Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II

by Paul Thomas Chamberlin

An unsparing, "sweeping," and "vivid" (Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering) new history of World War II, recasting the conflict as a brutal struggle for survival among declining and ascendant imperial powers

In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires and the triumph of an American-led democratic order. 

In Scorched Earth, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin dispatches the myth of World War II as a good war. Instead, he depicts the conflict as it truly 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 rendered and persuasively argued, Scorched Earth shows that World War II marked the culmination of centuries of colonial violence and ushered in a new era of imperial struggle.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, War, Military History, Politics, History and Politics

656 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything you think you know about World War II is wrong. This was no crusade for democracy, ending imperialism, or building bridges to peace. SCORCHED EARTH is a long historical essay about how the winners of World War II, the United States and Russia, forged a bloody path to global supremacy while fighting the Axis, which tried to do the same. World War Two was not the good war taught to students in the victorious countries. It followed the logic of all modern wars, pitting rival powers in a savage fight to divide the world for profit and enthrone racial superiority. The horrors were new- the Holocaust, Japan's Rape of Nanking, the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, and two atomic bombs dropped on civilians- but neither unprecedented nor unintentional. The Allies' victory in 1945 did not bring peace, but a redrawing of the world between two new superpowers, who turned the Third World into their battleground for the next four decades. Chamberlin's work must be evaluated not just on its facts, but on whether it succeeds in justifying a new radical interpretation of the most momentous conflict in human history.

One way to turn bad history into good myth is to take an event out of context. Genocide, race war, and imperialist slaughter were the outcome of Western history and not an anomaly begat by Hitler and Japanese militarists. Germany and Japan went by the playbook on how to subdue peoples deemed inferior. The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of South and Central America, the African slave trade, and the ethnocide of the Irish had their place in conjoining colonialism to racism, but Chamberlain sets his eyes on events closer to the minds of the perpetrators of World War Two. The ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans aroused the admiration and envy of Hitler. Leopold II conquered the Congo and turned it into his private preserve, capturing the Africans for forced labor and causing eight million deaths. Why should the Japanese not emulate them in China? India had been conquered and subdivided by the British, who used native troops to deal with troublesome tribes. The Arab world was splintered and plundered for the benefit of the Turks, French, and British, and Churchill ordered poisoned gas attacks on rebel strongholds in Iraq in the 1920s, just like Mussolini in Ethiopia a decade later. The Americans exterminated over one hundred thousand Filipinos in their island counter-insurgency campaign after 1898. These savage wars of peace made no distinction between civilians and combatants in the burning of native villages, concentration camps for potential collaborators of the insurgents, naval blockades, and aerial bombardment intentionally targeting women and children. Japan, Italy, and Germany had been denied their place in the sun in the race for colonies. They were determined to correct that, using the same methods, starting in the 1930s. The white sorcerers of mass death in the colored colonial world had their tricks turned back on them by their apprentices.

Germany, with its theory of an Aryan master race, the natural superiority of the Japanese over other Asiatics according to Yamato ideology, and Mussolini's concept of "razza" entitling Italy to exterminate Arab and African savages, incarnated a new kind of scientific racism born in the late nineteenth century. Whole peoples, including inhabitants of Europe and continental Asia, were deemed worthy of enslavement and genocide for constituting enemy races. Hannah Arendt showed in THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM how the fusion of imperialism, anti-semitism, and racism led to the Holocaust. Alien peoples under these doctrines were deemed diseases to be removed from the body politic. Only the "healthy" races who had proven their worth through competition for land and prosperity deserved to survive. Chamberlin broadens her picture to show how it fit neatly with Anglo-American and French thinking about race and empire. In the United States, the anti-immigrant writings of Madison Grant and anti-semitic rants of Henry Ford, a Hitler favorite, gained a wide following, and after 1919 the Ku Klux Klan enrolled millions of members. Britain and France justified their empires, containing millions of colonial subjects, on the grounds of white supremacy and cultural differences with Oriental races. Racism between the wars was not a crackpot or fringe theory but the very essence of thinking in the State Department, Whitehall and the Quai d'Orsay. Japan, however, developed its own kind of racial thinking; imperialist in claiming hegemony over China on supposed Nipponese superiority, and anti-imperialist in calling for the overthrow of European and American rule over East Asia and the Pacific. Anti-semitic pogroms in Russia under Tsar Nicholas II round out this picture, but other than citing the crude forgery of THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION, Russia, unlike Germany or France, developed no original racist thinking.

