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MWIH pre-release discussion
Topic Started: May 17 2008, 02:34 AM (1,455 Views)
LoneHawkBoy
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Jarl of East Anglia
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Makkabee
May 31 2008, 10:58 PM
Well, he did have Hoover suck on both foreign and domestic policy.

Not far removed from how OTL Hoover was, he kind of had the reverse Midas touch.

IF the Nuremburg Tribunals take place as scheduled OTL wouldn't surprise me if they offer in exchange for testimony a witness protection thing and shipping out of the continent or something similar.
Axe-time, sword-time shields are sundered,
Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls;

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alchemist
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LoneHawkBoy
Jun 5 2008, 07:42 PM
IF the Nuremburg Tribunals take place as scheduled OTL wouldn't surprise me if they offer in exchange for testimony a witness protection thing and shipping out of the continent or something similar.

Only probelm being that you still have people who would get the death penalty, how do you work around that?
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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Execute them someplace else? More likely offer plea bargains if you can flip a minor Nazi up to a major one. Besides we're talking about witnesses, not defendants. Not everyone who saw something was responsible for it.

It takes more than guarantees of personal safety to get people comfortable testifying at something like this. More than protecting wives and children and parents. The Werewolves will retaliate against distant relatives, friends, old comrades, business associates. They'll desecrate ancestors' graves, destroy property, whatever. If you can't relocate your entire life, you'll leave behind something that can be targeted.
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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TR1
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Here's the plot synopsis:




ABOUT THIS BOOK
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 Obergruppenführer 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.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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alchemist
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wow they're not even trying to cover the analogy in this one.

LINE EDITED BY AN ADMINISTRATOR
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Custer
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alchemist
Jun 22 2008, 09:48 AM
wow their not event rhing to cover the analogy in this one.

What does that say?
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Makkabee
Count
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I hope HT deals properly with the different attitudes towards total war people had at the time. "We killed 100,000 civilians in an air raid yesterday? Neat!" In the late 40s there were still people alive who remembered the ethnic cleansing of the Indians and the US-run concentration camps in the Phillipines. Hell, there were still people alive who remembered the guerilla warfare that went on in the American south during and after the Civil War.

I hope HT shows things going very differently than in Iraq. Better, worse, or the same number on the "this sucks" scale, just as long as it's different. If it plays out more or less the same, as the review above implies, I'm not interested. I'll wait for more thorough reviews before deciding whether I'll even try to read the thing.
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TR1
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Makkabee
Jun 22 2008, 09:53 AM
I hope HT deals properly with the different attitudes towards total war people had at the time. "We killed 100,000 civilians in an air raid yesterday? Neat!" In the late 40s there were still people alive who remembered the ethnic cleansing of the Indians and the US-run concentration camps in the Phillipines. Hell, there were still people alive who remembered the guerilla warfare that went on in the American south during and after the Civil War.

I hope HT shows things going very differently than in Iraq. Better, worse, or the same number on the "this sucks" scale, just as long as it's different. If it plays out more or less the same, as the review above implies, I'm not interested. I'll wait for more thorough reviews before deciding whether I'll even try to read the thing.

Given DelRey's penchant for cover copy of dubious value, I'm not too worried right now about anything in there.

(It does re-enforce my personal suspicion that Dewey will win. )

HT wrote a short story called "News From the Front", which also did a compare/contrast between WWII and Iraq. While the similarties were there, HT didn't lose sight of the critical differences.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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As I recall the big difference there was an impeachment.

Yes, I'm disheartened by that dust jacket. Copy-and-paste across place and time doesn't make for good reading. HT should give up his mantle of "Master of Alternate History" if he's going to pursue such stories.

Then again as TR said these dust jackets aren't worth so much. I never did find out if this was corrected in the final version of TG but in the publisher's proof I won in Silver's contest the plot synopsis talked about the US using paratroopers and followed that up with "--leading Jake Featherston to retaliate with his newest weapon, the atomic bomb." Really now :rolleyes:
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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TR1
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SladeJack
Jun 22 2008, 05:01 PM
As I recall the big difference there was an impeachment.


Actually, that story didn't follow the trajectory of the Iraq War particularly well.

From the marketing perspective, playing up the "It's like reality, but not" in AH makes more sense than we want to admit.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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"Actually, that story didn't follow the trajectory of the Iraq War particularly well."

It would have needed initial victories which were then eroded, not losing efforts as soon as we started.

"From the marketing perspective, playing up the 'It's like reality, but not' in AH makes more sense than we want to admit."

Maybe if you're going for general readership, but it costs you among genre-specific fans, who are more likely to put up the money on any given book. It's almost as though HT is trying to trade in the likes of us.
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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TR1
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Here's the link to the first chapter:

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/catalog/...40&view=excerpt

I'm a little more at ease after having read that, actually.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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I'll take a look later.
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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MapleLeafs4Ever
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It does look interesting. I can see how the Second Great War aftermath in IatD could have inspired and influenced this book.
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Custer
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TR1
Jun 24 2008, 07:50 PM
Here's the link to the first chapter:

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/catalog/...40&view=excerpt

I'm a little more at ease after having read that, actually.

The In at the Death paperback has the prologue as well as the first chapter. The prologue is just two parts from Heydrich's POV, first one taking place on May 28, 1942, and the second part two days after Sixth Army heeled at Stalingrad (it reminded me of Potter's first scene in The Grapple, actually).
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