Europe in the twentieth century proved to be not the natural homeland of freedom and democracy, but rather a nightmarish laboratory of social and political experimentation. There, it has repeatedly dismantled and redefined itself through war, revolution, economic, and ideological competition.

Fascism and communism thus emerged as alternative solutions to democracy and attracted intellectuals and masses due to the dynamic ways in which they addressed the challenges of the modern world.

By 1940, most Europeans had become disillusioned with 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 supremacy of capitalism over communism ensured its triumph in 1989.

Spanning the continent from west to east, from Western Europe to Russia and the Balkans (and indeed with unusually dense references to Greece), Mazower illustrates its involvement in a seesaw struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambitions and national self-determination, a charged past and the uncertain future of a European Union in constant evolution.