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The Greatest Show on Earth: Behind the Microphone at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Alasdair Hutton

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The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is one of the greatest shows on earth. Around 220,000 people...

Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov

Geoffrey Roberts

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Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history's legendary names. He played a decisive role in the...

Ecologies of Power: Countermapping the Logistical Landscapes and Military Geographies of the U.S. Department of Defense

Pierre Belanger and Alexander Arroyo

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This book is not about war, nor is it a history of war. Avoiding the shock and awe of wartime...

Awix (3310 KP) rated Third Reich Victorious: Alternate Decisions of World War II in Books

Feb 24, 2020

There's been a certain tension when it comes to military history, pretty much since not long after the Second World War ended: pretty much everyone agrees that the Nazi Party was as close to evil incarnate as we will hopefully ever see, but many academics (amongst others) still harbour a sneaking admiration for the quality of the German war machine and its leadership. That tension is basically at the heart of this book; it's telling that several of the German victory scenarios outlines here are predicated on Hitler either being replaced or being markedly less of a genocidal bigot.

The what-ifs vary: what if Hitler served in the navy in the First World war, what if the Russians pre-empted Barbarossa and attacked Germany first, what if Turkey joined the Axis, what if the Germans got the atom bomb in 1944, what if Rommel defeated the D-day landings, deposed Hitler, and the war devolved into a one-front struggle with the Soviets? Most of these are interesting and seem to have been written with the general reader in mind; a few do suffer from getting bogged down with detail. On the whole it is engaging stuff, if recent military history is your thing, and you do come away with an improved awareness that the Second World War was a closer-run thing than most people realise nowadays.