Themes in Modern European History since 1945

Rosemary Wakeman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134601059
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Broad in geographical scope, this collection explores the most important transformations and upheavals of post-1945 Europe in the light of recent scholarship.

A wide array of authors from the UK, the USA and across Europe contribute twelve chapters consider key political, cultural and economic changes of an era that needs reevalutaion and reconsideration from a historical perspective.

Cross-disciplinary, covering a wide range of issues – politics, economics, social and cultural aspects Themes in Modern European History since 1945 is structured around recent theoretical debates on the postwar, and will find a firm standing on the bookshelves of European history students.

1
Divided Europe
The long postwar, 1945–89

Steven Morewood

Over the period under review Europe divided sharply between free democracies and quasi-democracies, between open and closed societies, a split that prompted Winston Churchill to encapsulate the situation in his famous “Iron Curtain” address. On one side stood free Europe, protected by an emergent American superpower, determined to eschew the isolationist stance that helped bring about the Second World War. On the other stood the captive nations of Eastern Europe dominated by the Kremlin. The fault line would remain rigidly in place until the 1989 revolutions and symbolized the Cold War more than anything else.

Some key questions suggest themselves in considering this seminal period of modern European history. Was the Cold War, which literally divided Europe, inevitable? What was the nature of the divisions that emerged? How did the Cold War affect Europe? To what extent could and did Europe’s split personalities pursue economic and foreign policies that conflicted with the interests of their superpower protector? Was the outcome of the Cold War predetermined by the inherent advantages of democracies and free market economies over authoritarianism and command economies? Or did the Soviet leadership commit fundamental errors that cumulatively brought down the “outer empire” in Eastern Europe and ultimately the Soviet Union itself? There is no consensus view on any of these questions and, like George Bernard Shaw’s jibe—that if all economists “were laid from end to end they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion”—the debates will rumble on. Ideological bias also comes into play—although current research is much more archives-centered or driven by international relations theory, reflecting the fact that the Cold War is now past history.

The origins of the Cold War and the division of Europe

The onset of the Cold War has been subjected to several interpretations. The long-term view sees American-Russian hostility as the natural state of affairs following the Bolshevik Revolution. The Grand Alliance of the Second World War was therefore a false one and once its objective—defeat of the tripartite powers—was achieved, the coalition was bound to collapse and the normal distant and frosty relationship resumed. In this interpretation, the Cold War could only end with the collapse of capitalism or communism and therefore lasted from 1917 to 1991. More usually, the origins of the Cold War have been rooted in the immediate postwar period. The traditional school, centered on the memoirs of senior American political figures, blamed Soviet actions and ambitions for starting the Cold War. It was based on a literal interpretation of Soviet ideology: the notion that the Kremlin was intent on spreading communism across the globe and containment led by the United States was necessary to stop it. The revisionist school suggested that Soviet policy was in fact reactive and laid the primary blame on Western anti-communism, which grossly exaggerated Soviet intentions. In this interpretation, it was American actions, including the refusal to share atomic secrets and the employment of economic pressures, which ignited the Cold War. The post-revisionist school considered both sides at fault to varying degrees and recognized that contributing factors differed according to the particular situation. These schools tended to reflect different phases of the Cold War. Thus, for example, post-revisionism emerged during the 1970s, when détente prevailed and it was politically correct to apportion blame evenly. More recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union has begun to bring forth fresh perspectives from its archives and those of former satellites, while Britain has been accorded a more important role in starting the Cold War.¹ To quote Melvyn Leffler:

The Cold War in Europe was the result of an interactive process in which leaders in many capitals were responding to multiple threats and opportunities to their interests, power, and security (meaning not just territorial security but also regime-type). The threats and opportunities that policymakers perceived emanated from a unique set of geopolitical configurations in the international system interacting with equally unique sets of indigenous variables within their own countries. Ideological predilections, cultural dictates, and historical experience helped shape these officials’ assessments of these threats and opportunities. Parsimonious theory and singleminded interpretations cannot do justice to the complexity of the historical process.²

What has been termed “new Cold War history” is still being written. The situation is therefore in a state of flux with archival revelations and new approaches casting fresh light on what had become a sterile debate.

