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| The Man with the Iron Heart | 
 enlarge | Author: Harry Turtledove
Publisher: Del Rey
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 10226
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8
ISBN: 0345504348
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345504340
ASIN: 0345504348
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
What if V-E Day didn’t end World War II in Europe? What if, instead, the Allies had to face a potent, even fanatical, postwar Nazi resistance? Such a movement, based in the fabled Alpine Redoubt, was in fact a real threat, ultimately neutralized by Germany’s flagging resources and squabbling officials. But had SS Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious Man with the Iron Heart, not been assassinated in 1942, fate might have taken a different turn. We might likely have seen a German guerrilla war launched against the conquerors, presaging by more than half a century the protracted conflict with an unrelenting enemy that now engulfs the United States and its allies in Iraq. How might today’s clash of troops versus terrorists have played out in 1945?
In this imagined world, Nazi forces resort to unconventional warfare, using the quick and dirty tactics of terrorism–booby traps, time bombs, mortar and rocket strikes in the night, assassinations, even kamikaze-style suicide attacks–to overturn what seemed to be a decisive Allied victory. In November 1945, a truck bomb blows up the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where high-ranking Nazi officials are about to stand trial for war crimes. None of the accused are there when the bomb goes off, but their judges, all of them present and accounted for, are annihilated. Worse acts of terrorism follow all over Europe.
Suddenly the Allies–especially the United States–must battle an invisible enemy and sacrifice countless lives in a long, seemingly pointless, unwinnable conflict. On the home front, patriotism corrodes, political fortunes are made and lost in the face of an antiwar backlash, and a once-proud country wonders how the righteous fight for freedom overseas has collapsed into a hopeless quagmire. At once a novel of thrilling military suspense, intriguing alternate history, and profound insight into contemporary affairs, The Man with the Iron Heart is a tour de force by a storyteller of exceptional imaginative power.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Terrorism After the Victory in Europe August 15, 2008
28 out of 28 found this review helpful
The Man With the Iron Heart (2008) is a standalone alternate history novel set after the end of the war in Europe. In May, 1942, two Czechs attempted to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich on his way to the Castle of Prague. In the real world, they were successful. But not so in this tale.
In February, 1943, the Reich was mourning the defeat at Stalingrad. Heydrich saw the possibility of losing the war and went to Heinrich Himmler with a plan for a stay-behind force to terrorize their enemies after the war. Himmler was very reluctant to even think of losing the war, but he agreed to authorize the organization. Still, he insisted that information about the effort should not be shared with Hitler.
In this novel, after VE Day, the Werewolves start a campaign of terror in all four zones of occupation and elsewhere in what had been Greater Germany. They start with improvised explosive devices. Then they send suicide bombers among the enemy troops with explosives strapped under their coats.
Lieutenant Lou Weissberg is a Counterintelligence Corps officer in occupied Germany. He is called in to examine the scene of the initial attack on two American soldiers. He and his superior -- Captain Howard Frank -- become the American lead investigators on the Werewolves situation. After months of fruitless efforts, Weissberg and Frank both want to share information with the Russians, but are rebuffed by their superiors.
Comrade Captain Vladimir Bokov is an NKVD officer in the Russian Zone. He is assigned to investigate the death of Marshal Koniev by the Werewolves. He and his superior -- Colonel Moisei Shteinberg -- become the Russian lead investigators on the case. Soon both NKVD men ask to share their information with the Allies, but are threatened with deportation to the Arctic zone if they persist in such Fascist thinking.
In this story, an early victim of the Werewolves was Patrick Jonathan McGraw. Upon receiving a telegram from the Department of War, his mother is shocked at the news of his death. After thinking about it, Diane McGraw is even more upset over the timing.
Jerry Duncan is the congressman for the district in which Diane McGraw lives. He is also a Republican at a time when the Democrats seem to have a lock on the White House and Congress. After receiving a visit from Diane McGraw, Duncan sees this death -- and others like it -- as a tool to gain political power.
Diane starts Mothers Against the War in Germany to protest the postwar deaths and to demand that the troops be brought home. Reporters see such demonstrations and sound bites as sensational news which will sell even more papers (and promote their careers). Then violence occurs during a demonstration and panic causes more injuries. Wonderful headlines!
This tale is a cautionary story about terrorism. It has been said that those who know no history are doomed to repeat it, but this saying is more of a sound bite than a truism. Knowledge of history provides warnings of previous mistakes, but does not necessarily show effective solutions to the problems. Those who know history have the option of making new mistakes.
