The Moscow option: An alternative Second World War

by David Downing

This provocative alternate history looks at World War II from a new angle what might have happened had the Germans taken Moscow in 1941. Based on authentic history and real possibilities, this book plays out the dramatic consequences of opportunities taken and examines the grotesque possibilities of a Third Reich triumphant. On 30 September 1941, the Germans fight their way into the ruins of Moscow, and the Soviet Union collapses. Although Russian resistance continues, German ambition multiplies after this signal victory and offensives are launched in Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Hitler's armies, assured of success, make their leader s dreams reality, and Allied hopes of victory seem to be hopelessly doomed. David Downing s writing is fluid and eminently believable, as he blends actual events with the intriguing possibilities of alternate history. The Moscow Option is a chilling reminder that the course of World War II might easily have run very differently.

Genres: Alternate History, Fiction, World War II, Historical Fiction, Military Fiction, Novels, Russia

254 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

David Downing is the author of a political thriller, two alternative histories and a number of books on military and political history and other subjects as diverse as Neil Young and Russian Football.

Reviews

[Boudewijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

What would have happened if the German Army HAD conquered Moscow at the end of 1941? This is the question that David Downing is trying to answer in this book.

This book is not a dry, theoretical essay about the possible consequences. Instead, the author has tried to write a history of the Second World War that both might and could have occured. Do not expect a work of speculative fiction (such as The Man in the High Castle), but a history book that would be written by historians after the end of the Second World War - with the difference that in this war Moscow was captured.

It is of course difficult to write a review about a progress of a war that never happened. David Downing brings in two deux et machina's. The first is an incident where Hitler is temporarily disabled, giving the German generals a free hand in capturing Moscow, the other one is the discovery of the Japanese that their naval codes are being read by the Americans, enabling them to fool their enemy and destroying the American carrier fleet. This sets off a whole turn of events which in the end will allow the Germans to conquer Egypt and the Japanese to take Midway.

The way David Downing is telling the story is like any other non-fiction work regarding World War Two. It gives detailed accounts of fictional battles, illustrated by maps showing the main operations in such theathers as Egypt, Palestine and the Caucasus. This book therefore is a welcome distraction if you are used of reading non-fiction about World War Two, but not more than that.

[Nadienne Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little excursion into the realm of alternate/speculative history. Essentially, what if - shortly after naming Goering as his successor - Hitler was rendered unconscious due to a plane crash for a few months, and the war was continued in his stead, and the Nazis went on to take Moscow instead of pushing through the Ukraine.

The war is carried into the Middle East - and Japan is able to launch raids against the West Coast of the USA and Panama - but ultimately they lose the war just as they did in our own history. It's not too bad a read. The end of the last chapter is the best:

"The attempt to apply blitzkrieg on a trans-continental scale had failed. It was bound to do so. For just as National Socialism was a stop-gap solution to the problems of Thirties capitalism, so blitzkrieg was never more than a stop-gap answer to the military problems of continental war. It could only work over a limited period of time; it could only be sustained, as was now obvious, over a limited area of space. A panzer company has to keep moving in order to survive; this was basic tactics. The same was true of a panzer Wehrmacht. Once stopped it was doomed, vulnerable at every point of the territory it had traversed with such apparent ease.

Nazi Germany was the supreme example of economic realities being being to the political will. But however strong the restraining hand, economic realities cannot be indefinitely denied. Such a society lives on expansionism, on consuming the lands, the work, and the lives of others. It lives on its own momentum, until the momentum dies, and then it begins to consume itself. Such a society has nowhere to go.

The peculiarities of Nazism also played their part. The feudal character of the leadership - short-sighted, competitive, inhuman - hindered the full development of the armament industry which fueled the expansionist impulse. It was also destined, sooner or later, to stifle the initiative of its only potential opponents, the generals in the field. The virulent racism which festered at the heart of Hitler's weltanschauung made it inevitable that Nazi Germany would only win "friends" through the exercise of overwhelming force. Germany could offer other nations nothing, and this was eventually realized even by those who either welcomed or wished to welcome the Wehrmacht as an agent of their own liberation."

