Overview of Course

This course will attempt to tell the troubling story of how this violent conflict upended the mid-20th century world and how it is still affecting us today more than three-quarters of a century later. The course will examine antecedents in World War I and the interwar years, including the emergence of communism in the Soviet Union, fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany and militarism in Japan. While concentrating on the major events of the war in Europe, this course will make special reference to the war’s impact on countries we will visit such as Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Spain and Portugal. This course will conclude with an evaluation of how the war continued to profoundly affect the late 20th and early 21st century world, including major Cold War conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, and the 2022 war in Ukraine.