A Political History of Western Europe Since 1945

Derek W. Urwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317890744
• Edition: 5
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Taking a thematic approach, Derek Urwin addresses the major political and economic developments in western Europe since World War II, right up to the present day. The book covers issues and developments in national politics, and the movement towards greater unity in Western Europe and the role of Europe in global politics and in the international economy. The text has been revised throughout and updated to take account of the political consequences of the ending of the Cold War and the troubled progress of European integration since Maastricht. The Fifth Edition has lost nothing of its predecessor's clarity and accessibility and in its updated form will win the book a host of new admirers.

CHAPTER 1

PARAMETERS AND PERSPECTIVES

We have learned, whether we like it or not, that we live in one world, from which world we cannot isolate ourselves. We have learned that peace and well-being cannot be purchased at the price of peace or the well-being of any other country.

(James F. Byrne, 1946)

On 7 May 1945, in a schoolhouse near the French city of Rheims, Admiral Friedeburg and General Jodl accepted on behalf of Germany the Allied terms of unconditional surrender. At midnight of the following day, silence fell over Europe. Adolf Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich had failed in its thrust for European and world domination: in the end it had lasted for only twelve years, or two years less than its maligned democratic predecessor, the Weimar Republic. Three months later the world entered the nuclear age when atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing to an end the war in the Pacific and the Far East.

For six years the continent of Europe had been a battleground for Nazi Germany and the Allies. The Second World War had been all-embracing. The development of military technology had ensured that battle was not restricted to front lines or trench warfare: there had been many fronts, and civilian populations had suffered as much as the military forces. In addition, in every country the national economy, civil liberties and social life had all been subordinated to the exigencies of war on an unprecedented scale. The impact of the second world conflict of the twentieth century was traumatic for the individual, for European politics and for international relations. It was decisively to transform the face of the continent for decades to come, but while it was widely accepted in 1945 that the peace marked the beginning of a new reality, the true nature of that reality was as yet less immediately apparent or appreciated.

It seemed as if another chapter of history had been closed. Officially, the world in 1945 was at peace. With strategic imperatives reduced in urgency or dismissed altogether, the nations of Europe could turn to the problem of putting their own houses in order. Old protagonists renewed with greater vehemency their debates about the kind of society they desired, and about the kind of Europe that would or should rise out of the ashes of war. After the First World War many people had believed in 1918 that all that was needed to be done was simply to pick up the threads of prewar life. In 1945 the inevitability of change was widely accepted. The prime question raised, and one which had been debated throughout the hostilities by many of those concerned with the future, was the extent of the change – political, social and economic – which should occur. Yet while the necessity and unavoidability of change may have been widely accepted, not many could grasp that the Europe which had largely been forged in the nineteenth century had already expired.

The question of Europe’s future was not to be the concern of Europeans alone. The summer months of 1945 did not herald a new era of peace; rather, they were a brief interlude between the struggle against Hitler and Nazism and the commencement of a new and different type of conflict. The new Cold War was to be another struggle for world influence, even supremacy, between two incompatible political faiths and value systems, epitomised by the United States of America and the Soviet Union. For different reasons, both these states had previously remained somewhat aloof from international affairs. Thrown temporarily together by their opposition to Hitler, both had drawn upon the vast resources of a continent, to such an extent that they could, if they wished, have a decisive voice in the fate of Europe. The continent’s future was no longer mainly in the hands of the European states themselves.

This was obvious even in 1945. Of the former leading European powers, Germany had been destroyed, Italy had proved to have a brittle facade, France was still suffering from the psychological and economic consequences of military and moral collapse in 1940, while Britain was economically and financially exhausted by the years of war. None had the ability or the means to profit from or fill the vacuum that was the direct consequence of the disintegration of Nazi hegemony on the continent. The several meetings of American and Soviet troops – on the Elbe, in Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere – during the dying days of the Reich symbolised the future role which these two quasi-European powers would play in European affairs.

Indeed, it was already apparent that Europe, particularly the smaller states, would be subjected to a traditional ‘spheres of influence’ policy. In the wartime Allied conferences Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, had already forcefully indicated that such a policy was central to his view of how the Allies should participate in the political functioning of the postwar world. Eastern Europe, it was expected, would be claimed by the Soviet Union as its sphere of influence. What was perhaps not expected was the rigorous and exclusive way in which the Soviet Union would interpret and apply a sphere-of-influence policy. Notwithstanding the fact that the wartime victors might continue their cooperation in the Security Council of the newly formed United Nations (UN) and in the Allied Control Councils of occupied Germany and Austria, to all intents and purposes there were two Europes in existence more or less immediately after the cease-fire, one obliged to look towards the Soviet Union, the other with increasing urgency looking towards and across the Atlantic. Their expected meeting places, the UN and the Control Councils, were to be transformed into undeclared battlegrounds.

