1920s
At the beginning of the 20th century, liberalism was on the ascendant. The bastion of autocracy, the Russian czar, was overthrown in the liberal revolution of February 1917 and the Allied victory in the First World War and the collapse of four empires seemed to mark the triumph of liberalism across the European continent, not just among the victorious allies, but also in Germany and the newly created states of Eastern Europe.
Militarism, as typified by Germany, was defeated and discredited. The liberal themes were ascendant in terms of cultural pluralism, religious and ethnic toleration, national self-determination, free-market economics, representative and responsible government, free trade, unionism, and the peaceful settlement of international disputes through a new body, the League of Nations.