Professor Richard Overy (5:43)

God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Dan Snow (5:58)

Richard, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.

Professor Richard Overy (6:00)

Oh, my pleasure.

Dan Snow (6:01)

How far Back British. Does organized violence go? Where do you come down on the whole innate nature of human beings?

Professor Richard Overy (6:09)

Well, this is, of course, a huge debate. Many historians and social scientists argue that we're only talking about war if you talk about the modern state, you know, from four or 5,000 years ago, because states can organize war, can pay for it, can mobilize soldiers and so on. But there are plenty of anthropologists, archaeologists, and others who say that violence must have started much, much longer before. It seems implausible that human communities of hunter foragers from 100,000 years ago didn't find at certain points a need for collective violence to protect their food supplies, to keep away other predatory communities, and so on. The archaeological evidence, of course, is rather slender for this. But if you look at the way in which, you know, we've recorded the violence of hunter gatherer communities in the last 200 years, where some form of warfare is. Is often endemic, I think we can, without too much difficulty, project that back to an earlier age where people fight about the same sort of thing. Resources, vengeance, accusations of sorcery or witchcraft and so on. I'm really with the school that takes violence a long way back.

Dan Snow (7:28)

It seems to me when human beings get together, differences arise, and violence is one of the tools that we have to resolve those differences.

Professor Richard Overy (7:38)

It certainly is, yeah. I mean, evolutionary psychologies argue, in fact, that this is one of the things that gradually developed with human communities, that being aggressive, either in defense or in attack, became something that was normative, something that people psychologically adjusted to. So it became part of our toolkit, if you like, for survival. And that's something which is deeply rooted in human evolution, and we can still see it manifested today. Look at a playground. Look at kids fighting each other in the playground. It's not the same, of course, but, no, evolution psychologists argue that we need to see where all this comes from, and it probably comes from very early roots.

Dan Snow (8:21)

You do buy into this. The idea, then, that it was the successful groups of our hominid ancestors who were able to work together to organize effective group violence, and therefore it's become encoded into our DNA.

Professor Richard Overy (8:35)

Oh, well, whether it's encoded in our DNA, I think, is perhaps another rather complicated question. But yes, successful groups, yes, prospered. And biologists, evolution biologists argue now that human groups probably manifested what other animal groups do, which is a thing called inclusive fitness, which essentially means that you try and spread your genes and you protect your kin. And groups that are better at spreading their genes are capturing women, in fact, from other villages or other communities killing competitors, protecting that particular gene group were more successful and they would expand more. And that was a driving force in early evolution.

Dan Snow (9:16)

That's a little bit of biology for everyone. What about the psychology? Cause I was very interested in this in your book, and this is, you know, Einstein and Freud, you bring in all sorts of fascinating characters in the 20th century war as a psychological phenomenon. Did you buy into Freud's conclusion that humans do have a. Well, a sort of death drive?

Professor Richard Overy (9:36)

Well, I don't buy into that. And instead, I think rather than the death drive that evolution of, psychologists now argue that we have, you know, various psychological modules in the brain which help us to survive and navigate as animals. And that one of the modules, or perhaps a combination of them, is the capacity for collective violence when it's needed, whether it's in defense or whether it's, you know, it's in attack. And I think that's a pretty persuasive argument. Psychoanalysts, on the other hand, argued from the 1930s onwards that it was all connected with the early development of the infant and so on, that, you know, warfare can be found in the nursery and that, you know, when you reach adult age, you normally suppress this, but it doesn't take long to release it. That is really, of course, what Freud was talking about. Underneath, you know, we carry this death drive, as he calls it, this urge of destruction. And that's what lies at the root of war. I don't think any psychologist really would accept that today.

Dan Snow (10:40)

What I'm very struck by is defining war is really interesting here because there is evidence of sort of blunt force trauma on ancient skeletons, violent death. Tell me about the archaeology. What do you think the archaeology is letting us know about organised violence?

