Richard Overy

American air raids on Japan’s capital burned the city in March 1945, killing 80,000 people in one night alone. ‘Had to be done,’ said the general who ordered it. 

Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard Evans asks what manner of men made themselves the Führer’s ‘paladins’.

The West’s confused approach to Germany after Hitler’s death damaged its relationship with the Soviet Union.

The indiscriminate use of ‘Nazi’ to describe anything to do with German institutions and policies during Hitler’s dictatorship creates a false historical understanding, says Richard Overy.

Richard Overy looks behind the myth of a vulnerable island defended by a small band of fighter pilots to give due credit to the courage of the redoubtable civilian population.

Richard Overy examines recent analyses of how Europe became embroiled in major conflict just two decades after the trauma of the Great War and we look at events and broadcasts commemorating September 1939. 

In the mid-1930s many millions of British people voted overwhelmingly against any return to conflict. But events in Spain changed public opinion and by 1939 it was widely accepted that fascism could only be opposed successfully through military action, writes Richard Overy.

Richard Overy argues that the lesson Hitler Drew from 1914-18 was not that a major war should be avoided, but that Germany should prepare more systematically so that, next time, she would win.

Controversy has raged about Hitler's military and economic preparations for war. Did he intend a world war or a series of short conflicts? Richard Overy argues that Hitler drew the lesson from 1914-18 not that a major war should be avoided but that Germany should prepare more systematically so that, this time, she would win.