Section 1 - Postwar Europe and the Origins of the Cold War
The Legacies of the Second World War
- Physical Destruction—Many cities (Leningrad, Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, Rotterdam, Coventry) were completely destroyed. The war obliterated buildings, factories, farms, rail tracks, roads, and bridges.
- Death Tolls—20 million Soviets, 9–11 million noncombatants (including 6 million Jews and over 220,000 Sinti and Roma Gypsies), 1/5 Poles, 5 million Germans, 400,000 Americans. In sum, nearly 50 million people lost their lives.
- Displaced Persons (DPs) and the Homeless—Postwar refugees included 25 million Soviets, 20 million Germans, 30 million east-central Europeans, and 13 million ethnic Germans. Many of these were former Nazi prisoners, forced laborers, and orphaned children. Soviets returning home were often sent to labor camps, sent to prison, or executed. Jewish DPs remained in special Jewish DP camps for years until many went to Israel (1948) or to other countries.
- War Crimes—More than 100,000 Germans and Austrians were convicted of wartime crimes through “denazification” tribunals or formal war crimes trials (Nuremberg, 1945–1946). Acts of retribution were committed against collaborators in occupied Europe and so-called “horizontal collaborators,” women who had slept with the enemy. But the growing Cold War and the need for stability brought war crimes trials to a halt by the late 1940s and early 1950s. Some former Nazis avoided prosecution and founding leading positions in government and industry in Soviet and Western zones.
The Peace Settlement and Cold War Origins
- Early Discussions--Early discussions between the most powerful allies (United States, Great Britain, U.S.S.R.) focused on military victory and avoided the nature of the future peace settlement.
- The Tehran Conference (November 1943)--Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill discussed Poland’s postwar borders and a strategy to win the war, including an Anglo-American assault in France.
- The Yalta Conference (February 1945)--A meeting of the Big Three that took place while the Red Army was within 100 miles of Berlin and had occupied much of eastern Europe. The Allies agreed to divide Germany into zones, impose reparations payments on the Germans to be made to the Soviet Union, push the borders of Poland to the west, and allow for future eastern European governments to be freely elected but pro-Soviet.
- Potsdam Conference - tensions between Stalin and Truman led to a breakdown of the alliance and set the foundation for the Cold War
West Versus East
- Rising Antagonisms--Truman cut off aid to the Soviet Union once the Japanese had surrendered (September 1945). Churchill declared that an “iron curtain” had fallen across the continent (March 1946), Stalin established Soviet-style, one-party dictatorships throughout eastern Europe (including Czechoslovakia in February 1948)
- The Marshall Plan--Under the Marshall Plan, the United States provided more than $13 billion ($200 billion today) to help rebuild the economies of western Europe in order to stave off the Communist threat. East bloc countries rejected the funds. The Soviets established the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, an economic organization of Communist states to help rebuild the Eastern bloc.
- The Berlin Blockade--A defeat for the Soviet Union which had tried in vain to swallow up the western half of the city. It paved the way for the creation of two separate German states in 1949: the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) that aligned with the United States and the German Democratic Republic (East) that aligned with the U.S.S.R. This proved the containment worked.
- NATO and the Warsaw Pact--The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments. The Warsaw Pact was a Soviet-backed military alliance of East bloc Communist countries in Europe. This solidified the division of Europe into two hostile blocs.
Section 2 - Western Renaissance / Recovery of Western Europe
The Search for Political and Social Consensus
- The Postwar Economic Boom—The result of Marshall Plan dollars, spending on the Korean War, Keynesian economics, a mixture of government planning and free-market capitalism, and the growth of the welfare state. All of this created an “economic miracle” by the late 1950s, a term contemporaries used to describe rapid economic growth, often based on the consumer sector, in post-World War II western Europe.
- Christian Democratic Parties—These were rooted in the Catholic parties of the prewar decades and offered a center-right alternative to the left in Italy, France, and Germany. These parties became cold warriors, rejected authoritarianism and the class politics of the left, and championed a return to traditional family values.
- The Labour Party—Took power after the war in Britain and established a “cradle to the grave” welfare state that was maintained even when the Conservatives returned to power. It nationalized banks, iron and steel industries, public transportation networks, and public utilities and provided free medical service, retirement benefits, and a system of progressive taxation.
Toward European Unity
- Early Steps Toward Unity--The Bretton Woods agreement linked Western currencies to the U.S. dollar in 1944 and established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
- European Coal and Steel Community (1951)--An international organization set in motion by two French statesmen (Jean Monnet and Foreign Minister Robert Schuman) to control and integrate European steel and coal production.
