Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes – The Golden Age, the Fall of Communism, and the Crisis of Social Democracy

**In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we return to Eric Hobsbawm's magisterial overview of the 20th century, *Age of Extremes*, to explore the paradoxes that shaped our world – and the crisis that defines our present.**

Hobsbawm argued that the "short twentieth century" – from 1914 to 1991 – was defined by the confrontation between capitalism and communism. But the relationship between these two systems was stranger than simple opposition. The victory over Hitler's Germany was essentially won, and could only have been won, by the Red Army. Without the Soviet Union, the Western world would...