This  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  “great seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century marked the end of an initial era of globalization and the beginning of a 30-year period of misery and barbarism. Importantly for us, in hindsight, this tragedy was by no means inevitable.
Recent work by historians reconfirms the view that European leaders at the time would have had better alternatives, but they made the wrong choices. It took decades to overcome the division of post-war Europe, and in many aspects this process is still under way.