The Great War: Breakthroughs

2000

Set in the same altHist as his How Few Remain, this is the final book in Turtledove's alternative Great War series.

The world had been split in to two power blocs ever since the fateful Second Mexican War; the Quadruple Entente consisting of Great Britain, France, Russia and The Confederate States of America, and the Alliance Powers of Germany, the United States of America, Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

After two humiliating defeats by the CSA and it's European allies, the USA had welcomed alliance with Imperial Germany and now, two years after that fateful explosion in Sarajevo, the US is pressing attacks on two fronts. Up North against the deeply laid fortifications that protected the vital Canadian interior train routes and in the South against the even heavier fortifications that the Confederacy had run up. Usually not considered to be good military doctrine, but the US is a huge country and eager for victory against these traditional enemies and they are able to press hard on both fronts.

Gradually the Canadian and British forces are forced back from one line of defence to another ever closer to that vital rail route, while the US armies had reclaimed most of the territory taken by the CSA and French forces were beginning to crumble under the weight of German pressure.

An aged General Custer was preparing a massive strike against the CSA as the news of the final French collapse spread round the fronts. In the face of General Custer's massive barrel attack, the CSA soon followed and Britain, her supply lines cut, was forced to sue for peace, effectively leaving Canada under the rule of the USA and the CSA with whole swathes of territory ripped from its embrace.

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Now, Dr Turtledove is an American and we tend to see things from the point of view of the US. However, to be fair to Dr Turtledove, the US in this series is rather less likeable than the US we are all familiar with today. In brooding over their earlier defeats, the US had accepted a more militaristic approach and its citizens had accepted a degree of regimentation unseen in our time line. The existence of the CSA had also led to a greater prevalence of slavery in other countries. For example, slavery had been abolished in 1888 in Brazil in our time line, but was still a going concern well into the twentieth in these novels and while slavery was technically illegal in the CSA itself, blacks are still not citizens, nor do they have any legal recourse

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