Red Inferno: 1945 A Novel

by Conroy, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780345506061
• ISBN10: 0345506065
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-23
• Publisher: Ballantine Books

Summary

In April 1945, the Allies are charging toward Berlin from the west, the Russians from the east. For Hitler, the situation is hopeless. But at this turning point in history, another war is about to explode. To win World War II, the Allies dealt with the devil. Joseph Stalin helped FDR, Churchill, and Truman crush Hitler. But what if Uncle Joeo had given in to his desire to possess Germany and all of Europe? In this stunning novel, Robert Conroy picks up the history of the war just as American troops cross the Elbe into Germany. Then Stalin slams them with the brute force of his enormous Soviet army. From American soldiers and German civilians trapped in the ruins of Potsdam to U.S. military men fighting behind enemy lines, from a scholarly Russia expert who becomes a secret player in a new war to Stalin's cult of killers in Moscow, this saga captures the human face of international conflict. With the Soviets vastly outnumbering the Americans but undercut by chronic fuel shortages and mistrust Eisenhower employs a brilliant strategy of retreat to buy critical time for air superiority. Soon, Truman makes a series of controversial decisions, enlisting German help and planning to devastate the massive Red Army by using America's ultimate and most secret weapon.

Author Biography

Robert Conroy was a business and economic history teacher who lived in Detroit. His alternate-history novels include 1901, 1862, 1945, 1942, and Red Inferno: 1945. He died in 2014.

Excerpts

Chapter One


The hastily gathered flotilla of small motor launches plowed through the calm water of the Elbe River as their outboards churned toward the rapidly closing enemy-held ground ahead. The helmeted men inside the collection of small boats hunched down, as if willing themselves to be invisible and, thus, out of harm's way.

This was when soldiers were the most vulnerable, and the tightly packed men in each of the dozen assorted craft knew that a hit anywhere would impact on something soft, meaty, and human. In a perverse and illogical way, the American soldiers hoped they would be opposed only by rifles and machine guns. Anything, they thought, but the damn German 88 mm antitank guns that could instantly turn their frail craft into flaming coffins.

But where were the Germans? The April morning was clear and the GIs knew the little boats must stand out vividly to enemy eyes that must be watching them. Yet the only sound they heard was the roar of the straining motors and the splash of the waves only inches below the freeboard. The launches were overcrowded, with almost twenty stuffed into some of them. The men themselves were strangely silent. This was water. Their environment was land. Afloat, they felt useless. On land you could dig a hole and hide, or even run, but what the hell did you do on water?

Soldiers would look up and glance forward, trying to pick out the places where terror would emerge but saw nothing frightening. The German countryside was green and friendly, like something from a postcard. Where could there be terror? At this crossing point, the Elbe was less than a quarter mile of blue-green water. Yet it might as well have been the English Channel for the fear it caused.

"Lieutenant, get your head down," yelled Sergeant Jack Logan. "Please," he amended, belatedly conscious of the difference in their ranks and that he shouldn't show up any officer, even a brand-new replacement like Second Lieutenant David Singer.

"I wanna see, Sarge. I wanna be the first Jewish officer east of the Elbe and maybe the first in Berlin."

The young sergeant chuckled and a few of the other men nervously joined in. Sergeant Logan was big for an infantryman, nearly six feet tall, stocky and muscular, and with a shock of red hair that was kept out of view by his helmet. He had open, even features, and some, particularly his mom, described him as having a "friendly" face, whatever the hell that meant. He certainly wasn't friendly with a rifle in his hands. Logan contrasted sharply with the shorter young officer's pale skin and thin blond hair. Lieutenant Singer would be bald before he was forty.

Logan liked young Lieutenant David Singer. He had arrived only a couple of days earlier and was replacing another young lieutenant who'd gotten badly wounded. It was hard to realize that he, the old man of the platoon, was only a year older than the lieutenant's twenty- three years. War had such a wonderful way of aging its participants.

"Can this thing go faster?" came a lament from the rear of the launch. Logan thought the voice was Crawford's, but he couldn't tell.

Lieutenant Singer responded. "If you want, you can get out and push."

This was greeted with a few more nervous giggles and an offer to paddle with helmets. The jokes were stupid, but they broke the tension. Anything to hide the fact that they could be dead in an instant.

The water shallowed and the boat slowed, finally crunching up on the mud embankments. The men hurled themselves from their unwelcome craft and ran up the low embankment, fanning out like the veterans they were.

There was no need for either Singer or Logan to give any orders, and the two men prudently concentrated on staying out of everyone's way. To his left and right the other craft disgorged their human cargoes as well. In a matter of moments, almost half of D Company was safely across and forming a defensiv

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Excerpted from Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel by Robert Conroy
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