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.
All Luc wanted was to come through alive and in once piece. The only shame he worried about was letting his buddies down. They mattered to him. Paris? Next to the dirty, smelly, frightened men alongside of whom he fought, Paris wasn’t so much of a much.
Small-arms fire picked up. The Germans knew what was going on as well as the Frenchmen they were trying to murder. They wanted to get into the French fieldworks as fast as they could, while the poilus were still woozy from the barrage.
If they do that, I’m dead. The thought was enough to make Luc stick his head up and bring his rifle to his shoulder. A bullet cracked past, too close for comfort. He wouldn’t have had to worry about that if he’d stayed all nicely huddled in his young cave.
No, but then he would have had to worry about other things. Sure as hell, the Germans were loping forward. The men who ran straight up and down had less experience than the ones who folded themselves as small as they could. Most of the Boches did know enough to hit the dirt or dive behind something when French machine guns started chattering.
The Germans never got to Meaux the last time around. That meant all the damage in town was brand new. The thirteenth-century cathedral lay in ruins a couple of kilometers behind Luc. Guns and Stukas cared nothing for antiquities-and the French weren’t shy about placing observers in the steeples. If the bastards in field-gray kept pressing forward, pretty soon French guns would start shelling Meaux-and the Boches would have put men with binoculars up in high places.
As if thinking of French guns had called them up, several batteries of quick-firing 75s started banging away at the Germans. They’d slaughtered the Boches by the thousands in 1914, and all through the last war. Things were tougher now. German 105s outranged them and delivered bigger shells. The enemy knew better than to advance in tight-packed ranks, too. But when you needed to drop a lot of artillery on some unlucky place in a hurry, 75s were still hard to beat.
German medics in Red Cross smocks and armbands ran around gathering up the wounded. Luc left them alone as much as he could. War was tough enough without making it worse.
He thought so, anyhow. A medic fell, and then another one. Another German wearing the Red Cross emblem pointed angrily toward the French line…right about toward where Sergeant Demange was lurking. A moment later, that medic ducked, which meant a bullet hadn’t missed him by much. He could take a hint-he dove behind a battered stone wall.
“Naughty, Sergeant,” Luc called.
“So’s your mother,” Demange answered, which wasn’t exactly a ringing denial of anything.
Luc was in no position to tell him what to do. He had other things on his mind, anyway: “Have we got any tanks in the neighborhood? Do they?”
“Sure haven’t seen any of ours,” the sergeant said.
Since Luc hadn’t, either, he asked the next important question: “Have we got any antitank guns?”
“Sure as hell hope so,” Demange answered. That was also less encouraging than Luc wished it were.
Meaux lay in a loop of the Marne. Maybe the Germans were having trouble getting their armor across the river. They’d managed farther east with far fewer problems than he wished they’d had-probably far fewer than they should have had. With luck, the Allies were figuring out how to make those crossings tougher. Without luck, the Boches were feinting here so they could knock the crap out of the French and English defenders somewhere else.
Even without tanks, they hadn’t given up in front of Meaux. More artillery came in, this barrage precisely aimed at the French forward positions. Luc cowered in his hole while hell fell all around him.
“Up!” Sergeant Demange screamed. “Up, you gutless assholes! They’re coming!”
Luc didn’t want to come up. Shell fragments did dreadful things. But he didn’t want to get shot or bayoneted in his foxhole, either. The Germans aimed to make the French keep their heads down so they’d make easy meat. The French couldn’t let them impose their will on the combat…Luc supposed.
He came up firing. A German had crawled to no more than thirty meters away. He had a potato-masher grenade in his right hand. Luc shot him before he could fling it. “Heilige Scheisse!” screamed the soldier in the coal-scuttle helmet. He clutched at himself. He must not have pulled the grenade’s fuse cord, because it didn’t go off after he dropped it.
Then French machine guns opened up, one of them from a spot where Luc hadn’t known his side had a machine gun. The Boches hadn’t known it was there, either. Several of them fell. Others ran back toward the river. Luc would have done the same thing in their boots. Flesh and blood had limits, and facing machine-gun fire out in the open went beyond them.
The German Luc had shot lay where he’d gone down. He wasn’t dead; he kept thrashing around and yelling and swearing.
“Make him shut up,” Sergeant Demange called. “Either blow his head off or go out there and bring him back.”
Neither possibility appealed to Luc. Killing a wounded man in cold blood felt like murder. If he were lying there wounded, he wouldn’t want the Germans taking pot shots at him.
But if he went out there to get the Boche, other soldiers in field-gray might nail him. He knew he had only a few seconds to make up his mind. Demange wouldn’t hesitate longer than that before shooting the German himself. He wouldn’t have second thoughts about it afterward, either.
“Je suis dans le merde,” Luc muttered. Up shit creek or not, he had to do something. He climbed out of the foxhole and crawled toward the wounded Boche.
Firing had slacked off. That could end any second, as he knew too well. None of the few rounds flying about came close-the Germans weren’t aiming at him, anyway.
“I’ll take you in,” he called to the soldier in field-gray, hoping the fellow understood French. “We’ll fix you up if we can.”
“Merci,” the man answered in gutturally accented French. “Hurts.”
“I bet,” Luc said. The bullet had torn up the German’s left leg. “Can you climb up on top of me?”
“I’ll try.” The Boche did it. He felt as if the fellow weighed a tonne-he was a bigger man than Luc, and weighted down with boots and helmet and equipment. Slowly-the only way he could-Luc crawled back toward the French line. Seeing what he was doing, the Germans paid him the courtesy of aiming away from him.
Other hands reached out to pull the wounded man off him. The German groaned as they got him down into the trenches. Luc had never been so glad to get under cover again himself. “Whew!” he said. “I felt naked out there.”
“You did good, kid,” Sergeant Demange said, and handed him a Gitane.
“Thanks.” Luc leaned close for a light.
“You didn’t go out there pretty damn quick, I was gonna plug the motherfucker,” Demange said.
“Yeah, I figured. That’s why I went.” Luc’s cheeks hollowed as he sucked in harsh smoke.
“Maybe they’ll learn something off him,” the noncom said. “He’ll sing like a goddamn canary, and sergeants, they know stuff.” Not without pride, he tapped his own chest.
“Was he a sergeant? I didn’t notice,” Luc said. Demange rolled his eyes. Grinning, Luc added, “If I’d known that, I would’ve shot him for sure.”
“Funny man,” Demange said scornfully. “You got that crappy hash mark on your sleeve, so you think you’re entitled to be a goddamn funny man.”
“Sergeant, if it meant I’d come through the war without getting shot, I’d never make another joke the rest of my life,” Luc promised.
“Oh, yeah?” Sergeant Demange said. Luc’s head bobbed up and down as if it were on springs. Demange spat out a tiny butt, crushed it underfoot, and lit a fresh Gitane. Then he returned to the business at hand: “Well, you don’t need to worry about that, on account of it doesn’t.” Luc already knew as much. All the same, he wished Demange hadn’t spelled it out.