The history of Europe from 1945 to the present

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The history of Europe from 1945 to the present is a book (original title: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 ) by the British historian Tony Judt . It offers an overview of the post-war history of Europe from the perspective of the overall European situation that changed from 1989 to 2005. The Book Review of the New York Times it is one of the ten best books in 2005. It received the 2006 Arthur Ross Book Award as the best book on international politics. In Germany, the jury of H-Soz-u-Kult chose thework as the best historical book 2006 in the European History category .

Main developments

Although Judt emphasizes that he is not presenting an overarching theme or a closed story, he clearly works out some broad lines.

  • The period from 1945 to 2005 was a political decline in Europe. Most of the states were humiliated by their defeat (either the defeat against Hitler Germany or the defeat against the anti-Hitler coalition ). The only European victorious states of 1945, Great Britain and the Soviet Union , on the one hand, according to their self-image, belonged only half to Europe and, on the other hand, lost their weight significantly. Great Britain at the beginning of the period through its permanent economic crisis and the loss of the Empire, the Soviet Union with its disintegration .
  • The post-war decades are also the years that brought a long-lasting economic upswing and a significant improvement in the standard of living for Western Europe (e.g. the economic miracle in West Germany, the miracolo economico in Italy, the trente glorieuses in France, the society of success in Great Britain), which began later than generally believed. A broad mass prosperity, mass mobilization and the triumphant advance of television characterize the 1960s, the modern consumer society expanded. The structure of rural areas in particular, some of which were still in a pre-modern state in 1945 (e.g. southern Italy), changed suddenly. At the same time, these developments brought with them fundamental cultural and social changes with a certain time lag, for example in the relationship between generations, genders, the importance of religion, etc.
  • The great theories of progress of the 19th century faded in Europe. In the west it came to a “waning of political passions”, in the east to the “discrediting of official Marxism ”.
  • As a “modest substitute” for the abandoned ambition of the 19th century, the “Model Europe” appeared as a “specifically European way of shaping social conditions in individual countries and international relations”. Judt considers the fact that the rebuilding succeeded after 1945 as at least as important as the subsequent European unification .
  • The Americanization of Europe in the 1950s and 1960s is overestimated. They also experienced the Cold War as less threatening than the USA. Western Europeans wanted protection, but resented their own loss of power. The assessment of the cultural changes emanating from the USA was primarily a question of age: the older generation, regardless of their political orientation, saw them as a threat to European identity and tradition, the younger as a gain in freedom and independence. Americanization, which had already begun in the interwar period, only caught on with the following generation change.
  • In 1945 Europe became more ethnically homogeneous through border shifts, expulsions and genocide . The only multiethnic states that remained were the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia . But since the 1980s it has become more multicultural again . "Since 1989 it has become clearer to what extent the stability of post-war Europe was based on the acts of Stalin and Hitler ." On the other hand, according to Judt, the rejection of genocide has become a constant characteristic, and therefore the denial of the genocide of the Armenians will be recognized by the Turkey "turn out to be an obstacle to its EU accession".

Closer topics

Probably the most remarkable thesis of the book from a German point of view is that the German economic miracle was based on the economic recovery in the 1930s and the training of many German managers in the Nazi bureaucracy.

Judt sees the most important result of the 1960s as the realization that communism could not be reformed. In contrast, the practical achievements do not seem very essential to him. But he also states that authority was extinguished in the spheres of social life. In both halves of the continent, the "final turning away from political ideologies" has taken place. "A 180-year cycle of ideological politics in Europe came to an end."

According to Judt, the pillars of the “master story” of socialism crumbled because in the east communism in Prague in 1968, in the Chinese cultural revolution and finally in the genocide in Cambodia showed itself to be incapable of reform and inhumanity, and in the west after the economic crises of the 1970s Promises of the welfare state and further social progress had become implausible.

For market radicals, who, like Thatcher, doubted the existence of a society, and for conservatives, who were guided by religious norms and social conventions, that was no problem. The progressive left, however, was looking for a new orientation. She found it in the "language of rights and freedoms that were enshrined in every European constitution". In his estimation, the main changes did not take place in Western Europe, but in the East.

According to Judt, the overthrow of communist rule did not come from Poland, but was only possible because the power of the center was undermined by the “reform communist” Gorbachev . The opposition was successful because communism was discredited, because - with the exception of the special case of Romania - they proceeded non-violently and because the goal was not capitalism, but free Europe.

For the development of southern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, he points out that the transition to democracy that led Greece, Portugal and Spain to the European Union via southern expansion was initiated by conservative politicians: Karamanlis , Spínola and Soares . He sees the path to the European Union less in the will to political agreement than in pragmatic “reactions to economic problems”.

See also

expenditure

German

literature

Web links

Reviews

Footnotes

  1. ^ Council on Foreign Relations ( Memento of the original dated February 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cfr.org
  2. ↑ Daniela Bergelt on H-Soz-u-Kult: Book Prize: Essay Category European History  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de  
  3. ↑ As recently as 1951 "it was producing twice as much as France and Germany put together" (p. 396), but was then quickly overtaken.
  4. ↑ p. 363.
  5. ↑ p. 366.
  6. ↑ pp. 415-522.
  7. ↑ a b p. 22.
  8. ↑ "In fact, the fact that the defeated peoples of Europe succeeded in recovering and salvaging their own cultures and institutions from the ruins of 30 years of war could well be rated higher than the collective success of founding one transnational union. ”p. 929.
  9. ↑ p. 24.
  10. ↑ “Recognition of the Holocaust has become the European ticket.” P. 933.
  11. ↑ p. 394.
  12. ↑ "The social market economy of Ludwig Erhard had its roots in the politics of Albert Speer - many of the young managers and planners that rose after the war to high positions in business and politics, began her career under Hitler; they introduced the strategies and practices preferred by the Nazi bureaucrats to the committees, planning authorities and companies of the Federal Republic. ”p. 393.
  13. ↑ p. 504 - This realization arose with the suppression of the Prague Spring .
  14. ↑ a b p. 506.
  15. ↑ p. 620.
  16. ↑ p. 647.
  17. ^ "The really new and significant changes were now taking place east of the political watershed." P. 648.
  18. ↑ pp. 670, 677.
  19. ↑ "The opposite of communism was not >> capitalism <<, but >> Europe <<." P. 725.
  20. ↑ p. 602.