10.7Meanwhile, elsewhere (1929–1945)

The Depression was global, and its misery helped fascism and militarism rise in Germany, Italy, and Japan, as desperate peoples turned to authoritarian leaders promising order and glory. The result was World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history, which killed an estimated 60 million or more people worldwide.

At its center lay the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of six million Jews and millions of others. The war shattered the old European order, exhausted Britain and France, and left two superpowers standing: the United States and the Soviet Union. Their wartime alliance, always uneasy, would swiftly give way to a new global rivalry—the Cold War.