Dec 27, 2001 note: This was originally posted in December 25, 2001 on the newsgroup 'soc.history.what.if'. March 1, 2003 Note: It was posted on the 'sff.science-fiction.alternate.history' message group on the 'news.sff.net' newserver the next week, where William Sanders pointed out a few errors.

I read Alternate Generals (1998) earlier this year and have prepared some commentary for each story (including plot summaries, so spoilers, ho!). AG has a cover from another alternate history (Romans in tanks, no story in this anthology has both). It has a blurb that belongs to a different book (Generals ISOT perhaps?), and I suspect that Turtledove, who is listed as the editor, didn't do much editing (no preface, no introductions to the stories, no afterword, and Roland Green is credited for providing editorial assistance). But, it does have 16 stories, most are actually Alternate History. March 1, 2003 Note: According to William Sanders, Turtledove was quite active in preparing the anthology.

Lillian Stewart Carl - "The Test of Gold": A Roman is a witness to Boudicca's Rebellion. But, not knowing that much on this, I don't see a Point of Departure at all. This story looks like historical fantasy (the Roman is placed under an effective curse) or secret history.

Elizabeth Moon - "Tradition": Rear Admiral Cradock is the commander of the cruiser squadron that faces the "Goeben" and the "Breslau" at the start of WWI. He does not avoid action (unlike Tourbridge of OTL). BTW, I don't know very much about the workings of the Royal Navy on the eve of WWI, is there any reason to suspect that Cradock would not be assigned to the Mediterranean? March 1, 2003 Note: Since this message was originally posted, I have read that Cradock was in the Caribbean at the very start of WWI.

Brad Linaweaver - "And to the Republic For Which It Stands": Julius Caesar on the eve of the Ides of March - different fate, possibly the same final result.

S. M. Stirling - "The Charge of Lee's Brigade": Robert E. Lee at the Crimean War. There appears to have been no American Revolution, but there was still a French Revolution (which was suppressed earlier than on OTL) and a conflict with Russia in the mid 1850s and with fighting in the Crimea no less. I doubt this. The story has two charges, Lee's Brigade replicate the charge of the Heavy Brigade of OTL before they do a different charge of the Light Brigade.

Lois Tilton - "The Craft of War": A dialogue between Alcibiades and Socrates in an Athens conquered by Xerxes circa. 480 BCE. In this time line, Xerxes had a military advisor (and a most effective one) from the far east ("Sontseus" was how Socrates rendered the name). The fellow also wrote a book (in Chinese, which nobody in the Persian Empire could read - I suspect that it would had been a big hit back in China ;). As a side note, there is a goodly amount of scholarship which holds that The Art of War was written somewhat later than what is claimed by the legend attached to it. I have read a brief summary of this and I noticed that one proposed author, a Sun Pin, appears to be a contemporary of Alexander the Great. So this suggests a parallel what-if: the true author of tAoW is an exile in Persia and whips a Persian army into shape just in time to face Alexander III of Macedonia.

Jody Lynn Nye - "Queen of the Amazons": Eleanor of Aquitaine is part of the Second Crusade (which she was, I don't know enough to spot the actual PoD). I am puzzled by the implication that Damascus had been a Crusader possession. Is this an implied PoD? (or do I know even less than I thought?). At least the 2nd Crusade ends up capturing Damascus rather than being completely useless.

Harry Turtledove - "The Phantom Tolbukhin": General Feoder Tolbukhin, commader of the Fourth Ukranian Front, prepares an attack on a position held by the Fascist invaders of the Soviet Union. But, as the story unfolds, things don't look quite like the initial impression. If fact, the initial impression is deliberately misleading. There is also some unmentioned PoDs offstage since the story action takes place well after what I would consider to be the expiration date of the Third Reich's warranty. On the other hand, Nikita Khrushchev is a supporting character, what more can one ask?

Esther Friesner - "An Old Man's Summer": President Eisenhower is at his home at Gettysburg recovering from a stroke (which appears to be the PoD). But, I don't see anything caused by this (other than an extended waking dream on the Battle of Gettysburg). So is this Alternate History?

Bill Fawcett - "The Last Crusader": The allied armies of all Christian Europe (in alliance against atheistic Revolutionary France) had just been defeated by Davout (once again, though he hadn't always been successful). So the generals get a boost from the Vatican's representative, the Last Crusader, the probable next Pope, who as a bishop turned the Battle of Toulon around with his "whiff of brimstone" speech (oh, yes, the good Cardinal was from an Italian family that had moved to Corsica).

March 1, 2003 Note: William Sanders had a few pointed comments about the paragraph below. I had managed to misspell his name (now corrected) and had entirely missed the fact that Mitchell's attack was on Saturday morning rather than Sunday (also corrected). I also added a sentence at the end. A word to the wise, Mr. Sanders does not believe in being gentle when correcting idiots.

William Sanders - "Billy Mitchell's Overt Act": This is presented as a series of excerpts from newspaper columns, speeches, interviews and books. Mitchell crashes an airplane in 1925 and, since he is in the hospital for some time, doesn't make the statements that led to his court-martial in OTL. He stays both in the Army and quiet (that I doubt), doesn't die in the mid-30s, and is sent to Pearl Harbor in the spring of 1941 to command a small squadron of B-17s. He trains the crews for low-level bombing, not high attitude, and, using a rather creative interpretation of his orders from General Short, institutes a program of long range reconaissance flights around the Hawaiian Islands, especially to the northwest of Oahu. On the evening of December 5th, one comes back with a report of seeing a bunch of ships (including aircraft carriers). General Mitchell, again without telling General Short, organizes a mass strike of all the B-17s that could get into the air (which was only 12), takes off well before dawn, and finds the Japanese task force in the process of refueling. I was somewhat surprised (upon finding a list of all the ships in that task force) to discover that there were seven oilers with the Japanese task force (I had thought that they would have been too slow). FDR's speech on the 8th uses the phrase "day that will live in infamy" which I feel is not quite appropriate. The subsequent war in the Pacific follows a slightly different path and the post-war actions in the Asia is even more noticeably different.

