For those unaware, Harry Turtledove is possibly the most well known, and certainly the most prolific, author of alternate history novels. His most well-known works are The Guns of the South, the Southern Victory series, and the Worldwar series.

I've been a fan of Harry Turtledove for a very long time, but I hadn't read his most recent series. His works, especially the later ones, tend to have many formulaic elements that can get frustrating to read once you have them pointed out. However, I was recently gifted the first book of his newer series The Hot War, and decided to read it.

It's...got some issues. Spoilers below

• For context, the premise of the book is that US forces are trapped and destroyed at Chosin reservoir during the retreat from North Korea instead of escaping, and Truman decides to use nuclear weapons on China to halt the Chinese advance, which leads to an escalation and the beginning of WW3. Now, this premise is fine, and most of the book is OK (I haven't finished it, so I may be wrong there)

But there are some massive issues with the book that warrant a post here

Nuclear Escalation

Though it's at the center of the plot, the escalation from the US attack on Manchuria to "global nuclear war" makes very little sense. To sum up the convoluted series of events:

1. In retaliation for the attack on Manchuria, Stalin attacks mid-tier cities in Germany, Britain, and France with nuclear weapons
2. Truman responds by nuking the Soviet airbase in former Finland that launched the attacks in Europe
3. Stalin then retaliates by nuking an airbase in Alaska
4. Stalin begins a conventional invasion of Europe, and the US nukes several logistics hubs
5. Stalin launches a surprise nuclear strike on the US West Coast
6. The US retaliates and destroys many Soviet cities

This bears very little resemblance to US nuclear doctrine. Although the "Massive Retaliation" policy wasn't fully put into effect until the Eisenhower administration, the outlines of the policy were very clear in 1951, when the book is set.

1. The US has a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, a very large long range bomber fleet, and remains committed to the strategic bombing doctrine that defined the air war during WW2.
2. The Soviets are the only other country with any nuclear weapons, they don't have very many, and don't have many bombers or bases that can reach the US
3. The USSR has a significant conventional edge over US and allied forces in Europe

The logical conclusion to this dilemma is the one that the US settled on just two years after the start of the book - the US would respond to conventional weakness with its nuclear deterrent, a deterrent that the USSR could not match. Indeed, it's what Truman did to provoke the conflict - use nuclear weapons to combat conventional weakness in Korea.

Instead of this logical response, we get a piecemeal escalation where Truman allows Stalin to match him on equal terms in the nuclear sphere, and while the US remains weaker in the conventional sphere. This continues even after the Soviets invade West Germany and war officially begins - rather than launching nuclear attacks on Soviet airbases in Siberia that could possibly strike the US mainland - or indeed, launching conventional attacks, Truman seems content to do minor logistical damage to the Soviets in Eastern Europe and to launch conventional bombing raids on Soviet cities.

I know nothing about Soviet nuclear doctrine at this point of history, but a suicide attack on the US West Coast doesn't seem to be particularly logical for him, either. Rather than throwing away his bombers and arsenal on an attack that could only partly damage the US, it would seem far more logical for Stalin to destroy major ports, airbases, and enemy armies so that his conventional forces could take Europe before American reinforcements could arrive.

As a final note for this section, the book is set before modern taboos about the use of nuclear weapons developed. Our reverence toward nuclear weapons only developed as MAD became a reality and nuclear weapons became more powerful - in 1951 few knew that the American mainland could possibly be struck by nuclear weapons, and the actual destructive power of a nuclear bomb was limited. The bombs had been used just six years before, were a mainstay of American military doctrines, and their ultimate destructive power was on the scale of major conventional bombing raids, rather than the hydrogen bombs we know today.

Capitalists don't have radar

Now, you may be thinking after reading the previous section "but wait, how on earth did Stalin manage to pull off three separate surprise nuclear strikes"? Well, Turtledove has an answer for you:

• The main Soviet strategic bomber was the TU-4, a reverse-engineered copy of the B-29 that was nearly identical
• The Soviets painted them with US colors

That's it. The Soviets managed to launch a surprise nuclear strike on the West Coast, at night and during wartime, by painting their bombers to look like US bombers. After they did the same thing twice before. Oh, and multiple POV characters (at least three) openly voice their concerns about this exact ruse.

