The paper presents the main events and processes in the world during the 'Thirties'. The main characteristic of the 1930s was the ascent of the Fascist and Nazi ideologies and social systems, on the one hand, and the organisation of resistance to them, on the other. Although the period between the two world wars was marked by catastrophic events, such as Stalinism, Fascism, Nazism and the dictatorships inspired by them, the Spanish civil war, the collapse of Austria and Czechoslovakia, as well as the Great Depression and its consequences, this was also the time of stable democracies, which together with the Soviet 'people's democracy' provided a basis for the subsequent anti-Fascist coalition.