Let those of the Reich-Wing Party in the United States learn this lesson before it's too late.

[Peter Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I start this review with the fact that I'm not a great fan of alternative histories. That said, David Downing's "The Moscow Option" was a really, really good read. Very few books a real "page turners" but this one is.

Downing covers an alternative version of the Second World War from early 1941 to the end of 1942. He includes the Russian front, the North African campaign and the War in the Pacific from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. From these points of real history is story begins to deviate.

I will leave it to you to see how Downing's "history" tracks differently from reality but what I can say is that because of the breadth of the theatres of war covered the book moves along at a blistering pace.

Quite often alternative "histories" have plots that, given our knowledge of actual events,, seem far fetched at worst or merely improbable at best. Downing's fiction is not in this league. From my understanding of Second World War history and politics any of the scenarios that are outlines in this book could have happened; they are quite believable.

This is one of the BEST alternative histories I have ever read. I strongly recommend it!

Regards,
Peter

[Steven Raszewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1980 this has got to be one of the granddaddy's of alternative historic fiction. A really good read. Presented as history of the war at the grand strategic level, the author had just about every bit of luck and little twist of fate go to the Axis and they still lose, rightfully so IMO. It was if you are playing Axis&Allies and need a die roll of six for a good result and the Axis roll 50 six's in a row. They still lose due to their terrible logistics vis-a-vis the Allies. This old tome gets it right. Very enjoyable.

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even forty odd years after Germany’s defeat at Moscow you still see “optimistic” alternate histories like this.
“Just a little farther!”
David Downing can maybe be forgiven since in 1980 the Soviet archives were still closed and a lot of the Huns were still alive shamelessly promoting themselves as the Goodest of all the Good Germans. But even in 1980 a reasonable historian could see that in the summer of 1941 German divisions were holding, in some cases, 20 plus kilometers of front. Soviet partisans at the lowest numbered 30,000 moving behind German lines. Smolensk, even though the Germans managed to take it, involved bitter street fighting which the Germans were not prepared for and accordingly suffered irreplaceable losses. The Soviets were out producing German factories in all regards- most especially tanks- and those Soviet tanks especially the T-34 and KV-1 were superior to anything the Germans could produce at the time. They were also better designed for conditions on the Eastern Front. Then, the Soviet government had moved most everything of value east, everything that remained was rigged to blow, and winter was coming even though the Germans had done little preparation for even maintaining summer kits. If the Germans had taken Moscow they most certainly could not have taken Malta, much less Egypt. They had already drafted 85% of eligible men aged 18 to 30 in October of ‘41, they stripped factories and mines to the bone. The armies in the East were short several hundred thousand men even to maintain their initial division strength. Even with these casualties only about 50% of the supplies necessary were reaching the remaining troops. With the troop strength that they actually had there is no plausible way that the Germans could have held Moscow- a city then of five million people- with the numbers of troops that they had.
For sake of argument let’s pretend that Smolensk caused the Germans exactly zero casualties. That would free up a hundred thousand men. Even a very, very rough estimate of distance requires the Germans to maintain a frontline nearly 2000 kilometers long just in the Soviet Union. Right before winter. In Russia. With bare winter supplies.
Downing is arguing that the Germans could do more, with much, much less than they did in our timeline which just isn’t feasible.

[Jacob Stelling · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I recieved Moscow Option: An Alternative Second World War as a Christmas present, I was a little bit dubious as to how good it would be, and how interesting a non-fiction title could be. As it was surrounding my area of interest, Modern History, I must say I found it an extremely riveting read. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in History.

[Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is so well written. The goodies do win, of course (and that is almost too predictable... or is it just the reality of the situation?). Downing looks at all the theatres of War (USSR, North Africa and the Pacific) and at what could have gone wrong for the allies yet also how thing would have very likely turned out. Very interesting...

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book is basically “what would have happened in World War Two if every single roll of the dice or lucky brake went to the axis.” It’s not speculative fiction so much as contrarian, and while it gives more flexibility to some historical figures, fails to consider much more than operational battle related changes this would create.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a "What If" history that posits a Nazi victory in Operation Barbarossa - Moscow is occupied and the Russians are pushed back to the Urals. It's been years since I've read it but as I recall, the Allies still defeat the Axis, it's just at a much greater cost.