In this light, the global conflict of 1939-45 assumes a different visage. All sides were committed to defending and expanding their racial empires regardless of civilian casualties. The First World War was simply a dress rehearsal for the catastrophe to come. The German bid for hegemony in Europe faltered under the blows of French resistance, the British blockade of German ports, and American intervention. It did succeed, however, in knocking Russia out of the war and producing two revolutions that turned her communist, and anti-communism furnished another weapon in the arsenal of Western domination. The East was not only Slavic, and to conspiracy nuts, Jewish, but it was also, after 1917, Red as well. Hitler combined those elements into National Socialism: imperialist, racist, anti-semitic, and anti-communist. Italian Fascism rested on weaker foundations since Italy possessed only a small underground Communist Party, no "Jewish Question", and had chosen the winning side in the war. Mussolini instead fueled Italian resentment over puny gains from that war and dreams of a new Roman empire in the Balkans, Middle East, and Africa. Japan had been on the victorious side too, and proceeded to colonize the German-held islands in the Pacific claimed by the League of Nations and press China for entry into local markets. The United States withdrew from European affairs after 1919, but still retained the Philippines and other Pacific islands and dominance of the Western Hemisphere with the Monroe Doctrine. Germany, Italy, and Japan demanded their own Monroe Doctrine: a sphere of influence and the right to intervene in their neighbors. The European powers in the past had adjusted such competing claims peacefully, or through a redistribution of colonies, as they had done in nineteenth-century Africa. But not in this round. Germany, with Italy her hapless partner, and Japan would have to fight their way into the club of imperial powers. When war came in 1931 in Manchuria and 1939 over Poland, only those ignorant of the history of imperialism could be surprised.

The goals pursued by Hitler starting in 1939 were quite traditional for a European land power. Caring nothing for overseas colonies, Hitler pushed German imperialism against the East, with Russia the ultimate prize. His genius, if it be so called, lay in realizing that while the nineteenth century belonged to Britain with her Royal Navy, the airplane and tank had made land wars winnable again. Hitler followed the playbook outlined in the Mackinder Thesis: He who controls Eastern Europe controls the Eurasian Heartland, and he who controls the Heartland controls the World Island-Eurasia plus Africa. The Soviet Union held the land space, mineral and agricultural resources, laboring population, and strategic points Germany needed for world domination. France was to be eliminated as a military power-the German goal in 1870- and Britain neutralized by promising her continued control of the seas. The Nazi doctrine of lebensraum was not new; what Hitler added was the racial dimension tinged with anti-communism. This was the recipe for genocide. The "Judeo-Bolshevik" enemy was to be extirpated, Jews killed, and Slavs enslaved. Once triumphant, Germany would preside over an autarkic Fortress Europe cleansed of alien races. First, though, he had to secure the German lager by absorbing the neighboring states of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

The Japanese plan of conquest traveled more sinuous routes. Japan pursued the goals of a land and sea power, and neither served it well. China was the Holy Grail, and industrial Manchuria the first duel. The Chinese civil wars of the Twenties, pitting Chiang Kai-shek against the warlords and the Communists, offered a golden opportunity to intervene in the cause of "saving China". But Japan could not overcome China's vast spaces solely through the Kwantung Army it dispatched to the mainland in 1931. The Japanese created the puppet state of Manchukuo to exploit Manchuria's resources and serve as a model for Japanese rule over China and the rest of Asia, the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Yet, even with these gains, Japan remained resource-poor at home. A prolonged war with China, which Japan launched in 1937, required a continual supply of oil, rubber, and other essentials found only in the European colonies of Malaya, Burma, French Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies. Two giant obstacles stood in the way: The Soviet Union was bound to defend the sovereignty of China, and the American stronghold in the Philippines blocked any expansion southward. The Army wanted war with Russia, while the Navy made the convincing case that Japan could create her Asian-Pacific empire from Hong Kong to India and Australia, mobilizing the local populations in an anti-white crusade, provided the American Pacific fleet and the US army in the Philippines were eliminated at the start. Japan signed a non-aggression treaty with the USSR to secure peace to its north and set its sights on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.

