1945 (novel)
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1945 is a 1995 alternate history co-authored by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen, describing a 1945 where the United States fights against only Japan allowing Nazi Germany to defeat the Soviet Union after which the two confront each other in a cold war which swiftly turns hot.
The book is unique in having been written by a well-known politician and published when the author was at the peak of a quite controversial career, with criticism of the book for its merits (or lack thereof) and critism of the author for his political stance being almost inexticably mixed.
[edit] Plot
Among other things it was described as being "a disguised tract against gun control", as the key scene depicts an armed Tennessee civilian militia, led by Alvin York, defeating Otto Scorzeny's commandos who raid Oak Ridge.
It ended with a cliffhanger - Rommel invading Scotland, the British facing a desperate fight, and Churchill imploring the Americans "come quickly, this is much worse than 1940" - but a promised sequel, provisionally called "Fortress Europa", was never written.
Judging from the name (which implies Germany being pushed to the defensive, as in our 1944), the sequel would have probably gone from the last-minute salvation of Britain to an alternative D-Day culminating with the US defeating the Nazis on its own, without Soviet help - and correspondingly having no rival for supremacy in the post-war world. However this might be, it never got actually written and does not seem likely to be - with Gingrich and Forstchen turning instead to co-authoring an alternative history of the American Civil War, with a somewhat similar basic theme - i.e., the North losing Gettysburg but still manging to win the war.
[edit] See also
- Fatherland
- It Happened Here
- The Man in the High Castle
- The Ultimate Solution
- SS-GB
- In the Presence of Mine Enemies
