Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II

by Paul Thomas Chamberlin

ISBN: 9781529333848

Published: 2025-05-08

A radical new history of history's most brutal struggle for survival between imperial powers. In popular memory, World War II was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, and democratic order over the age empires. Scorched Earth dispatches the myth of World War II as a 'good' war. Instead, it reveals the conflict as a massive battle beset by vicious racial atrocities, fought between rival empires across huge stretches of Asia and Europe. The war was sparked by German and Japanese invasions that threatened the old powers' dominance, not by Allied opposition to fascism. The Allies achieved victory not through pluck and democratic idealism but through savage firebombing raids on civilian targets and the slaughter of millions of Soviet soldiers. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as hyper-militarized new imperial powers, each laying claim to former Axis holdings across the globe before turning on one another and triggering a new forever war. Dramatically...