World Wars and Cold War
See also: Twentieth centuryThe "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 book borrower of real stature whom we envisage here proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures and by the deaf ear which he turns to all reminders from the everyday world of legality as by his failure to read these books.”
—Walter Benjamin (18921940)
“America is addicted to wars of distraction.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“O land of manure and mist, of dirty, cold rain.”
—Petrus Augustus De Genestet (18291861)
“Peace to the shacks! War on the palaces!”
—Georg Büchner (18131837)