread his hands and let his voice trail away.
Willi understood that. If Arno Baatz and his friends-assuming he had any, which struck the biased Willi as improbable-decided to come back with weapons, what would the officers set over them do about it? Anything? Even if they did, how much would that help Claude after the fact?
“Maybe we’ll go forward again soon. Blizzards can’t last forever-I don’t think,” Wolfgang said. “Then Awful Arno will be out of your hair.”
“ Ja. Maybe,” Claude said. It was the first time Willi had heard him even slightly enthusiastic about the prospect of a German advance. He was a Frenchmen. The Germans had maimed him in the last war. You couldn’t blame him for not wishing them well. But you also couldn’t blame him for wanting Corporal Baatz the hell out of Watigny, even if that meant the Wehrmacht went forward.