![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerWhen Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis got onto my reading list as the winner of the 2010 long-form Sidewise Award for alternate history. What-ifs about Cuba in 1962 are not exactly unknown (e.g. Stephen Baxter's H-Bomb Girl, although that's more than just a pure counterfactual) but Eric Swedin presents his as a history of the events of 1962 as written by a historian in the mid-1990s.
The first third of the book covers the background to the crisis, and so far as I can tell is a fairly good summary of actual historical events up to mid-October 1962. Swedin, through his historian narrator, makes some interesting points about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he suggests was not the complete fiasco it is often presented as; whilst doomed to failure by the lack of US air support, the ground forces performed fairly well against Cuban troops, to the extent that Castro's subsequent enthusiasm for the basing of Soviet forces on the island is fully understandable. The only signs that things turn out differently later on are references to figures such as Castro in the past tense, and throwaway mentions of 'the Fire' as an explanation for why historical data is sometimes sparse.
The middle third of the book details the Crisis itself. Swedin's point of departure concerns the weather, which in his timeline delays crucial U-2 overflights by a week, thus allowing Soviet IRBMs to be firmly established by the time that the US detects their presence. With matters having progressed too far for a blockade to be effective, Kennedy is persuaded into a course of action he resisted in actual history: a massive conventional bombing campaign aimed at comprehensively destroying Soviet and Cuban military facilities, to be followed by a substantial US naval landing and invasion to remove Castro and eject the Soviet presence. Swedin's depiction of what happens next is based, as far as I can tell, on recent revelations that Soviet ground commanders had tactical nuclear weapons and release authority for them. A general, cut off from Moscow, decides to use all measures at his disposal to defend against the invading Americans; the resulting retaliation is almost contained, but inevitably escalates. The exact sequence of events Swedin puts forward is not quite what one might expect, but has a horrible credibility in terms of how desperate people acting with very limited information and expecting destruction at any moment might well behave.
What ensues - referred to three decades on as the Fire - is depicted in the final third. Swedin no doubt based his depiction of a nuclear exchange in 1962 on what we now now of both US and Soviet force levels and nuclear doctrine of the time. It's long been clear that far from there being a 'missile gap', the US had a massive superiority in weapons and delivery systems, and in NORAD a comprehensive and effective defence network against air-based attack. The Soviet attack causes appalling damage to the US and devastates western Europe (the UK's fate is not described in detail, but is implied to be as bad as Baxter depicted in H-Bomb Girl), but the US strike all but annihilates the USSR. Three decades on, Swedin's historian lives in a world where the USA has for the most part recovered, Europe is slowly rebuilding and what was the USSR is little more than scattered pockets of habitation in a scorched landscape returning to wilderness. Half a billion people died, and the world is still suffering the effects of the destruction of the ozone layer. Swedin posits the long-term outcome of the Fire as being an isolationist USA and a stronger, albeit heavily reconstituted, UN imposing a global ban on nuclear weapons. It's implied that technological progress has stagnated, credible enough in a world concentrating on rebuilding, and the narrator refers at times to the might-have-beens of his world, such as the moon landing plans announced by Kennedy not long before his death in the Fire.
I well recall the film Thirteen Days doing a remarkable job of depicting the politico-military manoeuvring during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and conveying the feeling that the leadership of both sides was desperate to avoid escalation but could not back down. When Angels Wept is a frighteningly believable depiction of how, in a world where matters unfolded only slightly differently from in our own, the balance could so easily have tipped into escalation beyond anyone's ability to control. Although not a novel in the usual sense, it was a worthy winner of the Sidewise Award, and I'd commend it to anyone interested in alternate history or the Cuba crisis.
The first third of the book covers the background to the crisis, and so far as I can tell is a fairly good summary of actual historical events up to mid-October 1962. Swedin, through his historian narrator, makes some interesting points about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he suggests was not the complete fiasco it is often presented as; whilst doomed to failure by the lack of US air support, the ground forces performed fairly well against Cuban troops, to the extent that Castro's subsequent enthusiasm for the basing of Soviet forces on the island is fully understandable. The only signs that things turn out differently later on are references to figures such as Castro in the past tense, and throwaway mentions of 'the Fire' as an explanation for why historical data is sometimes sparse.
The middle third of the book details the Crisis itself. Swedin's point of departure concerns the weather, which in his timeline delays crucial U-2 overflights by a week, thus allowing Soviet IRBMs to be firmly established by the time that the US detects their presence. With matters having progressed too far for a blockade to be effective, Kennedy is persuaded into a course of action he resisted in actual history: a massive conventional bombing campaign aimed at comprehensively destroying Soviet and Cuban military facilities, to be followed by a substantial US naval landing and invasion to remove Castro and eject the Soviet presence. Swedin's depiction of what happens next is based, as far as I can tell, on recent revelations that Soviet ground commanders had tactical nuclear weapons and release authority for them. A general, cut off from Moscow, decides to use all measures at his disposal to defend against the invading Americans; the resulting retaliation is almost contained, but inevitably escalates. The exact sequence of events Swedin puts forward is not quite what one might expect, but has a horrible credibility in terms of how desperate people acting with very limited information and expecting destruction at any moment might well behave.
What ensues - referred to three decades on as the Fire - is depicted in the final third. Swedin no doubt based his depiction of a nuclear exchange in 1962 on what we now now of both US and Soviet force levels and nuclear doctrine of the time. It's long been clear that far from there being a 'missile gap', the US had a massive superiority in weapons and delivery systems, and in NORAD a comprehensive and effective defence network against air-based attack. The Soviet attack causes appalling damage to the US and devastates western Europe (the UK's fate is not described in detail, but is implied to be as bad as Baxter depicted in H-Bomb Girl), but the US strike all but annihilates the USSR. Three decades on, Swedin's historian lives in a world where the USA has for the most part recovered, Europe is slowly rebuilding and what was the USSR is little more than scattered pockets of habitation in a scorched landscape returning to wilderness. Half a billion people died, and the world is still suffering the effects of the destruction of the ozone layer. Swedin posits the long-term outcome of the Fire as being an isolationist USA and a stronger, albeit heavily reconstituted, UN imposing a global ban on nuclear weapons. It's implied that technological progress has stagnated, credible enough in a world concentrating on rebuilding, and the narrator refers at times to the might-have-beens of his world, such as the moon landing plans announced by Kennedy not long before his death in the Fire.
I well recall the film Thirteen Days doing a remarkable job of depicting the politico-military manoeuvring during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and conveying the feeling that the leadership of both sides was desperate to avoid escalation but could not back down. When Angels Wept is a frighteningly believable depiction of how, in a world where matters unfolded only slightly differently from in our own, the balance could so easily have tipped into escalation beyond anyone's ability to control. Although not a novel in the usual sense, it was a worthy winner of the Sidewise Award, and I'd commend it to anyone interested in alternate history or the Cuba crisis.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 07:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 09:35 am (UTC)An excellent YA - one of the best things SB has written IMHO.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 10:25 pm (UTC)"In keeping with this realistic approach, we, the editors, feel we are performing a significant service by presenting dramatic stories of limited thermonuclear battle."
Link to several scanned issues of Atom Age Combat. Lousy comics, but to the student of the Cold War, fascinating in a creepy way.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 02:21 pm (UTC)I'm still unclear on the ozone loss - maybe the USSR airbursts were very high?
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 11:25 pm (UTC)Nitrogen oxides - as I recall these lead to more ozone, not less (see smog and tree damage in e.g. the Black Forest prior to catalytic converters becoming widespread), though I could be out of date, of course, as it isn't an area I've kept up with research in.