Book review: Imperialism has not been buried amidst the ‘blood and ruins’ of World War II
Behind the smiles of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta in February 1945, their deteriorating relations found expression in a political race to be the first in reaching Berlin. Picture: PA
Richard Overy’s new and thought-provoking book, Blood and Ruins, confirms his stature as an outstanding historian writing about World War II. His thesis is that the modernising states of Germany, Italy and Japan grew resentful of the way well-established empires, principally those of Britain and France, were enjoying the advantages of imperial rule: access to raw materials and new markets; national prestige; a perception of racial superiority that cemented a sense of identity and helped justify the exploitation of other nations. When their colonies called for self-determination, revolts were ruthlessly crushed and only in Ireland was a rebellion against the British empire successful.
At the end of the 1920s, Hitler was electioneering with the claim that Germany’s national honour was being undermined by the ‘lying and monstrous assertion that the German people lack the ability to administer colonies’. The collapse of the world economy that began at this time strengthened the conviction in Germany, Italy and Japan that territorial expansion was essential for national survival. They acted opportunistically and did not work together but their combined imperial projects had a destabilizing effect that fuelled and then ignited a global war in 1939-41.
