Big Picture Questions

1. What explains the disasters that befell Europe in the first half of the twentieth century?
2. To what extent did the two world wars settle the issues that caused them? What legacies to the future did they leave?
3. In what ways did Europe’s internal conflicts between 1914 and 1945 have global implications?
4. Looking Back: In what ways were the major phenomena of the first half of the twentieth century—world wars, the Great Depression, fascism, the Holocaust, the emergence of the United States as a global power—rooted in earlier times?