Paul Chamberlin’s masterful new book, Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II, is a vitally important work that fundamentally reframes our understanding of the twentieth century’s most devastating conflict. It meticulously dismantles the comfortable and enduring narrative of a simple “good versus evil” struggle, replacing it with a more complex and unsettling truth: World War II was, at its core, a catastrophic clash between rival, racist, and relentlessly brutal empires. While Chamberlin, an Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, makes it unequivocally clear that the Axis powers were an abominable evil and their defeat a necessary cause for celebration, his book brilliantly demonstrates that the Allies were far more similar to their enemies in their motivations, strategies, and criminality than standard histories admit. This review will explore the book’s monumental thesis: that World War II is best understood not as an ideological crusade for democracy, but as the bloody, pivotal turning point in the global history of empire—a conflict where all major powers fought to build or preserve their own imperial dominance.
Chamberlin’s argument is a persuasive indictment of the imperial hubris that defined the era. With the precision of a scholar and the narrative grip of a master storyteller, he situates the conflict within a much longer story of the rise and fall of world empires, a context that traditional accounts have often downplayed. He challenges the conventional wisdom by arguing that the war’s immense moral clarity—the righteous victory over fascism—has paradoxically stifled historical debate and obscured the uncomfortable truths about its origins and conduct. Scorched Earth is not a polemic, but a forensic audit of how the imperial ambitions of all belligerents, cloaked in self-serving ideologies, plunged the world into an abyss of violence and paved the way for a new, American-led global order.
The Imperial Cauldron: Roots of a Global Conflict
Chamberlin convincingly argues that the world of the 1920s and 1930s was a world of empires. It was the default mode of large-scale political organization, the only proven path to great-power status. The British Empire, the largest in human history, and the French Empire, the second largest, dominated the globe, controlling vast territories, populations, and resources. The United States, with its continental dominance, overseas possessions like the Philippines, and an economic might that cast a long shadow, was a new kind of imperial power. The international order established by the Treaty of Versailles was, in essence, a system designed to preserve this Anglo-French-American dominance.
For aspiring nations like Germany, Italy, and Japan, this established order was both a model to be emulated and an existential threat. Chamberlin details the palpable fear in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo that they would be relegated to second-tier status, becoming de-facto colonies of the Anglo-American powers or, alternatively, falling prey to the revolutionary “Bolshevik menace” emanating from the Soviet Union. The inherently unstable Versailles order weakened and humiliated them while increasing their fears of losing the global struggle for survival. Economic hardship during the Great Depression exacerbated this growing paranoia.
This imperial order was also explicitly racial. Chamberlin unearths the deeply racist intellectual climate that permeated mainstream Western thought, citing popular and influential works like Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy and Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race. These were not fringe ideas; they were endorsed by presidents, praised by major newspapers, and formed a central part of the worldview of the Western political elite. This ideology of white supremacy was used to justify the brutal subjugation of colonial peoples and reinforced the idea that the world was an arena of racial competition. Out of this fear and instability, the Axis powers launched a desperate and violent breakout attempt. They believed they had a short window of time to seize colonial territories and build themselves into empires capable of resisting the capitalist onslaught from the United States and the Bolshevik onslaught from the Soviet Union.
Emulating the Masters: Axis Ambitions as Colonial Projects
One of the book’s most chilling and powerful arguments is its demonstration of how Axis leaders explicitly modeled their imperial projects on the history of Western colonialism. This was not just a parallel development; it was conscious imitation. Chamberlin details how the brutal logic of colonial violence, long practiced by Britain and France, provided a ready-made playbook for the Axis. He points to the French aerial bombardment of Damascus in the 1920s to crush a rebellion and British counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq and Palestine as examples where extreme violence against civilians was normalized under the pretext of a “civilizing mission.” This established a racial hierarchy where one set of rules applied to conflicts between “civilized” Western nations, and another, far more brutal set of rules applied to the subjugation of colonial peoples.
The Axis powers did not invent this brand of savage warfare; they adopted and amplified it. They took the methods deemed acceptable in the colonies and applied them with terrifying industrial efficiency to their neighbors. Chamberlin unearths shocking statements from Hitler and other Nazi leaders revealing their admiration for the British Empire and the American extermination of Native Americans. Hitler, Chamberlin shows, looked to the British experience in India as a blueprint for Germany’s ambitions in Eastern Europe. He was fascinated by the ability of a small number of British administrators to rule a vast population and hoped to replicate this model with German officials overseeing Slavic peoples. Turning his gaze westward, Hitler saw the United States’ bloody expansion across North America—a centuries-long campaign of ethnic cleansing—as the ultimate model for creating Lebensraum – “living space”. His call for the Volga to become Germany’s Mississippi was not mere rhetoric; it was a direct invocation of the American model of continental conquest.
