I’ll admit it, I’m a history nerd.  If I didn’t have to make money to feed my family, you’d find me in some dusty library or walking around old battlefields.

I really enjoy well done counterfactual history.  Counterfactual, or alternate, history is a genre of fiction where the author takes a real historically significant event, changes one or two things in the narrative, then explores how things might have turned out.  The changes can be subtle (What if so-and-so had zigged instead of zagged at the Battle of West NoWhere in 325 BC?) to the semi-ridiculous (What if racist South Africans invented a time machine and took a few cases of AK-47’s and ammunition back to the American Civil War and supported the South?)  The best examples of this, in my opinion, are in the “What If?” series of short essays and stories, but there are numerous other excellent examples to be had.

In his counterfactual novel “Gray Tide in the East“, author Andrew J. Heller explores how World War I would have turned out had the Germans not invaded Belgium in August of 1914.  You see, the violation of Belgium’s neutrality was the reason the British government was able to sell the idea of going to war, and British involvement, including a ruinous blockade of Germany, probably led to the long, bloody slog of 1914 to 1918.   Heller explores how the war would have gone had Germany  not had to contend with the huge, but weak, Russian army one side, and the combined might of the British and French armies and navies on the other.

The book tells its tale in a narrative built around several real people, including Charles de Gaul, Adolf Hitler, and Ray Swing, an American reporter who is given access to the fighting because of American neutrality in the war.  Other historical figures are liberally salted throughout the book.  Significant events in the story are discussed either as they happen in real time to and around the characters, or the characters relate them in conversation.  This is very well done, but it could have been augmented by a more detached discussion of what was happening.  At the end of the book, Heller has two essays where he lists out his sources in researching the topic and explains his train of thought in writing the story.  If similar material had been interspersed through the book, either as separate chapters or in-line with the narrative, the book would have had a deeper dive in to the culture, technology, and politics of the nations fighting in the war.  However, the way that Heller laid out the story through the narrative makes the excellent research he did shine through in almost every paragraph.

Overall, I’d recommend this to anyone who is interested in history and enjoys a good thought experiment in “What if?”.  It was not a difficult read at all, and I enjoyed being able to get through it in a couple of afternoons.  For a history nerd, it was a great escape into one of the more pivotal events of the last century.