Originally,
American Empire: Blood and
Iron was billed as the fourth novel of the “Great War” series.
When Harry Turtledove elected to expand the series by two books,
this novel was changed to the start of a new trilogy set in the aftermath
of the Great War. At the end
of that trilogy, it was clear that Turtledove was setting the Confederacy
up to emulate the rise of Nazi Germany with Jake Featherston taking the
role of a Confederate Hitler.
Nevertheless,
some of the events which seem predestined at the end of The Great War:
Breakthroughs do not come to fruition indicating that
Turtledove does not wish his stories to be predictable.
While the book does deal with the rise of a socialist state in the
North and a fascist state in the South, neither event is as
straightforward as the earlier books may have appeared.
Furthermore, Turtledove continues to depict life in North American
through a variety of eyes, not all of them particularly interested in
politics, except as they affect those characters.
Blood
and Iron
is much darker in tone than How Few Remains or the books which made
up "The Great War" trilogy. With the war behind them, the
Confederacy is suffering from tremendous inflation and racism is on the
increase. Characters who had racist tendencies in the earlier books
are given free rein of their opinions in this book and even the characters
who were seen as heroic in the earlier books are now shown as malcontents
who fall under the sway of the emerging Freedom Party. Unlike the
earlier books, Turtledove doesn't balance this off with Confederate
viewpoint characters of an opposing view.
In
the United States, Turtledove's world has a government intent on keeping
the Confederacy at heel, but whose own pro-business policy is causing an
uprising of socialist ideals among the working class who are growing to
see themselves as oppressed. Despite
the Democrat’s long reign as the party in power and the success of
Roosevelt’s war, the Democrats find themselves facing serious opposition
for the Socialist Party. In
the North, Turtledove’s characters provide a more balanced view of
politics, with working class characters, such as Chester Martin and Sylvia
Enos, supporting the Socialists while the characters who served in the
officer corps, like Irving Morrel or
David Hamburger, see no reason to turn the Democrats out of office.
Some
of the most powerful scenes of the novel, however, deal with the
workers’ uprising in Toledo and Sylvia Enos dealing with the unwanted
attentions of her supervisor, Frank Best.
In a world with only the most rudimentary of unions, their troubles
demonstrate why unions became necessary in the first place.
Blood
and Iron
is also a novel about revenge. Jeff
Pinkard wants revenge on the North and on his wife, Emily, for cheating on
him. Jake Featherston wants
revenge on the North and the officer class for losing the war. Sylvia Enos seeks revenge on the unknown British submarine
captain she believes killed her husband after the was was over.
In Canada, even as Lucien Galtier grows used to the idea of
American occupation of Quebec, Arthur MacGregor continues to seek
vengeance on the Americans for the death of his son, Alexander.
With
the war in the past, Turtledove is able to focus more attention on the
individuals and their lives and worries.
While politics plays a large role in Blood and Iron, it is a
necessary role and frequently appears in the background.
The surprises Turtledove includes occur when his characters do act
completely in character, but the results are not what the reader who has
followed them through the three previous books would have expected.
