« Stalin's Wager: Part One--Inside Straights » Steven Newton

April 1945: the US Army has beaten the Soviets to Berlin, but the war is far from over.

George Patton’s tankers and Georgi Zhukov’s red legions eye each other suspiciously across a narrow demilitarized zone. Will Anglo–American support for the Kesselring government set off a new round of savage warfare across central Europe?

Meanwhile in Asia, Ivan Konev’s T–34s plunge deep into Japanese–occupied China while American Marines are still dying by the thousands in Dwight Eisenhower’s stalled campaign on Okinawa. Japan is the prize; will the race for Berlin be followed by a race for Tokyo?

This is a global conflict, different from anything you’ve ever expected, but meticulously researched by a leading military historian, and offering a rare (and entertaining) glimpse of how things might have been for all kinds of people:

After leading the first GIs across the Rhine River, Captain Jackie Robinson’s reward is hardly what he expected.

He and his ship survived the kamikazes at Okinawa, but can Commander Robert Heinlein stave off the US Navy’s relentless bureaucracy?

Why are so many of his fellow B–29 pilots asking Major Barry Goldwater for “the real story of his off–duty exploits?

Since when does the NAACP’s senior attorney Thurgood Marshall negotiate professional baseball contracts at the request of a Supreme Court Justice?

Exactly why is General Curtis “Iron Ass LeMay calling on an obscure US Navy Lieutenant named Virginia Gerstenfeld?

Nothing less than control of the world is at stake here, and Stalin is a betting man.