Blood and Ruins
The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945
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4.0 • 21 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
“Monumental… [A] vast and detailed study that is surely the finest single-volume history of World War II. Richard Overy has given us a powerful reminder of the horror of war and the threat posed by dictators with dreams of empire.” – The Wall Street Journal
A thought-provoking and original reassessment of World War II, from Britain’s leading military historian
A New York Times bestseller
Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. As one of Britain’s most decorated and respected World War II historians, he argues that this was the “last imperial war,” with almost a century-long lead-up of global imperial expansion, which reached its peak in the territorial ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires.
Overy also argues for a more global perspective on the war, one that looks broader than the typical focus on military conflict between the Allied and Axis states. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked the war and its protracted aftermath—which extended far beyond 1945.
Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece, a new and definitive look at the ultimate struggle over the future of the global order, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Exeter historian Overy (The Morbid Age) delivers a dazzling if overstuffed reassessment of WWII. Characterizing the conflict as a clash between ambitious and resentful upstarts (Germany, Italy, Japan) that sought to expropriate territory from more venerable empires (Britain, France, Russia, China), Overy details the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Italian campaigns in Libya and Ethiopia, and the swift fall of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France, before crediting Allied victories at Guadalcanal, El Alamein, and Stalingrad in 1942 with turning the tide of the war. He praises the Normandy landings and subsequent sweep across France and into Germany as "the high point of Anglo-American achievement during the war," and dramatically details the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Army's sweep into Manchuria. Overy then turns his attention to larger themes, including the economics of warfare, the impact of new technologies, and the efficacy of European resistance movements. Some of these discussions—about the conduct of civil defense, for example—grow tedious, and a chapter documenting "crimes and atrocities" committed by both sides of the conflict is more numbing than enlightening. Still, Overy's reframing of WWII as the last gasp of imperialism is astute and incisive. WWII buffs should consider this a must-read.
