History Literature / Worldwar

* GunboatDiplomacy: ''Homeward Bound'' features two human starships. The first is the ''Admiral Peary'' and comes on equal footing seeking peace; the second is ''Commodore Perry'' and comes with a [[spoiler:Faster Than Light Drive.]]

* HideYourLesbians: Miss Lucille, despite Mutt's obvious crush, rebuffs all his advances and explains that she is not interested in any man, not just him. However, while some of the Liu Han/Bobby Fiore or Sam Yeager/Barbara sex-scenes are composed of graphic details, when Mutt asks if she is one of those "lizzies" she merely asks what his reaction would be if she was. It is never expounded upon, and she soon begins [[IfItsYouItsOkay to return Mutt's attraction]].

* HumansAdvanceSwiftly: Having sent probes and observed knights on horseback, the conquest fleet arrived 800 years later expecting basically more of the same. Their first reaction on arrival was basically [[OhCrap "why are we picking up radar signals?"]]. It's speculated that this was originally due to Earth having lots of oceans to mess with the pace of progress, while the Race had to plod along on land.
* HumansAreSpecial: Kind of. The other two races the Race has conquered were reptilian and similar in nature to themselves, while humans are mammalian. It's hinted this is because those races' star systems lack asteroid belts and therefore there was no equivalent to the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and allowed mammals to arise on Earth.

** A member of The Race thinks this of a Nazi official she talks to about their status as the "Master Race.".

* IronicEcho: The first book opens with Atvar and the flagship's shiplord, Kirel, looking at an image of the enemy they expect to face, a knight on horseback from the Middle Ages and laughing at the prospect of an easy conquest. The last book in the ''Balance'' series and the first of the ''Colonisation'' series opens with them doing this again, somewhat more ruefully.
* LadyOfWar: Ludmila Gorbunova and Liu Han. "The Fair Tatiana," a Russian sniper who begins an affair with Jerome Jones, would apparently need to beat off men with a stick if her skill with a rifle had not already scared them off.

** ''Homeward Bound'' demonstrates this when the human cast returns to Earth at the end over a generation after they left. Johnathan and Karen Yeager go see a movie which is described as a standard MonsterMash-type film, except that the female lead does things with the monster that you would only see [[{{Porn}} in a certain type of movie]] back in their time.

* DoggedNiceGuy: Mutt is just a sweet old man whose fervent pursuit eventually makes Miss Lucille warm up to him.

* TheEmpire: The Race's version of government. Before they encountered humans they thought it was the ''only'' version of government. The best word they can come up with to describe any system of government that is not a hereditary autocracy is "not-empire". The Race describe the not-empires thusly: "The not-empires fall into three categories. Those which have one man with the power of an emperor, but who is not one (Germany, Soviet Union), those which have emperors, but whose emperors have no real power (Britain, Japan) and those who engage in 'snout-counting' (USA, Canada)." They're actually so firmly entrenched in this idea that when Molotov brags to Atvar that in the Bolshevik Revolution the Emperor of Russia was murdered, Atvar shudders inwardly and marvels at the barbarism of the act.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Not really evil so much as morally gray, but Jager and the Race are both shocked and horrified at stories of Nazi concentration camps.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Shiplord, Fleetlord, etc. Few of the Race's titles and ranks leave anything to the imagination.
* ExposedExtraterrestrials: The Race never wears clothes. Their idea of proper attire is to cover themselves with body paint. They are utterly unprepared for Earth's far chillier climate, and suffer greatly in their campaigns in the USSR and America during the winter months.

* FantasticRacism

* {{Badass}}: Otto Skorzeny, very much so.
* BadassBookworm: Jens Larssen manages to travel his way across war-torn America on a ''bicyle,'' fights as a competent infantryman in Patton's army and repeatedly shows himself to be tough, resourceful and determined despite the fact he is simply a nuclear physicist with no combat training. Rare case of a badass also being a ButtMonkey.

** Ussmak appears to be the Race's equivalent of a ButtMonkey. Butt Beffel, perhaps? He is a tank (or "landcruiser" to use the Race's terminology) driver whose first commanding officer gets killed in his very first engagement by sniper fire; his replacement commander is a [[TooDumbToLive Grade A Idiot]]; his best friend, the tank gunner, gets killed shortly later; his tank gets blown up when Skorzeny, of all people, rams a satchel charge between the turret and the chassis; when Ussmak bails out he lands in a particularly radioactive patch of mud which gets him a ''lovely'' stay in a hospital ship and to add insult to injury one of the orderlies there gets him addicted to ginger. Then he gets assigned to a new crew and gets to play cat and mouse with Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS troops and armor in France; then he takes part in the invasion of Britain where he gets introduced to a new type of warfare, ''Chemical Warfare;'' then he gets sent to Siberia, and the Race can not stand cold weather, where his second crew gets killed. Afterward, Ussmak finally snaps and leads a mutiny at his base and then defects to the Big Uglies. Unfortunately, the humans he defects to are Stalin's USSR complete with Beria's NKVD, so you can guess that doesn't exactly end well for poor Ussmak.

