How did the mid-twentieth century crisis in Europe transform the relationship between politics, culture and the individual? This module addresses that question through sources such as diaries, memoirs, films and fiction to explore how Europeans experienced fascism and antifascism, dictatorship, war, occupation and liberation, leading to new forms of individuality and selfhood between 1930 and 1950. We will ask how cultural forms, such as the theatrical and artistic avant-garde, as well as the everyday experiences of economic depression, political extremism and mass violence influenced the making of the self in the context of the ideological clash between Right and Left during Europe’s age of catastrophe.