The war of 1939-45 was not ideological. Both Japan and the US claimed to be anti-imperialist, and Britain, France and Germany were anti-communist. The Soviet Union colonized th Baltic states and cooperated with Germany in partitioning Poland. The real war was over territory, race, and who would prevail in the post-war world. Hitler settled German territorial claims in Eastern and Western Europe from 1939-40-Poland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries-subdued and divided France, and, after confining Britain to her home islands, launched Barbarossa against the USSR in 1941. This was a huge mistake, since he had traded a maritime and air war for a land invasion of a country of endless steppes and massive manpower. He settled for a race war in the East. German "Special Action Groups" exterminated the Jewish population of Eastern Europe and the USSR, but the centers of Soviet Communist power-Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad-were denied to him by the Red Army. Japan's war in East Asia and the Pacific enjoyed enormous success the first year of 1941-42, building an arc of conquest from Manila to Rabaul to Rangoon, but Japan was no closer to victory in China, and had to choose between a land war against Chiang and a sea and air war against an unbowed America that outproduced Japan in shipbuilding and aircraft every month. Native populations never rallied to the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the dream of turning India against the British, and thus dominating the Indian Ocean, came to naught.

The United States, dragged into war with Japan, Germany, and Italy in December 1941, had no intention of letting either Russia or Britain win the war against the Axis. The American grand strategy was to let the great land powers fight the war among themselves while the US, with Britain playing a very junior partner, chipped away at the periphery of the lands conquered by the Axis though amphibious landings and punishing air raids. Russia anf Germany should exhaust themselves in time for American troops to land in France, and Japan and China battle it out until the Americans conquered the Japanese home islands. Roosevelt and Marshall aimed to secure the Rimland designated by Nicholas Spykman; a belt of regions from Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, to Northeast Asia that contained the major world sea lanes, monopolized vital resources, and served as a buffer to the Eurasian Heartland. No hostile power must be allowed to dominate the Heartland, be it Nazi Germany during the war or Russia afterwards. The Rimland strategy also led to the ouster of the British, too feeble to save the West, from their empire. By this conception Germany must be defeated first, and Japan cut off from her Pacific conquests until she surrendered.

Two wars raged in the world from 1941-45: The sea and air war in Europe started in the Mediterranean with the capture of North Africa from Germany and Italy, then passed into Sicily and the Italian mainland, with the US Army Air Corps and RAF decimating German industry through thousand-plane raids that mostly killed civilians while the Anglo-American navies reconquered the Atlantic from the U-Boats. Only when Germany was thoroughly devastated on the Eastern Front and after the loss of her Italian ally was a cross-channel invasion of France launched in 1944. Allowing the Russians to take Berlin, a decision made by Eisenhower, was a small price to pay for American lordship over Europe. In the Pacific Nimitz devised his "island-hopping" littoral campaign to take back islets held by the Japanese from Guadalcanal to Okinawa and convert them into air and naval bases for the final conquest of Japan, while McArthur waged a "hit-em where they ain't" war to recapture New Guinea, the Solomons, and finally the Philippines. Meanwhile, beginning at Midway in 1942 and culminating at Leyte Gulf in 1944, the US Navy destroyed Japan's carrier fleet. The brunt of the fighting during these four years, and the vast majority of civilian casualties, came in Russia and China. The Russo-German land war finally turned towards the Soviets at Stalingrad in 1942-43, but between that victory and the fall of Berlin the Soviets suffered 26 million deaths while the Americans raced through France and Germany with comparatively minor casualties. Stalin proceeded to communize Eastern Europe, but America held sway over the rest of the continent, including Germany. The slaughter in China had gone on for eight years by 1945 with neither Japan nor Chiang achieving a major victory. Still, so long as the Japanese army was tied down on the mainland, it could not be used against the Americans in the Pacific. America in the summer of 1945 controlled all the sea lanes of East Asia, helped the British regain Burma, Hong Kong, and Malaya, restored the French in Indochina and Dutch in the East Indies, and counted on Chiang for an anti-Soviet ally. Japan, without an army to defend the home islands, teetered on shameful surrender. The white race, expelled by the Japanese from Sahkalin Island to Sumatra at the start of the war, was back on top.