* LesCollaborateurs: The Polish Jews flip-flop between helping the Alien Invaders fight the Nazis and helping the Nazis fight the invaders.

* CrazyPrepared: The Race expected humanity would be nothing but sword-wielding primitives. They still arm their Conquest Fleet with ''[[TankGoodness tanks,]] [[GunshipRescue attack choppers]], [[CoolPlane fighter aircraft,]] [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill and]] [[NukeEm nuclear weapons]].'' They were, however, completely unprepared when the humans engaged in chemical warfare, not even having the ''concept'', but they press on anyway. The crazy preparedness is brought up when Shiplord Straha is asked why they bothered bringing so much hardware to fight a bunch of primitives. Straha looks at the person asking like he's "egg-addled" (i.e. crazy) and explains that when you go to war you must prepare for war. Simple as that.

Finally, a standalone book, ''Homeward Bound'', was added to the series. A whole bunch of humans get on a human-made starship and head towards Home, in the effort to create a lasting peace deal between humans and the Race. The Race, for its part, is still contemplating the possibility of utterly destroying Earth to end the threat to the Empire, even though it would mean killing hundreds of millions of their own colonists. But in the end, they discover that it's already far too late to contain the humans, and they need to begin adapting to compete.

The Race are [[TheReptilians reptilian]] aliens bringing an invasion fleet to the world of Tosev 3 (locally called Earth), expecting a fairly easy conquest given the locals' level of sophistication. Then they discover that the planet is [[AliensStealCable emitting radio transmissions]], though their reconnaissance probe found them as sword-swinging savages only eight hundred years ago, which [[HumansAdvanceSwiftly by their standards is nowhere near enough time to advance technologically at all]]. Confusing, implausible, an affront to the Race's rigid doctrines, and if the Tosevites have advanced that much, it throws the certainty of the invasion in doubt. However, Fleetlord Atvar decides he could go down in history as one of three leaders to conquer an alien world, or the first to turn tail and flee. They go ahead with the conquest exactly as planned. A mistake.

They land in the middle of our WorldWarTwo, to the absolute confusion of everyone involved. Through the eyes of LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, of all nationalities, human and alien, we read about the humans desperately trying to survive, and the aliens desperately trying to win. The Race is forced to become more like humans, making hasty decisions and breaking protocol. It also turns out that ginger (the spice) is a powerful and highly addictive narcotic for the Race, which further strains their normal way of life. This takes up the four books of the ''Balance'' series (the original ''Worldwar'' series) and ends with a stalemate and truce between the Race and the human governments that managed to resist their invasion (the USA, [[NaziGermany the Greater German]] ''[[NaziGermany Reich]]'', the SovietUnion, the UnitedKingdom and ImperialJapan.)

Next comes ''Colonization'', a trilogy that picks up twenty years after the end of ''Worldwar''. The Race's colonization fleet arrives on Earth expecting a subdued planet, only to find that barely more than half the surface is under the control of the Race. This creates friction between the invasion fleet, which has been changed by their interaction with humans, and the much more conservative and strait-laced colonists. Most of the tension comes from the [[WithFriendsLikeThese just-short-of-hostile]] relationships between the USA, the USSR, Germany, and the Race. Making matters worse for the Race, it is discovered that on top of its narcotic effects to the Race, ginger causes females to go into estrus out of season (the conquest fleet was all-male), which has devastating effects on the Race's mating cycles and introduces them to some truly alien concepts like sex for pleasure, prostitution, and marriage.

Finally, a standalone book, ''Homeward Bound'', was added to the series. A whole bunch of humans get on a human-made starship and head towards Home. In the end, human technology surpasses that of the Race, whose leaders wish no-one had even heard of Tosev 3.

** After being able to destroy several Race landcruisers (albeit with heavy losses) with the help of the newly developed panzer tanks, one of Jäger's men wonders if the next type of tank they'll develop will be a [[CoolTank Tiger]] mounting a long, barreled gun and sloped armor. That was precisely what [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_II the tank that succeeded the Tiger had]].