Similarly, Japanese leaders self-consciously invoked the U.S. Monroe Doctrine to justify their own sphere of influence in Asia. Chamberlin notes that they explicitly spoke of their “Asian Monroe Doctrine,” underscoring the direct intellectual lineage. Tokyo’s goal was to create a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” by ejecting the Western colonialists and establishing Japan as the region’s preeminent imperial power. The Axis powers were not simply rogue states; they were students of Western imperialism, seeking to join the club of great powers by adopting its most brutal methods.
Defending the Realm: The Allies’ Imperial Calculus
If the Axis powers were fighting to build new empires, Chamberlin masterfully demonstrates that the Allies were fighting to preserve and expand theirs. The popular narrative of an ideological war against fascism is systematically dismantled. After all, Italy had been fascist for two decades and Germany for years before the war began. The Allies, Chamberlin argues, went to war not because of ideology, but because Axis expansion directly threatened their own imperial order. Britain and France declared war on Germany not because it was a Nazi state, but because it invaded Poland, upsetting the European balance of power. The war in Asia was triggered not by an opposition to Japan’s internal politics, but by its attacks on the colonial possessions of the Western empires—the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies.
The United States, often portrayed as a reluctant belligerent, is revealed to have been a far more calculating player from the outset. Chamberlin highlights the pivotal “Plan Dog Memo” of November 1940—more than a year before Pearl Harbor. In the wake of France’s collapse, U.S. leaders concluded that the old world order was finished and that America must enter the war not just to win, but to be in a position to dictate the terms of the post-war world. The memo laid out the “Germany First” strategy and, through agreements like the Destroyers-for-Bases Deal, began the process of integrating the military infrastructure of the British Empire into a new, American-led global system. The U.S. entered the war, Chamberlin shows convincingly, not primarily to save democracy, but because it recognized that the rise of the Axis powers threatened to create a new global order outside of its control. The ultimate goal was to ensure that the United States would be in a position to shape the world that followed.
A War of Unequal Sacrifice and Colonial Violence Brought Home
Perhaps the book’s most damning indictment of Allied strategy focuses on the deliberate and cynical decision to let the Soviet Union and China do the vast majority of the fighting and dying. While Chamberlin’s focus is on the grand strategic and ideological sweep of the conflict – though his descriptions of key battles are themselves riveting reads -, his most profound contribution is in contrasting the two different wars that were being fought.
On the Eurasian continent, massive land armies clashed in what he calls “continental slaughterhouses.” The Eastern Front and the war in China were meat grinders that consumed tens of millions of lives and accounted for 80-90% of Axis combat casualties. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Americans fought a “maritime colonial war.” Relying on their naval supremacy, they chose when and where to fight, focusing on the imperial periphery in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific islands. This strategy was driven partly by Churchill’s desire to avoid the mass casualties of World War I, but more importantly, to secure Britain’s imperial possessions and lines of communication, particularly in the Middle East.
This self-interested strategy found its most horrific expression in the skies over Germany and Japan. Chamberlin details how, for a long period, the primary Anglo-American contribution to the war against Germany was a campaign of strategic bombing that deliberately targeted civilian populations. He provides harrowing accounts of Operation Gomorrah, which unleashed a firestorm in Hamburg that sucked the oxygen from the air, and the bombing of Dresden, a city swollen with refugees, which some American officials privately decried as “baby killing schemes.” He quotes RAF chief Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who made it chillingly clear that the destruction of German cities and the killing of German workers were “accepted and intended aims of bombing policy,” not regrettable side effects.
This colonial logic was then applied with even greater ferocity in the Pacific. Chamberlin describes how General Curtis LeMay, frustrated with the inefficiency of high-altitude precision bombing, switched to low-level nighttime raids using napalm-filled incendiary bombs. He knew Japanese cities, built of wood and paper, were “tinderboxes.” The result was the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, a single raid that killed over 100,000 people and was, in LeMay’s words, “a hell of a good mission.” This strategy culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ultimate application of indiscriminate violence against civilian populations. Chamberlin argues that this was colonial “savage warfare” brought home to the metropole, a terrifying new form of state violence that the Allies justified as a military necessity. While the Soviets and Chinese bore the brunt of the ground war, the Western Allies perfected a new kind of warfare from the air, one that erased the distinction between combatant and civilian with devastating efficiency.
