In 1939, Albania was invaded and exploited along colonial lines.

In 1935, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and the following year prematurely declared to an adoring crowd in RomeвЂ™s Piazza Venezia that вЂItaly finally has its empireвЂ™.

The brutality of this theatre of war, which has received relatively little attention in the West, is emblemized by Chiang Kai-shekвЂ™s order to open the dykes of the Yellow River to keep the Japanese away from Wuhan, killing at least half a million people. Overy finds similarities in the ways Germany, Italy and Japan succumbed to the vanity of this delusion and he begins his account with JapanвЂ™s expansion into Manchuria in 1931 and its escalation into the Sino-Japanese war. The context that Overy provides, what he calls вЂthe paradigm of empireвЂ™, was laid down by Britain and France in the 40 years before the 1930s and it inspired the fantasy that a nationвЂ™s virility, its economic prosperity and racial superiority required territorial aggrandizement. The crippling trade embargo imposed in 1941 by the US - to assert its hegemony in the Pacific region and keep Japan out of China - which would cut three quarters of JapanвЂ™s oil imports, was an existential threat to the country and it precipitated the attack on Pearl Harbor in December. 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. 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. When their colonies called for self-determination, revolts were ruthlessly crushed and only in Ireland was a rebellion against the British empire successful.ДЄt the end of the 1920s, Hitler was electioneering with the claim that GermanyвЂ™s national honour was being undermined by the вЂlying and monstrous assertion that the German people lack the ability to administer coloniesвЂ™. 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. Richard OveryвЂ™s new and thought-provoking book, Blood and Ruins, confirms his stature as an outstanding historian writing about World War II.

Empire total war ireland