Still, the author takes certain events and situations from the past to illustrate possible missteps in the present. The Werewolves in this story were based on Operation Greif during the Battle of the Bulge and the stay-behind operation planned for the end of the war. Both these improvised operations were less than successful. But what would have happened if such efforts had been initiated over a year before D-Day?
The story shows consequences of two different approaches to such problems. The Russians, of course, countered terror with more terror, executing hostages and shipping Germans to the gulags. The British and the French did much the same, but not as ruthlessly. Naturally, the US Army concentrated on punishing the holdouts rather than the whole population. Yet neither approach accomplished the destruction of the terrorist organization.
Many civilians back in the USA saw only the death toll and ignored the consequences of a rejuvenated Nazi society. Does this seem familiar? While this tale had the Republican party using the sorry results of the war on terror against the Democratic administration, such lack of true foresight seems to be on the other side in our times.
Terrorists do not care about political partisanship among its enemies. They only follow their own abhorrent logic and use such partisanship to forward their own goals. They gladly use every offer of appeasement and withdrawal to cause even more terror.
Note: this novel has unusual significance for this reviewer. I was assigned to the last CIC unit in the world during the Vietnam War. This was on Occupied Okinawa just before it was returned to the Japanese. I even carried a card stating that I was a CIC agent in addition to my standard credentials.
Highly recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of historical situations, counterintelligence procedurals, and stubborn perseverance.
-Arthur W. Jordin
 Pales in comparison with his other novels July 25, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
For the past decade, the summer has been the occasion of another entry in Harry Turtledove's "Southern Victory" alternate history series. In it, he explored the eighty years after a Civil War in which the South had won its independence, his last volume, In at the Death (Settling Accounts, Book 4), saw the Confederacy defeated and dissolved after their version of the Second World War. Having apparently finished with the series, Turtledove has moved on to this book. In it, he takes the "Werewolf" resistance movement devised by the Nazis before the demise of the Third Reich and puts it in the hands of Reinhard Heydrich, whom is spared his assassination by Czech partisans during the war.
Benefiting from better planning and more ruthless leadership, the Werewolves unleash a fearsome terrorist campaign against the Allied occupation forces. Soldiers are murdered and mutilated, truck bombs explode, and leading commanders targeted by rocket launcher-equipped fanatics. Readers of Turtledove's earlier series will find his depiction of this similar to that in his earlier novels, when he envisioned disaffected Mormons becoming suicide bombers and conquered Confederates waging a diehard resistance against occupying U.S. forces. But whereas in the earlier novels these elements were only part of the storyline, here they take center stage and form the basis of the action.
When reading the book, it soon becomes apparent that Turtledove draws many of his ideas from the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, both in terms of the occupation and the reaction to it on the home front. Much of it comes across as a metaphor that serves as commentary on modern-day events, one that is much less subtle than in earlier novels. Yet as I read this, I couldn't help but think how much more interesting his premise would have been in a new volume of his "Southern Victory" series, which ended in a place similar to where this novel begins. Perhaps he could not have done what he wanted as easily had he stuck with his earlier series, but this book suffers by comparison from the much more interesting world that he spent so many years cultivating. Longtime Turtledove readers will find much that is familiar and enjoyable within the pages of this book, but in many ways it seems a poor substitute for what he had entertained his fans with in the past.
provocative postulate that evokes current struggles July 22, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Here is another alternative history, set in World War 2. It looks into what might have happened if the Nazis were able to establish a prolonged Alpine resistance to the Allies. An added twist is that this is masterminded by Reinhard Heydrich, a loathsome being who in our timeline was assasinated by Czech partisans. In the book, he survives, and goes on to preposition materials and diehard Nazis for an underground struggle going well past 1945. In our history, there was briefly the phenomenon of Werewolves; principally young Nazi fanatics who were often too young to have already been conscripted into the Wehrmacht or SS. Well, the book extrapolates this, into a coherent organisation with experienced war veterans.
Reading it today in 2008, there is an inevitable subtext. The American occupation of Iraq and perhaps to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. A powerful metaphor that undergirds the book's events. We see the use of suicide bombers, sabotage, and the presence of a sullen population unwilling to admit defeat. To some extent, Turtledove already used such ideas in his long running Civil War series. Where we saw Mormons, Negroes and Canadians availing themselves of these tactics. But in some wise, not as central to the plot as in this book.