The bad history here is simple - radars existed. Turtledove even mentions that US aircraft and ships are equipped with radar, and that specialized night-fighting interceptor aircraft exist for this exact reason. So it's baffling why this Soviet ruse would work multiple times - it should have failed the first time it was tried, when American interceptor pilots spotted unidentified aircraft on radar at night and the aircraft in question didn't know any codes or even speak English.

Asiatic Hordes

"Urra! Urra!" The chant got louder, and higher in pitch. He knew what that meant. "They're coming!" he bawled, and peeped out behind the Mercedes again. Coming they were, and just as he remembered from the old days: rank after rank of men, arms linked... - Turtledove 171

.

But the rest of the Red Army men closed ranks, linked arms, and came on. They were as impervious to doubt or damage as they had been on the Ostfront a few years before. Vodka and fear of their own secret police both had to play a part in that - Turtledove 209

Your brave hero is Gustav Hozzel, a Wermacht veteran of the Ostfront who volunteered for a militia company after the Soviets invade West Germany (and who the Americans inexplicably equip with a Springfield bolt-action in 1951, but I digress...).

The Soviet army in 1951, despite being just a few years removed from being arguably the largest and most veteran fighting force in human history, has apparently decided to eschew armored vehicles, machineguns, artillery, or the very concept of cover. No, the New Soviet Man links arms with his fraternal comrades and marches toward machineguns while drunk off his ass and singing songs. Just as he did in 1944, when our friend Gustav was wounded while defending...Poland.

The badhistory is again simple - the Soviets absolutely did not make a common practice of charging trenches with arms interlinked and when drunk. There are reports of some Soviet formations doing that in the bad old days of 1941, but for most of WW2 the Soviets attacked with massive superiority in armor and artillery, using veteran soldiers to attack in the smart, intelligent ways that veterans conduct attacks against machineguns.

The Soviet army in 1951 would still be chock full of veterans from the Great Patriotic War, and was very large and very well equipped with heavy weaponry. Turtledove provides some justification by claiming that Soviet armored divisions were out of fuel thanks to American logistics warfare (apparently the USSR was not introduced to the concept of supply depots?), but his use of Nazi stereotypes of Russian soldiers as drunk barbarians who attacked in suicidal human wave attacks is inexcusable for somebody who has studied WW2 as much as Turtledove has

There's almost certainly much more badhistory to talk about in this book, but the three points above were the most egregious examples I saw in the book.

Dukat was the Prefect of Bajor during the final years of the Occupation. One of his main points of argument from then on was to state that as Prefect he tried to 'help' the Bajorans, occasionally going as far as saying the entire occupation was to help the Bajorans. This is flatly not true.

On and on it went, year after blood-soaked year. Time and again I would reach out with an open hand of friendship, and time and again they would slap it away.

Of course, this completely ignores the fact that the Bajorans are currently being occupied against their will by another star nation. He ignores the fact that the people who were trying to rebel were being worked to death in labor camps both on the surface and on Terok Nor.

Families were torn apart, as evidenced by Kira's mother being taken away from her family. Women like Kira's mother were turned into comfort women for Cardissain military and government officials. Bajorans were dealt out harsh punishments and entire populations were killed. More than 10 million Bajorans were killed during the occupation. Dukat himself participated in good portion of this. If this is his hand of friendship, I would hate to see his closed fist.

I know you find this hard to accept, but... I believe that in some ways, the occupation actually helped Bajor.

A lot of my last two paragraphs could also function as a rebuttal to this statement of his as well. But just to reiterate:

1. Labor Camps

2. Comfort women

3. Military occupation

4. Harsh justice (usually death)

5. Stealing of Bajor's natural resources

Unbelievably, Dukat seems to think that somewhere in all that the occupation 'helped' Bajor. Even if we could find a little gain here and there, the negatives would vastly outweigh those.

What's funny is that when pressed, Dukat's true feelings about the Bajorans show.

I hated everything about them! Their superstitions, and their cries for sympathy, their treachery and their lies. Their smug superiority and their stiff-necked obstinacy. Their earrings, and their broken, wrinkled noses! ... Yes! Yes! That's right, isn't it? I knew it! I've always known it! I should've killed every last one of them! I should've turned their planet into a graveyard the likes of which the galaxy had never seen! I should have killed them all.

Granted, this admission comes a short while after great personal distress (the loss of his daughter), but it shows the true nature of the man who has somehow deluded himself into thinking he wanted nothing more than to help the Bajorans.