Nearly 80 years have passed since the end of World War II, but popular and scholarly interest in history’s deadliest conflict shows no sign of abating. Studies of the war roll off the presses at a rapid rate; films, documentaries and podcasts on the subject attract large audiences. For most people, tales of shattered cities, desperate refugees and heroic resistance have long had the added benefits of distance and remoteness, becoming mere reminders of a vanished age.
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Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945
But the shadow of war has again fallen across Europe, as a large and powerful state has gone to war against its smaller neighbor with the aim of conquest, in a manner not seen on the Continent since the 1940s. Ukraine, part of what the historian Timothy Snyder calls the “bloodlands” crushed between the tyrannies of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, is again being savaged. Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with his physical courage and rhetorical prowess, has evoked comparisons with Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill. And Russian leader Vladimir Putin, determined to maintain his kleptocratic rule, has pledged to carve up Ukraine and restore Russian imperial glory.
