Germany, the Inter-war European Crisis and the Spanish Civil War

The inter-war European crisis changed significantly the role and place of Europe in the world. Although National Socialism massively accelerated this crisis, pushing it to the extreme until it destroyed the idea of Europe and the continent’s preponderance, it must be highlighted that the crisis emerged before the rise and the impetuous development of National Socialism. The First World War left in its wake a world in shatters that ended up becoming the «original catastrophe» of the «age of extremes», in the words of Hobsbawm. The Great War marked the beginning of the end of Europe’s global hegemony. The post-war order was characterized by a basic political power shift and a constant destructive instability, which were the distinctive features of the twenties and thirties. Germany’s radical revisionism was only possible since the order emerged in the Peace of Versailles lacked legitimacy; as a consequence of that the Third Reich managed to drag all Europe into the Second World War.