Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

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Worldwar: Tilting the Balance
Author Harry Turtledove
Country United States
Language English
Series Worldwar
Genre(s) Alternate history novel
Publisher Del Rey Books
Publication date 21 February 1995
Pages 478 pp (hardcover edition)
ISBN ISBN 0-345-38997-2
Preceded by Worldwar: In the Balance
Followed by Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance

Worldwar: Tilting the Balance is an alternate history and science fiction novel by Harry Turtledove. It is the second novel of the Worldwar series, as well as the second installment in the Tosev timeline.

Contents

[edit] Plot introduction

The major world powers struggle to develop the first human atomic bombs with material taken from the invading aliens known as The Race.

[edit] Plot summary

As the year 1943 begins, the Race attempts to consolidate its hold over Latin America, Africa, and Australia while engaged in a fierce struggle with the free nations of the world: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Japan, and the Greater German Reich. While capable of resisting the invaders, mankind has been dealt a heavy blow by the nemesis from the stars. The Race maintains unquestioned air supremacy over the entire world as humans are reduced to moving their ground forces by night and using their own aircraft only in the most dire emergencies. With supplies of petroleum severely limited, people have taken to using horse driven carriages rather than automobiles and kerosene lamps instead of electric lights. But even as the human race huddles in the darkness, physicists and engineers work desperately to develop the first human atom bombs as they represent what might be the only hope of driving the Race off Earth.

After a rapid conquest of Spain and the capitulation of Italy, the Race focuses on driving its forces in France eastward, toward the heart of the German Reich. Among the officers of the Wehrmacht struggling desperately to hold back the tide of the alien forces is Colonel Heinreich Jäger. Fresh from his stay in Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat, Jäger is puzzled by the relationship he has formed with Lieutenant Ludmilla Gorbunova, the Ukrainian pilot who flew Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov to Bavaria for a conference with the Führer. He is much enamored with her but wonders if love can develop between two former enemies.

Jäger is given command of a panzer regiment near Belfort and is charged with keeping the Race from reaching the Rhine. Although the latest panzer models, the Panther and the Tiger, give the Germans a fighting chance, they are still woefully inferior to the Race's landcruisers. For their part, the aliens are stunned that humans are capable of designing and deploying new tank models within such a short space of time, as the Race's rate of technological development is centuries slower. Jäger is abruptly pulled out of frontline service and ordered to assist the German atomic bomb program in Wittelsbach.

In the United States, Jens Larssen, a physicist, leaves Chicago in search of the metallurgical laboratory which has relocated to Denver. After crossing the Great Lakes, he moves swiftly across Minnesota and the Dakotas. Larssen is not so much driven by the need to hasten atomic bomb development as he is by a desire to be reunited with his wife Barbara. Unfortunately for Jens, under the impression that he is dead, Barbara has started a relationship with Corporal Sam Yeager, a soldier responsible for guarding captured alien POWs. Yeager serves as a translator for the metallurgical lab since he has learned the rudiments of the Race's language. Jens arrives in Denver before the lab and sends a courier out to find Barbara with a message that he remains alive. Barbara learns that her husband is still alive just after revealing to Yeager that she is pregnant.

In Illinois, after the successful drive by General Patton that liberated much of the state, the Race begins to advance upon Chicago once more. U.S. soldiers fight valiantly but the flat open country gives the alien landcruisers a decisive advantage. Slowly but surely the Race draws closer and closer toward Lake Michigan.

Heinreich Jäger manages to return to the frontlines in Belfort after an unproductive stay with German physicists working on atomic research in Wittelsbach. Not long afterward, Wittelsbach is destroyed by an unstable nuclear reaction produced by Nazi scientists. The atomic explosion alerts the Race to the virtual certainty that Germany is engaged in nuclear research.

They are not the only ones. On Stalin's behalf, Foreign Minister Molotov visits a secret research laboratory several miles north of Moscow where Soviet researchers are struggling to turn the sample of Uranium captured by German-Russian forces in the Ukraine the year before into an atomic device. They are meeting with minimal success and Molotov attempts to encourage them with threats of torture and death if they fail. His pep talk produces no marked improvement in the advances made by Soviet engineers.

In Japan, a captured killercraft pilot of the Race named Teerts is interrogated by Japanese researchers attempting to understand the dynamics of nuclear fission. As a pilot, Teerts has a limited knowledge of atomic weapons, as his job is merely to drop them not build them. The Japanese refuse to believe him and use torture to make Teerts more cooperative.

In the United States, the metallurgical laboratory finally reaches Denver and begins working on atomic research. Their work is helped by a small shipment of Uranium that Colonel Leslie Groves brings from Boston, where a British submarine had been entrusted with delivering it to the U.S. government. The Uranium is one-fourth of the material stolen from the Race during the Nazi-Soviet operation in the Ukraine. It had come into the possession of the British by way of Jewish partisans who had commandeered a portion of the Uranium consigned to Germany when they briefly held Colonel Jäger in captivity in Poland the previous winter. Unfortunately, the Uranium in question is not enough with which to build an atomic bomb. The metallurgical lab must produce a substantial amount of the precious Uranium before Americans can hope to wield a nuclear device in the war against the Race.

Jens Larssen meets with his wife upon her arrival in Denver and learns that she has married and become impregnated by Corporal Sam Yeager. In a difficult decision that leaves everyone emotionally upset, she decides to keep the baby and remain with Yeager. Jens takes the news hard and his work on the atomic bomb project suffers. In order to keep him out of trouble, Colonel Groves orders Larssen to travel to Hanford and consider the possibility of transferring the metallurgical lab there to facilitate the production of Uranium. With an M1903 Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, Jens heads off to Washington state on a bicycle.