The intention of this book is to look at the postwar events in Western Europe, or that Europe which looked towards the Atlantic. To avoid becoming bogged down in problems of definition, it will suffice to describe Western Europe as that part of the continent which after 1945 found itself outside the Soviet sphere of influence, to the west of Winston Churchill’s ‘iron curtain’. This specifically post-1945 political definition has the merit of at least imposing a boundary that reflects a postwar reality that survived and structured European affairs for over four decades. The iron curtain may never have been impermeable, but the reality of a divided continent persisted until the dramatic events of 1989 which brought down the Communist regimes of the East. The demise of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 seemingly brought down the final curtain on the European settlement that emerged in 1945. However, in many ways – politically and economically – the East–West divide persisted after 1989. After the first flush of enthusiasm about the new possibilities afforded by the fall of Communism, more sober reflection and the experiences of the East European states indicated that stability, democratisation and an effective market economy would not be automatically or easily gained, that a true pan-European convergence could not be realised quickly. Hence, while in the 1990s the governments of Eastern Europe may have embraced democracy and market reforms, and while they may have sought membership of Western organisations such as the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, their situation was such that to a considerable degree they remained different, and might continue to remain so for some time, from the world of Western Europe that was fashioned politically and economically by and during the events and practices of the postwar decades.

Even with the definition outlined earlier, it would be impossible to examine within a single volume the myriad politics, policies and problems of all the Western states other than very summarily. Without implying that they are somehow less interesting or relevant, the discussion of the smaller democracies of Western Europe will be limited to those aspects of their domestic politics which have a bearing upon the wider themes examined. More attention will be paid to Britain, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy: their demographic size gave them dominance in many ways, making it reasonable to regard them as the core states of Western Europe. Their problems and policies could more readily have important consequences outside their own territory, both within and beyond Europe.

The countries of Western Europe are nevertheless not alike in every respect. But nor is each unique in every respect. There is a broad consistency in their experiences across the decades since 1945: economic reconstruction and the development of a welfare state, their involvement in an increasing and interlocking network of international organisations, increasing prosperity and affluence in the 1950s and 1960s, growing pressures upon government and a more pessimistic appraisal after the 1970s of what is reasonably and economically possible, leading to a heightened uncertainty and scepticism. Yet while Western Europe can be reviewed as an entity on such a broad canvas, its inner diversity should never be neglected. Over the centuries it has displayed a richness of variety unmatched by other parts of the world. That pervasive diversity offers a multitude of viewpoints from which the region can be and has been examined.

Historically, attempts to integrate the territory within one political system never came near to success. However, the idea of unity never died. It resurfaced again during and after the war to force politicians and citizens to consider whether they should seek to defend the retention of the independent state or, alternatively, attempt to achieve some unification of state practices that in time might lead to a comprehensive European political community embracing as many countries as possible. Since 1945 Western Europe has moved, albeit hesitatingly and sporadically, along the road to unity. Unlike the past, however, it was a road constructed out of consent and consensus rather than upon military conquest.

While the theme of European unity is a profitable framework within which postwar events can be examined, the forces for and against integration cannot be fully understood without some consideration of politics within the various states or of the relationship of European politics to the wider world stage. So we return to the questions of the independence of states and international politics. It is the individual politics of the several states which most decisively set the tone of, or hindered, movements towards European integration. Furthermore, so much of what has happened in Western Europe since 1945 has been conditioned by world politics that the region cannot be isolated from the rest of the globe. The war may have hastened the end of the imperialist phase of European states, yet the continent remained central to world politics, not least because the confrontation between the two new imperialist ‘super-powers’ was sharpest in Europe. Because the United States has played such a large role in Europe since 1945, and because much of postwar European politics was a reaction to the policies, real and imagined, of the Soviet Union, Western Europe could not be totally divorced from the competition for world influence between the super-powers.

