The original name evidently referred to the fact that in this history, unlike in OTL, the Second World War ends "not with a bang, but with a whimper", i.e., the war ends with an inconclusive peace. The novel begins in mid-1943 and ends roughly a year later. The Second World War ends in Europe, but is still raging in the Pacific at the end. At the end of the book, the United States and Soviet Union are allied in a war against Japan, which still controls large swaths of the Pacific and Vladivostok. The novel ends without depicting the final resolution of that theater.