Whatever view is taken of the causes of the Cold War, Europe was its epicenter. The failure to agree on a lasting peace settlement for the Continent led the superpowers to establish spheres of influence there. The fact was that Western Europe was so weakened by its exertions in the Second World War that the United States felt compelled to act as a buttress lest the Soviets took advantage. Soviet archives have so far yielded no plan to invade Western Europe. Whether or not this was the Kremlin’s intention is beside the point—the option was there if Washington stepped aside and military planners could not afford to disregard the possibility. Walter Laqueur recognized some home truths about the division of Europe:

The Soviet Union quite likely never intended to invade Western Europe, as many feared at the time. But it is also true that a vacuum of power in Western Europe would have constituted a permanent temptation to the superpower in the East, with its formidable military power headed by a leadership that knew neither scruples nor internal divisions. Fear of Russia was probably the single most important cause of greater willingness in Europe to co-operate.³

Indeed, NATO held annual exercises centered on the assumption of a Soviet invasion and its forces remained in a constant state of readiness for such an eventuality.

Superpower confrontation was therefore inherent in the postwar situation and compounded by disagreement over the future of Germany. The Soviets wanted to extract punitive reparations to keep Germany down whereas the Western powers, controlling the lion’s share of German industrial resources, wished to promote German recovery as a platform for European economic recovery. The eventual result—a divided Germany— became a key frontline of the Cold War. At the same time, this outcome suited both superpowers because it resolved the German problem and ensured that a resurgent Germany could not, by itself, instigate another European war as it had after 1918. This was also true of the Continent: there could be no return to the “old Europe” and the closing of the Iron Curtain created a measure of stability through locking the advanced and relatively backward halves together under the aegis of their patron superpower. It was the acceptance by each that military intervention in their sphere of influence would turn the Cold War “hot” that sustained the division for over four decades. The doctrine was one of “stability and peace through division.” As Richard Villers states: “There was a decline in the cordiality of relations after 1947, but no attempt to challenge the frontiers that divided a Soviet-dominated East from an American-dominated West.”⁴ Again, Eric Hobsbawm recognizes that: “Both sides tacitly accepted the boundaries of each other s zones of influence, and during the 1950s and 1960s no indigenous revolutionary changes appeared on the globe, except in Cuba.”⁵ The Cold War was therefore fought in different ways by the superpowers: through brinkmanship, as in the Berlin crises of 1948 and 1961; military confrontation, both conventional and atomic; a political, psychological and ideological propaganda battle to try to win over the hearts and minds of rival populations; and in the economic domain with separate trading systems centered on the industrial might of the respective superpowers, echoing Stalin’s concept of “two world economies.”

“There were,” remarks Georges-Henri Souti, “no common values, no common culture, no free movement of people and goods and ideas.”⁶ The division of Europe into rival camps assumed a number of forms. Opposing political systems reflected those of the hegemonic power. Thus Western Europe, Greece and Turkey embraced democracy where Eastern Europe and most Balkan regimes—ironically styled “people s democracies”— followed the Soviet autocratic model to different degrees. George Soros considers that: “The Soviet system was probably the most comprehensive form of closed society ever invented by man. It penetrated into practically all aspects of experience: not only the political and military but also the economic and the intellectual.”⁷ The surveillance societies that emerged were police states wherein security forces intimidated and spied on the general population to ensure passive compliance with the system and to root out troublemakers. Economically, Washington actively promoted the integration of Western Europe through the Organization for European Economic Co-operation, which led to the European Economic Community (EEC), which in turn became the European Community (EC). Originally comprising six members, by the mid-1980s there had been three EC enlargements. The first involved Britain, Denmark and Ireland in 1973. The second extended to Greece in 1981, and the third to Spain and Portugal in 1986, with these three southern countries being admitted as much for politico-strategic as economic reasons, all of them having experienced recent destabilizing dictatorships. Stalin was suspicious of European federalism and refused to allow Soviet satellites to become involved, a stance continued by his successors. Militarily, the division was symbolized by the rivalry between NATO, formed in 1949 and soon extended to incorporate Greece and Turkey, and the Warsaw Pact, established in 1955 after West Germany joined NATO’s ranks.

