Europe between Democracy and Dictatorship: 1900 - 1945

In Europe between Democracy and Dictatorship, Conan Fischer offers a captivating analysis of Europe’s turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century. After many largely peaceful years in which Europe enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, the continent was plunged into two world wars in quick succession and a traumatic series of national revolutionary upheavals. It was a time of repeated economic crisis and even fundamental famine; an era seemingly defined by Bolshevism, Fascism and Nazism, and stained by the mass murder of continental Europe’s Jews.

Fischer traces and evaluates the history of these great events in concise and accessible chapters. He reviews key debates and theories and provides readers with a systematic introduction to the wider literature. He also argues that parallel to Europe’s desolate record of upheaval and war, more benign developments were creating the unmistakable and essentially positive foundations of contemporary European life, whether in terms of everyday experience or in the first steps along the road to today’s European Union.