"As for us, the ‘ordinary people’ of today, like our grandparents and great-grandparents in the late 1930s, we are sure that we want all the advantages of prosperity, safety, a roof over our heads and the conveniences of fast travel and communication. And, like them, we want the gift of international peace, which guarantees all these good things. However, many of us also seem to think we can combine these benefits with crude national self-aggrandizement while remaining immune to the consequences. No one really expects another war in Europe. However, it is also true that for the first time in almost three-quarters of a century, no one really rules it out. In this trend lies the chilling similarity between our world and the experience of the people living day by day, week by week, through the chaotic and unpredictable time immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War. This is how it felt to be human beings existing in the thick of a fateful and ultimately catastrophic phase in European history, their experience unmediated by hindsight. Like most of us today, our grandparents and great-grandparents were largely preoccupied with private daily duties and routines, preoccupations and gratifications. They could not, of course, foresee the future. Wider dangers remained unseen or half-seen, individual and communal hopes for peace and continuing prosperity had not yet been dashed."