I'm John Batchel. Continuing my conversation with Professor Paul Thomas Chamberlain, his new book is

Scorched Earth, a global history of World War II. This is about competing empires in 1930s and

1940s. Berlin, Rome, and Moscow, and Tokyo all wanted to see their empires,

either secured or grown in this contest that we call the Second World War.

It's an extension of the failure of the Versailles Treaty to describe the world as it is

as opposed to the way Wilson and Lloyd George wanted it to be,

and let's not leave out Clemenceau.

However, we're now in France again, not in Versailles.

We're in Normandy, an enormous battle that takes place between June and August when they enter Paris and then rolls on

towards Germany. At the same time, Stalin has promised to launch an offensive called

Bagration against the German army in the east, this vast landscape. The two squeezing Berlin

between them. And the leaders of the countries,

of the empires that are involved, are looking to the future. I don't want to, we're going to

Yalta and January 45, but before we get there, Professor, my concern now is the Chinese. They're watching these

resources being poured into Europe. And one of the themes of your book that you explore very

carefully is the clear racist language that is used at the time. We joke sometimes about it, calling it white man's burden and laugh at

them, but they thought it was a real policy. What do we say right now about race and the contest

as they enter the battles of 1944? What can we say about how Russia and France and Britain

and the United States saw their burden?

So I think at this point in time, all of the allied leaders see themselves as

waging a civilizational struggle. And this is actually true for the Axis as well.

They all see themselves as fighting this war for,

...