Never Call RetreatThis is the third in the series of books about an alternate history of the Civil War from Gettysburg on. In the previous books, Lee made a different decision at Gettysburg, and this led him to being able to defeat the Army of the Potamic. Lee's forces attack Washington, D.C. Finally, Grant is put in charge of all Union armies in the whole country, and takes time to gather his men and supplies. In this book, Grant and Lee have their confrontation. It's incredibly bloody, and the descriptions of what happens to men hit by canister, bullets, etc. is very descriptive and gory. The delicate political situation for Lincoln is shown, as well as a much-different approach to blacks who, in this case, formed groups of both soldiers and workers and were used in regular, front-line type of battles. The book also shows some of the weaknesses of the Southern position. The North had a much more developed technology. There's a lot of use of trains in this book, something that enables Grant to move his forces quickly. There are also references to the sheer mountain of supplies that Northern factories were able to make. This is quite similar to what happened to Japan in World War II. Japan was not able to directly attack the mainland U.S., so our factories were able to continue to manufacture planes, ships, bombs, bullets, etc. Japan's factories, on the other hand, were subject to U.S. firebombing and regular bombing, cutting down their ability to produce supplies. The very effective U.S. submarine effort kept much of what supplies were produced from every reaching the Japanese Army by sinking numerous boats. In both cases, we have losses primarily due to technological differences. The only way the Japanese could have won, just as the only way the South could have won, was to have won an initial large victory and then hope the U.S. people would not stand behind a war and would agree to a settlement. In neither case did that happen, of course. This is a really good book. Gruesome, but good. |