[Bilbo Nobwank · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear. I'm not sure if my expectations were misplaced. But I was expecting am Alternate History Novel here. Instead, what I got was just page after page of incredibly dull minutiae listing various troop movements. I got five chapters in before the matchsticks holding my eyelids open finally splintered and I gave up.

This book has no 'characters' at all [at least not in the five chapters I read]. Instead, historical figures are mentioned in passing with no attempt made to give them any kind of personality or allow them to speak. they're just cardboard cutouts, wheeled in at the beginning of the book to set the scene [Hitler incapacitated, Germans push on to Moscow] in preparation for the aforementioned avalanche of "troop movement bulletins". Here's arandom sample from about 3 or 4 chapters in:

As the sun rose slowly above the pines on 23 August, the strengthened 56th Panzer Corps moved forward from its starting line south of Lake Ilmen. There were no roads to speak of, and 8th Panzer struck east along the railway line towards Lychkovo. Some ten miles to the north 6th Panzer and 3rd Motorised Division were directed along marshy forest tracks towards Kresttsy on the main Leningrad-Moscow road. A similar distance to the south the motorised SS division ‘Totenkopf’ covered the Corps’ southern flank against the strong enemy formations in the Demyansk-Lake Seliger area. Progress was slow but steady, the terrain offering considerably more opposition than the enemy, who was still struggling to fill the gap left by Thirty-fourth Army’s recent destruction.

Now that might not seem too bad in isolation. But imagine that kind of thing, for page after page, chapter after chapter. It's made all the more dense by the fact that --unless you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of unheard of Russian villages and rivers-- in order to "follow along" you'd pretty much need one of those big tables with a map of Russia and a team of WAAFs at hand to push flags about on it for you.

Now, I'm sure the author has put in a lot of detailed research and worked this all out logistically to create a plausible narrative here. But, sometimes you can have too much detail. I can imagine this book appealing to those of a military historian bent. But, for someone like me, who was just after a good "What if...?" alternative history novel, it was just too boring to bother with.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a re-read of an old favourite- I mean old. I read this when I was in Grade 7 or 8 and then, once, or twice a year for a decade after it. But, then, not for the last twenty years. And, yes, I'm dating myself.

This is an interesting alternative World War II novel, written very much in the style of a grand strategy military history. The basic premise is that, in summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler is seriously injured in a plane crash- an injury which basically takes him out of commission for a key six months of the war. In his convalescence, the German military takes charge of the war and conducts it the way that it intends to- namely, directing German military strength against the central sector of the Russian front, right at Moscow. There are a few other key changes- an invasion of Malta and the diversion of a Panzer Corp to Africa and a change in the Japanese plan at Midway. Nothing outlandish, but Downing takes the rest of the novel to work out the consequences of these alterations.

The result is a highly readable novel and a plausible scenario for an alternative war. Downing carefully works out the consequences of his changes and comes up with reasonable reconstructions of what the major figures in the war would be likely to do. At the risk of giving a spoiler, the result is still the same- defeat for the Axis, but they get further in territory and much closer to victory. Downing also gives tantalizing hints about how the war would end, but ends the novel at the turning points in the war- outside Jerusalem, on the Azerbajani-Iranian border, in northern Russia and off Panama.

This is still worth a read for a highly plausible alternative World War II with engaging writing and a clever plot. If you are a WWII geeks, this is a book you'll like to read.

[Mauro Martone · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to alternative history the writer has the freedom to write whatever they desire. Yet in this case, the result is the same in the end except for the overall cost of the Allies going on to win the war as well as the time it takes them to do so. This book shows how the Allies would still win – principally down to the industrial power of the US and of course, the determination of the Russian people despite a fall of Moscow. The Germans and Japanese don't do themselves any favours by treating the inhabitants of the lands they conquer like animals either - which is precisely how they behaved in reality of course. It does come across as a military history and for me, was quite palatable as a consequence – a good read.