World War Two in Europe came to a bloody end in May of 1945 with, as George Bernard Shaw had predicted in 1939, only two winners, the United States and the Soviet Union. France was prostrate, Britain bankrupt, Germany and Austria had been divided, and Greece was at war with itself. Seventy percent of European Jewry had been exterminated. Stalin ruled a desolate empire from Lake Ladoga to the gates of the Bosporous. The United States wielded the largest air force in the world, a navy patrolling every ocean, 3 million US troops remained in Europe, and its armed forces had sustained less than 450,000 deaths and the homeland no significant civilian casualties at all. How were these two behemoths to deal with one another? The answers was found on the other side of the globe. Stalin promised a dying Roosevelt at Yalta to enter the war against Japan after the German surrender. His real goal was to regain all the territory Russia lost to Japan in 1905, plus occupying Hokkaido Island. The Red Army smashed through Manchuria the very moment Truman ordered the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities. The US was sending a signal to the Russians that the Pacific region was now an American protectorate. The two sides rushed to occupy and divide Korea and Indochina. Stalin stepped up aid to his nominal ally Mao, who took power four years later. The Cold War gripped two continents immediately after the hot war of 1939 ended. The meeting at Potsdam, Germany between Stalin and Truman, with Churchill later replaced by Attlee, confirmed the world was back to rival spheres of influence, daily threats of war and the possibility of nuclear suicide.

The Chamberlin thesis of an interconnected global war for empire only serves him, and us, up to a point. The Japanese, after their victory over the Russians in 1905, proceeded to colonize Korea, South Manchuria, and Sahkalin. Their military intervention in China went back to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and the dispatching of troops to Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion. The war in Europe begun in 1939 provided easy targets for Japanese expansion in Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, but was not inspired or coordinated with the Germans. Anti-communism played a major role in enabling Hitler's takeover of Germany and winning European allies for his anti-Soviet crusade, and next to no part in the Far East war or Mussolini's aborted campaign for an Italian empire. The brutal tactics of the war are hard to asses in comparison. At times Chamberlin judges all sides equally ravaged civilians, and draws back from the comparison when detailing Japanese horrors against the Chinese and Filipinos and the carefully planned genocide of the Jews and Roma in Europe. His case for a geopolitical approach to the conflict, land wars versus maritime, makes Stalin and Chiang look like passive Heartland victims of the big bad imperialist Rimland powers. The USSR disappears for long stretches of SCORCHED EARTH, and China is always being duped by Roosevelt, Stilwell, and Marshall. The European and Asian resistance movements, Tito's partisans, Greek Communist Party, Mao's Red Army, and the Viet Minh, do not even merit a footnote. The great merit of this work is in reconceptualizing the war through geopolitics. Mackinder and Spykman, back in vogue these days in explaining Communist China's expansionist agenda, merit a second look for having uncovered the sources of conduct of Allies and Axis. In the pages of Chamberlin, passion and propaganda give way to cold strategic calculation. SCORCHED EARTH is a tantalizing and much-needed reevaluation of the war that simultaneously saved and damned humankind, but it is only a starting point in the discussion.

[Simon Mee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scorched Earth wants to be something new, while disguising itself as something old. The problem is that it forgot to be something good.

Earth

The basic contention in Scorched Earth is that the popular view of World War II of being between good versus evil is wrong. Instead, we need to view the conflict as a clash of empires, both as to their methods and goals. Apparently, the realization of this perspective is a recent thing which… …well I must have been hallucinating some guy called Gore Vidal whom I doubt is even the original progenitor of the concept of American Empire via World War II.

