Strayer, Introduction to Part Six and Chapter 21

The twentieth-century histories of the western world, the communist world, and the third world not only paralleled one another but also frequently interested and overlapped.  Perhaps there is enough that is new about the twentieth century to treat it, tentatively, as a distinct era in human history, but only what happens next will determine how this most recent century will be understood by later generations. The collapse of the world, the World War.  Europe had assumed an increasingly prominent position on the global stage, driven its growing military capacity and the marvels of its Scientific and Industrial revolutions.  The outbreak of the war was an accident, in that none of the major states planned or predicted the archduke's assassination or deliberately sought a prolonged conflict.  The collapse of the German, Russian, and Austrian empire emerged a new map of Central Europe.  Then came the Nazi's and Hilters rule.  Then started the World War II.  The tragedies that afflicted in the first of the twentieth century-fratricidal war, economic collapse, the Holocaust-were wholly self-inflicted, and yet despite the sorry and desperate state of the heartland, Europe.