Hello, welcome to the history hit World Wars Podcast, a podcast dedicated to that turbulent period in history between 1914 and 1945.

I'm James Rogers and in this episode I talked to Thomas Botelia who provides us with a

whole new way of thinking about the Second World War. You think it started in

1939 well Thomas argues that maybe it didn't. Instead we should move out from our

Europeanization of this historiography and instead look at what was happening in

China with the Japanese invasion there or in Ethiopia with the Italian invasion there in the 1930s

and start to think about how that chipped away the international norms that paved the way for Hitler's aggression.

This is putting the world back into the World Wars. How are you doing?

I'm doing fine, how are you?

Yeah, good thanks. It's getting a bit darker and atmospheric here, but it's ideal for talking about the history of the world wars.

And with that in mind, let's dive straight into your research, because I'm fascinated by your approach to the Second World War.

It's not controversial to say that when we think of World War II, we have this standard view

that it was Hitler's expansionist ambitions that mixed with European appeasement to spark the war and then after this falling in line we have Italy and then of course Japan show their true colors at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

It's a common historiography. But in your work you counterintuitively argue that it might be the other way round. What do you mean by this?

Well like you said we have this very peculiar image of the Second World War so we see the war as a sort of last desperate attempt to save the world

from these aggressors. The primary one being Hitler and the Nazi Germany and he's sort of the trailblazer for the Japanese and the Italians.

And the allies in this story are a sort of passive group. They react and they react to the

events and the pace set by the axis. But a more correct image would be the reverse. Actually, the desperate ones were the axis.

They made a sort of last bid attempt to save their hides, their political projects in the face of overwhelming strength from the allies.

And when I say overwhelming strength, I'm thinking particularly of the rearmament policies that have been adopted. What I'm resisting is this idea that the democracies, the allies were always running after the facts. In fact I would say they were prepared or

preparing for war from much earlier than we think. So this image of

appeasement and meeting the dictators in the middle also needs adjusting.

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