ABSTRACT

World War II began more than half a century ago. No one at that time could imagine the changes that have since overtaken the global system. Adolf Hitler deliberately launched his war to create the Thousand Year Reich in conjunction with fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and in short-term alliance with Stalin's Russia. Both Hilter and the Japanese achieved unlooked-for short-term success, but the fuhrer died in his Berlin bunker in 1945, with Germany in ruins around him, while the Japanese empire collapsed in the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These losses meant that the battered Soviet Union became dominant in the heart of the Eurasian continent, while the undamaged United States, with its economy intact and its prestige enormous, dominated much of the rim lands of the Eurasian continent. Between the two giants lay vast areas of destruction and chaos. Ruined Western European countries clung to their imperial holdings as one of their few assets in a world their people hoped might be a better one. One thing was certain, though hard to assimilate: Europe was no longer the center of the world political system it had dominated for three centuries.