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Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 Kindle Edition

by Richard Overy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 735 ratings
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY

'A masterpiece. It puts all previous single-volume works of the conflict in the shade' Saul David, The Times

A bold new approach to the Second World War from one of Britain's foremost military historians

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. He argues that this was the 'great imperial war', a violent end to almost a century of global imperial expansion which reached its peak in the 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.

How war on a huge scale was fought, supplied, paid for, supported by mass mobilization and morally justified forms the heart of this new account. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked these imperial projects, the war and its aftermath. This war was as deadly for civilians as it was for the military, a war to the death over the future of the global order.

Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece from of one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War, 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.

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  1. Print length
    982 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Penguin
  5. Publication date
    August 26, 2021
  6. File size
    22505 KB
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  1. Thirdly, that the conflict needs to be redefined as a number of different kinds of war.
    Highlighted by 225 Kindle readers
  2. Finally, that all three of these factors – chronology, area and definition – derive from the argument presented here: that the long Second World War was the last imperial war.
    Highlighted by 207 Kindle readers
  3. This new history of the Second World War is based on four main assumptions. First, that the conventional chronology of the war is no longer useful.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] stupendous achievement...Blood and Ruins dissects the sinews of war with the sharpest of scalpels…it is history at its best, down to the finest points."--The New York Times

"Blood and Ruins is a monumental work; it is hard to imagine that a more comprehensive study of World War II could possibly be contained between two covers. 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

“The Pacific clash over colonies reveals a greater truth about the Second World War…Blood and Ruins…refuses to treat the Pacific as ‘an appendix,’ as histories often do. Rather, it sees World War II as a truly ‘global event.’”--The Atlantic

"Startling yet persuasive...brilliant." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Astute and incisive. WWII buffs should consider this a must-read" --Publishers Weekly

"One of the great historians of the Second World War." --Sunday Times

"Probably the most important book published on the history of the second world war this century."--Richard J. Evans, The Guardian on The Bombing War
 
"Tremendous ... a masterpiece of the historian’s art." --The Times on The Bombing War
 
"A superb work, comprehensive and written with rare fire and intelligence." --The Observer on The Dictators
 
"Stimulating and enjoyable … essential reading." --The Guardian on The Road to War
 
"This book is [Overy’s] magnum opus (in every sense of the phrase)." --Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain's most distinguished historians and an internationally renowned scholar of World War II. He is the recipient of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize and is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. His many works include The Bombing War, Dictators and The Morbid Age.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B084CZR8N9
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (August 26, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 26, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 22505 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 982 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0143132938
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 735 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

J. P Spencer
5.0 out of 5 stars Best one volume history of WW II
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2023
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I read a fair amount of 20th century world history, particularly about WW II and I think Overly has written the best one volume history I’ve read. As his subtitle indicates, his core argument is that the war was not primarily a war against the evils of the Axis powers but rather was fought by the major participants to preserve and/or expand their “empires.” In making this criticism he in no way justifies the horrors imposed on the world by Japan, Germany and Italy but also describes and acknowledges those wrought by the Allies.

A little less than half of the text is given over to a chronological narrative of the military and political aspects of the war giving fairly equal time to the all the various major battlefields. Given Overly’s thesis, he sees the war commencing about 1932 with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. On the other hand he sees the war continuing at least until 1955 and the East Asian colonial liberation fights.

Following this military history Overly engages in a series of descriptions and analyses of various special features of the war from the viewpoint of all the major parties: mobilizing for a war involving the totality of society, the technology used (armor, aviation, amphibious warfare, radio and radar, intelligence, economics, the morality of actions of the participants, war as experienced by civilians, crimes and atrocities, etc. Despite the breadth and depth of Overly’s subject, his writing is smooth and never boring. For anyone looking for a balanced and well-informed description of what is possibly the most apocalyptic periods of human history, this is it.
7 people found this helpful
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Erik Peterson
5.0 out of 5 stars Blood and Ruins
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2023
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BLOOD & RUINS

The first thing you need to come to grips with in Richard Overy’s World War II historical narrative, ‘Blood and Ruins’, is that it consists of 878 pages, in small print.

The second thing you need to know is that it is not a chronologically -ordered history of the war.

Instead, it consists of eleven separate and self-contained chapters, each of which examines in great detail different aspects of the war, which makes it an excellent reference guide, which does not require the reader to start at the beginning or to finish at the end.

The eleven chapters are:

-Nation-Empires and Global Crisis, 1931 -1940

-Imperial Fantasies, Imperial Realities, 1940 - 1943

-The Death of the Nation-Empire, 1942 - 1945

-Mobilizing a Total War

-Fighting the War

-War Economics: Economies at War

-Just Wars? Unjust Wars?

-Civilian Wars

-The Emotional Geography of War

-Crimes and Atrocities

-Empires into Nations: A Different Global Age.