Professor Richard Overy (10:58)

Well, it's a very interesting point because for a long time in 2017, archaeologists were not much interested in war. It's not what they wanted to find. But in the last 40 or 50 years, there's been a huge increase in interest in manifestations of collective violence and the archaeological evidence necessary to support it. I suppose the real difference is between, I mean, famously John Keegan, for example, who argued that there was a threshold and only in the zero state did you reach that threshold where you could organize a thing called war. Whereas the archaeological evidence shows that something we can call warfare, collective violence, one group against another, often savage violence, and we have plenty of evidence of how savage it could be, goes back much, much further. I mean, have, you know, pretty clear evidence in the last 10,000 years before states, well, before states were formed. And I think some of the psychological evidence is pretty compelling, but the most compelling one is osteoarchaeology, the damage to the skeleton. And I spent quite a lot of time reading the Journal of Osteoarchaeology, which I never expected to do. And, you know, there are. There's photograph after photograph of projectiles embedded in spinal columns and heads bashed in with axes. And I think that, you know, to just say this is fighting, you know, not war is, I think, very misleading because it's clearly a continuum we're talking about from these early manifestations of violence through tribal violence, onto the Proteo state.

Dan Snow (12:33)

And finally to the state I've always been fascinated by. The archaeology of the. Is that the Tollens Valley battlefield in what is now northeast Germany from sort of three and a half thousand years ago, a vast Bronze Age battle took place. And we know so little about the protagonist, but it is just a fascinating and in some ways a tragic example of big organized violence stretching way back in our history.

Professor Richard Overy (12:57)

Yeah, I mean, the frustrating thing, of course, is that the overwhelming bulk of evidence of narcology has been destroyed. Weapons of anything except stone and later on, of course, metal have disappeared. Most skeletons have simply disappeared too. We rely on a very thin range of evidence, but by the time we get to 2 or 3,000 years ago, we'll see evidence is plentiful. But yes, occasionally we see massacres, for example, where there are dislodged bodies and so on. Crania bashed in from five, six, seven thousand years ago. And I think it's very difficult to simply say, well, yes, that's a massacre, but is that actually war? To me, these are forms of greater violence which provide the roots of our understanding of our modern war.

Dan Snow (13:52)

There are examples, aren't there? On the cusp of anthropology, archaeology and history, there are examples of cultures that seem less violent. I'm very struck by the prevalence of violence in these completely distinct civilizations and cultures all around the world that seem to. Even when they evolved within isolated geographical boundaries, you still see the prevalence of violence. But on the other hand, there are some cultures who seem to have kicked the habit.

Professor Richard Overy (14:20)

Well, I think there are rather few, actually, anthropologists in the 20th century. Margaret Mead was a famous one. Paul Ruth Benedict, two of the great anthropologists of mid century were very concerned to find peoples that were not violent. And they thought it had to be possible to show that violence was not something general. But the examples they chose were very soon shown by other archaeologists to be, in fact, extremely violent. Not very long ago. It's just they become more peaceful because, of course, they were under the control of the state and, you know, the tribal violence they practiced could no longer be effectively carried out. Yes, of course, there are also tribal societies which are manifesting less violent. I think we shouldn't assume that human communities 10,000, 20,000 years all behave the same. They obviously didn't all behave the same. But what's striking, I think, is that there are very few cultures where warfare doesn't feature to some extent, and a great many cultures from long ago up to the present where making war is a central feature of those societies and a central feature of cultures that endorse it.

Dan Snow (15:28)

So let's look at the four drivers that you identify towards conflict. Let's start with resources. And you've got examples. Well, from literally the earliest times right up to the presence of why resource drives us to walk. Can you tell me a bit about that?

Professor Richard Overy (15:44)

Yeah, well, I think this is a fairly obvious thing, but it's worth stressing that research resources, additional resources long ago because of population pressure, or because of the deadline of the hunting stocks and so on, or just simply greed because you think that another child has got something you really let you get your hands on. It's manifestly going to be a major driver for warfare. And it's been a major driver for warfare, you know, right the way through the classical age and up to the. Up to the modern day. Example I use in my book, which will not surprise people, of course, is Adolf Hitler, who believed that what Germany needed was living space, more agricultural land, the resources it needed to become a superpower, and that they were going to be found somewhere in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. So resources have remained a driver of war right the way through human history, and I think will remain a driver as key resources dry up in the 21st century. We are seven and a half billion people. Many resources are finite. So I think resource wars are going to be a feature of the 21st century as well.

Dan Snow (17:03)

You listen to Dan Snow's history hit Stick with us. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar, across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast brought to you by Ubisoft and historyhit is a must. Listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast. As a child of the 90s when we were told that history had come to an end and there would be no more wars, we had this utopian belief, I think, that the kind of globalized economy would allow different powers or fantastically rich and powerful individuals to sate their appetite for wealth and power on the market. You don't have to own Siberia in order to exploit its mineral resources or gain a share of the wealth that's created there, because you can do so in a kind of free market, free trading sense. And that now seems with the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine and that more nakedly old fashioned forms of aggression, that it feels like the kind of resource war is sadly here to stay.

