Still, let’s praise Overy’s stupendous achievement.

Precision, not mass, would rule the battlefield. After 100 million dead in two world wars, this scourge seemed to have yielded to “tailor-made” force: hybrid warfare, “little green men,” tightly targeted drones.

War was still interested in us, but mercifully not in Europe. Overy thought that large-scale war for land and booty had breathed its last, at least in the so-called “civilized” world (as did this author along with many historians). “You may not be interested in war, but it is interested in you,” runs a quip attributed to Leon Trotsky. After 77 years of relative peace in Europe, the longest ever, conquest and slaughter are back. Russia’s murderous assault on Ukraine makes the subtitle, “The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945,” ring premature. After 40 years of painstaking scholarly effort, Richard Overy was overridden by Vladimir Putin. Running for just under a thousand small-print pages, “Blood and Ruins,” too, has had its own fate. “Books have their own fates,” the Romans taught. BLOOD AND RUINS: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 By Richard Overy

Mortal empires map ruins