ABSTRACT
During the twentieth century, more than in any previous century, Europez has been the theatre of enormous social, economic, cultural and political experimentation. In 1920, on the ruins of four empires, the old continent counted twenty-four competitive democracies, from Lisbon to Warsaw. Between 1922 and 1939, fifteen of these democracies collapsed, and four others were suppressed in 1940 by military occupation. In 1944 Europe was a cemetery of nineteen democracies and a devastated continent.
