Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II
Paul Thomas Chamberlin, Basic Books, £30

PAUL THOMAS CHAMBERLIN, whose book The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order remains one of the best books on the Palestine Liberation Organizations’s meaning and impact in the years before Oslo, ends his recent tour de force on World War II with this statement: “We must come to terms with a basic, underlying truth: the war did not end imperialism; imperialism ended the war.”

The book, titled Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II, is a history of that unfathomably murderous conflict that goes beyond many other descriptions, in that it shifts the focus from the Eurocentrism of so many World War II histories and broadens the viewfinder to include the entire world.

In the text’s pages, Chamberlin relates a history that describes almost indescribable horrors, clever and not so clever political manipulations, dashed hopes of colonial empires and the rise of US imperialism and Soviet power.

The glory of the greatest generation is reconsidered and, after all is said and done, that glory is revealed (individual heroism aside) to be a myth. Instead, one is presented with a narrative detailing a massive power play to replace a colonial world dominated by European empires with one dominated by the capitalist United States and the socialist Soviet Union.

It was not a war that ended all wars; it was a war that created endless war, especially in the former colonies of Britain, France and other former European powers.

There are other writers who have noted that Adolf Hitler’s plans for Europe were nothing more than a Nazi attempt to colonise the continent and those nations to its east. Chamberlin tends to agree with this understanding.

The argument goes like this: having been a latecomer to the European endeavour to colonise Africa, the Americas and Asia, Hitler and his government decided to apply a similar agenda to the land next door. Some, who have suggested this, come from formerly colonised nations in Africa and Europe and note that there already was a world war before the Nazis made Europe and Russia into a battlefield.

The horrors of the Holocaust visited on Jewish and other unwanted residents in the Nazi-occupied territories were horrors perfected over the years of European colonialism — the British and US genocide of northern America’s indigenous people, the British colonisation of the Indian subcontinent, and the German slaughter of the Herero people in what is now Namibia are but three examples.

Violence is the essence of colonialism and history is replete with examples of this truth.

But what about Asia? What about Japan, China, Indochina, Indonesia and the Indian subcontinent? It is here where Chamberlin expands the European battlefield around the globe. He sets the stage, describing the wars in China against British colonialism and Washington’s growing interest in expanding its imperial reach beyond the Philippines.

He also details Japan’s growing power and determination to build an empire across Asia, defeating the white Europeans and becoming the master of what it considered to be its part of the planet.

In the same manner he uses to chronicle the surge in industrial production of military equipment across Europe and the US, Chamberlin describes Japan’s military expansion in its preparations to go to war against the Allied militaries. In both cases, the political and military debates are outlined and discussed.

Then there are the descriptions of the major military moves taken by all sides in the conflicts. Like the discussion of the military build-ups mentioned earlier, Scorched Earth refers to the major players — the generals and political rulers — delineating their positions, their successes and failures, and the repercussions of both for them personally and for their country’s military.

Like many war histories, the descriptions of the battles occasionally can stray towards boredom for those not especially interested. However, Chamberlin’s contextualisation of those battles tends to circumvent any long-windedness.

Instead, one finds a nuanced and balanced presentation of how rulers think during times of war and how that thinking plays out on the ground where people die. In this war, the deaths numbered in the millions.

The Nazis were defeated in battle in World War II. It’s fair to state that there was a victory but the truth is that there was nothing particularly moral about it. The fact that the Nazi death factories were destroyed is probably the conflict’s saving grace.

However, the sheer magnitude of the slaughter remains incomprehensible 80 years after Hitler killed himself in a bunker in Berlin. Chamberlin’s text does a magnificent job describing the war in its global manifestations; he reveals the white supremacist dynamic that informed the Allied rulers and generals running the war and the Aryan supremacy touted by the Nazis.

The change of Washington’s focus from beating the German and Japanese militaries to creating a new world order where Washington ruled is developed throughout the book. In a similar manner, Stalin’s manoeuvrings to put the USSR in a superpower role are also discussed.

If there I anything to conclude from reading this magnificent text, it is that we cannot afford another war of such magnitude. One hopes the earth itself would not allow another such bout of human madness.

Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.