Worldwar Series

At the bloody height of World War II, the deadliest enemies in all of human history were forced to put aside their hatreds and unite against an even fiercer foe: a seemingly invincible power bent on world domination.

With awesome technology, the aggressors swept across the planet, sowing destruction as Tokyo, Berlin, and Washington, D.C., were A-bombed into submission. Russia, Nazi Germany, Japan and the U.S. were not easily cowed, however. With cunning and incredible daring, they pressed every advantage against the invader’s superior strength, and, led by Stalin, began to detonate their own atom bombs in retaliation.

City after city explodes in radioactive firestorms, and fears grow as the worldwide resources disappear; will there be any world left for the invaders to conquer, or for the uneasy allies to defend?

While Mao Tse-tung wages a desperate guerrilla war and Hitler drives his country toward self-destruction, United States forces frantically try to stop the enemy’s push from coast to coast. Yet in this battle to stave off world domination, unless the once-great military powers take the risk of annihilating the human race, they’ll risk losing the war.

The fatal, final deadline arrives in Harry Turtledove’s grand, smashing finale to the Worldwar series, as uneasy allies desperately seek a way out of a no-win, no-survival situation: a way to live free in a world that may soon be bombed into atomic oblivion.

Russia, Communist China, Japan, Nazi Germany, the United States: they began World War II as mortal enemies. But suddenly their only hope for survival—never mind victory—was to unite to stop a mighty foe—one whose frightening technology appeared invincible.

Far worse beings than the Nazis were loose. From Warsaw to Moscow to China’s enemy-occupied Forbidden City, the nations of the world had been forced into an uneasy alliance since humanity began its struggle against overwhelming odds. In Germany, where the banshee wail of hostile jets screamed across the land, caches of once-forbidden weapons were unearthed, and unthinkable tactics were employed against the enemy. Brilliantly innovative military strategists confronted challenges unprecedented in the history of warfare.

Even as lack of fuel forced people back to horse and carriage, physicists worked feverishly to create the first nuclear bombs—with horrifying results. City after city joined the atomic pyre as the planet erupted in fiery ruins. Yet the crisis continued—on land, sea, and in the air—as humanity writhed in global combat. The tactics of daredevil guerrillas everywhere became increasingly ingenious against a superior foe whose desperate retaliation would grow ever more fearsome.

No one had ever put the United States, or the world, in such deadly danger. But if the carnage and annihilation ever stopped, would there be any pieces to pick up?

While Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Togo worked out their strategy, the war against an even greater enemy continued . . . 

They cut the United States in two.
They devastated much of Europe.
They had a ferocious agenda.
And no one could stop them.

World War II screeched to a halt as the Russians, Germans, Americans, and Japanese scrambled to meet an even deadlier foe.

In Warsaw, Jews welcomed the invaders as liberators, only to be cruelly disillusioned. In China, the Communist guerrillas used every trick they knew. In America, Washington, D.C., was vaporized in a matter of seconds.

But humanity would not give up—whether delivering supplies in tiny biplanes to partisans across the vast steppes of Russia, working furiously to understand the enemy’s captured radar in England, or battling house to house on the streets of Chicago. . . . 

As Turtledove’s global saga of alternate history continues, humanity grows more resourceful, even as the menace worsens. No one could say when the hellish inferno of death would stop being a war of conquest and turn into a war of survival—a war for the survival of the planet.

Suppose Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, and Hirohito had united to conquer an even greater foe?

No one could top their power—not the Germans, not the Japanese, not the Russians, not the United States.

From Pearl Harbor to panzers rolling through Paris to the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Midway, war seethed across the planet as flames of destruction rose higher and hotter.

And then, suddenly, the real enemy came.

The invaders seemed unstoppable, their technology far beyond human reach. And never before had men been more divided. For Jew to unite with Nazi, American with Japanese, and Russian with German was unthinkable.

But the alternative was even worse.

As the fate of the world hung in the balance, slowly, painfully, humankind took up the shocking challenge. . . .