- The European Economic Community--Created by six western and central European countries in the West bloc in 1957 as part of a larger search for European unity, the Common Market reduced tariffs among the six member nations, allowed for the free movement of capital and labor, and shared resources for modernizing national industries.
The Consumer Revolution
- People bought stuff
- Not people in Eastern Europe, you know because of Communism
Section 3 - Developments in the Soviet Union and East Bloc
Postwar Life in the East Bloc
- The Return to Dictatorship--After having relaxed dictatorial terror during the “Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland,” Stalin reasserted complete control through rigid ideological indoctrination, attacks on religion, crackdowns on civil liberties, and deportations of millions of Soviet citizens to prison or forced labor camps.
- Stalinization in Eastern Europe--Eastern European states Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, and East Germany were remade on the Soviet model with one-party dictatorships, show trials, and purges.
- The exception was Yugoslavia, where the leader, Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) successfully stood up to Stalin in 1948.
- Establishing Planned Economies--To build socialism, Eastern European states nationalized industries and businesses, prioritized heavy industry and the military, produced few consumer goods, and collectivized agriculture.
- Censorship and Opposition--The Communist regimes censored culture and the arts, forcing artists and writers to follow the dictates of Communist ideals as expressed through socialist realism.
Reform and De-Stalinization
- The Death of Stalin (1953)--Led to the curbing of secret police power, the closing of many forced-labor camps, and economic changes.
- Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971)--A coal miner who rose through the ranks to become the new Soviet premier in 1955.
- De-Stalinization--Khrushchev’s liberalization of the post-Stalin Soviet Union led to changes in party membership, a shifting of resources from heavy industry and the military to consumer goods and agriculture, a modest rise in the standard of living, and artistic ferment.
- Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)--Author of Doctor Zhivago (1956), a challenge to communism. He was denounced but not shot.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008)--Author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), an account of life in a Stalinist concentration camp.
Foreign Policy and Domestic Rebellion
- “Peaceful Coexistence”--A hallmark of Khrushchev’s foreign policy that led to a modest relaxation of Cold War tensions between 1955 and 1957.
- Reform in Poland--The Communist Party in Poland won greater autonomy from Soviet control and the new leadership maintained Communist control while tolerating a free peasantry and an independent Catholic Church.
- The Hungarian Revolt (1956)--Imre Nagy, a liberal Communist reformer and the new prime minister, allowed open elections and other reforms, triggering a Russian invasion that crushed the revolt and executed its leaders.
The Limits of Reform
- The Berlin Crisis--In a series of erratic policies, Khrushchev attempted to close the open border between East and West Berlin in 1958, ordered the Western allies to evacuate the city within six months, and allowed for the building of a wall between East and West Berlin in 1961, a clear violation of the agreements between the Great Powers.
- The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
- Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982)--Brezhnev became Khrushchev’s successor after a bloodless coup in 1964. He initiated a period of economic stagnation and limited re-Stalinization, but avoided direct confrontation with the United States.
Section 4 - The End of Empires
- (Decolonization: The post-war reversal of Europe’s overseas expansion caused by the rising demand of the colonized peoples themselves, the declining power of European nations, and the freedoms promised by U.S. and Soviet ideals. In two decades, 100 new nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East joined the global community.)
Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh
India - Mohandas Gandhi
China - Mao Zedong
Middle East - Conflict
Africa - Mostly dictators, some civil wars and apartheid in South Africa
India - Mohandas Gandhi
China - Mao Zedong
Middle East - Conflict
Africa - Mostly dictators, some civil wars and apartheid in South Africa
Section 5 - Postwar Social Transformations
Changing Class Structures
- The Middle Class--After 1945, a new breed of managers and experts who were in high demand by large corporations and government agencies replaced traditional property owners as the leaders of the middle class.
- Class Leveling in the East Bloc--To reduce class differences, authoritarian socialist states nationalized industry, expropriated property, opened employment opportunities to workers, and equalized wage structures.
- The Lower Classes--The migration from rural areas to the cities continued. The number of farmers and industrial workers in western Europe declined as jobs for white-collar and service employees grew and workers became better educated.
Patterns of Postwar Migration
- Migration Within National Borders
- Migration from South to North
- Post-Colonial Migration
- Tensions--Adaptation to the European lifestyle was difficult, and newcomers faced employment and housing discrimination and anti-immigrant politicians. These would pose challenges in the decades to come.
New Roles for Women
- Declining Birthrates
- The Workplace
- Challenges--Discrimination in pay, promotion, and occupational choice. Married women still carried most of the child-rearing responsibilities. Such injustices contributed to movements for women’s equality and emancipation in the United States and western Europe in the 1960s.
Youth Culture and the Generation Gap
- Youth Culture - Beatniks
- Consumption - Music, Movies, Magazines
- Higher Education - New class of highly educated people