Europe in the twentieth century proved to be not the natural homeland of freedom and democracy but a nightmarish laboratory of social and political experimentation. There, it settled and reshaped itself many times through war, revolution, economic and ideological competition. Fascism and communism emerged as alternative solutions to democracy and attracted intellectuals and masses thanks to the dynamic ways in which they faced the challenges of the modern world. By 1940, most Europeans had been disappointed by democratic governance, and the future of Europe was in Hitler's hands. Only the defeat of the Nazi New Order gave democracy a second chance, and only the superiority of capitalism over communism secured its triumph in 1989. Spanning the continent from Western Europe to Russia and the Balkans (with unusually dense references to Greece), Mazower shows its involvement in a precarious struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambitions and national self-determination, the charged past and the uncertain future of a continuously evolving European Union.