Turtledove is very careful here not to place the Nazis in a heroic light. Instead, he tries to highlight the moral problems and ambiguities faced by both Germans and occupiers (mostly American). Some Germans become aware of the atrocities committed by their country, leaving them to ponder whether they should justly struggle against the occupiers. While the question arises whether the Americans should use harsh means to suppress the insurgents, that echo what the Nazis so recently did themselves as occupiers.
The only possible problem about the book is whether it will age well. If say 20 years from now, the US is no longer occupying Iraq and Afghanistan (or other countries), and no longer experiencing insurgencies, the book might get embarrassingly dated. Recall those original Star Trek episodes from 66-68 about a pacifist movement in the Federation, or when the Enterprise encounters a planet in civil war between 2 groups, painted half-white and half-black? A current viewer might cringe at the episodes. Could this book engender the same reaction?
Polemical and par for course August 2, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The analysis of the American political scene that Turtledove provides in this book seems accurate: The GOP of 1945-1948 seemed hellbent on opposing Truman's policies no matter how sensical they proved to be. A reading of Cherney's excellent (real) history Candy Bombers shows this. Still, much of the rest of the book was problematic:
1. I have a hard time believing Heydrich could have squirreled away so many weapons, munitions, slave laborers, and built up a huge underground infrastructure without Himmler et alia catching on to it and executing him for defeatism.
2. I also have a hard time believing the Germans would have adopted kamikaze tactics on such a widespread basis, especially when they were not being funded by Heydrich as Al Qaeda has been doing with its followers.
3. By 1948, Truman resoundedly won over the American public on his very unpopular foreign policy. Would the same have happened in Turtledove's Germany? Perhaps.
4. The overt comparisons with Iraq were annoying. Germany had a tradition of parliamentary government, though, and Iraq didn't. This led to huge differences in what did/would happen to both countries post war. Another big diff: Hitler declared war on us (if he hadn't, the GOP probably would have just approved the fight against Japan), while Iraq was a war we started. The differences between post "mission accomplished" Iraq and postwar Germany make the comparisons interesting, but Turtledove overplays them.
I was disappointed with Turtledove's closing comment about that nutty California Senator who made a nutty statement. Yeah, you can find nuts who say nutty things all the time. I hope T was not suggesting that this guy's words were typical of Democratic thought in the post "mission accompished" era in Iraq. I don't know why he put that in.
Finally, the writing: more or less as good or bad as everything else T does. I like a one-series book like this because it's not as repetitive as the books in his series, where he seems to feel the need to remind his prematurely senile readers that, for example, every time Sam Carsten comes along, he tends to sunburn.
All this said, I've read everything T has written for years, but I'm now looking forward more to the works of Robert Conroy and John Birmingham than I am to the works of Mr. T.
 A Pot of Message August 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Harry Turtledove's "The Man with the Iron Heart" is alternate history with an easily-explained but significant deviation from real history: That SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich was not assassinated in Prague in 1942, but lived on to lead a Nazi "insurgency" after the Allied military victory in Europe.
SPOILER ALERT: A successful insurgency. The last pages of the novel clearly foreshadow a re-emergence of the Nazi Party in Germany, overturning the military decision of the Second World War. END SPOILER ALERT.
Make no mistake: Turtledove wrote this novel with a purpose. "I've become very political in my old age," he said at a science fiction convention in Chattanooga in July. "Any resemblance between this book and events in a certain Middle Eastern country are intentional."
Having spent a half-dozen books of the "How Few Remain" series grinding the idea of "American exceptionalism" into dust, Turtledove now turns to alternate history to comment on current political and military affairs. His position is similar to that first developed in the later "HFR" books: A sufficiently determined and ruthless insurgency cannot be rooted out.
Larry Niven once described the tendency of fiction writers to use their craft to comment on real-world politics as "selling one's birthright for a pot of message." At the least, it leaves the writer something of a hostage to fortune.
If the situation in Iraq goes sour - if the Baathists return or civil war fragments the country or an "Islamic Republic of Iraq" results -- Turtledove will look like a prophet. If something less dire and catastrophic comes about, he's a goat. Worse, the book in question becomes a curiosity or an object of derision as history moves on. And the only way the author can come in on the "up" side of the deal is for something bad to happen to the country as a whole.
Good luck, Dr. Turtledove. I think.
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