Professor Richard Overy (18:48)

Most resources of course today are traded peacefully, as indeed they were in the past. It's when you reach a moment of crisis. We need to remember that China, for example, has enormous resource power in the sense that it has scarce resources available which it trades with, with other states. But you know, one might see in 10, 20, 30, 40 years time, you know, a greater degree of resource selfishness. We can't rule that out. I mean, nobody imagined in the 1930s that Japan and Germany would go to war in order to seize oil supplies because they were short of oil. That's exactly what they did. And in the middle of the 21st century, we're going to be very short of oil. Let's see what happens.

Dan Snow (19:28)

There's a fashion, isn't there? You see optimists who see Russia's struggles in Eastern Ukraine. At the moment, there's a great fashion to say, well of course Japan and Germany, that desire for oil actually end up completely destroying both those two societies. Russia is now in terrible trouble in Eastern Ukraine. And yet the lesson from history is that sadly, I think resource wars can work. I mean, Frederick the Great sees Silesia, one of the richest provinces of his neighbor Maria Theresa. The Austro Hungarian Empire, the Austrian Empire, you'd have to argue strategically for Prussia, that was successful.

Professor Richard Overy (19:59)

Yes, no, indeed. Of course the resource was at work. I mean, look at the Roman Empire, the Roman Republican Empire. It was built on seizing the resources of other peoples, extracting tribute from seizing slaves. And it made the Roman Empire rich and successful. You know, resource wars people calculate and calculated long in the past, I think about what chances they had of getting the resources and keeping them. But that was the object. And almost certainly, you know, Neolithic man too thought about, you know, how can I take control of that flint mine and they took control of it, often violently. So, yes, resource wars can work the bull out. Germany and Japan in the 20th century, of course, is that there was more involved in the war, of course, than just simply resources. And they bit off far more than they could chew in confronting the end the rest of the world. Resource wars in the 21st century, well, will there be one? Or are they now zero sum wars? I think we can't be certain about this. What I think is certain is that resources are finite and at some point it might well prompt renewed round of violence.

Dan Snow (21:15)

What I think is so fascinating about us human beings is that we can build this superstructure of belief on top of a pretty base desire to get hold of resources. So we say to ourselves throughout history, I want that territory, I want the resources it provides. But I've come up with an extraordinarily complicated and rather magical justification for me doing so on top of that. And it strikes me belief is often, well, perhaps a successful resource war, perhaps it sometimes requires belief to motivate you, demotivate enemies, somehow legitimize your conquests.

Professor Richard Overy (21:47)

Well, it could do. But I think many of the wars for belief, certainly the ones I talk about, belief is really autonomous. It is a point where you get intense religious enthusiasm which prompts warfare in defense of the faith. We think of crusades, we think of, well, we think of, of modern jihad in defense of Islam in the face of western secularism. I think the temptation of certainly, I think among social scientists is to see belief as something that's used as a bit of a facade, as you suggested. You know, you justify what you're doing by referring to belief, but actually what you are doing is, you know, you're doing something for social and economic motives and so on. I think that's overplayed. I think that belief can become important for itself and indeed for early societies it certainly was where they animated by a cosmology that we often don't now understand or know about. But it will drive them to fight neighboring communities where there are accusations of sorcery, or a belief that your gods require you to go off and see sacrificial victims as the Aztecs did. So I think to see belief as something connected to other forms of warfare can be misleading. I think in my book I come back to the idea that when people say that they're fighting for religion, they very often are fighting for religion. That's what drives them. And of course it's surrounded by political and social realities as well. But belief can be A major driver in itself.

Dan Snow (23:28)

How should we think about belief? Slightly extend the definition to think about European colonial wars of the 19th and 20th centuries or the ultimate colonial war, the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 with the idea of, in that case, the idea of smashing communism. Judeo Bolshevism, Slavism. Is that something that you find sits alongside belief as a historical cause for war?

Professor Richard Overy (23:54)

I think the colonial argument is an interesting one because of course people assumed in the late 19th century that Europe was civilized and much of the rest of the world wasn't. And they defined what they meant by civilization and they thought they were exporting these ideas to the rest of the world. The powerful belief in so called white man's burden and so on, which justified, in fact, you know, often very cruel wars of colonial expansion. So you can, you can find belief in a variety of rather different contexts. And the Russian example, I mean, we talked about invading the Soviet Union for resources. Well, of course the Soviet Union was also invaded because it was the homo communism and Hitler hated Marxism and wanted to extirpate it. So you get resources and you fulfill your ideological goal. At the same time as you're speaking.

