Conflict like no other, it has come to define the very idea of war itself. Great power rivalry prepared the ground, yet so did bitter ethnic disputes following the collapse of four empires, as did the ideological clash between Fascism and Communism. More than any other, the Second World War was dominated, in the age of totalitarianism, by leaders who determined the course of events in a way we have not seen since then - and thought we would never see again.