[John A. Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rather enjoyed this take on an alternate approach for the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. An accident side lines Hitler, and his generals prioritise the attack on Moscow, forcing Stalin East. This utilises mostly real data/events – the introduction specifically calls out the two points of divergence that allow the change. The change in the East cascades to the Mediterranean and North Africa theatres, and (for me) slightly less obviously to the Pacific War.
As mentioned in other reviews, it is rather abrupt, and perhaps a sequel could have worked. However, Mr. Downing does ‘give away’ the ending in a few places, so perhaps he never intended to go further than autumn 1942. An good read for those interested in the genre.

[Dan Dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable Alternative

An enjoyable alternative because in the end victory still goes to the allies. Mr. Downing is stating in very imaginative and yet scholarly terms that no matter how you sliced the real great war, the fascists at both ends of the world were going down to defeat. It would take just a little longer. However, he marks September of 1942 as the crucial month and not December when most historians agree was the turning point of the war with the battles of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal resolved. The battle details fly at you at near incomprehensible speed. What is the reader to do but to ignore the potholes in the road and view the descriptions from30,000 feet.

[Lewis Barnich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readers be warned

This is an excellent, grounded, and well researched alternate history of WW2. This is NOT, however a novel. Downing wrote the book as if he was writing a history of actual events. I personally really liked the style, but many readers may find it very dry.
The one real complaint I have is a rash of typos throughout the book. I don't know if the original text had that problem, or if mistakes were made when adapting the work for the Kindle format. Either way, it could use another pass through the editors office.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely disappointed in this David Downing book. I am a fan of his "Station" series primarily set in WWII Berlin. I believe this books Amazon description was misleading as this book did not present an alternative WWII outcome at all but simple read like a military campaign history of the Eastern Front was and the North Africa/Middle East campaign to control oil fields in the Russian Caucasus, Iran and Iraq.
The book was tedious and really a waste of my time and I'm sorry I bought it.

[AVid_D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having loved his "Station" series, I thought I would give this book a go, though I had no idea of what to expect when I bought it.

Other reviewers have given an excellent summary of the book and it's "historical account" style.

At times, I found it a little difficult to picture all the military manoeuvrings, but I raced through the book.

Different and a good read.

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting enough although it was more of a military description than a story. The text is largely absent a plot and quite monotone in its telling. If you are interested in reading military dossiers which focus on alternative history, this is perfect. For my part, I had hoped for something more of a novel.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author has much to tell but in his haste to maintain historical accuracy he placed setting with an overload of names of places where battles are fought often confusing to lay readers.This book should have placed more emphasis on the characters involved .There is no excuse for the many typos left uncorrexted.This author is a scholar but with a larger view of his reader.

[Keith Johnstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and obviously well researched thesis. Implies, perhaps correctly that even with further initial success the Germans and Japanese still would have lost WWII. It lacks something in the telling, I can’t quite pinpoint what but still very readable

[Steve Tabler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good historical read

I have also read a lot of history of WW2, and find the book very interesting and entertaining. What if this and what if that. Rommel has always fascinated me.

[Paul Juniper · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much detail. Would appeal to someone who cares where each division and military unit was. I enjoyed the larger strategic decisions and projected results.

It does make clear how easily things could’ve ended differently.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Moscow option is a very realistic alterntive history

[Steve Leitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting premise, but the story-telling leaves something to be desired. It also seemed to end inconclusively.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting

Well researched and written. Plausibly explained and dramatically well presented. A most easy to read and follow presentation of a very possible outcome.

[Andy Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andy's review

Downloaded this as I was intrigued, & I was not disappointed - a thoroughly though provoking alternative WWII history - there should be a sequel.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competent and believable alternate history; one for the armchair militarists rather than literature lovers.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

In spite of not liking the idea of reading another war story, once started the read is engaging and well done. The analysis of actions and results is satisfying. Recommended.

[Conner Crowder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sounds like a realistic outcome of the Barbarossa campaign if Germany decided to focus on Moscow instead of the encirclement of Kiev to the south.

[Dan LeSeure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful speculati

Two major changes and the pendulum swung a bit further against the allies, but not far enough to alter the final outcome.