Axis of Time

A trilogy of Alternate History novels by John Birmingham about a Multinational Task Force from 2021 sent to oust an Indonesian Islamofascist movement getting sent by Negative Space Wedgie to 1942, just off the coast of Midway, where the bulk of the fleet accidentally ends up in the company of Admiral Ray Spruance's task force. A massive naval battle breaks out when Spruance's task force sees one Japanese ship accompanying the fleet, believing them all to be Imperial Japanese, but the fighting is eventually halted and the future fleet is brought to anchor in Pearl Harbor where the Up-timers explain themselves to various contemporary military and government officials. Culture Shock ensues and the war finds itself irrevocably changed.

Meanwhile, small contingents of the fleet unfortunately find themselves in German, Japanese, and Soviet hands, and all parties go to work gearing up and changing their battle plans based on their new knowledge of the future.

Tropes used in Axis of Time include:
  • Affably Evil: Otto Skorzeny. Big, boisterous man who likes boasting and roaring a lot. Scares Brasch to death with his brand of friendliness (which mostly consists of boasting and roaring) and even banters with the Prince during a failed assassination attempt on Churchill.
  • Ancient Conspiracy - Admiral Kolhammer and the other uptimers more or less start one, the Quiet Room, intending to "correct" history in the post-war world
  • Armor Is Useless - For the German and Japanese warships targeted by 21st century weaponry. Tirpitz almost looks as if it's survived a hypersonic missile. It breaks up afterward though. Inverted in the case of the reactive-matrix body armor of the Task Force - it saves plenty of lives from Axis bullets, unless they're hit in the face or throat, which is rare.
  • Asshole Victim - J. Edgar Hoover. He eventually commits suicide.
  • Black Comedy Rape: One of the temps, a fence for the mafia, comes across a tablet with an extremely stupid gangster rap song called "Rape the Bitch Now". His bemused, enraged, and racist reaction is darkly humorous.
    • An SAS member shoots a Japanese officer in the act (literally with his pants down) during an operation to save an imprisoned Australian town.
  • Blood Knight - General Patton and many of the more extreme Japanese characters.
  • Butt Monkey - J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. He deserves it.
  • Can't Kill You - Still Need You - The reason the "Havoc" spares the Japanese Ohka carrier
  • Colonel Badass: Colonel (later Brigadier General) J. "Lonesome" Jones.
    • Although not a Colonel, or even in the Army or Marines, Admiral Phillip J. Kolhammer is no pushover either.
  • Complete Monster: Rear Admiral Jisaku Hidaka, who is considered a scumbag - even by Nazi collaborators.
    • The series was criticized by some for making nearly all the Imperial Japanese forces this, even with Truth in Television - every town they've been through is in ruins.
    • Arthur M. Snider turns out to be responsible for raping and murdering Captain Anderson and Sub-lieutenant Miyazaki. Julia vows to expose him and destroy his good name now that the war is over, but the novel ends before we see him get his comeuppance.
  • Cool Ship: All of the future ships are one of these, but standing out are the USS Hillary Clinton or "Big Hill" and the stealth ship HMS Trident.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Whenever the 21st century task force decides to take off the gloves and goes on a full-scale offensive against the past forces - notable examples include the first book's assault on the Japanese-held Philippines, the counteroffensive in Australia, most of the naval combat, and the bombing after D-Day that utterly destroys twelve of Germany's best armored divisions.
  • Defector From Decadence: Colonel/Major General Paul Brasch is horrified to learn about the Holocaust when analyzing history documents aboard one of the captured future vessels, especially since his son has a cleft palate and Downs' Syndrome, and will be an easy target for the T4 program. his child and wife escape thanks to an allied spy's effort. In response, he sabotages much of Germany's efforts to build new weapons based on the future tech.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: The cause of a lot of tension between the racially and gender-egalitarian 2021 military and their 1940's counterparts. For starters, a fight breaks out on board a future ship and contemporary ship that ended up fused together via Negative Space Wedgie when, in the aftermath of a firefight, a female medic slaps one of the contemporary crewmembers when he indirectly asks for blood that doesn't come from a non-white person (a disproportionate number of the future ship's crew are either black or Chinese-American).
