"The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with ... Ian Kershaw's long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II. The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history-- an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation. This new volume in the ... series offers comprehensive coverage of this tumultuous era. Beginning with the outbreak of World War I through the rise of Hitler and the aftermath of the Second World War, [the author] profiles the key decision makers and the violent shocks of war as they affected the entire European continent and radically altered the course of European history. Kershaw identifies four major causes for this catastrophe: an explosion of ethnic-racist nationalism, bitter and irreconcilable demands for territorial revisionism, acute class conflict given concrete focus through the Bolshevik Revolution, and a protracted crisis of capitalism. [This book] offers [a] study of a period in European history whose effects are still being felt today"--Amazon.com.