'1945'
By:
Speaker Of The House Newt Gingrich
&
William R. Forstchen

Please allow me to tell you about a very unique book, '1945'.
At first, I was looking forward to the idea of a 'What If' story. Being a W.W.II fan and historian, I thought this would be a great combination. About the first one hundred pages, I started to wonder if I had made a mistake. I see history as 'the way it is' and revision of it is hard to swallow. I couldn't accept things I knew for fact were just plain out right wrong. As I warmed up to it though, I did start to derive a certain, unique pleasure from it. Of course, many things had to be changed and it took some getting use to.

The just of this book is, that Adolph Hitler was in a near death airplane crash six weeks before the date he actually did declare war on the United States. Therefore, during his recovery, his health was never good enough to take on the challenge of America so he concentrated his efforts on what they referred to as the 'Russian War'.
In the book, he took all of Europe except for England whom he never attacked. He also, took all of Russia.
On the other end of the world, Japan did declare war on us with their raid on Pearl Harbor. The only difference being was that we didn't have the A-bomb developed yet and never used it.
So, by 1945, we were done fighting the Japanese, and Germany was a world power with Hitler in charge!!! Knowing the Nazis, you can imagine that they require an enemy at all times, so world peace was just a mirage. Not to mention the threat of an atomic bomb which the United States was within a year from completing. So, the just of this book occurs when Hitler decides he needs to take out our entire nuclear capabilities so he can get ahead. Therefore, he plans and commits commando raids on both Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico. This he ties in with an all out Naval and Land attack on England.

The book makes many references which are quite comical. Things such as walking into a restaurant and the latest Glen Miller hit 'Persuasion' was playing. Another reference to putting Patton up against Rommel in England. My favorite though was a Sheriff Alvin York who just coincidentally happened to be the Sheriff of the county in which Oak Ridge Nuclear Research Facilities. When the locals reported Germans commandos attacking the area, he went down to the local Veterans organization and rounded up about 200 World War One Vets. They wore there old uniforms and came marching to the rescue as an armed militias with old Springfield rifles and 12 gauge shot guns! Of course Sgt. York's legendary marksmanship was brought into the story line.

Many people I talked to thought the idea of an alternative history story may be OK but were afraid with Newt at the pen, he would insert his political philosophies. Even though this would not bother me in the slightest since I agree with the Speaker on most subjects, this could not be further from the truth. In fact, the president is a Democrat,(not Harry Truman) hand picked by FDR himself, who is presented as a great president in the book. I was also quite surprised with how bad the authors made the Nazis look. In this day of political correctness, it's refreshing to see someone speaking the truth or even his or her opinion, especially someone as high up as the Speaker Of The House Of Representatives. I have to give me credit.

The book did have a few downfalls. Mainly, it was very hard to read. The authors used words that when heard in conversation, one recognizes, but when read and read quickly like most read a novel, I found myself having to stop and say out the word to figure out what it was. Another downfall in my opinion was it's high-tech language. I consider myself very familiar with the military and can even read Clancy with ease, but this novel left me reading and not even trying to comprehend the Nazi's military machine although I have to give them credit on being precise.
I also thought it had too many characters which also made it hard to follow at times.
Over all, I would suggest this book to anyone who enjoys World War II stories or anyone who enjoys a real thriller! The worst thing about this book is it leaves us hanging after the German strike teams had left America soil, the British were in a bad way, and a meeting in the Oval office about how to fight the war. This was just the first of a series of three and who knows how long we will have to wait until the next book comes out and we get into the actual war.