BLOOD AND RUINS: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945

World War II was global warfare on an unimaginable scale, generating suffering, deprivation and death of almost limitless dimensions. Not even the Great War saw such barbaric cruelty and atrocity. 100 million men, and a smaller number of women, entered the theatre of war fighting with weapons that had been honed in the earlier conflict, while bombing, deportation, requisitioning and theft completely overturned domestic structure and infrastructure. Coercion, torture and genocide were carried out by regular servicemen and women and the police. The author goes beyond the view of war that sees Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese military as causes of crisis, and looks at the broader historical forces that prompted the Axis states to undertake imperial territorial conquest. The conflict goes back to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and continued a decade after "Victory in Europe" in 1945, with its course being influenced by the civil wars raging in China, Ukraine, Italy and Greece. The author is a major authority on World War II and his argument in this magisterial book is that the long Second World War was the last imperial war. Imperial crises frame the origins and course of the conflict and the outcome ended half a millennium of colonialism. The books starts with the fracturing of trade and finance in the 1920s combined with growing nationalist ideology, particularly in Germany where Hitler blamed the Jews for frustrating his ambitions. The hostility of both the US and Soviet Union, on opposite sides, to the survival of traditional colonial empires was key to the eventual outcome. The progress of the war provides the author with a frame for thematic chapters exploring the wider experience of the conflict. How did states mobilise the colossal manpower and material resources? How did states, parties and individuals justify extreme barbarity? What did the war do emotionally and psychologically to those sucked into it? Along the way the author examines issues such as the role of the BBC and intelligence services, and the contribution of partisans and resistance fighters, particularly in the Pacific where barbarity was extreme. Almost a third of the female partisans in Italy were wounded or killed. A huge 990pp, illus.