In terms of that refocusing Scorched Earth does contain discussion-worthy points. The heart of the book is clearly Chapter 13 and the prospective applications of the theories of heartlands and control of critical areas to the postwar stage. More generally, Chamberlin paints British and American strategies as reflecting imperial goals that were achieved on the back of naval and air power rather than limited manpower. Chamberlin describes events from an imperial viewpoint which, while a matter of interpretation, do occasionally land as challenging the received wisdom. He does dig up supporting evidence I was not aware of, such as the British military coup of the Egyptian Government in February 1942, as part of Britain moving:

to tighten imperial control against Axis incursions. For London, victory against the Axis required a heavier rather than light hand in the colonial world.

…which is a value-add in terms of adding novelty to the argument Chamberlin is making.

However, I am not going to analyze the substance of Chamberlin’s view of World War II in part because this is Goodreads and I am a rank amateur. I will leave that to paid reviewers and journal articles. However, with the caveat that Scorched Earth is very Western focused, there is buried within this book a debate about the extent to which the Western Allies embarked upon Imperial projects, both in the sense of trying to uphold the old order (UK) or to forge a new own (United States).

Scorched

There’s another reason why I’m not going to debate the imperial perspective – it would give the impression that this book has been well written and coherent.

It isn’t.

My speculation is that something when awry with the planning of this book. The decision appears to have been to apply Chamberlin’s imperial viewpoint to an entire narrative of the long version of World War II, i.e. starting with Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s. That’s a massive scope to cover in less than 600 pages while still offering something novel. Chamberlin picks and chooses points in the narrative to emphasise the imperial perspective, but when there’s nothing worth discussing from that perspective, he just falls into regurgitating popular histories that have said the same things a million times before while losing perspective of what matters from a military/strategic standpoint.

The recounting of the early Pacific campaign is noticeable for its laxness. Hornet and Wasp get mixed up, the number of bombs that hit Akagi is mis-stated, and the Naval Battles around Guadalcanal are misdescribed. The near straight copying from popular sources leads to the absurd situation where the factoid that a single torpedo salvo from a Japanese submarine hit three warships is treated as more worthy of space than the entire Norwegian campaign (not even one word devoted to the latter!). Chamberlin is generally sloppy with the narrative, describing Doenitz’s submarine fleet at the start of World War II as formidable when it very famously was not. Good luck also on any substantive treatment on the Resistance or Special Operations.

My central criticism is not that Chamberlin failed to include the things I like or state niche details incorrectly. Rather, it is that he had a clear goal in the introduction of his book but planned poorly in going about achieving that goal. He races through the narrative history because he (or his editors/publishers) presumably thought he had to write it as a narrative history. It probably makes the book easier to sell than what might otherwise be perceived as an overly academic treatment on the goals of each (imperial) party and specific steps they took to achieve them (perhaps even split by country).

Even the final form it is more saleable, I found it a fatiguing read. Scorched Earth not written in an especially gripping manner and it is very easy to tell when Chamberlin is on autopilot. When he switches into his preferred subject matter, such as with Chapter 13, the depth and quality noticeably improve. It makes it obvious that the problem is a planning one where Chamberlin had to justify the parts he does like writing about by shoehorning them into a very mediocre retelling of the global conflict, often sourcing from better written popular histories while missing a few detailed treatments (e.g. Shattered Sword or Hell to Pay).

Perhaps Scorched Earth exists in the form that sells best. However, it does not give the best value for money. I do not recommend it, not for what it wants to be, not for what it pretends to be, nor for what it is.

[Eva Tanit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como dice el autor:" la mitología nacionalista ha secuestrado los relatos habituales de la Segunda Guerra Mundial". Creo que hacía mucha falta esta nueva forma de ver la guerra mundial, tratándonos como adultos.

[Faizel Bham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. I had gotten tired of reading about the 2nd World War some time ago and was quite skeptical when I bought this. It turned out to be one of the best books about the war I’ve ever read.

Highly recommend.

[Tiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chamberlin wants to reframe the war as a war between the old entrenched racist empires and the new upstart racist empires, instead of a war between the forces of democracy and fascism. The trouble is that he fails to argue convincingly for this view. The retelling of the war takes on a seemingly random pattern. He will switch between policy makers' views and decision, and accounts by people on the ground witnessing the horrific fighting. Some central events are glossed over very quickly, (Pearl Harbor receives like half a page) while other events are treated more thoroughly. But it seems somewhat random, much of the time he does not explain how it ties into and supports his main thesis. Chamberlin too often uses some buzz word like "race war" rather than solidly arguing his case. He also admits that FDR wanted to make a new world order based on the Atlantic Charter etc. which would seem to undermine his thesis that the war was fought to save imperialism.

