Note to historians: saying "World War II was all about empire" sounds clever but doesn't actually explain anything. It doesn't explain how the sides aligned, what claims they made, what soldiers went into it believing, and in the name of what millions of people were murdered.

— Moshik Temkin (@moshik_temkin) April 5, 2022

Ascribing the complexity of WWII to “empire” is a way of getting out of thinking and really understanding what happened and why. It’s like when explaining why someone did something and saying, “Well, they’re just bad.” It doesn’t tell you anything at all.