The Man with the Iron Heart | 
 enlarge | Author: Harry Turtledove
Publisher: Del Rey
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 29234
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8
ISBN: 0345504348
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345504340
ASIN: 0345504348
Publication Date: July 22, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
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 Obergruppenfuehrer 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Terrorism After the Victory in Europe August 15, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The Man With the Iron Heart (2008) is a standalone alternate history novel set after the end of the war in Europe. In May, 1942, two Czechs attempted to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich on his way to the Castle of Prague. In the real world, they were successful. But not so in this tale.
In February, 1943, the Reich was mourning the defeat at Stalingrad. Heydrich saw the possibility of losing the war and went to Heinrich Himmler with a plan for a stay-behind force to terrorize their enemies after the war. Himmler was very reluctant to even think of losing the war, but he agreed to authorize the organization. Still, he insisted that information about the effort should not be shared with Hitler.
In this novel, after VE Day, the Werewolves start a campaign of terror in all four zones of occupation and elsewhere in what had been Greater Germany. They start with improvised explosive devices. Then they send suicide bombers among the enemy troops with explosives strapped under their coats.
Lieutenant Lou Weissberg is a Counterintelligence Corps officer in occupied Germany. He is called in to examine the scene of the initial attack on two American soldiers. He and his superior -- Captain Howard Frank -- become the American lead investigators on the Werewolves situation. After months of fruitless efforts, Weissberg and Frank both want to share information with the Russians, but are rebuffed by their superiors.
Comrade Captain Vladimir Bokov is an NKVD officer in the Russian Zone. He is assigned to investigate the death of Marshal Koniev by the Werewolves. He and his superior -- Colonel Moisei Shteinberg -- become the Russian lead investigators on the case. Soon both NKVD men ask to share their information with the Allies, but are threatened with deportation to the Arctic zone if they persist in such Fascist thinking.
In this story, an early victim of the Werewolves was Patrick Jonathan McGraw. Upon receiving a telegram from the Department of War, his mother is shocked at the news of his death. After thinking about it, Diane McGraw is even more upset over the timing.
Jerry Duncan is the congressman for the district in which Diane McGraw lives. He is also a Republican at a time when the Democrats seem to have a lock on the White House and Congress. After receiving a visit from Diane McGraw, Duncan sees this death -- and others like it -- as a tool to gain political power.
Diane starts Mothers Against the War in Germany to protest the postwar deaths and to demand that the troops be brought home. Reporters see such demonstrations and sound bites as sensational news which will sell even more papers (and promote their careers). Then violence occurs during a demonstration and panic causes more injuries. Wonderful headlines!
This tale is a cautionary story about terrorism. It has been said that those who know no history are doomed to repeat it, but this saying is more of a sound bite than a truism. Knowledge of history provides warnings of previous mistakes, but does not necessarily show effective solutions to the problems. Those who know history have the option of making new mistakes.
Still, the author takes certain events and situations from the past to illustrate possible missteps in the present. The Werewolves in this story were based on Operation Greif during the Battle of the Bulge and the stay-behind operation planned for the end of the war. Both these improvised operations were less than successful. But what would have happened if such efforts had been initiated over a year before D-Day?
The story shows consequences of two different approaches to such problems. The Russians, of course, countered terror with more terror, executing hostages and shipping Germans to the gulags. The British and the French did much the same, but not as ruthlessly. Naturally, the US Army concentrated on punishing the holdouts rather than the whole population. Yet neither approach accomplished the destruction of the terrorist organization.
Many civilians back in the USA saw only the death toll and ignored the consequences of a rejuvenated Nazi society. Does this seem familiar? While this tale had the Republican party using the sorry results of the war on terror against the Democratic administration, such lack of true foresight seems to be on the other side in our times.
Terrorists do not care about political partisanship among its enemies. They only follow their own abhorrent logic and use such partisanship to forward their own goals. They gladly use every offer of appeasement and withdrawal to cause even more terror.
Note: this novel has unusual significance for this reviewer. I was assigned to the last CIC unit in the world during the Vietnam War. This was on Occupied Okinawa just before it was returned to the Japanese. I even carried a card stating that I was a CIC agent in addition to my standard credentials.
Highly recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of historical situations, counterintelligence procedurals, and stubborn perseverance.
-Arthur W. Jordin
 Well-written, but heavy-handed attempt to allegorize Iraq August 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
On balance, I think Harry Turtledove might have been better advised to put out a second book in his new "Atlantis" series (a genuinely interesting look at what might have happened had the eastern seaboard of North America been split off by tectonic processes from the rest of the continent and ended up in the central Atlantic) instead of this rather disappointing attempt to write a World War II-era analogue for the United States' troubles in Iraq. He writes it well - when keeping to the confines of a single book, he avoids the pitfalls of repetitiousness that he falls into in his mega-series - but then he falls into a different trap, yielding to the temptation to write an op-ed article instead of a novel.
