This is an excellent, but somewhat oddly structured book. The subtitle highlights the author’s opinion that WW2 was, or at least started as, a war about empire, that pitted the old existing European empires (Britain, France, Russia and the Netherlands) against nations that wanted to build or expand their empires (Germany, Italy, and Japan). The idea is not entirely original, rooted as it is in the rhetorical discourse of the 1930s and 1940s, but it is an important perspective.

Overy pursues the idea in the first three chapters. This is an approximately 200 pages long, condensed history of the war as seen from this "imperial" perspective. Regrettably, as a brief history of the war, this is useful but not very good. Frankly, by page 373 you may feel a bit disappointed.

Fortunately this is followed by seven chapters that are longish stand-alone essays, which highlight various aspects of WW2 that have not been much written about previously. These essays are very good. Several of them make for uncomfortable reading, as Overy explores in detail subjects such as the war crimes committed by soldiers, partisans and resistance fighters; the mental health of soldiers; or sexual violence. Stories that later generations often chose to cover with selective forgetfulness, grim stories that do not inspire much confidence in humanity. But they sadly remain entirely relevant to this day, and these are well written accusations.

There is an alternative edition with a different cover, on which the subtitle states that 1931-1945 was the last imperial war. This seems closer to Overy's thesis. His conclusion argues that the end of the war brought about the end of empire, as the hegemonies that the USA and USSR established during the Cold War were something different, and both assisted in the dismantling of the old colonial empires. This may do a disservice to the people living in these colonies, who were working towards independence well before the war. Their agency in this must be respected, even if the war accelerated the process.

"Blood and Ruins" is not a complete history of the conflict from 1931 to 1945, and I think it doesn't strive to be. It is a book that tries to fill the gaps in our collective memory, and in that it succeeds. It reads like a collection of essays squeezed into single hefty volume, but at least that makes it easier to digest. ( )

A bloodbath in which many atrocities were committed, the best known being the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 100 million men fought "using weapons whose destructive capability had been honed in the First World War and developed dramatically in the years that followed it."
Richard Overy's argument in his new book on World War Two is that the war was part of an longer struggle, between the Allied nations trying to maintain a grip on their Empires, and the Axis powers trying to grab Empire for themselves,. The instances of the latter being the 1931 Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China.,the Italian dictator Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia on 3 October 1935, and then Hitler's desire for "lebensraum" (living space) for the German people in the East pushing him to annex parts of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939.(Even though lack of land wasn't really the problem. The problem was it was owed by the junker class https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1330125520611840010?referrer=georgestokoe. Hitler obviously couldn't expropriate the land from this class as they were some of the supporters of the Nazi party in the first place.) However, at the time, different reasons than straight up imperial conquest were given for these military actions:

"One of the reasons for caution was the much higher visibility of imperial conflicts by the 1930s, including those in the established empires. This was thanks principally to the development of modern media - worldwide newspaper reporting, popular newsreels and radio- but also the work of the League of Nations, which, for all it's alleged timidity, gave a public platform to debate violations of national sovereignty, including very public discussion of Japan's illegitimate seizure of Manchuria and Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia. International debate forced the aggressors to justify their actions on all three cases by claiming speciously that invasion was carried out to protect their interests against failed states. ") p. 39)

One of the things the book suggests is that there was a mystical aspect to imperialism,:" These were powerful fantasies about the settlement of wild frontiers, or the prospect of an Eldorado of riches, or an exalted 'civilising mission', or the fulfillment of a manifest destiny that would reinvigorate the nation." (p. 4)
This had a racialist component. Racialism wasn't confined to Nazi Germany, or fascist Italy:
" The British statistician Karl Pearson, in a lecture in 1900 on 'National Life from the Standpoint of Science' told his audience that the nation had to be kept up to a high standard of efficiency 'chiefly by war with inferior races, and with equal races by the struggle for trade routes and for the sources of raw materials and of food supply. This is the natural history view of mankind.'.. .
In 1900,Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India, could argue that' all the million I have to manage are less than schoolchildren '. "(p. 5)

WWII itself was seen by the warring powers as a case of do-or die, on a worldwide scale. Professor Overy quotes Dennis Wheatley, the best-selling British occult horror novelist, who was recruited in 1940 by the British military Joint Planning Staff to draft papers on the nature of a new type of twentieth - century warfare, "Total War" :

'Moral and ethical questions have no validity in Total War except in as far as their maintenance or destruction contributes towards ultimate Victory. Expediency, not morality, is the sole criterion of human conduct in Total War.'
- Dennis Wheatley, Total War, 1941

Wheatley thought that" Nations-at - War "had only two options,"Total Victory", or "Total Annihilation", and that therefore any actions that would shorten the war and bring about victory would be morally justified 'irrespective of its "legal" or "illegal" implications.') p. 597

Obviously, Wheatley wasn't the only one who thought this. The term 'total war' had actually been coined by one of the German WWI military leaders, General Erich Ludendorff, in his post-war memoirs. Ludendorff viewed modern industrialised warfare as dependent on mobilising the whole population, rather than just the current armed forces. This would have been the British view, as well. .

