History of Europe - World Wars and Cold War

World Wars and Cold War

See also: Twentieth century

The "short twentieth century", from 1914 to 1991, sees the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War, including the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and of the Soviet Union. These disastrous events spell the end of the European Colonial empires and initiated widespread decolonisation. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 to 1991 leaves the United States as the world's single superpower and triggers the fall of the Iron Curtain, the reunification of Germany and an accelerated process of a European integration that is ongoing.

Read more about this topic:  History Of Europe

Famous quotes containing the words world, wars, cold and/or war:

    “The most conservative man in the world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.”
    —Ernest Bevin (1881–1951)

    “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”
    —Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

    “Laid out for death, let thy last kindness be
    With leaves and moss-work for to cover me:
    And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter,
    Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister!
    For epitaph, in foliage, next write this:
    Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is.”
    —Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

    “It is a war against the pines, the only real Aroostook or Penobscot war.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)