Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America
             is a product of philosophy.
             Margaret Thatcher (1925 - )
             In the year nineteen hundred, the center of world power inarguably
             resided in Europe. In fact, for many centuries, many European countries
             were the heads of vast empires, spanning the globe (and reaping her
             spoils)â€"for, although spread to the ends of the earth, European nations
             held firm control of their colonial territories (and the wealth they
             acquired through them), and enjoyed an influence over the majority of the
             world's population. World War II changed all of that, and would go on to
             impact the future of the Western world.
             What took the nations of Europe centuries to acquire through war,
             conquest, and treaty, proved to topple exponentially faster than its rise,
             and the close of the Second World War heralded the end of, not only "the
             age of empires," but of the age of European supremacy in the world. In
             fact, by the end of 1990, just forty-five years later, Europe would be
             virtually unrecognizable from its former self.
             Physically, the Second World War had a staggering effect on the
             infrastructure of countless cities. From bombed out buildings, to mined
             fields, to decimated bridges, roads and vital systems, Europe had to
             Socially, the toll of untold human suffering weighed down an entire
             generation with its painâ€"for, unlike the vast number of American war dead,
             the majority of those killed in Europe were civilianâ€"millions of men,
             women, and childrenâ€"lost to the horrors of the holocaust, horrific bombing
             Economically, the impact of the War on Europe was immense. Before the
             War, Europe was one of the richest continents on the earth. Aft
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