Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century From Europe&rsquo

Twentieth-century Europe was the playing field for two world wars and the front line for the Cold War, but most of the trigger points were on the continent's periphery, the Balkans and the eastern lands from the Black Sea through the Baltic. Dan Diner, a historian at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, explores how East impacted West in Cataclysms, an interesting study that rambles beyond its stated theme in a concise, nuanced re-evaluation of many events, from the Bolshevik Revolution through the fall of the Berlin Wall. His most cogent point? Most of Europe's regimes acted out of self-interest, whatever their stated ideology. Only the Nazis followed their irrational belief system to its logical extreme regardless of all consequences in the Holocaust, a costly project that diverted resources from war against foreign enemies and probably contributed to Germany's defeat.