One sometimes wonders what publishers would do if World War II had never happened. Each year brings hundreds of new books about a conflict that ended 80 years ago, and there is only so many times you can read about the Battle of Midway. Luckily for us, Paul Thomas Chamberlin offers us an invigorating and exceptionally well-written account of the war and its roots in colonialism, interpreting the global battle not so much as the last Good War but as a struggle for dominance, with atrocities committed by soldiers on all sides.
Chamberlin provocatively frames the war as being as much about the West against the Soviet Union as it was the West against Germany and Japan, including details about Operation Unthinkable, which was Churchill’s plan to enlist the defeated German Army to fight against the Soviets, and Operation Rankin, F.D.R.’s scheme to parachute American soldiers into a teetering Berlin to foil Stalin’s occupation of Germany. Two of every three people killed in the war were civilians, a fact that underscores just how horrific and unheroic some of the tactics were. Scorched Earth offers not only a panoramic account of the most destructive war in history but illuminates the path that led us to the Cold War and beyond.
