Historical Figures in the Worldwar Series

mong Turtledove's huge cast of characters are an impressive number of historical figures. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin have all appeared, as have U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, Germany and Japan. Most of the rest are either military officers or physicists working on the nuclear weapons programs. Very few of these appear in more than brief cameo roles, or as recurring minor characters. There are three exceptions, however: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Jewish resistance leader Mordechai Anielewicz, and German SS officer Otto Skorzeny.

Molotov is perhaps the most unpleasant character in the series. He's manipulative, reads the actions of everyone as cynically as possible, and combines a ruthless pragmatism with a devotion to Stalin and the Soviet dialectic.

Anielewicz and Skorzeny, on the other hand, are among Turtledove's most charismatic characters. In real life, Anielewicz led the Jewish resistance to the Nazis in Warsaw until killed in battle in 1943. In the Worldwar novels, he serves as the politically astute and strategically creative leader of the Jewish forces, first leading them with the Race's assistance against the Nazis, then arranging various clandestine activities against the Race. In a defining moment, Anielewicz decides to allow Major Heinrich Jager safe passage to Germany with plutonium as long as Jager gives him half of the shipment to smuggle to the United States.

Skorzeny was best known for a daring rescue of Benito Mussolini. Later, Skorzeny was tried at Nuremberg, but acquitted based on the testimony of a British officer. Still, the West Germans held him for a denazification trial, but he escaped in 1949, and lived in Spain until his death in 1975.

In the Worldwar Saga, Skorzeny rescues Mussolini, but this time from the Race. He also leads the raid that obtains the plutonium and later steals one of the Race's highly advanced tanks. By the end of the second novel, the Race has made Skorzeny's elimination a strategic objective.

ack to Off the shelf.