The Man with the Iron Heart: A Novel

Harry Turtledove

Jul 2008 · Sold by Del Rey

About this eBook

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.

Ratings and reviews

I just finished a breathless read. Turtledove hasn't been a favorite author of mine, but his grasp of World War II history has intrigued me in the past. This book is more plausible than most of his plot-lines, knowing what little I've gleaned from my own WW2 hobbies. The main characters in this story isn't the title lead Reinhard Heidrich, but instead the men who are trying to capture him from both the U.S. and Soviet occupied territories, and a common middle-aged married woman who becomes an unpopular anti-war activist back here on the home-front. The story does an interesting alternative history twist by condensing the anti-war sentiment since Vietnam along with the parallel events during the current anti-terrorist wars, only in a much shorter time-frame, the next couple years after WW2 ends in the summer of '45. The moments when Heidrich's 'Werewolves' (named after the failed German strategic plan to defend from the Bavarian Alps) learn and use the techniques used by guerrilla fighters in more recent times resonate with anyone who has observed the headlines since 9-11. The characterization of Heidrich and those who follow him is so chilling that I cannot think of what it must have been like to live in his assigned territories as Reichprotektor in the early war years. This was a truly evil man, along with Himler, one of those who pioneered the "final solution" plan to liquidate the Jews. All in all, a tense, well-thought political thriller with relevance even to modern audiences.

It took me a long time to finish this book, but its story line was so memorable that i had to finish it. Interesting read if you are interested in the study of terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

Great read

About the author

Harry Turtledove is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works The Man with the Iron Heart, The Guns of the South, and How Few Remain (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Hot War books: Bombs Away, Fallout, and Armistice; the War That Came Early novels: Hitler’s War, West and East, The Big Switch, Coup d’Etat, Two Fronts, and Last Orders; the Worldwar saga: In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, and Striking the Balance; the Colonization books: Second Contact, Down to Earth, and Aftershocks; the Great War epics: American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs; the American Empire novels: Blood and Iron, The Center Cannot Hold, and Victorious Opposition; and the Settling Accounts series: Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple, and In at the Death. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters—Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca—and two granddaughters, Cordelia Turtledove Katayanagi and Phoebe Quinn Turtledove Katayanagi.