Designated Targets

Designated Targets is a science fiction novel by Australian writer John Birmingham, the second volume of his alternate history Axis of Time trilogy. Plot summary It is September 1942, four months after the Transition. A cease-fire has been signed between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and the dictators have re-established their June 1941 borders. Both nations are 'cooperating' in various areas of research (particularly rocketry) at the newly built Demidenko research facility in Ukraine. Thanks to the foreknowledge granted by the Transition, Hitler and Stalin have purged their military and party ranks of traitors (real and imagined) that have been revealed from our history but not without problems. The arrest of Field Marshal Rommel sparks off a mutiny of the Afrika Korps and it throws the entire North African front into chaos. Most of the German war machine shifts to "Operation Sea Dragon": the invasion of Britain. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the Japanese have conquered New Guinea and the nearby island chains and are battling Allied forces (reinforced with troops from the Multinational Force) along the Brisbane Line in Australia.