Dan Snow (24:48)

I was reminded of, is it Cecil Rhodes who called British expansion in Africa philanthropy plus 5%. So this sort of civilizing, hugely philanthropic mission to conquer Africa, but you know, taking a nice little return on top of it as well. Let's come on to power, which is very interesting because you define power that has a distinction place within these causes. And so tell me how you came to see power as separate from desiring resource domination?

Professor Richard Overy (25:17)

Well, I don't see them as entirely separate. I think, as I would stress, power is usually power for something. And that can be anything from seizing war territory, extracting tribute, seizing women as sexual beauty booty. There are many ways in which you exercise power in order to achieve something. But what I would argue is that there are plenty of examples in history of individuals. I mean, they're usually kings or emperors. And so. But they needn't be who see power just for its own sake, extending power for its own sake. The Roman Empire or the Roman Republic, in fact, whatever extended power for its own sake, it justified its own civilizing mission in Europe and the Mediterranean in terms of exercising power over other peoples, which would be good for them. The idea of power for its own sake is also a very important way to understand how warfare's developed. I use the example of the great leaders, Alexander the Great and Napoleon, Hitler, who set off in the pursuit of Power by waging endless warfare. Warfare was, you know, the root of air power. And they believed that, you know, war was, you know, essential to underpin it. And these are hubristic individuals who arrogantly think that they can, you know, take their own people and go often wage war, destructive war on a huge scale. I argue, I think that that's in some ways the most dangerous explanation for the cause of war because it's completely unpredictable. Who would have found Napoleon in the 1780s or Hitler in the 1920s capable of waging massive European wide war? Nobody would have remotely guessed it. There may be somebody today in 21st century world who, who has the same ambition and, you know, we have no way of being able to detect who they are.

Dan Snow (27:28)

I've said this on the podcast before, I sound so fascinating. There is a Cromwell and a Bonaparte just living amongst us, just cruising around. And if the great seismic plates of history shift, they're thrust to the fore and we find the whole of Europe at their whim. But this is the bit where I wonder if psychologists can be useful. I sort of radically shift my opinions on this and I was very influenced probably by the Marxist historians who talk about the economic substructure. But looking at Putin, looking at President Xi, it feels like we are all vulnerable to the individual. Xi seems to be taking his decision over Taiwan in a kind of personal discourse or dialogue with emperors past. And in the same way we know that Putin has talked about the people that he's thinking about, the people he's addressing as Catherine the Great and Peter. These wars, correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like they are. They're quite individually driven. Presumably you would say the same about Hitler in 39 and his decision to invade the Soviet Union in 41, and perhaps I think sometime with a kind of dystopian thinking in German high command in 1914 as well. So now that we live in these gigantic hierarchical states, individual psychology probably matters quite a lot in terms of what driving us to go impelling us towards war.

Professor Richard Overy (28:43)

Well, I mean, it's right and power seeking for its own sake is something which I argue is something that, you know, in a certain individuals do rather than, you know, elites or, you know, the broad institutional structure of the state. And we have plenty of examples of that. I think the problem is, is that, you know, for psychologists it would be difficult to find. Well first of all do find the evidence, but secondly, difficult to argue that all these people share the same psychological traits, that if we had them all on a character, they'd all be more or less same, same kind of thing. So they wouldn't. They're shaped by circumstances as well. They're driven by their own sense of ambition. And I think that suggesting that we need to look out for a particular psychological type and lock them up is not going to work. They're ambitious, but they also depend critically on circumstances, the willingness of others to accept what they're doing, and so on. So there are quite complicated psychological themes going on between leaders and led not just speaking of leaders himself or herself. I wish we could reduce it to a clear set of psychological explanations, but I think it's going to be very difficult to do. And people have studied the psychology of Adolf Hitler. For example, during the Second World War, the Americans had psychologists busy doing that, trying to produce a profile. What is this man like? More recent assessments of Hitler have also tried to present him as a narcissistic personality and to discuss what that means psychologically. Again, we're really working in the dark. We don't have these people on the couch in psychiatrist's office. We have to make do with what we see.