* HideYourLesbians: Miss Lucille, despite Mutt's obvious crush, rebuffs all his advances and explains that she is not interested in any man, not just him. However, while some of the Liu Han/Bobby Fiore or Sam Yeager/Barbara sex-scenes are composed of graphic details, when Mutt asks if she is one of those "lizzies" she merely asks what his reaction would be if she was. It is never expounded upon, and she soon begins [[IfitsYouItsOkay to return Mutt's attraction]].

** After his defection, Straha, (who has been considered by other members of the Race to be more like Humans than one of the Race) notes that he ''doesn't'' care for a lot of human art and music. He is somewhat fond of Bach, however.

Next comes ''Colonization'', a trilogy that picks up twenty years after the end of ''Worldwar''. The Race's colonization fleet arrives on Earth expecting a subdued planet, only to find that barely more than half the surface is under the control of the Race. This creates friction between the invasion fleet, which has been changed by their interaction with humans, and the much more conservative and strait-laced colonists. Most of the tension comes from the [[WithFriendsLikeThese just-short-of-hostile]] relationships between the USA, the USSR, Germany, and the Race. Making matters worse for the Race, it is discovered that on top of its narcotic effects to the Race, ginger causes females to go into estrus out of season, which has devastating effects on the Race's mating cycles and introduces them to some truly alien concepts like sex for pleasure, prostitution, and marriage.

They land in the middle of our WorldWarTwo, to the absolute confusion of everyone involved. Through the eyes of LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, of all nationalities, human and alien, we read about the humans desperately trying to survive, and the aliens desperately trying to win. The Race is forced to become more like humans, making hasty decisions and breaking protocol. It also turns out that ginger (the spice) is a powerful and highly addictive narcotic for the Race, which further strains their normal way of life. This takes up the four books of the ''Balance'' series (the original ''Worldwar'' series) and ends with a stalemate and truce between the Race and the human governments that managed to resist their invasion (The USA, [[NaziGermany the Greater German]] ''[[NaziGermany Reich]]'', the SovietUnion, the UnitedKingdom and ImperialJapan.)

The Race are [[TheReptilians reptilian]] aliens bringing a invasion fleet to the world of Tosev 3 (locally called Earth), expecting a fairly easy conquest given the locals' level of sophistication. Then they discover that the planet is [[AliensStealCable emitting radio transmissions]], though their reconnaissance probe found them as sword-swinging savages only eight hundred years ago, which [[HumansAdvanceSwiftly by their standards is nowhere near enough time to advance technologically at all]]. Confusing, implausible, an affront to the Race's rigid doctrines, and if the Tosevites have advanced that much, it throws the certainty of the invasion in doubt. However, Fleetlord Atvar decides he could go down in history as one of three leaders to conquer an alien world, or the first to turn tail and flee. They go ahead with the conquest exactly as planned. A mistake.

The Race are [[TheReptilians reptilian]] aliens bringing a invasion fleet to the world of Tosev 3 (locally called Earth), expecting a fairly easy conquest given the locals' level of sophistication. Then they discover that the planet is [[AliensStealCable emitting radio transmissions]], though their reconnaissance probe found them as sword-swinging savages only eight hundred years ago, which by their standards is nowhere near enough time to advance technologically at all. Confusing, implausible, an affront to the Race's rigid doctrines and if the Tosevites have advanced that much, it throws the certainty of the invasion in doubt. However, Fleetlord Atvar decides he could go down in history as one of three leaders to conquer an alien world, or the first to turn tail and flee. They go ahead with the conquest exactly as planned. A mistake.

* HumansAdvanceQuickly: Having sent probes and observed knights on horseback, the conquest fleet arrived 800 years later expecting basically more of the same. Their first reaction on arrival was basically [[OhCrap "why are we picking up radar signals?"]]. It's speculated that this was originally due to Earth having lots of oceans to mess with the pace of progress, while the Race had to plod along on land.

The Race are [[TheReptilians reptilian]] aliens bringing a invasion fleet to the world of Tosev 3 (locally called Earth), expecting an fairly easy conquest given the locals' level of sophistication. Then they discover that the planet is [[AliensStealCable emitting radio transmissions]], though their reconnaissance probe found them as sword-swinging savages only eight hundred years ago, which by their standards is nowhere near enough time to advance technologically at all. Confusing, implausible, an affront to the Race's rigid doctrines and if the Tosevites have advanced that much, it throws the certainty of the invasion in doubt. However, Fleetlord Atvar decides he could go down in history as one of three leaders to conquer an alien world, or the first to turn tail and flee. They go ahead with the conquest exactly as planned. A mistake.