Himmler's War: Robert Conroy

"Only days after Normandy, Hitler is taken out of the equation and Heinrich Himmler, brutal head of the SS, assumes control of the Reich. On the Allied side, there is confusion. Should attempts be made to negotiate with the new government or should unconditional surrender still be the only option? With the specter of a German super-weapon moving closer to completion and the German generals finally allowed to fight the kind of war at which they are masters, the allies are pushed toward a course of accommodation - or even defeat! Will the soldiers of the Grand Alliance find the courage and conviction to fight on in the face of such daunting odds? And can Alliance leaders put into place a new plan in time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by the German war machine? A new and terrible battle for a free world is on!"


The best Alternate History books take a single, simple change to the course of history and extrapolate how this would have altered the events that followed whilst tying in real-life events as they would have appeared.

Himmler's War is an excellent example of how Alternate History books can go badly wrong. Faced with the twin challenges of pleasing an audience who want both an interesting read that changes what actually happened whilst also maintaining enough historical accuracy to keep from just making things up, Conroy misses the mark. Whilst some of Conroy's earlier books with less scale have been interesting reads, this book never dodges the second charge. Historical figures are reduced to two page cameos (Stalin appears for less than a page, Churchill and De Gaulle are mentioned in passing but don't appear) or have their real world motivations and priorities ignored (Himmler, the fanatical head of the SS giving control of his private army over to the Wehrmacht. Stalin signing a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1944 out of fear that morale in the Red Army is low - and then selling Germany two thousand of the Soviet Union's best tanks). Ultimately it's Conroy's inability to get a handle on his main players that sinks this book - playing fast and loose with characterisation in a book that is supposed to have only a minor single change doesn't work, especially as many of those reading this will have a semi-decent knowledge of these figures already.

This culminates in the development of a German nuclear weapon by 1945, a feat that's impossible no matter who's in charge of the Nazi party.

The macro-scale of the war is still more interesting than the micro however, with the characters focused on seemingly picked at random. Battle scenes go undescribed, or are seen from afar (even by participants), and there is little serious analysis of how the tide of war could have been changed by Hitler's death.

Finally, in a move that bothers me more in retrospect, both the female characters mentioned end up being sexually assaulted. Every woman who features for more than a page ends up the target for rape, sexual assault or a hastily conducted sex scene. If their story lines beforehand had mattered this may be more forgivable, but to introduce female characters just to give motivation to men, or to culminate in a rape scene seems a little embarrassing.

An interesting idea, poorly executed.

Also Try:
Harry Turtledove, The War That Came Early
Guy Saville, The Afrika Reich
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Stephen Fry, Making History