Janet Berliner - "A Case for Justice": Jan Smuts in the twilight of his life, lost in the sea of his memories. But, this appears to be secret history, because I didn't see any alteration of history.

William R. Forstchen - "A Hard Day for Mother": Joshua Chamberlain is a professor at Virginia Military Institute when the American Civil War starts and goes to war as subordinate of his friend Thomas Jackson. On July 2, 1863 he finds himself the commander of a Confederate Army regiment attacking Little Round Top (guess what Union unit is defending?). But this is a "Lee wins at Gettysburg, captures Washington DC, and thus the CSA wins the Civil War" story and I don't believe them. In addition, I consider the epilogue of the story to be a cheat.

David Weber - "The Captain from Kirkbean": It is August 1781 and Captain Sir John Paul of the Royal Navy reflects on his career. Even though a son of a gardener, he had been a midshipman at Quiberon Bay (his father had saved the life of a relative of the Captain of a 3rd rate Ship of the Line) and, in his mid 30s, was a Captain of a 74 himself (I would like to know how he got promoted without any family connections whatsoever - perhaps the Admiral who had done so had been his first Captain). By chance, a French dispatch falls into his hands, and he organizes a scratch squadron (he happened to be the senior Captain on hand) to sail to Chesapeake Bay which he reaches before De Grasse did with his much larger French fleet. A desparate battle by a badly outnumbered force ensues, which allows Captain Paul to deliver his signature line "Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight...!" There is also another PoD which results in the relief force from New York being commanded by a more aggressive admiral than in OTL.

John Mina - "Vive l'Amiral": Admiral Nelson faces what is to be his last battle, at the Cape of Trafalgar. But this is an ATL, so there are differences (unfortunately, I don't believe the differences). Basically, he defects to the French in the early 1790s because of his career has floundered (but ravings about other officers getting promotions because of connections are silly because he still got his big promotion to post-captain - the only one that really mattered in c. 1800 Royal Navy - at the same age in OTL which happened because of HIS connections). Furthermore, the Battle of the Nile still occurs offstage with roughly the same forces, starting positions, and final result as in OTL. This is also silly (even though it inspires Napoleon to give Nelson unlimited authority to build a fleet that could win), the Nelson of OTL ignored the tactical book there and got an extraordinary result (perhaps even an unique result). Admiral Collingwood at Trafalgar is using a double column attack (this is also silly, who other than Nelson would ignore the tactical book to that extreme? And get away with it?). And the story ends with a cheat in that the senior French Admiral (after Nelson's death) countermands Nelson's final command and orders the fleet (with beat up ships, even though victorious) to set sail immediately for the English Channel (last sentence ends with "the wind was picking up"). If an author is going to have a Point of Departure, I want the story line to DEPART!

Brian M. Thomsen - "Bloodstained Ground": Samuel Clemens, a reporter for the New York Tribune (his novelist's career ruined after the commercial and critical failure of Huckleberry Finn) is ordered to write an appreciation of President George Armstrong Custer after Custer is assassinated (I didn't see any explicit statement on what year this was). Sam discovers that the hero of Little Big Horn ... wasn't. Cynical story of politics and the press (would fit in well with the Hearst-Pulitzer paper wars in the late 1890s).

R. M. Meluch - "Vati": In the first part, Werner Moelders becomes (in essense) the Luffwaffe airplane production chief at the end of 1941. He makes all the right decisions (and has the authority to implement them). By the way, I remember reading (or at least looking at) a military history article that had capsule descriptions many Luftwaffe aces and commanders. I believe that Moelders was one of them; but I couldn't find that article in anything I have on hand (I must have looked at a military history magazine in a bookstore) when I tried to check on what had happened to him in OTL (was he killed in action?). Well, I did what I should have done while writing the original post - use Google to find any online material. And, I found it (killed in an airplane crash in bad weather flying back to Germany for Udet's funeral), and I found what the PoD was as well (flying back to Germany several days earlier). In the second part, it is the spring of 1944 when he takes over command of the air units in France. Makes more right decisions (of couse, it helps when you have a bunch of ME-262s with engines that aren't total crap and substantially more planes on hand because of a big increase in the pilot training establishment 2 years before). There is no Operation Overlord (I would have thought that the amount of fighter aircraft that the Americans and Britsh could put over France would still swamp the forces on hand and that ME-262s would still very vulnerable when landing). While offstage, it is clear that the USSR doesn't shatter the Eastern Front either. Come August 1945 and there is still no invasion (and the Soviets are still far away from the gates of Berlin). But, it is August 1945 and the warranty of the Third Reich expires. A B-29 bomber block comes in high over central Germany and a new sun rises ... Now, some might wonder on why I don't consider this a cheat. I don't mind Points of Departure that are inadequate; it is the ones that come with subsequent decisions that force the action back towards OTL that I object to.

I see that there is going to be an Alternate Generals II sometime in 2002 and I saw a reference in Locus for a contract for Alternate Generals III. I hope there will be no sequels to any of the above stories (the good ones don't need sequels and the others shouldn't have any).