As Prof. Overy writes,
"Mass mobilisation was an expression of modernity...Industrialised warfare depended on a cluster of modern wespons that were easily reproducible and relatively cheap so that it was possible to sustain large forces in the field and to resupply them over years of warfare -... These elements of modernity explain why mobilisation was possible, but not why it happened. The willingness of governments to embrace almost unlimited mobilisation, and of people's to submit to it, was shaped by the emergence of modern nationalism and changing perceptions of citizenship...The Darwinian paradigm of the struggle for survival in nature was widely understood to apply with equal force to the contest between peoples, empires and nations. During both world wars, one of the driving forces in sustaining the conflict, irrational though it might now appear, was fear of national extinction and the collapse of empire. "(p. 377 - 378.)

Ludendorff had an anti-Semitic take on total war, though, in that he attributed German WWI defeat, in 1918, to Jewish agitators and defeatists on the home front undermining mobilisation.

This "stab-in-the-back" conspiracy theory was one of the things that went on to fuel Nazi Ideology .: For Hitler,, the war and the racial struggle against Jews were one and the same thing, as heard in this speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939 in which he said if the Jews succeeded in plunging Europe into war, as they were alleged to have done in 1914, the consequence would be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

Also fuelling Nazi Ideology were "the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." This fabricated document was cited as an example of Jewish perfidy. For example, when in a radio speech to the German people on 4 September 1939 Hitler blamed the British and French declaration of war on a 'Jewish-democratic international enemy', the anti-Semitic Weltdienst journal cited the Seventh 'Protocol' on universal war, and asked, "Could the war plans of Jewry be more clearly expressed?" (p. 600)

The history of the war suggests that the British establishment were not, however, having it's strings pulled by "world Jewry." Emigration to Britain by German Jews was heavily restricted by Britain just after the anti-Semitic Kristallnacht pogrom had happened , in November 1938.
From September 1939, Jewish emigration to Britain from Germany or German-occupied Europe was stopped completely. As one Foreign Office official put it, "So far as we and France are concerned the position of the Jews in Germany is now of no practical importance." (p. 624-5)
In one case where three overladen ships from Romania arrived off the coast of Palestine with Jewish refugees from Central Europe, the British colonial authorities at first refused permission to disembark. Then they interned the refugees in camps. And then they deported them to Mauritius, where they were held behind barbed wire with armed guards, many dying of typhoid or debilitation on route, and after being beaten with sticks by colonial police after protesting at being deported. "Sir John Shuckburgh, deputy under-secretary at the Colonial Office, thought that the protests showed that 'The Jews have no sense of humour and no sense of proportion'." (p. 625) Obviously, it wouldn't have been bad as getting gassed or worked to death in the Nazi concentration camps, but still pretty bad.

WHY DID THE ALLIES WIN?

FORCE MULTIPLIERS :

ARMOUR AND AIR
German successes at the start of the war were a lot down to how they deployed tanks. The Germans would concentrate tanks, motorized infantry and artillery in fully mechanised army units, instead of spreading them out over the whole army. However, they would run into problems against Russia, supply lines getting stretched thin and tanks running out of fuel, not to mention their innovations in tank warfare getting copied :"By 1945 the Red Army had activated forty - three tank corps, and it was their turn to do what the German army had done in 1941."(p.438)

RISE OF THE AMPHIBIANS

"At sea, air power contributed to the revolution in amphibious warfare, first in the Pacific war with the Japanese advance and the Allied counter - offensive, then in Europe with amphibious landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Normandy. These were complex operations in which air, sea, and ground forces collaborated to find a way to springboard onto a heavily defended enemy shore in order to create a permanent lodgement. For the Allied sea powers, amphibious warfare was the only way to get to grips with their enemies on the territory they occupied. "(p. 439)

RADIO AND RADAR

" Radio-wave research led to the development of radar, which was initially introduced for the early warning of approaching enemy aircraft from across the sea, but soon had a range of further significant applications in the field. Among other things, radar gave advance warning of tactical attack aircraft, contributed critically to the success of anti - submarine warfare, gave notice of attacks on a fleet at sea, and allowed artillery to be ranged with deadly accuracy whether on land or aboard ships. Over the course of the conflict the advantage in electronic warfare shifted decisively to the Allies as they learned how to produce and use a technology at the cutting edge of the scientific war. " (p. 439)

