At the 11th hour on the morning of November 11, 1918, the "war to end all wars" ended. The peace that followed would start a new era not only in European affairs but in those of all mankind. The thirty years that followed the Treaty of Versailles would see an increase in war and bloodshed that even the darkest pessimist would find unexpected. It would see a world struggle out of the emptiness of the Great Depression only to find itself once again cast into the fires of world war. It would bring out the best and the worst in men and see the commission of the darkest crimes of history. The world would emerge from the fires of war to find not the peace she hungered for but the netherworld of the Cold War. This is the story of that time.