The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1700s. New inventions and machinery revolutionized the way people lived and worked. Towns and cities grew, and the countries of western Europe developed strong economies. Industrialization also led to rivalries among countries for control of world markets and resources. In 1914, World War I broke out in Europe and quickly spread to other areas of the world. It was more violent than previous wars because techniques learned during the Industrial Revolution allowed weapons and machines to be mass-produced. World War I's end did not settle many of the problems that had started it, and by 1939 the world was at war again. During World War II, Germany's leader, Adolf Hitler, carried out the Holocaust, the mass murder of over 6 million Jews.
Following World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the world's superpowers. The global competition between the democratic United States and its allies and the Communist Soviet Union and its supporters came to be called the Cold War. By the 1980s, the economies of the Soviet Union and its satellite nations were struggling as the Soviet Union continued to spend more than it could afford on military and space ventures. In 1991, all of the Soviet satellite nations threw off communist rule in favor of democracy and the Soviet Union collapsed. Freed from Russian control, ethnic fighting broke out among various peoples in many of the former Soviet republics.
Europe as a whole is moving toward greater unity today. Many countries are
members of the European Union, and will begin using a common currency—the Euro—in
2002. Europeans are focusing attention on closing the income gap between their
rich and poor nations and on protecting the environment. They are realizing
that international cooperation and increased contact between peoples hold the
key to overcoming the region's most pressing challenges and crises.