As the summer of 1943 begins, the Race creeps closer to Germany, Moscow appears to be on the brink of capture, and in the USA the Lizards reach the outskirts of Chicago. The Race advances on Moscow only to be abruptly stopped by the detonation of a human-made atomic bomb planted at Kaluga. The story ends with the balance of power in the scope of the conflict dramatically redefined.

[edit] Characters in "Worldwar: Tilting the Balance"

See list of Worldwar characters for fictional and historical characters.


[edit] Allusions to Other Works

The primary concept of the novel, an alien invasion of earth, is of course a plot made popular by the H.G. Wells story War of the Worlds and similar works.


[edit] References to Actual History and Current Science

The fact that the USSR is the first nation to develop the atom bomb is a parallel to the reality that, in actual history, of the three powers, the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was the least advanced in terms of research into nuclear technology. The USSR did not produce an atomic weapon until 1949, some four years after the U.S. first deployed atomic weapons. Turtledove makes this counter-factual plot development credible by explaining rapid Soviet progress as a result of Soviet exploitation of alien technology, namely captured Uranium.

Molotov's meeting with Cordell Hull in New York City may be an analogue to his actual trip to San Francisco in 1945 to establish the UN, an organization that is never created in Turtledove's fictitious timeline. This parallel is perhaps emphasized by the fact that the UN in actual history has its headquartes in New York.

The French Resistance appears to still be active in the novel, tentatively allied to German forces fighting in France. However, the motivations the Resistance has for working with the Germans against the Race is left unexplored.

Turtledove is careful to avoid any elaborate technical details about the Race's technology. However, from the descriptions given in the novel it is possible to surmise that much of the technology used by the Race is not only feasible but is in fact in common use at the start of the twenty-first century.

The military equipment of the Race is almost entirely analgous to human technology. Their primary ground forces are composed of tanks and mechanized infantry with supporting self-propelled artillery and gunships. In one respect, at least, the Race's military equipment is actually inferior to human technology, that being naval warfare. Since the Race's homeworld has only a few large lakes and rivers, they never developed the sophisticated warships of the human forces. Battleships and aircraft carriers in particular strike the Race as literally unimagineable.

Their air forces are not fundamentally different from human air forces in terms of tactics and doctrine, being based primarily on the concept of achieving air superiority through the use of fighters. From a technical standpoint, the Race's aircraft have a tremendous advantage over human planes in that they are powered by turbine engines whereas most human aircraft in mid-twentieth century were propeller-driven.

The Race apparently makes use of several theoretically feasible but not yet materially possible technologies, namely nuclear fusion power and interstellar travel. Turtldove describes the alien vessels making the journey from Tau Ceti to Earth in twenty years, implying that they can travel at one-quarter the speed of light. Vessels of the Race seems to create artificial gravity by means of rotation. During their long interstellar travels, part or all of a ship's crew is placed in suspended animation by some unexplained method of artificial metabolic arrest referred to simply as cold sleep.

See article on World War II.

[edit] Release details

[edit] Sources, references, external links, quotations

Page for this book in the Turtledove wiki

v • d • e
Works by Harry Turtledove
Videssos books Videssos Cycle The Misplaced Legion | An Emperor for the Legion | The Legion of Videssos | The Swords of the Legion
The Tale of Krispos Krispos Rising | Krispos of Videssos | Krispos the Emperor
Time of Troubles The Stolen Throne | Hammer and Anvil | The Thousand Cities | Videssos Besieged
The Bridge of the Separator
The Race or
Tosev timeline series		 Worldwar Tetralogy In the Balance | Tilting the Balance | Upsetting the Balance | Striking the Balance
Colonization Second Contact | Down to Earth | Aftershocks
Homeward Bound
Southern Victory
or
Timeline-191		 How Few Remain
Great War Trilogy American Front | Walk in Hell | Breakthroughs
American Empire Trilogy Blood and Iron | The Center Cannot Hold | The Victorious Opposition
Settling Accounts Tetralogy Return Engagement | Drive to the East | The Grapple | In at the Death
Darkness Into the Darkness | Darkness Descending | Through the Darkness | Rulers of the Darkness | Jaws of the Darkness | Out of the Darkness
War Between the Provinces Sentry Peak | Marching Through Peachtree | Advance and Retreat
Hellenic Traders Over the Wine Dark Sea | The Gryphon's Skull | The Sacred Land | Owls to Athens
Crosstime Traffic Gunpowder Empire | Curious Notions | In High Places | The Disunited States of America | The Gladiator | The Valley-Westside War
Pacific War Series Days of Infamy | End of the Beginning
Scepter of Mercy The Chernagor Pirates | The Bastard King | The Scepter's Return
Other, non-series books
Agent of Byzantium | A Different Flesh | Noninterference | Kaleidoscope | A World Of Difference | Earthgrip | The Guns of the South | The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump | Departures | Down in the Bottomlands | The Two Georges | Thessalonica | Between the Rivers | Justinian | Household Gods | Counting Up, Counting Down | Ruled Britannia | In the Presence of Mine Enemies | Conan of Venarium | Every Inch a King | Fort Pillow | Beyond the Gap | Opening Atlantis | The Battle of Teutoberg Forest