But the main problem aside, the book is well written with interesting and harrowing accounts of the deadliest war in history.

I can also recommend this scholarly review.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...

[Eigil Møller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended! He almost gets it right, and that’s an achievement. Unfortunately he doesn’t know what imperialism is, and doesn’t get why the Soviet Union (and now the Russia-China cooperation) was (is) such a powerful anti-colonial force. - Read this great account and follow it up with Michael Parenti (on imperialism) and Domenico Losurdo, who rightly describes WWII as the greatest anti-colonial liberation war in history.

[Smokychimp · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Scorched Earth," by Chamberlin, has the basic problem of a one-volume World War II survey: it has to justify why it exists. That is a hard task in a category already crowded with much stronger books, especially works like "The World at War" or "A World at Arms", which have greater scale, authority, and narrative force. Chamberlin gives a competent enough account of grand strategy, and there are moments where the book finds a slightly different angle, particularly in its attention to colonial politics and the Middle East. That material adds some color. But it does not really transform the story, and it does not have the explanatory power Chamberlin seems to want it to have.

The bigger problem is emphasis. Chamberlin’s stress on Allied shortcomings is badly overplayed. No serious history of the war should turn the Allies into saints, and incompetence, brutality, miscalculation, and hypocrisy were all part of the Allied story. But here the balance feels distorted. The critique too often seems more interested in correction than judgment.

Even stranger is the prose when the book descends from the operational level to the battlefield. The war was, of course, horrifyingly violent. No account of it should sanitize that fact. But Chamberlin repeatedly falls into a blood-soaked register that becomes numbing rather than illuminating. Again and again, the reader is handed catalogues of severed bodies, pulverized men, and the recurring cliché of the “meat grinder.” The effect is not moral gravity. It starts to feel like mannerism.

That is the odd failure of "Scorched Earth". It wants to be a fresh, hard-eyed, global account of the war, but too often mistakes emphasis for insight and gore for seriousness. There are useful passages here, especially on strategy and empire, but as a one-volume account of World War II, it never quite earns its shelf space.

[Gian Batayola · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful example of narrative history.

History often depicts World War 2 as a righteous, moral war between good and evil.

However, this is a dangerously naive oversimplification.

Chamberlin deconstructs this narrative and demonstrates why the reality was far more problematic and complicated.

In essence, the Second World War was the violent climax of centuries of colonialism and white supremacy.

It was a conflict driven by unstable personalities, realpolitik, and imperial ambitions fueled by racial insecurity.

At the turn of the 20th century, the prestige of a nation and its people was measured by their ability to conquer, subdue, and extract resources from foreign lands.

As the victors of the First World War, Western empires and their allies sought to maintain the status quo they had built and benefitted from.

As dejected and disenfranchised secondary powers, the Axis alliance sought to dismantle, seize, and replace this existing imperial world order through violent revolution, committing numerous atrocities in a desperate attempt to quell existential and racial insecurities.

And in their defeat, this had paved the way for the United States and Soviet Union to emerge as diametrically opposed, neo-colonial empires that would continue to propagate the the violence that enabled their ascent as superpowers.

Chamberlin takes this unorthodox thesis and weaves it with brilliant storytelling to present a compelling, alternate interpretation of the most destructive conflict in human history.

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This book argues that history's largest conflict as tno the good war between democracy and fascism that history books often describe. Rahter, it was a massive, colonial race war marked by vicious atrocities and fought by rival empires across huge stretches of Asia and Europe." (p.4)

Nice when a book so neatly lays out its own thesis so clearly for you at the outset. The book has its strengths. Chamberlain clearly knows the ins and outs of the war and can give plenty of solid evidence for the book's main point that this was more or less a power struggle.