Dan Snow (30:29)

And not all narcissists require locking up and removing from society. Just speaking up for a friend There you finish off with this definition of security and you point out that, frankly, most wars have been fought between neighbors in the past. I was reading Carton de Wiatt's book, General Carton de Wiatt, who served all around the world in first and Second World War and before, he just had a brilliant summary of why the Poles and the Czechs had problems after the First World War. He goes, because they're neighbors. And so of course they fought. That was the end of his sort of analysis of that situation. But you'd say there's much in that.

Professor Richard Overy (31:05)

Well, there is. I mean, you know, doing plenty of research by scholars to demonstrate that almost all the wars of the last 300 years have actually been between neighbors. And a very high percentage of them have been arguments over the frontier, territorial arguments, irredentist arguments and so on. And it's, I think, evident throughout recorded history anyway that the frontier is a tinderbox, that, you know, there's always going to be arguments over the frontier. Particular frontiers in the past were not very, very clearly defined. So the Romans didn't have, you know, frontier and, you know, border force. They tried to keep outposts, you know, along the rough idea of their frontier, but it was a porous frontier. And so, you know, you often making war to defend what you saw notionally as your territory. Now we have to find frontiers. But that doesn't stop the arguments over frontiers. The conflict in Kashmir, the conflict between India and China, or between Pakistan and India. Well, the conflict in Northern Ireland, 1960s. Frontiers are place sites of potential violence. And I mean in most cases, of course, time frontiers are secure and defined, people can protect them. But there's no doubt that in a world of nation states, 190 something nation states, people are constantly on guard for their frontier, constantly aware of any threat to their frontier. And I think in the 21st century, one of the problems you might face, of course, is mass migration, huge population growth, growing problems caused by climate change and so on. And in Africa, for example, the threat of mass migrations across frontiers, which will then involve a good degree of violence as states try to suppress the movement of migrants and so on. Frontiers are, as I said, tinderboxes, and they have been throughout history, particularly when.

Dan Snow (33:10)

You find large caches of resources just the wrong side of that frontier, or embattled fellow communities of believers on the wrong side of that frontier. So it all links up, as you've said many times. Did you end this book feeling deeply depressed about the state of our species?

Professor Richard Overy (33:27)

Well, I was depressed before I started.

Dan Snow (33:29)

Okay, good.

Professor Richard Overy (33:30)

I can't say that I'm any less depressed now. I mean, I do think that the human scientists spent the last century exploring all the explanations for the causes of war in increasingly sophisticated ways. I think what really depresses me is not that we don't understand the courses of war, because I think we do understand them much better now than we did. It's that understanding the courses of war doesn't stop war from happening. I mean, you know, we all wish that Putin had sat down with a couple of history books and said to himself, perhaps this isn't a good idea. But he wouldn't. And even if he had, I think you decide on war because of current circumstances. And although we would like to think that it's disappearing, it evidently isn't disappearing, certainly not in the 21st century. So that I think is really what's depressing us, that whatever institutional and ideological checks we have to try and maintain the peace to try and maintain international stability, there's a kind of dynamic in the human condition which means that we reach for war at certain points when we feel that it's advantageous or necessary. And that's not going away.

Dan Snow (34:44)

Well, I was. Okay, okay. Professor Rich Overy. I was going to ask another question, but now I'm too depressed to ask one. Thank you very much. For coming on the podcast, tell everyone what your book is called.

Professor Richard Overy (34:54)

My book's called why War, which was the title of a little pamphlet that Einstein and Freud produced in 1932. Following their conversation about exactly that question, it seemed to me that it's still a pertinent question a century later.

Dan Snow (35:09)

Richard, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Professor Richard Overy (35:11)

Right, thank you, Dan.

Dan Snow (35:18)

Thank you so much to Rich Dovray for coming on the podcast. Given how precarious the situation is in Ukraine, in Congo, in Gaza and elsewhere, this felt like a timely episode to share with you. And we'll be following this line of inquiry into our strange, well, perhaps not so strange, human propensity for war. In a bonus episode for subscribers tomorrow, we're going to be exploring the Nazi mindset with the brilliant historian Lawrence Rees. It's a fascinating one, so make sure you sign up to get that episode tomorrow. And when you sign up, you get all our episodes ad free, as well as all our amazing documentaries, our TV documentaries. Just click on the link in the show notes. See you tomorrow.

Professor Richard Overy (35:57)

Bye Bye.

Dan Snow (36:08)

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