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.
The tapman ducked into the back room for a little while, then came out again. A couple of minutes later, so did Michelle. She brought Willi a beer and Wolfgang a brandy they hadn’t ordered. When they tried to pay for them, she wouldn’t take their money.
“Merci. Merci,” Willi said. It didn’t seem enough, but it was the best he could do.
They finished the free drinks and left. After they got outside and closed the door behind them again, Wolfgang said, “If she really wanted to thank us, she could have taken us into that back room while Papa looked the other way.”
“She’s not that kind of girl,” Willi said.
“Yeah. Ain’t it a shame?” Wolfgang’s breath smoked even though he didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth. After a couple of steps, he brightened. “Could be worse, you know? Old Arno sure got his.”
“Boy, did he ever!” Willi agreed enthusiastically. They walked on through the snow, toward the house where they were quartered.
* * *
French villagers stared fearfully at Vaclav Jezek and the rest of the Czechs in his outfit. Vaclav knew why, too. Their uniforms weren’t quite the right color, their helmets were the wrong shape, and they spoke some funny foreign language. To people who didn’t know any better, that was plenty to turn them into Germans.
And, just to make things worse, they were coming from the east. If they were Germans, they would have smashed all the defenders ahead of them, but you couldn’t expect civilians to think of things like that.
One of the locals came out with something. Vaclav had picked up a handful of French words, but not nearly enough to let him follow. “What did he say?” he asked the guy along as an interpreter.
Benjamin Halevy looked even less happy than he had before he heard the Frenchman’s news. The Jewish sergeant pointed north and west. “Old geezer claims the Germans are already over there.”
“Shit,” Vaclav said. If that was true, they were in danger of getting cut off and surrounded. If…“Does he know his ass from a hole in the ground?”
He eyed the Frenchman. The guy was around fifty, and had some ugly scars on his jaw and left cheek. Maybe those weren’t war wounds, but they sure looked like them. If this fellow had gone through the mill before, he wouldn’t see a cow and imagine it was a German armored division.
Halevy went back and forth with him. After a last “Merci,” the sergeant returned to Czech: “Sure sounds like he does. They pushed through the woods over there. This guy says he saw a couple of armored cars, but no tanks.”
“Bad enough,” Vaclav muttered. Several of his countrymen nodded. He went on, “Where are our tanks? Where are our armored cars?” Nobody answered him. The Germans always seemed to have armor when they broke through. They used their armor to break through. The French scattered it up and down the line, which meant they never had enough where they needed it most. That was one reason they were falling back and the Nazis moving up.
Halevy gave Vaclav a crooked grin. “Hey, pal, that’s why you’ve got your antitank rifle, right?”
Vaclav told him where he could put the antitank rifle. Halevy would have walked very straight if he’d tried. You could get your behind in a sling for telling off a noncom, but Vaclav’s behind was already in a sling because he was up at the front, so what did he care?
He would have expected a Jew to get stuffy about that kind of thing, maybe to threaten him with official regulations. But Sergeant Halevy just laughed and said something about his mother and troopships. From another guy, or under different circumstances, Vaclav would have tried to rearrange his face. He laughed now, too. They’d been through it together. They’d earned the right to zing each other.
“Seriously, we ought to head up that way,” Halevy said. “If your rifle can take out those cars, it’ll do us some good.”
Vaclav was no more enthusiastic about putting his dick on the chopping block than any other soldier in his right mind would have been. But he could see the need. “I’ll try it,” he said.
“Attaboy,” Halevy told him. He clapped another Czech soldier on the back. “Dominik, take point.”
“Right, Sergeant.” Dominik didn’t sound thrilled, but he never did. He was little and skinny and nervous as a cat in a room full of Rottweilers-all of which made him a goddamn good point man. He carried a captured German submachine gun. If he ran into trouble, he could spray a lot of lead at it.
“Let’s go,” the sergeant said. He moved right behind Dominik. He didn’t believe in staying away from trouble. None of the people who said Jews were a bunch of cowards had seen him in action. David had stayed right up there with everybody else, too, till he stopped one. And they both hated Nazis even more than Vaclav did, which he wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
“Bonne chance,” called the Frenchman who’d warned them about Germans. Luck, that meant, or something like it. Vaclav waved to the guy without looking back.
Trees and bushes and rocks. The western part of the Ardennes was as wild and rugged as anything in Czechoslovakia. Vaclav would have bet the Germans couldn’t get any armor through here, but he would have lost if he had. He’d already escaped from tanks in these parts: Panzer Is and IIs, and also some captured Czech T-35s. Those infuriated him. Yes, everybody grabbed whatever he could get his hands on-his own antitank rifle and Dominik’s machine pistol showed as much. But seeing Czech tanks fight against Czech soldiers made him want to cry.
Dominik waved urgently. Vaclav dove behind the closest bush. He didn’t know what was up ahead, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Sergeant Halevy twiddled fingers at him. Ever so cautiously, Vaclav slithered forward. He swore under his breath every time a knee or an elbow broke a twig.
Then he froze-German voices up ahead. The breeze swung, and he got a whiff of cigarette smoke. “God in heaven, I’m tired,” one of the Fritzes said. “I could sleep for a month.”
“Just a little going on, Klaus.” If those dry tones didn’t come from a sergeant, Vaclav would eat his boots.
“Ja,” Klaus said, and then, “What the hell was that?”
That was Vaclav’s antitank rifle scraping through some dry bushes. The goddamn thing was more than a meter and a half long-almost as long as he was tall. It wasn’t just heavy; it was also unwieldy as all get-out. Jezek froze.
“I didn’t hear anything,” the noncom said.
“I sure thought I did,” Klaus replied.
“Want to check it out?”
“Nah. I just want to sit here and grab a smoke.”
“Sounds good to me. Let me bum one off you,” the sergeant said.
Even more warily than before, Vaclav crawled forward. He spotted an armored car between a couple of chestnuts. Hoping the noise wouldn’t give him away, he chambered a round. The Germans didn’t have kittens, so he got away with it. A couple of those long, fat rounds through the engine compartment and that armored car wouldn’t go anywhere for a while.
He waggled the fingers on his left hand to let Sergeant Halevy know he was in position. The rest of the Czechs opened up on the Germans. His noise covered by theirs, he punched one through the armored car’s thin steel side and into the engine.
He was about to shoot at it again when a German with a submachine gun popped up out of nowhere. Vaclav shot him instead. A round designed to pierce armor did horrible things to flesh. It seemed to blow out half the German’s insides. The poor bastard fell over with a grunt and never stirred after that. It was over fast for him, anyhow.
Shoulder aching-even with muzzle brake and padded stock, the antitank rifle kicked harder than a kangaroo-Vaclav reloaded. Here came the other armored car. He fired at where the driver would sit, once, twice. The car slid to the left and slammed into a tree.
That seemed to take the vinegar out of these Germans. They either ran off or gave up. “Good job!” Sergeant Halevy called to Vaclav. “Don’t you wish it was this easy all the goddamn time?”