Some historians suggest that the Cold War began on July 2, 1947 when the Soviet deputation was withdrawn from the Paris talks considering the Marshall Plan. This is debatable, but perhaps more than anything else the extension of Marshall Aid symbolized the economic divisions. The American benefactor sought to replicate its own successful economic model in Europe to sustain and inculcate democracy by means of raised productivity, banished shortages and higher living standards. Some $13.2 billion was made available between 1948 and 1952. Stalin would not permit bloc countries to participate because of the “imperialist” overtones, thereby restricting the recovery program to Western Europe and Greece. The Soviet response to Marshall Aid was Comecon, or the CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) founded in 1949.⁸ This never achieved the integration of the EEC and tended instead to promote bilateral relations between Moscow and its satellites. Both economic systems had political overtones. The EEC sought to entwine member economies—not least West Germany’s— to prevent another internecine European conflict. “No more war between us” was an early rallying slogan. The CMEA provided a mechanism for the Soviet Union to promote its dominance over the strategically vital captive nations of Eastern Europe through the provision of abundant raw materials and acceptance of poor quality manufactured goods.

Geir Lundestad argues that the United States was drawn into Western Europe for economic, political and military reasons at the instigation of its European allies.⁹ They desperately needed and sought American aid. This constituted “empire by invitation” and was on a greater scale than Soviet expansion. But there were strings attached. Britain and France had to open up their empires to outside trade and Marshall Aid recipients needed to minimize trading links with Eastern Europe and promote economic integration between themselves. Washington consciously sought to inculcate the “American way of life” in Western Europe, which was seen as an important overseas market for goods produced in the United States. Culture was exported in a number of guises, including mass consumer goods and movies that tended to idealize the American way of life, and troops at various overseas bases. In line with this, US investment in Western Europe mushroomed from $1.7 billion in 1950 to $21.5 billion by 1969. Moscow was initially intent on plundering Eastern Europe for economic resources to promote its own economic recovery from the war. It is estimated that in the decade after 1945, some $13 billion worth of reparations were extracted. Following the 1953 East German uprising and the 1956 Hungarian revolt, this policy gave way to the heavy subsidization by Moscow of its satellites to sustain their puppet regimes in power, including paying for any Soviet troops stationed on their territory.

The critical importance of Eastern Europe to Soviet security, a key force for the Sovietization of the region after 1945, re-emerged as a reason for reasserting an iron grip there in the 1960s. From the middle of the decade a new generation of inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) allowed the Soviet Union to catch up with the United States to create a virtual nuclear stand-off: an attack by one side would inevitably lead to mutual annihilation. In this context, the possibility was heightened of a conventional war fought between the superpowers in Europe. As a result, the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev reversed Nikita Khrushchev’s plans to reduce conventional forces. The enhanced strategic significance of Eastern Europe was one reason why, while a degree of deviation could be tolerated from Nicolai Ceauşescu’s Romania, Alexander Dubcek’s efforts to create “socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia could not. For while the former’s strategic location was peripheral the latter occupied a central geographical position. Soviet military intervention along with its Warsaw Pact allies (bar Romania) in August 1968 to crush the “Prague Spring” gave rise to the Brezhnev Doctrine. This decreed that bloc countries must maintain an acceptable socialist outlook both internally and internationally. It was intended to ensure that satellites remained loyal to Soviet interests and signaled that they could expect military retribution if they overstepped the mark. In Czechoslovakia a loyal communist apparatchik, Gustav Husák, was installed with a Soviet garrison deployed to underwrite his authority and ensure “normality.”

Emerging differences: the United States and its European allies 1963–82

It was French president Charles de Gaulle who led the European charge against subservience to Washington—at least publicly (Britain secretly kept nuclear weapons at Cyprus and Singapore without alerting its superpower ally). The Kennedy administration had devised the concept of “flexible response,” that is the initial deployment of conventional weapons escalating, if necessary, to nuclear warfare. The West Germans, who were in the front line, were uneasy at this. De Gaulle attempted to draw Bonn away from Washington, but was disenchanted with the pro-American preamble of the January 1963 Franco-German treaty of cooperation. The same month De Gaulle rejected Washington’s offer of Polaris missiles and vetoed the British application to join the EEC, seeing Britain as the USA’s Trojan horse. The following year De Gaulle broke ranks and established diplomatic relations ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Chronology
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Divided Europe: The Long Postwar, 1945–89
• 2. The Collapse of World Dominion: The Dismantling of the European Colonial Empires and Its Impact On Europe
• 3. The Golden Age of Prosperity, 1953–73
• 4. Social Class and Social Change In Postwar Europe
• 5. Changing Margins In Postwar European Politics
• 6. European Mass Culture In the Media Age
• 7. The Boundaries of the Avant-Garde
• 8. The Central and Eastern European Revolution, 1989–2000
• 9. The Politics of European Unification
• 10. European Economic Integration: From Business Cycle to Business Cycle