 First edition | |
| Author | John Birmingham |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Series | Axis of Time |
| Genre | Alternate history, Science fiction |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
Publication date | August 2007 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | 0-345-45716-1 |
| OCLC | 68192608 |
| Preceded by | Designated Targets |
Final Impact is a science fiction novel by Australian writer John Birmingham, the last volume of his alternate history Axis of Time trilogy. [1] [2]
Picking up two years onwards from the end of Designated Targets , Final Impact is the last novel in the Axis of Time trilogy. The supercarrier Hillary Clinton has been refurbished with more conventional steam catapults which replaced her less reliable fuel air explosive catapults. Her carrier air group is replenished with A-4 Skyhawk jet-powered attack aircraft, many of which are flown by 'temps, contemporary pilots. Admiral Kolhammer returns to sea at the head of a new Task Force with the Clinton at its core after two years of administering the Special Administrative Zone-California. Many characters have died in the intervening time period, from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, by his own hand to Commander Dan Black, one of the main characters of the story who asks for a return to combat and dies during the re-takeover of Hawaii, when his plane crashed during take-off from Muroc Airfield, California.
D-Day is launched on 3 May 1944, a month earlier than in the original timeline. The Allies invade the Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy, relying on a dis-information campaign to obtain surprise. They are able to gain a foothold and slowly push back the Nazi forces. On 27 May the Allies gain a major victory by wiping out several German divisions with massed air strikes. On 1 June the USSR rejoins the Allied side and declares war against the Axis: They launch a huge attack against Germany and advance on a broad front. The Soviets have used the intervening two years to build up their armed forces, and construct fleet of warships at Vladivostok. Meanwhile, Paul Brasch's cover is blown and he is extracted by British commandos. Adolf Hitler has a seizure and suffers permanent brain and muscle damage; with the T4 program in mind, Heinrich Himmler chooses to suffocate him. Before launching an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, the Soviets drop an atomic bomb on Litzmannstadt (that is, Łódź, Poland).
The Axis powers react as much as they can: Himmler authorizes the use of anthrax in a synthesized form which will persist for months. He also orders the Army to begin transferring divisions from the western front to the east, gradually bringing the Soviet advance to a halt. The USSR takes two more blows when a massive kamikaze strike cripples their Pacific Fleet, and the A-bomb building facility in Kamchatka is destroyed - both hits scored by the Japanese. The United States has secretly completed the Manhattan Project a few months earlier, with the help of thousands of people from the future Multi-National force. They now have a large enough stockpile of bombs to take on Germany, Japan and the USSR at the same time, if necessary. On the orders of President Roosevelt, a trio of B-52 bombers fly out of New Mexico and launch a raid deep into Germany. Berlin is utterly destroyed with three nuclear weapons.
In response to the U.S. blast on Berlin and the Japanese destroying the Soviet Pacific fleet at Kamchatka, the Soviets destroy Tokyo with an atomic bomb, killing the Emperor. The Axis Powers give in to unconditional surrender, ending the war in June 1944, but the damage has been done. The USSR has pushed into Asia securing gains in Persia, Afghanistan, Korea, Indochina and is probably going to share occupation of Japan with U.S. and Australia; in Europe the USSR has gone around Germany and has taken all of Eastern Europe including Greece, plus Northern Italy and chunks of Vichy France and Austria. The Western Allies are at odds with the Soviet Union, and the stage is set for another cold war. With the Axis defeated, most of the main characters move into the private sector and start anew.
In general, Final Impact was less well received than the prior two books. [3] It picks up 18 months after Weapons of Choice, a transition which some readers[ who? ] criticized as too jarring. Other reviews noted the large number of plot points which had not been addressed properly, and the disjointed narrative structure used to depict the war.
Operation Downfall was the proposed Allied plan for the invasion of the Japanese home islands near the end of World War II. The planned operation was canceled when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet declaration of war, and the invasion of Manchuria. The operation had two parts: Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet. Set to begin in November 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyūshū, with the recently captured island of Okinawa to be used as a staging area. In early 1946 would come Operation Coronet, the planned invasion of the Kantō Plain, near Tokyo, on the main Japanese island of Honshu. Airbases on Kyūshū captured in Operation Olympic would allow land-based air support for Operation Coronet. If Downfall had taken place, it would have been the largest amphibious operation in history, surpassing D-Day.