INTELLIGENCE AND DECEPTION

"Radio was also central to the practice of wartime intelligence and counter-intelligence, including the development of complex deception operations... Soviet forces were masters of deception. The devastating defeat of Axis armies during Operation 'Uranus' in November 1942 and the annihilation of German Army Group Centre in June 1944 were testament to its effects. The value of Allied deception before the Normandy invasion can be open to question, but it certainly reinforced Hitler's predisposed view that Normandy would be a feint and the Pa's de Calais the primary invasion site. For the Allies, sound intelligence and successful deception helped to counteract the high fighting skills of an enemy determined to cling on to every square kilometre of the new empires. " (p. 440)

This is a great book. It's very rich in analysis of World War Two. My only complaint is the narrative chapters were so fact filled that they were a bit hard to follow. Obviously, it's all valuable stuff. But a timeline before the main text, maybe followed with some pictures of wartime newspapers, headlining the main events of the war, might have been handy. You would have been able to refer back to it as you're reading the chapters. ( )

Il capolavoro di uno dei piú rinomati storici della Seconda guerra mondiale, che ci costringe a considerare quei tragici eventi sotto una luce inedita. «Uno studio vasto e dettagliato, sicuramente la miglior storia della Seconda guerra mondiale in un unico volume. Un potente monito sull'orrore della guerra e sulla minaccia rappresentata dai dittatori nutriti di sogni imperiali» («The Wall Street Journal»). Richard Overy si propone di riformulare il modo in cui guardiamo alla Seconda guerra mondiale, alle sue origini e alle sue conseguenze. Secondo il grande storico inglese si trattò di una «Grande guerra imperiale», la conclusione terribile di quasi un secolo di espansione imperiale globale, che raggiunse il suo apice nelle ambizioni di Italia, Germania e Giappone negli anni Trenta e all'inizio degli anni Quaranta, prima di sprofondare nella piú estesa e costosa guerra della storia dell'umanità che, dopo il 1945, sancí la fine di tutti gli imperi territoriali. Al centro del volume, le modalità secondo le quali questa guerra su vasta scala venne combattuta, alimentata, subita, sostenuta dalla mobilitazione di massa e moralmente giustificata. Overy sottolinea l'immane prezzo pagato da chi si trovò coinvolto nei combattimenti e l'eccezionale livello di criminalità e atrocità di ognuno di questi progetti imperiali. Una guerra mortale per militari e civili, una guerra all'ultimo sangue la cui posta in gioco era il futuro dell'ordine globale. (fonte: retro di copertina)

British historian Richard Overy begins by noting that World War II was “a war so widespread and cruel [it] challenges the historian in many ways.” He writes that it is difficult to remember now, or even imagine, a war fought so widely, with so many participants, and with weapons of such horrific destructive capability. He notes the massive scale of deprivation, dispossession, and loss suffered. But hardest of all to grasp now, he avers, is “how widespread acts of atrocity, terrorism and crime could be committed by hundreds of thousands of people who were in most cases what the historian Christopher Browning has memorably described as ‘ordinary men’, neither sadists nor psychopaths.” The era of WWII “witnessed a tidal wave of violent coercion, imprisonment, torture, deportation and mass, genocidal killing, carried out by uniformed servicemen, or security and police forces, or partisans and civilian irregulars, both men and women.”

How to account for this? Most histories focus on military aspects of the war, which, although important, do not address the underlying political, economic, social, and cultural conditions that facilitated such cruelty and violence - so important in light of the continuing international instability that still characterizes the world.

Overy presents this new analysis based on four underlying assumptions. First, he contends conventional chronologies of the war are no longer useful. There is little to be gained by separating the two giant world wars of the 20th Century. Second, the usual focus on the European Axis with occasional deference to action in Asia and the Pacific limits our understanding of the international currents at work and their interactions with the West. Third, the conflicts should be understood as the aggregate of a number of different smaller struggles that were waged simultaneously, including civil wars, partisan wars, and wars of liberation. And fourth, Overy argues, WWII was the last imperial war. Most general histories gloss over the significance of territorial empire in defining the period from 1931 to the aftermath of 1945. Traditional colonial rule collapsed after 1945, ending with a surfeit of “blood and ruins” and metamorphosing into the domination of a few superpowers in a new global order.

To advance these arguments, Overy proceeds in several parts. He explores the long-term factors that shaped the crisis of the 1930s. He describes WWII less from a military lens than from a social and economic perspective. He discusses the new world of nation-states that arose from the old divisions of empire. Finally, he explores the excessive violence and criminality provoked by the war.

Evaluation: I found this history extremely thought-provoking and stimulating in ways quite different from analyses of strategies and tactics. I also found myself agreeing with Overy that the social and cultural aspects of the two world wars are in the end much more critical to understanding our past and present world than the detailed analysis of individual battles or personal characteristics of different generals.

With the passing of time, and the resurgence of a growing appeal of strong men, totalitarian rule, and brutal social repression, it is more important than ever to understand what happened in our parents’ generation, and what it means for the future.

(JAB) ( )