From Sarajevo to Potsdam Author:A. J. P. Taylor, Geoffrey Barraclough The two World Wars between Sarajevo and Potsdam were the most devastating in Europe's History, and none has ever been conducted with such solid popular backing on both sides. Yet the author believes that Europeans, and European Civilization, remained almost unaffected by this wild race to destruction. It was a paradoxical period, when nations we... more »re asserting their political independence while national differences were constantly decreasing, when the laissez-faire capitalist nations became concerned with economic planning and the Communists with free enterprise. Mr. Taylor recognizes the growth of the state as a response to the demands on national resources made by the 1914-1918 war, a process which crystallized in the person of Hitler, a distorting mirror held up to European civilization.« less