Supreme Allied Commander is the title held by the most senior commander within certain multinational military alliances. It originated as a term used by the Allies during World War I, and is currently used only within NATO for Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.
The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with the opposing superpower, the United States, during the Cold War (1945–1991). The Soviet Navy played a large role during the Cold War, either confronting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in western Europe or power projection to maintain its sphere of influence in eastern Europe.
The Worldwar series is the fan name given to a series of eight alternate history science fiction novels by Harry Turtledove. Its premise is an alien invasion of Earth during World War II, and includes Turtledove's Worldwar tetralogy, as well as the Colonization trilogy, and the novel Homeward Bound. The series' time span ranges from 1942 to 2031. The early series was nominated for a Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 1996.
The Flensburg Government, also known as the Flensburg Cabinet, the Dönitz Government, or the Schwerin von Krosigk Cabinet, was the rump government of Nazi Germany during a period of three weeks around the end of World War II in Europe. The government was formed following the suicide of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1945 during the Battle of Berlin. It was headed by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as the Reichspräsident and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk as the Leading Minister. The administration was referred to as the "Flensburg Government" because Dönitz's command had relocated to Flensburg in northern Germany near the Danish border on 3 May 1945. The sports school at the Mürwik naval academy was used as the government headquarters.
Designated Targets is a science fiction novel by Australian writer John Birmingham, the second volume of his alternate history Axis of Time trilogy.
The military history of the United States during World War II covers the nation's role as one of the major Allies in their victory over the Axis Powers. The United States is generally considered to have entered the conflict with the 7 December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan and exited it with the 2 September 1945 surrender of Japan. During the first two years of World War II, the US maintained formal neutrality, which was officially announced in the Quarantine Speech delivered by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937. While officially neutral, the US supplied Britain, the Soviet Union, and China with war materiel through the Lend-Lease Act signed into law on 11 March 1941, and deployed the US military to replace the British forces stationed in Iceland. Following the 4 September 1941 Greer incident involving a German submarine, Roosevelt publicly confirmed a "shoot on sight" order on 11 September, effectively declaring naval war on Germany and Italy in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the Pacific Theater, there was unofficial early US combat activity such as the Flying Tigers.
Worldwar: Striking the Balance is an alternate history novel by American writer Harry Turtledove. It is the fourth and final novel of the Worldwar tetralogy and the fourth installment in the extended Worldwar series, which includes the Colonization trilogy and the novel Homeward Bound.
The Volcano and Ryūkyū Islands campaign was a series of battles and engagements between Allied forces and Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific Ocean campaign of World War II between January and June 1945.
The Allied leaders of World War II listed below comprise the important political and military figures who fought for or supported the Allies during World War II. Engaged in total war, they had to adapt to new types of modern warfare, on the military, psychological and economic fronts.
The Axis leaders of World War II were important political and military figures during World War II. The Axis was established with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1940 and pursued a strongly militarist and nationalist ideology; with a policy of anti-communism. During the early phase of the war, puppet governments were established in their occupied nations. When the war ended, many of them faced trial for war crimes. The chief leaders were Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy, and Hirohito of Imperial Japan. Unlike what happened with the Allies, there was never a joint meeting of the main Axis heads of government, although Mussolini and Hitler met on a regular basis.
This is a timeline of events that stretched over the period of World War II in 1941, marked also by the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front.
This is a timeline of events that occurred during World War II in 1942.
This is a timeline of events that occurred during World War II in 1943.
This is a timeline of events that occurred during 1944 in World War II.
This is a timeline of the events that stretched over the period of late World War II, its conclusion and legal aftermath, from January 1945 to 1991.
The following events occurred in May 1945:
The War That Came Early is a six-novel series by Harry Turtledove depicting an alternate history of World War II. As is typical of Turtledove's alternate histories, the narrative follows a large cast of both fictional and historical characters.
At the beginning of World War II, the Royal Navy was the strongest navy in the world, with the largest number of warships built and with naval bases across the globe. It had over 15 battleships and battlecruisers, 7 aircraft carriers, 66 cruisers, 164 destroyers and 66 submarines. With a massive merchant navy, about a third of the world total, it also dominated shipping. The Royal Navy fought in every theatre from the Atlantic, Mediterranean, freezing Northern routes to Russia and the Pacific ocean.