Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33536 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
This is a chilling alternate history of World War II. Based on actual choices presented to the Third Reic, this is an entirely plausible and gripping narrative. This provocative alternate history looks at World War II from a new angle - what might have happened had the Germans taken Moscow in 1941. Based on authentic history and real possibilities, this book plays out the dramatic consequences of opportunities taken and examines the grotesque possibilities of a Third Reich triumphant. On 30 September 1941, the Germans fight their way into the ruins of Moscow, and the Soviet Union collapses. Although Russian resistance continues, German ambition multiplies after this signal victory and offensives are launched in Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Hitler's armies, assured of success, make their leader's dreams reality, and Allied hopes of victory seem to be hopelessly doomed. David Downing's writing is fluid and eminently believable, as he blends actual events with the intriguing possibilities of alternate history. "The Moscow Option" is a chilling reminder that the course of World War II might easily have run very differently.

Customer Reviews

Promising but heavy going
An interesting scenario, but I got blogged down in the very detailed descriptions of individual units fighting a series of very detailed battles. Not quite what I was expecting or looking for, but the concept has potential.

If the Germans had gone straight for Moscow in 1941
This excellent counterfactual history makes two quite plausible changes to the course of World War II in 1941 which, as the author argues in the introduction, "give the Germans and Japanese significant military advantages without altering their fundamental historical situations."

In the real history of 1941, Hitler diverted his Panzers from the drive on Moscow to surround and destroy a major Soviet force around Kiev. This resulted in the capture of over half a million men, but delayed the advance on Moscow for six weeks, with the result that the Wehrmacht did not reach the Russian capital before the snows came - or ever. A prominent German general was to describe this as "the greatest strategic blunder of the war."

In the first chapter of this book, the author describes an aircraft crash on 4th August 1941 during which Hitler is injured causing him to remain in a coma for several weeks. During this period the German Generals keep up the attack on the Soviet capital, and capture it.

The other change from real history has the Japanese, using information which was actually available to them in Spring 1942, realise that the USA had broken their codes and change their plans for Midway.

The author then works through a realistic projection, not of how the Nazis and Japanese could win, but of what sort of history would have been most likely to follow given those changes. His analysis takes full acount of the limitations of both Axis and Allied powers.

The masterly narrative which follows does not "prove that Hitler would have lost anyway" but it does illustrate how the internal contradictions of the Nazi and Imperial japanese states would have made it very difficult for them to win.

Counterfactual reasonableness
Too many counterfactual historians, when addressing World War II, seem to suffer from a sneaking sympathy for the Wehrmacht. Furthermore, it is often accepted at face value that, if Hitler had not directed the thrust of his Panzers twice (towards Kiev in '41, and away from Stalingrad into the Caucasus in the summer of '42) then the Germans would have defeated the Soviets.

Downing falls into neither of these tracks. He explicitly refuses to give the Germans those things which would have given them potentialy war-winning advantages: an economy geared for sustained warfare or a political acceptance of liberation in occupied Russia. To do so, he rightly considers, would require fundamental moral and philosophical changes in the nature of the regime that were profoundly at odds with both National Socialist ideology, and with Hitler's personal Weltanschaung.

Downing allows - as the title and cover suggest - for Germany taking Moscow. He also allows the Japanese a decisive triumph at Midway.

The result is a counterfactual book that runs contrary to the trend in this area. Downing is not saying "what could the Axis have done differently that would have allowed them to win?" Instead, he guides us to the conclusion that, given their early decisions, whatever the Axis powers did, they were doomed to fail.

This is not to say that he subscribes to a neo-Marxist analysis of "historical inevitablism". Rather, it is an intriguing exposition of how the logistical, manpower and strategic factors that faced the Axis would eventually have ground them down to an extent that rendered operational-doctrinal advantages irrelevant.

Thoroughly enjoyable on the level of a page-turner, this also provides a range of historically-grounded argument that will interest the military historian without alienating the casual reader.