Review of “Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945” by Richard Overy

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.

Rating: 5/5

Published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2021