That said, it presses things too far. Either the war was fought for ideals or it was fought for power politics. I mean, there is a pretty clear ideological component to why so many European (and American) powers had a problem with Hitler.

Also, the book might have been better served by some editing. I noted up top that Chamberlain knows the ins-and-outs of the war. Yeah, but it gets so detailed that it's easy to lose the book's main point as it comes off like a standard military narrative. (Also: wouldn't his own argument be better served by including the Bengal famine? While he knows his way around WWII, this is a heckuva thing to lay out).

He argues that the Axis Powers just took the logic of imperiaist overseas conquest and applied it to Europe itself. OK. But the book isn't as strong as it could've been.

[Preeti Mahatme · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic narrative of the geopolitics behind World War II. The book makes a strong case that the War was not a fight against fascism as is widely believed and made out to be. It was a war for imperialism and colonialism with deep racial undercurrents. While Germany and Italy tried to use the war as a means to build an empire in Europe, Japan tried to do the same in Asia. This meant snatching power from the existing colonial powers that were. Obviously, this did not go well with the existing imperial-colonial powers like Britain and France whose empires spanned the globe from Africa to the middle east to Asia. Even America which has always tried to portray itself as a beacon of democracy and a non-colonial power had colonial interests around the world eg: Phillipines. A rising military power in Japan was definitely not something it wanted to allow. In the end, the war resulted in the creation of two global superpowers - USA and USSR. I loved reading this candid take on the War which significantly deviates from the popular conventional narrative written by the Allied victors.

[Chris Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Chamberlin sets out to prove that WWII was less a war of liberation than a defense of colonialism, which, in fact, morphed into a bipolar neo-colonialism. He succeeds admirably. He mixes macro views with the micro, in a way that is entertaining, instructional, and informative.
He encapsulates battles with adequate detail for understanding. He takes us through the struggle of the various parties, politicians, generals, admirals, and leaders, as they plot the war goals, actions, and advantage, and eventually the post-war plotting outcomes. He quietly but forcefully compares the traditional 'story' with his colonial-centric thesis. He is a generally reliable reporter, though I question his coverage of General Stilwell in the CBI. He seems to follow the China Lobby (he is not) in his description of the meager amounts of Lend-Lease Aid to China, without ever mentioning the manipulations and conniving of Chiang Kai-Shek. It is a lengthy tome, but it reads fast and is a quality book.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Thomas Chamberlin's "Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II" is a massive, richly detailed account of the global conflict that shaped the world as we know it. The book offers an intriguing blend of narrative, analysis, strategy, and eyewitness testimony, making for compelling and informative reading.

Chamberlin looks at the Second World War not as a "good war" against fascism, but as part of a more extended episode of racial violence, colonial warfare, and the ascendancy and decline of great powers. Each chapter of the book discusses the origins, evolution, and progress of the war, as well as the main protagonists' ideologies, strategies, and goals. Each chapter ends with a summary and analysis of the impacts of the events described.

The book provides an unflinching look at the war's cost, not just in military casualties, but also in the horrific number of civilian casualties. Readers interested in a different perspective regarding World War II should seek "Scorched Earth."

[Barb Chamberlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 5 rating may have something to do with the similarities in our last names—full disclosure, he is my nephew. However, the 5 really represents how much I learned from reading this! Can’t say I was ever great at history, and somehow I got through both high school American history and college 20th century American history without ever learning anything about the two world wars. In high school the year ended with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. My college course picked up at the end of WWII. I’ve read many books that took place during the war—but those were dominated by things happening in Europe. Having two uncles who were in the Pacific and one in North Africa didn’t really register much—no one talked about the war.
Sooooooo…. This was really a great way to fill in for some of my ignorance.
While not exactly a page turner, it was written in a manner that kept my attention. Personal quotes and details really helped to make it less like a text book.

[Bookie Monster · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this an easy to read and engaging book; I also admire the author’s ambition - but it’s a bit all over the place in terms of rushing the narrative, skipping dimensions of the war that don’t fit (but going into blow by blow descriptions of many US campaigns) and the slightly irritating repetition of arguments about imperialism and racism without any real depth.

It’s a shame though because the author handles the great power interactions really well bringing lots of interesting research to the fore, and drawing out the leadership dynamics within Russia, the US and Japan.