The pity and the shame is that the basic concept is quite interesting: what would have happened if the Nazis had exercised more forethought and prepared their "Werewolf" guerrilla movement well in advance for the postwar occupation, and what if Reinhard Heydrich had survived his assassination attempt? There's ample matter here for a great alternate-history novel, but unfortunately, _The Man with the Iron Heart_ just isn't it. Turtledove spends way too much time on trying to draw what the TV Tropes Wiki website calls "Anvilicious" analogies between what's happening in Iraq and U.S. politics today and what might have happened if the Allies had had to face a well-organized diehard Nazi movement in the months and years following V-E Day. It's pretty clear that he thinks "out now" proponents of ending U.S. involvement in Iraq are making a serious mistake - still a debatable proposition - but he hammers on his point in such a repetitive, indeed clumsy, fashion that even a lot of people who would agree with his hypothesis are likely to end up being bored and irritated.
 Harry T. vs Harry T: Alternate History SmackDown!! August 6, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Harry Turtledove takes on Harry Truman in this latest Alternate History. I was anxiously awaiting this current novel from Harry Turtledove and enjoyed reading it on my Kindle. However, this was certainly NOT among my favorites from the Master of Alternative History. Although I think it was one of the best executed novels he's written in recent years, I gave it four stars.
The entire novel is a thinly disguised treatise on the current U.S. Iraq policy. My complaint is not whether I agree with Turtledove or not. I've always argued that I enjoy thoughtful fiction regardless of whether I agree with the political view espoused. I gauge a book by whether it makes me THINK about the issues in a new way.
In this case, the novel falls short. Turtledove has done little more than transcribe current history into post-WWII history. No real surprises and very predictable twists. The parallels he draws between the Truman administration and the current administration are tenuous at best.
Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable novel, but it could have been much more!
 Alternate History Allegory August 6, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Man with the Iron Heart is master of alternate history Harry Turtledove's latest foray into the genre. The Man with the Iron Heart is also an allegory for the Iraq War set in an alternate post World War II Germany. The novel falls down under the weight of too much suspension of disbelief.
The premise of The Man with the Iron Heart is that SS Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, one of the principle architects of the Holocaust, did not stop a volley of partisan bullets in Czechoslovakia in 1942. Instead Reinhard Heydrich lives on and, having concluded that the war is likely lost in the wake of Stalingrad, sets into motion plans for resistance to allied occupation of the Third Reich.
The post World War II insurrection that Turtledove imagines in The Man with the Iron Heart is not exactly like the trouble recently resolved in Iraq, The differences of technology, the nature of the antagonists, and popular culture of 1946-48 vs that of 2003-2008 makes sure of that. But Turtledove sure does try to make the parallels clear. And that's where Turtledove requires too much suspension of disbelief.
Substitute Germany for Iraq, SS fanatics for Islamofascist jihadis, the four occupying powers of the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union for the Coalition, Harry Truman for George W. Bush, Isolationist Republicans for Liberal Democrats, and the reader gets the idea of what Turtledove is attempting. There is even a 1940s version of Cindy Sheehan, albeit a little less crazy than the real world bereaved mom.
The Man with the Iron Heart spirals a little into the surreal as Reinhard Heydrich literally invents all the tactics of terrorism that it took sixty years to develop in the real world. There are IEDs, suicide bombings, airplane hijackings, and execution videos (films actually). Meanwhile a "peace" movement arises in the United States demanding a complete withdraw of American forces from Germany
The message Turtledove is trying to impart in The Man with the Iron Heart is obvious and a little heavy handed, even considering if the reader agrees with it. The reader, if he or she is aware of any history at all, is very much aware of what a post war Nazi revival would mean. But the "US Out of Germany" characters in the book are wildly dismissive of the consequences of what they propose, sort of like their modern day, real world counterparts.
And there is where Turtledove's allegory really falls down. Would a country, like the United States, transform itself overnight, practically, from the country that successfully defeated Nazi Germany and Japan to some kind of pacifist, isolationist 1970s style analogue simply because of casualties over a two year period that number perhaps two days of Normandy or the Bulge? One would think the United States was a tougher nation than that and that Harry Truman was a better President than that, better able to explain the necessity of staying and crushing the last glowing embers of Nazism.
Harry Turtledove spends an entire novel, which is well written setting aside the unbelievable scenario, that contains a message best conveyed by a eight hundred word op-ed piece. Someone once said that if you want to send a message, use Western Union. The modern version of the saying is, use the Internet.
Appalling use of alternative history August 4, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Many of the most recent Turtledove books have been formulaic - tracking characters throughout the alternative (modified past) history with a few different names (barrels for tanks) and a few anachronisms (people bombs for more recent phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers). The Man With The Iron Heart is similar in many ways but differs in that it provides a scripted, highly biased form of propaganda supporting the continued Iraq occupation. All I can assume is that Dr. Turledove has either become or has always been both neo-conservative and more connected/driven by his Jewish heritage. The many (nqr - not quite right/accurate) parallels between Nazism and Islamic terrorism appear to driven purely from his cultural/political biases. As a former (actual) military officer who does not support this war I would have preferred a less heavy handed analogy and discussion of the issues.
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