Subject: Review: Hitler Victorious ed. by Benford and Greenberg

From: [email-masked] (Fungi from Berkeley)
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 1995 23:46:32 GMT

Hitler Victorious
	ed. by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg
		Garland, New York, 1986
		ISBN 0-8240-8658-9, pp. 278

Adolf Hitler is perhaps the most important person in shaping the history of
the 20th century; certainly one of the most influential.  It has been argued
that there would have been no WWII without this man. It would have
definitely had some other form, maybe better, probably not much worse. This
possibility is not considered, however, in _Hitler Victorious: 11 Stories of
the German Victory in World War II_. It focuses instead (as should be
readily apparent from the title) on the possibility of a history in which
Adolf Hitler had success, in one way or another, in his military endeavors.

Norman Spinrad, author of "The Iron Dream", provides the introduction.
Surprisingly (or perhaps not, being Spinrad), the introduction is one of the
best reads of this book. Though short, it is informative in the historical
sense and thought provoking in the alternate historical sense. Since this is
*just* an introduction, however, I'll leave it out of an in depth review.

Sadly, the introduction gives the book more promise than it actually
delivers. As a general rule for this book, the shorter the story the better.
For some reason, the longer tales tend to be rambling adventures more
reminiscent of poorly thought out role-playing games than thought provoking
stories focusing on what might have actually been. Most notably are C. M.
Kornbluth's "Two Dooms" and Brad Linaweaver's "Moon of Ice". Benford
explains away the first by stating that Kornbluth died before finishing the
tale, but he also says that "it is arguably Kornbluth's best work." Not
having read any other Kornbluth, I can't comment, but I won't hold this one
against him.  I don't see an excuse for Linaweaver's work, however. While it
begins as a promising tale of excerpts from Goebbels' diaries after the war,
focusing on some of the pseudo-scientific beliefs of the Aryan cosmos, it
quickly descends into a goofy B movie romp. If it weren't for the hopeful
start, I might not have disliked this one, so I shall attribute this to the
author masticating more than what is digestable.

Three other tales that suffer less from this are Hilary Bailey's "The Fall
of Frenchy Steiner", Keith Roberts' "Weihnachtsabend", and Sheila-Finch's
"Reichs-Peace". Of these three, I enjoyed Bailey's tale the most, which
gives a textured feel to a London controlled by the Empire across the
channel. Though I found the ending satisfying, the transition from the harsh
reality of daily life in England to Nazi mysticism was too abrupt for me and
damaged the story as a whole. Finch's tale, however, suffered from a
hastened ending as well as more "magical" Nazi technological.
Weihnachtsabend was an enjoying story to read, but also suffered from an
overdose of ill-placed Nazi mysticism.

After further thinking, all of the above tales were spoiled for me because
they asked me to believe in something I didn't. They failed to convince me
of their stories' realities. This is a particular problem in alternate
history stories, where the reader is presumably familiar with the history
being altered. In the above tales, "magic" (used loosely here, as either
occultism or future technology) was presented as an important part of the
story. And I just didn't buy it, for one reason or another.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is "Thor Meets Captain America" by
David Brin, wherein the Norse gods return to help the Nazis to victory. Here
is a magic that is so overboard that it is believable, and the story worked
on several levels for me because of this, though I found the title a little
off-putting at first. Two tales that worked high technology into the story
well were Tom Shippey's "Enemy Transmissions" and "Valhalla" by co-editor
Gregory Benford. Shippey's was probably my second favorite tale, with vivid
imagery *and* an interesting reality. Any description of "Valhalla" other
than this is about what actually happened to Uncle Adolf would spoil the
story, whose placement in the book as the final tale is a good climax.  Greg
Bear also has a nice short short, under the guise of "Through Road No
Whither", whose prose reads as the title suggests, with typical poetic
justice for the tale's antagonists.

Algis Budrys and Howard Goldsmith ("Never Meet Again" and "Do You Hear the
Children Weeping?", respectively) also have stories, with Budrys' being a
traditional time travel yarn and Goldsmith's a typical tale of "karma never
forgets."

Being a history buff, I would have originally said that my enjoyment of the
stories would have been based on how much they focused on altered historical
details. Upon retrospect, I found that not to be the case, however. The
stories I enjoyed most were those that made me believe whatever they were
trying to sell. Unfortunately, this was only about 50% of the stories
therein by number, and much less than that based on word count. Thus, I can
only recommend this book to the true alternate history fan. (But honestly,
who else would buy it?)

%B	Hitler Victorious: 11 Tales of German Victory in World War II
%E      Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg 
%C      New York City
%D      1986
%I      Garland 
%O      clothbound
%G	ISBN 0-8240-8658-9
%P	278pp

[email-masked]                           "Nam et ipsa scienta
http://www.me.berkeley.edu/~jdjacob/                         potestas est."