Central Europe pops up on the front pages of newspapers every few decades. Whether it is because of Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife dying at the hands of a Bosnian Serb in 1914, the consequences of the 1938 Munich agreement surrendering Czech lands to Hitler, the drawing of the Iron Curtain after World War II by the Soviet tyranny, the annus mirabilis of 1989 bringing liberty to oppressed nations, or, now, the violent westward push by Russia in Ukraine—Central Europe is the place where seemingly circumscribed forces ignite larger events, good or bad.
