This digital anthology is the public facing, student authored weblog of a modern European history course which is being taught by Dr. Brian J Griffith at University of California, Los Angeles during the Spring 2021 quarter (March 29-June 11, 2021). The course, which shares the same name as this Open Access volume, explores the various political, economic, social, and cultural upheavals which took place in Europe between the two world wars, and asks its participants to consider the various parallels between developments during the 1920s and 1930s and today’s international community.
In addition to publishing our historical analyses, we will be gradually developing an interactive Interwar Map, which will tell a spatio-temporal story of the principal events and developments that, taken collectively, undermined democracy and peace and paved Europe’s path towards dictatorship, conflict, and genocide during the Second World War.
Since we are writing for a broader, general audience, we invite our readers to interact with the volume’s weekly content by sharing its chapters and interactive resources via their social media accounts and publishing their commentary on each of our sub-chapters. In partnering with our readership in these ways, we hope both to build a bridge between Academia and members of the general public and, perhaps most importantly, stimulate a broader, more meaningful engagement with these increasingly important, and contemporary, topics and themes.