economies, societies, and cultures. The demands of total war required the centralization of power and the regimentation of the lives of citizens. During the war, governments sought to control information and used propaganda to create stronger emotional ties to the nation and its war effort. Ironically, these measures also produced distrust of traditional authorities. At the end of the war, four empires dissolved—the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires—but the democratic nations that arose in their place lacked a tradition of democratic politics and suffered from weak economies and ethnic tensions. Even before the end of the war, Russia experienced a revolution and civil war that created not only a new state, the USSR, but also a new conception of government and socioeconomic order based on communist ideals.
In Italy and Germany, charismatic leaders led fascist movements to power, seizing control of the post–World War I governments. Fascism promised to solve economic problems through state direction, although not ownership, of production. The movements also promised to counteract the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles by rearming the military and by territorial expansion. The e orts of fascist governments to revise the Treaty of Versailles led to the most violent and destructive war in human history (World War II)—a con ict between democracies, temporarily allied with communist Russia, and fascist states. At the end of this con ict, fascist forces had been defeated, Europe was devastated, and the international diplomatic situation developed into a con ict between the capitalistic democracies and the centrally directed communist states.
In the post–World War II period, states in both Eastern and Western Europe increased their involvement in citizens’ economic lives. In the West this came through social welfare programs and the expansion of education, while Eastern European nations were heavily regulated in planned economies directed by the Soviet Union.
With the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the Western European democracies celebrated the triumph of their political and economic systems, and many of the former communist states sought admission into the European Union and NATO. By the late 1990s, it became evident that the transition from communism to capitalism and democracy was not as simple as it rst appeared to be, with Western Europe experiencing difficulties because of economic recession and the extension of social welfare programs.