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Almost everyone who dies does so suddenly and anti-climactically - if not off screen.
    • Otto Skorzeny is an especially notable one - Prince Harry off-handedly mentions strangling him to death in one sentence near the end of Final Impact
  • French Jerk - Subverted and played straight - the captured French missile frigate puts up a major resistance against the Nazis, wiping data and sabotaging what they can get their hands on, and all of them but four die for it - and the one actively collaborating is a racist, conservative, insubordinate, sloppy disgrace of a sailor who wants to avert America's rise to power, blaming them for the Islamic riots and terrorist attacks in France. The other two are implied to be Neo-Nazis. The last sailor says he's getting revenge for his sister, who was raped and murdered by two US Marines, except that's a lie. His sister's alive and married to J. Lonesome Jones. He sabotages almost the rest of the missiles for the strike on Hawai'i, but fails to get the last few and blows the racist's head off before Hidaka guns him down.
  • General Failure - Hitler is in top form here as per real life. It's not that everything he touches turns to shit, but he's playing Armchair General and tends to work off of bad hunches and incorrect assumptions.
  • Good Is Not Nice - The doctrine of the 21st century force has been honed by years of wars against terrorists and rogue states into one of complete and utter pragmatism, and their operating rules allow torture and call for summary executions of war criminals. It's enough to make Himmler think "and they call us the war criminals" and to get an occasional What the Hell, Hero? from their allies.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight/Name's Almost The Same: The Captain of a new experimental stealth ship named after a major WWII turning point is a black person with the name of "Da____ Anderson." Are we talking about Captain Daytona Anderson of the USS Leyte Gulf or Captain David Anderson of the SSV Normandy?
  • Historical Hero Upgrade: An alternate future version of Prince Harry who travels back in time to a point where his grandmother HM The Queen is a teenager.
  • Historical In-Joke/Allohistorical Allusion: The 2021 fleet's flagship is the fusion-powered supercarrier USS Hilary Clinton, whose "murdered namesake" (assassinated) was "America's fiercest wartime President".
  • Hope Spot - The Germans (and the Japanese) keep on believing they'll be getting their atomic bomb any time and that they just have to hold out a little longer. It doesn't happen.
  • Hot Scoop - Julia.
  • Insane Troll Logic - Hoover resorts to more and more of this as his standing erodes away, as does the French Jerk who helps the Japanese attack Hawai'i.
  • It's Raining Men - The German Falllschirmjager and a new airborne SS unit take part in Operation Sea Dragon as paratroopers and glider troops. It doesn't end well for them. Later, the Allies subvert this trope by launching a major airborne offensive in France - with helicopters, like a modern army.
  • Jerkass - One of the racist privates from the first novel, and the Detective.
  • Karmic Death: Heinrich Himmler remembers the importance of the T4 Program meant for the extermination of the physically and mentally disabled when he smothers a vegetative Hitler with a pillow.
  • La Résistance: The French Resistance helps out Prince Harry during the rescue of Paul Brasch. A few of the Russian uptimers also try get one going against the Soviet Union in the second book, but no word on its progress in Book 3.
  • The Ladette: Julia Duffy and many of the other 21st century women come across like this to the 'temps. Even Julia comments on it, thinking she must look like a "bull dyke from Hell" to their eyes.
  • Lady of War: Captain Karen Halabi and Julia.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters
  • Magnificent Bastard: Lieutenant Ali Moertopo manages to talk his way out of execution and torture while in Japanese custody, and even ends up becoming the governor of Indonesia, first under the Japanese, then under the Americans. While under the former's thumb, he secretly builds up an anti-Japanese guerrilla army to support the American invasion/liberation of the islands.
