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Road to World War 2: 1938 (Patreon)

Published:
2026-02-14 15:46:59
Edited:
2026-07-29 09:49:41
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:
WW2

Videos

  • 635095563.mp4

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Content

Dear Patron,

I am very pleased to share the exclusive Patreon premiere of Road to WW2: 1938 - only very slightly delayed!

1938 was a year that saw full scale war in Spain and China (how many in the west would name Wuhan as one of the major battles of the 20th century?), and a series of major war scares in Europe - first the German annexation of Austria, shortly followed by the Czechoslovakia crisis. It's been an interesting challenge to summarise such enormous topics in this fast-moving format, and Richard Overy has been a very helpful and reassuring guide throughout.

Thanks as ever for supporting the channel. I hope you enjoy the video, and we will be back with more updates soon.

Toby

Files

Comments

Emile Hanberg

Getting ever closer to September 1939...

Marco Carbajal Vargas

Awsome job! I’ve been a fan for years and im pleased to be supporting this channel! Thank you for so much, I look forward for your next videos im sure will be extraordinary!

CMCD🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪

That was absolutely brilliant. Very well done. Now I'm really in the edge of my seat for the next parts to come. Love it

Robert Sawers

Great job on the most important War in History! 👍👍📚📚

Line_of_Blood

1:30 wait, wasn’t it Field Marshall Walther von Brauchitsch that became Commander-in-Chief in 1938? If I remember correctly, Hitler became commander-in-chief after failure of Operation Typhoon to capture Moscow in December 1941.

EpicHistoryTV

The commander-in-chief of the armed forces (Wehrmacht) and of the army (Heer) were two separate roles - the latter is the role Hitler took over from Brauchitsch in 1941. Because he was, after all, a military genius..

Line_of_Blood

I think Hitler’s title was Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht (Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces). That’s why when I heard commander-in-chief in the video I thought of the army

Timothy Fisher

I do think the Battle of the Ebro should be given a marker with name & date, since you showed the casualty numbers

TankerBricks

Excellent episode for sure. 1939 will be the year it erupts in Europe..... Hopefully each episode will be better and better!

HanzChen

Always real nice to see Japan and China. China is overlooked in WW2 and their role by keeping the Japanese bogged down played a huge part.

Stuart Carver

Hate to say it, but it’s hard not to draw comparisons with Hitler’s assertions of the treatment of Sudeten Germans, vs Putin’s ones of Russians in the Donbas.

ASAP Meech

Great video! Eagerly waiting for 1939 now … any idea when it might be released?

Marek Václavík

Thank you for another amazing video, it was very much worth the wait. As a Czech, it is particularly painful for me to watch this episode, coming from a part of the nation that was in the Sudetenland.

HyperSonicX

You can feel the tension escalate through these last two videos, it's incredible stuff. Also love the Lake Khasan mention, it's a small-scale battle compared to its contemporaries, but one I am deeply fascinated by.

mcmaha1

Very much worth the wait, great as always! The sense of tension and uncertainty was really palpable in this episode. The colour footage also makes everything vivid, can't wait for the next episode ^^

EpicHistoryTV

Not yet, but there will be a little pause while we complete Verdun..

EpicHistoryTV

Not to mention the idea of Czechoslovakia being a 'fake nation'.

EpicHistoryTV

Fair point - we'll add one for the YT release..

Tim Murphy

You videos are always engaging and interesting. You always leave me wanting more. Well done and thank you.

Eli Khanam

And also Hitler removing the heads of the armed forces through scandals so he can take direct control, just like what Xi Jinping did recently. History certainly rhymes.

Eli Khanam

"The idea that safety can be purchased by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion. You cannot reason with a tiger, when your head is in its mouth!" - Winston Churchill

Stuart Carver

Preciously! The irony is it’s actions like these that do more to forge a sense of national identity that anything else could!

MrAH2010

Excellent video, the soundtrack and pacing really makes this feel like a countdown. Despite the fact the war has already been raging in Asia and we all know what's coming. The power of the year 1939 still is entrenched in the story.

