Intro to Part Six and Chapter 21

During the 20th century, it carried on from the past and developed distinctive characteristics. Whether it was a combination of the old and new merits the designation of a separate era in world history will be debated for a long time to come. When I was reading, what really caught my eye was when it talked about WWII and it discussed Hitler's attempted extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust and the United States' dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities which marked something new in the history of human conflict. I found this interesting because both events are so tragic that they have become famous in history and had an impact on human conflict. Another phenomenon that occurred is the communism which is a blending of the new and the old. The great revolutions of the 20th centuries derived from long-standing conflicts in Russian and Chinese societies. These events shape the future and tell stories of the past.In chapter 21, the last veterans of World War I are dying. There was disappointment that it wasn’t the “war to end all wars," but now the major European states have ended centuries of hostility. The “Great War” (World War I) of 1914–1918 launched a new phase of world history. It was “a European civil war with a global reach” and between 1914 and the end of WWII, Western Europe largely self-destructed. The modernization and Europe’s rise to global ascendancy had sharpened traditional rivalries between European states this is when both Italy and Germany. By around 1900, the balance of power in Europe was shaped by two rival alliances: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, Italy) and the Triple Entente (Russia, France, Britain). These alliances turned a minor incident into WWI.