  • Mook Horror Show: When the Japanese get Tank Rushed in Australia or the Germans get bombed in oblivion in France, or when the Soviet troops try to Zerg Rush their way past German nerve gas.
  • Not So Different - Quite a few "temps" comment on the field executions of Japanese personnel and burying procedures mirroring the Japanese's own methods.
    • There is the subtle difference that under their rules of engagement, the uptimers are required to thoroughly document evidence of war crimes before summarily executing the criminals, and if a review of that evidence were to show that execution was unjustified, they would theoretically be executed themselves.
  • Nuke'Em: Final Impact ends with Lodz and Tokyo nuked by the Russians and Berlin by the Americans.
  • Oh Crap: The reaction of both the Allies and the Axis when the Soviets come back into the war with a MASSIVE arsenal
  • Rape as Drama: Any time the Imperial Japanese and prisoners get mixed up.
  • Schizo-Tech: A major result of the Transition. World War II tech, tech that was obsolete in World War II but still used, "napkinwaffe" actually being brought into service, upgraded World War II tech, tech straight from the 50s or 60s being built ahead of time, tech straight out of the 2020s, and ad hoc mixtures of all of the above all clash in the same war.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Julia Duffy, who's only a war correspondent but handles herself in combat to the point of scaring some contemporary soldiers.
  • Shout-Out: One of the characters is mentioned to hail from Grantville, West Virginia. One of FDR's Secret Service bodyguards is even named Agent Flint.
  • Suicide Attack - The Japanese, as in our timeline, go heavy on the kamikaze aircraft and are also mentioned as using suicide submarines against ships. However, thanks to the arrival of future technology, they are able to perfect the Ohka, a far more effective jet-propelled suicide aircraft. The Ohkas get a rare (for kamikazes, who are generally portrayed as crazy idiots) Sympathetic POV and Crowning Moment of Awesome when they totally destroy the Russian invasion fleet and later the Soviet atomic weapons research facility. Earlier, in Designated Targets, it's shown how futile these are against Metal Storm turrets.
  • Superweapon Surprise - No one expected the Soviets to drop the Bomb first. The Germans' mass deployment of nerve gas and anthrax against them also came as a shock.
    • Reversed with the nuclear weapons. While the Soviets are the first to drop the bomb, it is revealed that the Americans had already had one for months, and were waiting for the Soviets to show their nuclear hand first. In the time it takes for the Soviets to build and four to five bombs, the Americans have constructed a dozen.
  • Take That - Himmler wonders how this 'Microsoft' could possibly (have) become the pre-eminent software supplier when their product is so annoying and buggy.
  • Technology Porn - They even have A Is!
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill - When a panzer army is sent to counterattack against the landings in Calais, the Allies bomb it so thoroughly that it leaves the ground scorched black like a cartoon for miles and miles, and there is nothing left of it.
  • Villainous BSOD - Hitler, after a long period of mental and physical decline as Germany's fortunes wane, collapses and suffers a disabling stroke upon hearing the Soviet have used nuclear weapons against Germany
  • War Is Hell
  • Warrior Poet - Masaharu Homma, known as the Poet General.
  • What the Hell, Hero? - Split. Lieutenant Lohrey from the Australian submarine submachineguns a bunch of Chinese prisoners who were escaping torpedoed Japanese transports. At the time, the prisoners were threatening to swamp a PT boat on a critical mission, and the Lieutenant's actions didn't bother the uptimers at all. The 'temps on the scene and later MacArthur and some of the other 1940s-era higher ups are outraged.
    • It should surprise no one who the captain of the PT was. Yep!
    • As per Not So Different above, the mass execution and burial of Japanese POWs.
  • Wicked Cultured - Admiral Hidaka has studied in the States before, at Stanford and Harvard.
  • Won the War, Lost the Peace - At the end of the war, the Soviets have taken over much more of Europe than they did in real life, and the Cold War has started years earlier, much better armed and better prepared.
    • Even worse, it is flat out stated that Stalin is no longer merely unreasonably paranoid, but flat out insane.
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