TankerBricks

As a side note - the Battle for Teruel was launched in the waning days of December 1937, and conducted in January 1938 in bitter conditions for both sides.

300 sc

Great video! I wonder if we have a date for the youtube upload? :D

EpicHistoryTV

Not yet, we're going to hold this one back for a few weeks.

MitchyCool

There was an additional reason for why Hitler made these moves so early on, on top of this belief of infallibility of himself and perceived Western weakness. Though the economy was improving, the crisis was by no means solved, and Hitler’s rearmament was expensive and had to be funded through “Mefo notes” which were essentially “secret loans” which created a “secret debt”, and by 1938 these were coming due, and Hitler’s plan to pay for it was Anchluss and invading Czechoslovakia. The invasion of Czechoslovakia was especially essential to this end as it would provide an immediate influx of factories, raw materials, gold and foreign exchange reserves.

300 sc

ok, thx!

Thomas Venables

Interesting point. What about the invasion of Poland?

300 sc

13:19, "Nationalists defensive"?

EpicHistoryTV

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Mefo bills were actually repaid from the gains made in Austria and Czechoslovakia? My understanding is the bills that came due in 1938 were paid through further borrowing - helping to create a unstable German economy by 1939. There was certainly a lot of opportunism around Hitler's annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia, but I do think the overriding motivations are to be found in the Four Year Plan and Hossbach Memorandum. Interestingly, one personal factor that probably helped speed up Hitler's schedule was his own 50th birthday in April 1939 - and a sense time was running out if he was to lead Germany to its 'destiny'.

MitchyCool

Likely not as much of a reason then.

TankerBricks

I think the MEFO bills, were at least partially satisfied by Austrian and Czech Gold and money, but by '39 it was clear that Germany would be bankrupt and hence Hitler was intent on war with Poland, even if a solution could of been found- I was doing research and I found that because Poland occupied Zaolzie Britain and France were like, actually is it worth getting involved over Poland over Danzig?

Mohammed Alsaadoon

It's actually quite common casus belli tbh Saddam Hussein's plea to free the Ahwaz Arabs vs Khomeini's plea to free the Shia of Iraq. The Greek attempts to incorporate the Ionian Greeks during the Greco-Turkish Wars of 1919-1922, the various Balkan conflicts and that's just off the top of my head.

Mohammed Alsaadoon

Chiang Kai Shek was kind of an idiot. Don't know how he got to his position and held it through all the blunders.

Alec Donners

So how many episodes will happen for WW2?

EpicHistoryTV

Not sure yet. We will try to do one episode for reach remaining year of the war..

Julian Gilyadov

This is one of my favorite series so far. Let's make it the defining documentary for the greatest conflict in human history.

Steps TV

As a viewer and in my opinion this format is too low resolution. I myself come from the high resolution Napoleon series with in depth battle reports with Individual troop movement. A broad political description is something I have seen countless times in documentaries. I would much rather see Individual battle reports with high detail on Individual decisions and stories you dont get to hear in every ww2 movie or documentary. USP of Epic History has always been battle reports and stories that are lesser known.

EpicHistoryTV

Thanks for the feedback. The aim of this series has always to provide a very high-level summary of the global war, exactly as we did for WW1. We may return to cover specific campaigns in much greater detail, but that's a different kind of project.

ANS Gaming

Excellent quality as always! I have decided to go from YouTube to here, on the sole purpose of supporting the most unbiased, interesting and well defined historian out there.

EpicHistoryTV

Not for a few weeks yet. We will wait until 1939 is finished, then release 1938 on YouTube.

jur

Thanks for doing these videos. I have been waiting for you guys to cover WWII. No one does historical videos better than your team. When will the next video be released? I joined Patreon hoping there would be more.

EpicHistoryTV

We're working on it! It's 2-3 weeks away, but you'll see it here weeks before it's released on YouTube.