The Senior History Society was privileged to host Professor Richard Overy, a former Cambridge and KCL academic, currently teaching at the University of Exeter, who came to Oundle to deliver a talk on his current project, the history of WWII.
Professor Overy thought the often used ‘good versus evil’ approach was far too simplistic, and made it clear that his own book would not be directed by such moral guidelines. He explained how he was concerned with three areas in particular: time, space and definition.
The first area, time, was all about breaking the concept that WWII started in 1939 and ended in 1945. Professor Overy’s approach is at odds with this notion ; he believes a complete history of the war would need to start earlier and end later. He used the situation in Asia to illustrate this, suggesting that war there had begun in the early 1930s with the Manchuria crisis and would only end with the Korean War. He felt the same could be said of Europe when looking at the 1930s and the Cold War conflict.
The second focus, space, was primarily to do with the geographical spread of the war and its three dimensions on air, sea and land. Professor Overy was keen to point out that WWII was not just a European conflict but a global one. Historians have often concentrated on the war from their own country's point of view, and in his opinion, this was not good history.
The third and final area, definition, was about the many different kinds of war which combined to create what Churchill first defined as ‘WWII’. War between states was the obvious first one mentioned, then came civil wars, including the Ukraine, China, Greece and Italy amongst others, civilian wars (the fight of civil defences against bombing), wars of resistance and the war against the Jews. Overy feels the need to make these distinctions because state wars were often separate to civil conflicts, Italy being a good example. He seeks to understand the different motives of the different groups. For instance, the Jewish Brigade, which was formed as a section of the British army in 1944 and sent to Italy to fight the Germans, he argues, was motivated by the idea of a free Israel.
He concluded by saying that the war should be seen through the prism of ending empires, and explained his belief that the duty of a historian is to detach himself from what he is writing.
I look forward to reading his new book when it is published.
Alexandre Verge (G)