a Commensal history of WWII includes the small and the great, the hubristic and the nimble

To render the sprawling activities of WWII palatable to digestion (because even the most devoted of readers have their limits) the tendency of authors is to show the war as seen through the eyes of the Great Powers and the Great Men.

And as seen through the eyes of those wisest of Wise Men, the scientists.

A commensal history of 1939-1945 should also start with a war between a handful of Great Men and Great Powers, because that is the way it all began.

But, to be fully accurate, it should also end in a confused co-mingling of the actions of the decisive small as well as those of the chastened great.

Henry Dawson never changed his mind about the Overdogs, but the World did ...

The idea that Nature favours the ubermenschs and overdogs,  that 'Might is Right' , were pretty well universally accepted, albeit sometimes resignedly, in 1939.

Henry Dawson, drawing much different conclusions from his decade long study of the constantly varying battles of Human-Bacteria Commensality, certainly didn't agree.

He gave at least equal odds to all the untermenschs and the underdogs of our natural slash human world.

Modernity : "Might is Correct"

Modernity's claim that "Might was Right" (and correct) is a significant expansion from the Bible's mere temporary linking together of the two separate entities, the Mighty and the Wise, for the purpose of  warning of hubris.

Mass Extinctions : most of the mighty are crushed while most of the weak survive

The geological record certainly doesn't support the idea that Might is Right and that the mighty and the wise species will inevitably replace the weak and the foolish species : far from it.

Tortoise vs Hare : predicting our world in 1945....

On September 2nd 1939, when the British Empire declared war on the German Empire (thus ensuring we would have another world war), there were two main scientific theories predicting the shape of our world at the war's end.

The far more popular theory at the time was called Modernity, Social Darwinism or simply 'Might is Right'.

 It said Evolution was a vertical affair, with wiser and more mighty entities inevitably and naturally replacing entities that were weaker and more foolish.