So there I was, just thinking as usual. Then I started to see some patterns in the world today that paralleled history. So I just had to run a thought experiment to see what was going on. The cleanest way to read 1925–1935 is like this. In 1925, it appeared to stabilize after World War I, while in 1935, it appeared to break down. In 1925, Europe still had the “Spirit of Locarno" [1], Germany was being pulled back into diplomacy, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 reflected real hope that another great war could be avoided. By 1935, that hope had been shattered by the 1929 crash (America is almost $40 trillion in debt), the Depression, tariff retaliation, Japanese (Japan is rising to meet Chinese aggression) expansion in Manchuria, Hitler’s consolidation of power (the coming rise of an Antichrist in Europe, maybe?), and Mussolini’s (Putin invaded the Ukraine) invasion of Ethiopia.