The document discusses the history of Europe in the early 20th century. It describes how nationalism rose in the late 1800s and fueled the creation of European empires. World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and devastated Europe. After the war, the Treaty of Versailles imposed harsh terms on Germany. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in the 1930s and initiated World War II by invading Poland in 1939. The postwar period saw Europe divided between the capitalist West allied with the US and NATO, and the communist East allied with the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Warsaw Pact.