| 1945 | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Newt Gingrich William R. Forstchen |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Alternate history |
| Publisher | Baen Books |
| Publication date | August 1, 1995 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 400 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0671877392 |
| OCLC Number | 35717489 |
1945 is an alternate history co-authored by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen in 1995, describing the period immediately after World War II wherein the United States had fought only against Japan, allowing Nazi Germany to force a truce with the Soviet Union, after which the two victors confront each other in a cold war which swiftly turns hot.
Contents |
At the start of the novel, the United States, having won over Japan, is in no mood to enter a new war, and Americans accept the fait accompli ("done deal") of German domination over Europe. An alternate Cold War seems in the offing; even the British, with a German-dominated Europe at their doorstep, squander much of their resources on a colonial war in the former French Indochina.
US President Andrew Harrison (the writers chose to have a fictional character in this role rather than Harry Truman or some other historical character who might have succeeded Roosevelt on this time-line) has a summit with Hitler at Reykjavík, Iceland. The meeting goes badly, the two leaders sharply confront each other and Hitler secretly decides to accelerate preparations for a surprise attack on both the US and Britain. As part of these preparations, a beautiful German spy seduces and suborns the White House Chief of Staff and makes him a key German spy.
The book's protagonist, Lieutenant Commander James Martel - at the incipient Head of Naval Intelligence at the American Embassy in Berlin - is one of the few who suspects the gathering storm, watching the new weapons displayed at the parade commemorating Germany's victory over the Soviet Union and encountering the well-known commando Otto Skorzeny who is his main opponent throughout the book.
Skorzeny makes meticulous secret preparations for raids to destroy the US atomic bomb programs in Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. (During the war with Japan, the Manhattan Project was put on the back-burner, so that in 1945 the US is far from already possessing a nuclear bomb.) The bulk of the book is devoted to Martel, back in the US, getting a glimmering of the threatened attack and unsuccessfully trying to sound a warning.
The German raid takes place, and though eventually beaten back it succeeds in causing great damage, killing key scientists and setting the US nuclear program behind Germany's; moreover, the Germans seize the uranium mines in the Congo region, while launching all-out war against Britain.
The book ends 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, has yet to be written, though many years have passed and the writers had meanwhile completed a different alternate history trilogy (beginning with Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War).
In our history, "Fortress Europe" was the Nazi concept of making German-occupied Europe impregnable to the invasion which was clearly coming since the Allies started massing their forces in Britain in 1943. In D-Day this "fortress" was decisively breached. The projected book's name seems to suggest that the same would happen in this history, some years behind schedule.
It has been described as a powerful critique of gun control[1] as a key scene depicts an armed Tennessee civilian militia, led by Alvin York, defeating Otto Skorzeny's commandos who raid Oak Ridge.