But despite the thrust around colonialism, there’s no meaningful exploration of some fairly well documented imperial excesses: the Bengal Famine, Katyn, use of imperial soldiers, Vichy or the terrible treatment black GIs which could have lent credence to some of the slightly woolly analysis.

Overall - a good read, but with a pinch of salt - and the Americans get off pretty lightly compared with everyone else.

[Len Boselovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far from your average narrative about the "good war," Chamberlin's even-handed account provides a fresh perspective on World War II that resonates in today's world of rising far-right nationalism and militarism. The author uses a breezy narrative of the military struggle to support his thesis that "the war did not end imperialism; imperialism ended the war." His argument is strengthened by a constant reminder of the human cost, including the extent to which both Allied and Axis powers targeted noncombatants. Readers seeking a play-by-play of military campaigns won't find it here. But those searching for the bigger picture of the war and its consequences won't be disappointed.

[Pablo Acuña · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitivamente es lo mejor que he leído del conflicto hasta la fecha. Puede que en historiografía anglosajona no sea novedoso y el adjetivo global se le quede muy grande, sobre todo con el énfasis que pone en las campañas estadounidenses, pero aplicar las categorias de imperio y raza es una decision acertadisima, asi como el enfasis en las relaciones diplomaticas y teorias geopoliticas quw movieron a los lideres del conflicto. Ademas las descripciones tacticas de las campañas tienen la justa extension sin por ello perder rigor

“La guerra no acabo con el imperialismo, el imperialismo acabo la guerra”

[James Stephen Lorson · Rating 2.25 out of 5]

A pitiful attempt at WWII history. A "so called" history professor at a liberal East Coast college with his warped views of the US and history in general. White supremacy, racism and colonialism all shape his worldview. The first 50 pages of the book can easily be discarded by anyone who wants to subject themselves to this book. I think his warped view of WWII is shaped by the fact that his heroes have imploded with the collapse of the Soviet Union which is the usual result for communists and socialists the world over as they run out of other peoples money. 2.25 stars is being very generous for this door stop.

[Ron Nurmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

To quote “Collectively, then, the victorious Allies chose to narrate the history of the war as a series of patriotic fairy tales designed to justify postwar national ambitions”

The book explains the role of imperialism and racism as leading to the war and downplaying the role of fascism.

[Chris Tate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and detailed history of World War Two. Provided alternative insights to the version usually presented. Not sure if it completely delivered on its initial premise, but was an informative read nonetheless.

[Shannon Heaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive and thorough. Thesis is sound, I rather liked it and it holds up. US had most excellent soldiers but the war was won through American economic and logistical power, and Soviet manpower (though the cost to the USSR was a terrible one).

[ROBERT · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the topic the book seemed a little long. There was some unnecessary repetition during some topics. There were notes but no bibliography. I could not find it but the book was a little off to me.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had a lot of interesting details and the author's conclusion was really solid, and really astute. But the way he writes (word choice, syntax, etc) is SO repetitive that it detracts from the smart things he's saying. Come up with another way to say 'war of attrition' PLEASE.

[Ryan Meskill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find it hard to believe this book has so many negative reviews, but let me try to respond a bit to them. First off: this is not a history book primarily, it's an academic one. Does that make historical inaccuracies excusable? Of course not, but it also means this isn't meant to be a blow-by-blow account of the second world war, rather it's a piece trying to make the author's point: that WWII was essentially a war of empire, the expansion, defense and forging of them. In that vein it succeeds admirably. I don't think the premise is particularly controversial (comments here notwithstanding) but the author does a great job of hammering his point home, from Hitler's expansionism to Japan's to Russia's desire to defend its hard-won gains to the US ensuring the burying of the British empire and forging her own. It's by no means a perfect book, and if you're searching for another single-volume WWII history look elsewhere, but if you want to view the war through a specific lens, that of imperialism, it makes for a fantastic read!

[Mario Gochez]

interesante

Muy recomendable, un enfoque diferente. La guerra desde otra enfoque, la guerra detrás de la guerra. Debe leerse si se quiere entender lo que está haciendo significado para el mundo.