The Second World War transformed Europe with unprecedented speed and violence. This course follows the arc of that seismic conflict, from the rapid German Blitzkrieg that upended the continent to the final destruction of the Third Reich in 1945. Emphasis is placed on the major military campaigns, the ideological engines that drove total war, and the diverse human experiences that unfolded on battlefields, in occupied cities, within resistance networks, and across sites of mass atrocity. Engaging primary sources, maps, films, and recent scholarship illuminate the conflict's turning points, the machinery of terror that underpinned Nazi rule, and the enormous challenges of reconstruction after Europe lay in ruins. The course offers a fast-paced introduction to World War II's European theater and the ways it reshaped the modern world.