The Cynical Endgame: Cold War Roots in World War
Chamberlin identifies the end of 1942 as the war’s critical turning point. With the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, the American victory at Guadalcanal, and the Allied landings in North Africa, it became clear that the Axis would eventually lose. From this moment on, the war’s character changed. The Allies, knowing victory was certain, began positioning themselves for the post-war struggle for global dominance. The Cold War, Chamberlin provocatively suggests, effectively began as early as 1943, as the US and the USSR, while still allies, started viewing each other as future competitors.
The timing of the Normandy invasion is presented in this light. The Allies had to land in Europe to prevent the Soviet Union from single-handedly defeating Germany and dominating the entire continent. This cynical calculus culminated in one of history’s most startling documents: “Operation Unthinkable.” Drawn up by British military planners in the spring of 1945, just weeks after Germany’s surrender, it was a detailed plan for a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. Most astonishingly, the plan called for the use of Allied forces alongside re-armed German Wehrmacht divisions. The plan was ultimately deemed “unthinkable” because the Soviets had such a massive troop advantage that the Western Allies would almost certainly lose. But its mere existence, Chamberlin argues, exposes the true nature of the conflict—a clash of powerful world empires rather than a crusade to rid the world of fascism. It reveals that from the perspective of Western leaders, the German army had transitioned from an existential enemy to a potential pawn in the next great imperial struggle.
Conclusion: The Nature of Evil and the Birth of a New Imperial Order
Scorched Earth culminates in a powerful and deeply unsettling conclusion. While Chamberlin meticulously documents the often-neglected crimes of the Western Allies, showing how all belligerents operated under the brutal and racist logic of colonial power, he leaves no doubt that the Axis powers were indeed the greater of two evils. He does not shy away from the horrific details of the Holocaust, the Nazi plans for the enslavement and extermination of Slavic peoples, or the ghastly atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China and across the Pacific. The book is unflinching in its portrayal of Axis depravity.
Yet, where it departs radically from conventional wisdom is in its explanation for this distinction. Chamberlin posits that the unparalleled ferocity of Nazi and Japanese atrocities was fueled by a desperate, paranoid sense of existential threat. As ‘latecomer’ empires, they felt trapped and encircled by the overwhelming economic and military power of the established Western and Soviet empires. Their leaders came to believe that a hyper-violent, “all-or-nothing” bid to forge their own empires in a very short window of time was the only path to national survival. This desperation, this belief that they were in a fight to the death, amplified their existing racist ideologies into a nihilistic, apocalyptic worldview. The Nazi-elite’s antisemitic fantasy of a Jewish world conspiracy was the most extreme manifestation of this intense paranoia.
This explanation in no way excuses or diminishes the unique depravity of Axis crimes. Rather, it offers a stark contrast to the motivations of the Western Allies. Chamberlin makes clear that British and American societies were also rife with racism, nationalism, and militarism, but they acted from a position of established power and growing strength. Their brutality, particularly the firebombing of German and Japanese cities, was horrifying but stemmed from a different logic: it was the calculated application of overwhelming force to minimize their own casualties and secure their imperial interests, not a frenzied gamble for survival. By framing the conflict in this way, Chamberlin offers his most profound and tragic insight. The “Good War” narrative is too simple. The war was a systemic failure, the catastrophic result of a world order built on zero-sum imperial competition. It powerfully suggests that a more inclusive, peaceful international system and wiser diplomacy—one that did not corner aspiring powers into a state of existential panic—could have potentially prevented the largest and most cruel war in global history.
In the end, there was only one true victor: the United States. While the Soviet Union won a massive military and moral victory, its land and population were devastated. The British and French empires were fatally weakened. The US, in contrast, emerged with its homeland untouched, its industrial economy supercharged, and a global network of military bases. This, Chamberlin concludes, gave birth to a new, distinctly American form of empire—one that did not require direct colonial conquest but could exert its will through economic dominance, a web of client states, and the constant threat of overwhelming military force. This sober reckoning does not excuse the monstrous crimes of the Axis. Rather, it forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that the “Good War” was also a brutal clash of empires, a conflict whose cynical calculations and imperial legacies shaped the very world we inhabit today. Scorched Earth is more than just a history book; it is a necessary corrective, a brilliant and courageous work that challenges us to look beyond the myth and understand the dark, imperial heart of the twentieth century’s greatest cataclysm. It is a difficult history, but one that is essential for understanding the foundations upon which our modern world was built.
You can find Michael’s interviews with Jeffrey Sachs, Trita Parsi, Scott Horton and other antiwar voices on his author’s page for NachDenkSeiten — the videos are in English!
