The book’s premise is that a 100 Years War started in 1914 and rages ever onward to the present day. The war began as a European Civil War that eventually engaged Japan and the United States. It then evolved into a continuous World War with no end in sight. It is a new sort of war where the primary targets are civilian non-combatants. Their deaths, the elderly, women and children mostly, far outstrip military ones. Every nation is now involved: either at war with a foreign foe, or in hostilities against their own people. In many cases, both.
The war began with soldiers in cloth caps using tactics from the Napoleonic Age. Four years later they had modern steel helmets, submachine guns and flamethrowers. Conditions like total war, weapons of mass destruction, regime change, and ethnic cleansing were introduced and practiced. After a twenty year pause for rearmament, the war began again, and was worse than ever. On the day it ended, the Vietnam War began.
One of the legends to emerge was that only the United States had the technical wizardry to produce The Bomb. The evidence indicates that Germany and possibly Japan produced nuclear weapons called atom-splitting bombs. Germany had a fleet of Amerika Bombers in Norway ready to hit New York when the war ended.
The plot is a narrative told as a record of human greed, wrath, genius, stupidity and lust for power. Testimony is extremely complicated; compounded by institutionalized lies and deception. Many times, baffled by ignorance and pride, events overcame the best people with the finest intentions. Eventually though, in a world hardened by war, the worst sort of people necessarily rose to the top. They stayed there.
The book’s final argument is that in the prolonged trauma of perpetual war, Americans and Europeans lost their will to prosper and survive. Their civilization has run its course and its people, purposeless and despised, will soon disappear from history; like so many before them.