Fifty years after the end of the Second World War, the Symposium "1945 in Europe and Asia - Reconsidering the End of World War II and the Change of the World Order", held at the Japanese-German Center Berlin 1995, brought together twentyone speakers to discuss the experience of the end of the war and the subsequent political events in seventeen countries in East and West. Many of the developments taken up at the meeting and summarised in this volume have been studied separately, but only the synthesis of detailed analyses of the events in a great number of countries makes the numerous parallels and the global interconnection of the historical processes visible. For all parties involved in the war, events in the European battlefields influenced decision-making in Asia and vice versa. Therefore, the essays in this volume reinforce the conclusion that - at least in the twentieth century - the history of Asia and Europe is one.