Highly recommended, especially for those already familiar with World War II who are interested in broadening their perspective on these great and terrible events.
18 people found this helpful
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Arbie Herout
4.0 out of 5 stars A Technical History for Professionals
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2024
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This is a very technical history of the Second World War written in a style that requires some work to wade through it. It is worth the effort, but it takes an effort, and potential readers should anticipate expending several weeks to get through it.
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MM
5.0 out of 5 stars An unusual but interesting concept of the causes and progress of the war. Well written.
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2024
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A most enjoyable narrative of the war from the perspective of a struggle of Imperial prejudices of the major combatant countries. Well written and very readable in style as well as a good historical coverage of the world wide impact and outcomes.
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Aran Joseph Canes
5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative, Revisionist and Demythologizing
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2022
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As acclaimed by journalists and academics in Britain, Richard Overy’s Blood and Ruins seems destined to be the definitive one volume history of WWII for a long time to come. Roughly divided into three sections, Overy first recounts a battlefield narrative of the war, then the socio-economic differences between the combatants and concludes with an account of the lived experience of soldiers and civilians.

It’s revisionist in the best sense—revising previous narratives with well-marshaled data. Overy sees the immediate cause of the war as the decision of the Western imperial powers to create beneficial trade zones in the 1930s which excluded Germany, Italy and Japan. This, along with a long history of nationalistic feeling among these peoples, led to an effort to carve out empires at the expense of previous ones. The war, when it comes, is seen as somewhat accidental. Hitler believed that England and France would not honor their treaties with Poland and that the invasion could be the beginning of the German colonization of the East.

Continuing his revisionist narrative, Overy sees Hitler as not bent on world domination but reacting to events as they occur; hence, there was no plan for invading Britain because the victory over France was unanticipatedly swift. Another major paradigm shift is that part of the book devoted to detailing the socio-economic advantages enjoyed by the Allies. According to Overy, the Industrial strength of the USSR and the USA made victory almost certain in any lengthy conflict.

But perhaps the most controversial narrative change is in the amount of demythologizing. The war is seen less as a battle between good and evil and more as a struggle to preserve or establish European and Asian empires. Both sides’ atrocities are amply and vividly described. And while the extermination campaign against the Jewish people uniquely marked the Nazi effort, Overy shows that its prevention was not a war time objective of the Allies.

More could be said about the changes to conventional narratives but it’s perhaps best to encounter them yourself. While a substantial investment in leisure time may be demanded to make it through what can only be described as a tome, it’s well worth it. Highest recommendation.
98 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Juhunget
5.0 out of 5 stars Richard Overy at his masterful best!
Reviewed in Canada on May 13, 2022
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Overy, a great academic, has written another wonderful exegesis of the series of wars that coalesced into World War II. At first, I thought, of course they were imperial wars, but Overy with his acumen for taking a subject that has been well-written about, yet shedding a new perspective on it, has done it again. Industrious and skilful, Overy weaves into his analysis the positions of countries defending dying empires, those who felt entitled to one and others that arose phoenix-like from the ashes of the Second World War, such as the Soviet Union and U.S.A, to become super powers. A great book!
One person found this helpful
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Nigel John Smale
5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant
Reviewed in Germany on September 10, 2023
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A lot of stats to keep up with, the depth of research excellent, and an alternative to the normal war books
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Arynth
5.0 out of 5 stars Huge in scope with a clear line of argument
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2022
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A very long-read indeed. While this numbers some 880 pages of prose to read through it is densely packed with argument and evidence and if you're reading the hardback, each page has probably twice or three times as much as another book. There's a lot here. And it's very good.

Overy broadly (and correctly in my view) takes the period of the Second World War to start from from the conflicts of some of its belligerents and contextualises it as a culmination of several hundred years of colonial history. The book starts off then recounting pre-WWI and WWI history, establishing the world that led to the 1930s and shaped the outlook of the belligerents and makes a compelling case for the undercurrents as driven by the desire to conquer, annex, populate and exploit. An excoriating view of the Allies and Axis alike is a natural byproduct.

He then takes us through book-length chapters exploring themes - logistics and emotion and genocide etc - in vast detail while never succumbing to the desire to caricature the players as simply good and evil forces. It's a complex tapestry woven. At times Empire appears to slip away as the detail forms an academic military history but Overy always brings it back.

The weakest part of the work is towards the end, summing up the period broadly between 1945 and 1962: the collapse of empire. It feels rushed and unexplored (while I appreciate the focus of the book, as the title suggests is the war itself: Overy's focus is on it within the context of Empire). We're left with a lot of white space as to the imperial-like developments across the remainder of the 20th century. What of the First Gulf War? What of Afghanistan? Iraq? And now we have Russia and Ukraine and China and Taiwan begging for historical analaysis. Perhaps saved for a follow-up.

As it stands, this is up there with the best academic works on the Second World War.
6 people found this helpful
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Monica J Cook
2.0 out of 5 stars Very badly bound book - not worth reading for its production, despite good content
Reviewed in Spain on January 7, 2022
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The content is dense and fascinating, but the actual book is so badly bound, despite being a hard-cover, that by page 271, the pages were coming out from the binding. Now the book is a disaster of loose pages. For the price charged, this is not impressive and does great disservice to the author. Not worth buying if you have to fight the actual way the book is produced.
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Dr. John Whitesell
5.0 out of 5 stars Blood And Ruins is a Masterpiece
Reviewed in Canada on September 10, 2022
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Richard Overy reframed pre- and post-WWII history in a way that methodically displaces what we were taught in Western schools. The defeat of imperialism was necessary to free the human race from the tyranny of colonialism, but the cost in human life and suffering was staggering. One of the many takeaways for me is that it is a travesty that Palestinians do not have a country of their own.
2 people found this helpful
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