Worldwar: Tilting The Balance - References To Actual History and Current Science

References To Actual History and Current Science

The fact that the USSR is the first nation to develop the atom bomb is in contrast to the reality that, in actual history, of the three powers, the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was the least advanced in terms of research into nuclear technology. The USSR did not produce an atomic weapon until 1949, some four years after the U.S. first deployed atomic weapons. Turtledove makes this counter-factual plot development credible by explaining rapid Soviet progress as a result of Soviet exploitation of alien technology, namely captured plutonium.

The French Resistance appears to still be active in the novel, tentatively allied to German forces fighting in France. However, the motivations the Resistance has for working with the Germans against the Race is left unexplored.

The military equipment of the Race is almost entirely analogous to human technology. Their primary ground forces are composed of tanks and mechanized infantry with supporting self-propelled artillery and gunships. In one respect, at least, the Race's military equipment is actually inferior to human technology, that being naval warfare. Since the Race's homeworld has only a few large lakes and rivers, they never developed the sophisticated warships of the human forces. Battleships and aircraft carriers in particular strike the Race as literally unimaginable.

Their air forces are not fundamentally different from human air forces in terms of tactics and doctrine, being based primarily on the concept of achieving air superiority through the use of fighters. From a technical standpoint, the Race's aircraft have a tremendous advantage over human planes in that they are powered by turbine engines whereas most human aircraft in mid-twentieth century were propeller-driven.

The Race apparently makes use of several theoretically feasible but not yet materially possible technologies, namely nuclear fusion power and interstellar travel. Turtledove describes the alien vessels making the journey from Tau Ceti to Earth in twenty years, stating that they can travel at one-half the speed of light. Vessels of the Race seems to create artificial gravity by means of rotation. During their long interstellar travels, part or all of a ship's crew is placed in suspended animation by some unexplained method of artificial metabolic arrest referred to simply as cold sleep.