As you scroll down the interactive timeline below, the story of modern Europe becomes clear.

Nazi Germany tried to unify Europe through conquest and fascism, turning it into a genocidal racial empire. The Soviet Union locked much of the continent behind its Iron Curtain, keeping its own people prisoners under totalitarian communist rule, controlling its sphere of influence with constant military pressure and the installation and maintenance of satellite regimes. But alongside Soviet domination, another model took root in the West: voluntary integration through democracy, law, trade, and prosperity.

When the Soviet empire collapsed, Europe made its choice. Almost all of Moscow’s former satellites joined or aligned themselves with the European Union because it offered a better future under the rule of law, solidarity between nations, peace built on consent, and prosperity through freedom.

The end of the interactive timeline below shows the last vestiges of despotic influence being pressed to the margin. Each Russian aggression has only accelerated the trend, pushing nations toward Europe rather than deterring them from aligning with it. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the decisive test. Russia must be defeated so that conquest is finally denied a future on the continent.

What will remain is a Europe largely united, democratic, and at peace, with the authoritarian Union State of Russia and Belarus increasingly isolated at the edge.

The twentieth century defeated fascist and communist dictatorship. The twenty-first century is the century of European Union. The task now is to cement freedom through integration by completing the project through the creation of a federal union.