Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II By: Paul Thomas Chamberlin

Author: Paul Thomas Chamberlin

A panoramic history of WWII that argues that much of what we thought we knew is wrong – rather than being a conflict between democracy and fascism, it was a colonial race war that forged the Soviet and American empires.

This new international history of World War II will challenge conventional Western understandings of the conflict as an ideological crusade against fascism concentrated in Western Europe, East Asia and the Pacific Islands. Instead, the book will argue that the war was a massive colonial struggle waged by rival empires, marked by vicious atrocities, and focused along the periphery of Eurasia. In this history, the Western front was little more than a secondary theater to the far bloodier battlefields of Eastern Europe, China, and the colonial world. Race and empire, rather than ideology, formed the touchstone of this global conflict that would force its key players to prepare for perpetual war on a scale never before seen and transform the world into a colonial battlefield. In doing so, World War II brought about a fundamental transformation in the relationship between war, society, and the state that is still very much with us today.

Ultimately, this book presents a far darker picture of the Second World War than most conventional accounts. The war marked the culmination of modern imperialism, witnessed globalized colonial violence and systematic racial atrocities, ushered in a new age of atomic war, unleashed far more powerful and aggressive state security forces around the world, and set the stage for global imperial competitions in the postwar era. In doing so, World War II served as the midwife of the contemporary age.