・Around 1942, most of the Soviet Union's oil was produced in Baku, so Hitler wanted to take Baku by all means. We knew that if we owned Stalingrad, the land between the Don and Volga rivers, and Baku, the war would end (p27)
・Communists hated socialists more than conservatives. Because the supporters of both are the same working class (p35)
・Vienna seemed like a microcosm of Europe after World War II. Similar to Berlin, it was divided and ruled by 4 countries: the Soviet Union, America, England, and France. Actually, the United States and the Soviet Union were split in half (p46)
・The method used by the Soviet Union when hiring spies was to take families hostage, and America provided citizenship certificates and green cards (p50)
・When Carl Martel (France) won the Battle of Tours Poitiers in 732, Muslims were pushed back west of the Pyrenees. If they had lost, Europe would be a different place than it is now (p63)
・When the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, in Europe, the Silk Road and the Mediterranean were closed and maritime trade collapsed (p66)
・Portugal, which controlled the south-facing route, declined Columbus' offer (westbound), but Spain was different. I needed a route to India (p70)
・Europe had an elegant and sophisticated face like Enrique and the face of a ruthless scoundrel like Cortez, and they both had something in common (p74)
・The Mayans feared they would be conquered by the Aztecs in the near future, and out of that fear they sided with the Spanish (p77)
・In the Inca Empire, multiple tribes jointly supported the administration, but many of those tribes did not benefit from the Inca Empire; rather, they thought they were victims. Pizarro used the tyranny of the imperial rulers to side with those dissatisfied with the empire. It is a very important fact in understanding why Europeans were able to conquer the world (p78)
・People who were oppressed by the Aztecs rose up, and the Spaniards and the Aztecs, who were destroyed by Christianity, had just seized power just a few centuries ago, and forced the people to believe in their own gods in place of the gods up until then (p81)
・The main reasons why Portugal and Spain embarked on world conquest are 1) technology to manufacture sailing ships capable of sailing in the open ocean, and 2) development of trade routes with India and China. The first world power in Europe was born in 1492, and the last major power collapsed in 1992 (p83)
・The European people are convinced that 1) the world they live in is the center of the universe, 2) Europe is the center of the world, and 3) the center of Europe is the church (p88)
・Luther's ultimate assertion is that Roman bishops do not have a special relationship with God; they can read the Bible alone. Also, Catholicism lost its superiority in the region it had controlled until then within Europe. It also lowered the authority of priests (p 89, 91)
・If Lutheran logic were to be applied, it was not enough to read only the Bible, and in order to know about nature, things other than reading the Bible were necessary, and that was science (p94)
・I thought that human thought was regarded as a machine for understanding nature, and that the natural world could eventually be fully understood by using reason. The enemy of science is superstition. Superstition is a belief based on authority rather than evidence (p97)
・The Enlightenment revolutionized the European system by valuing reason (p100)
・What happened on the Western Front in World War I, 1) devising/development of new weapons due to advances in science and technology, 2) mass production due to industrial development, and 3) improvements in ease of maintaining military control due to infiltration of national consciousness (p118)
・Most of the people who supported the Nazis and the Communist Party were those who served in World War I and acted on the same principles as during the war (p125)
・In the 1930s, 20 million people died due to planned starvation in regions such as Ukraine. Stalin took grain from peasant farmers and bought technology from Western Europe (p 129)
・In Russia, it was intellectuals, not soldiers, who controlled the revolution; in Germany, former military personnel led the revolution, but they were not those who had a high position within the military (p130)
・If the original is poverty, there is no big change even if everything is lost; if the middle class loses everything, life changes drastically. In Germany, after World War I, ordinary people paid the price (p133)
・It is calculated that one-tenth of Europe (over 50 million people) died in war in just 6 years from 1939-45. In 1914-45, 71 million people were added, and if 20 million people starved to death under Stalin were added, it became 91 million people (p143, 147)
・As a condition for America's participation in the war, it was 1) loaning 50 destroyers to England, and 2) renting all naval bases (Bermuda, Newfoundland, East Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, etc.) in the Western Hemisphere excluding Halifax base. As a result, the Caribbean islands came under American control (p168, 390)
・The United Kingdom established EFTA in 1960 instead of joining the EC, but it ended in failure. There was no American support. After that, many, including the United Kingdom itself, left EFTA. Currently, it continues to exist in Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein (p188)
・As an EU issue, 1) war broke out between Russia and Georgia (Kruzia) in 2008, 2) Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in the same year (p198)
・Banks have begun to increase profits from debt transactions from interest due to loans. (p203)
・The high unemployment rate among young people has no influence to threaten the current system, but when older middle class unemployed people connect with them, they can have influence and energy to threaten the current system (p213)
・As a characteristic of wars that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after the conclusion of the Maastricht Treaty, 1) small groups continued to live without disappearing, 2) they occurred in church regions where Christianity and Islam intersect (p214)
・Vulcan has been split by being pulled from different directions by three powerful forces. It is Turkey in the southeast, Russia in the east and northeast, and Germanic states in the northwest (p227)
・Fierce battles between ethnic groups in the Balkans only occur when pressure from major powers weakens (p228)
・What Russia gained in the 19th century was 1) a guarantee that it would not lose control of the Greater Caucasus, 2) securing a road through the Lesser Caucasus, and 3) Baku oil field (p241)
・Germany needs to make two decisions: 1) relationship with France, 2) relationship with Russia (p265)
・England drastically lowered food costs for citizens of the home country by using food flowing in large quantities from the Mississippi River basin, and encouraged farmers to become urban factory workers, and France protected farmers and did not use American food much (p322)
・The regions that are important to France are 1) the European Plain (Germany), 2) the English Channel (England), and 3) the Mediterranean and Africa (p329)
・Discrimination in Europe is not about the person's behavior, but what ethnicity they were born into is important, and outsiders will always be outsiders no matter what they do (p342)
・People from former European colonies are given the right to migrate to their former suzerainty countries after independence (p344)
・Europeans view Turks as outsiders, 1) most of them are not Christians, but Muslims, 2) it was the Ottoman Empire that destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire (p359)
・Kurds live across Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey (p371), like a nation without a national territory (p371)
・England was conquered by the Normans in 1066. Normans are people who emigrated from the Scandinavian Peninsula to northwestern France (p381)
・One of the reasons Europe was not integrated is the existence of the North Sea and the English Channel. It's cold and humid, windy, and the weather changes easily, making sailing difficult. After the 16th century, it withstood invasions by the Spanish, Napoleon in the 19th century, and Hitler in the 20th century (p383)
・Conflicts of interest increase, and when it is determined that the results that occur when fighting are better than those that occur when there is no battle, humans go to war (p401)
