Examines the fundamental question of our times: why was the 20th century so violent? It looks at the ideologies that promised utopias and total solutions to social problems and relates the terrible human toll of attempts to realize these ideas.

24 lectures in 2 parts, 30 min. each. Course guidebook includes scope, outline and readings for each lecture, timeline and biographical notes. Special features: Lecture chapters; Professor biography.

Pt. I. lecture 1. Defining Utopia and terror ; lecture 2. Legacy of revolutions ; lecture 3. Omens of conflict ; lecture 4. World War I ; lecture 5. Total war : mobilization and mass death ; lecture 6. Total revolution in Russia ; lecture 7. War's aftermath : the hinge of violence ; lecture 8. Communism ; lecture 9. Stalin ; lecture 10. Soviet civilization ; lecture 11. Fascism ; lecture 12. 1930s : the "Low dishonest decade" -- pt. II. lecture 13. Nazism ; lecture 14. Hitler ; lecture 15. World War II ; lecture 16. Nazi genocide and master plans ; lecture 17. Cold War ; lecture 18. Mao ; lecture 19. Cambodia and Pol Pot's killing fields ; lecture 20. East Germany, the Soviet Union, North Korea ; lecture 21. From the Berlin Wall to the Balkans ; lecture 22. Rwanda ; lecture 23. Saddam Hussein's Iraq ; lecture 24. Future of terror.