Within this broader setting, arguments were renewed in the 1940s as to what would be the postwar shape of things in Western Europe. Attitudes and opinions were many and varied, but very generally we can speak of an opposition between two broad viewpoints which in the immediate postwar years carried on a long and relentless debate on European organisation and arrangements of power. The first may be loosely termed ‘traditional’ national self-interest, espoused by those who preferred to place their trust in the validity of tested institutions and practices. Opposing them were people committed to the establishment of a new order of international collaboration and integration. During these first peacetime months and years, reform was packaged in what might be called the ideology and vision of the national Resistance movements, which by and large sought a complete change in the political, social and economic structures of the European states. The ideals espoused by these movements were not only supported by men and women who had actively fought against Nazi hegemony; they attracted all those who sought a new moral climate of man’s responsibility to man, as well as that minority of prophets who in the pre-1939 wilderness had preached against the stultifying effects of materialism and nationalism.

If we disregard for the moment the wider implications of international politics, it is not too unreasonable to view political activity during the first few years of peace as centring upon the contest of national self-interest and reform for the allegiance of the public and for control of the institutions of power. By 1950, when international considerations had intruded more persistently upon the European consciousness, the forces for change, earlier so much in the ascendant, appeared to be in retreat, with the realisation of a European political community at best pushed back to a much more distant future. But it was not a complete defeat. The experiences of war and occupation, of mobilisation and destruction – along with the dawning of a postwar reality fraught with danger – had radically altered perceptions of the world. While delusions of restoring former imperial grandeur might persist, it had become painfully obvious to all except the most blinkered that the boundaries of Europe’s ambition had contracted dramatically. It is within this psychological context that one should consider the wartime Resistance movements. Because, through the prestige it had acquired from its wartime role, it was a potentially powerful newcomer on the political stage and because much political activity in these first years revolved around its political ideas and proposals, the Resistance is an appropriate starting point for an account of the politics of postwar Western Europe.

CHAPTER 2

THE RESISTANCE IN THE POSTWAR WORLD

A movement without doctrine, without coherence, without definite outlines, destined to attract much support … but not to achieve strong and disciplined action.

(Vincent Auriol, Le Populaire, 27 October 1944)

The philosophy of the Resistance embraced, and was willing to embrace, all those who felt that a new spirit should be injected into European reconstruction. Its recipe for the future was revolutionary, its leaders nearly all leftist in inclination and favouring radical solutions to socioeconomic problems. Politically, the several national Resistance movements were dominated by three major currents of thought: Communism, Socialism and Social Catholicism. In some areas there could also be found those who advocated a marriage between Liberalism and Socialism, stressing egalitarian values and the public good while rejecting Marxist determinism. Brought together during the war by the necessity of fighting a common enemy, men and women from all these political persuasions and from all walks of life seemed genuinely determined to forget their differences in the fight for a common, peaceful and harmonious future.

There were, of course, differences of opinion, even distrust. In particular, some Resistance leaders were suspicious of and hostile to their Communist associates: fearing the possibility of a Communist takeover of an integrated Resistance organisation, they sought to prevent Communists from achieving positions of influence within the movements that could be used as spring-boards for exerting strong political pressure at the war’s end. While such attitudes were an augury of what was to come, during the war the vast majority of Resistance participants saw no necessity for discrimination. The Italian Committees of National Liberation, which contained representatives of all the anti-Fascist parties, were typical of the dominant wartime mood, conveying an image of a broad-ranging and generous camaraderie, of sharing the same risks and responsibilities in the fight against German occupation.

The Resistance dream was that this camaraderie would persist into the postwar world to encompass the whole of society. The scenario for postwar reconstruction drawn up by the Resistance movements was all-embracing. Not only did they seek a radical overhaul of the institutional structure of the state; a new morality and a new belief in the dignity and value of all humanity had to permeate the whole of society. The blueprint for the future prepared in 1944 by the French National Resistance Council was typical in its insistence upon the need for a new morality in human affairs, upon regarding social and economic rights as being as important as those political rights which had for long been accepted as essentials of parliamentary democracy.

Central to the overall vision and programme of the Resistance was the pre-war idea of the Popular Front, previously expounded by such men as Léon Blum, the veteran French Socialist, and Aneurin Bevan, the fiery Welsh radical. The core of the Front would be a Communist-Socialist alliance, though it would nevertheless be open to any other political movement desiring the same goals. These two parties had collaborated closely in Italy since the 1930s, and for a short while in 1936 the Communists had supported a Popular Front coalition government in France. It was felt that the common ground shared by these two ideologies had been broadened and strengthened by common involvement in Resistance activities. Certainly the two seemed close everywhere, and in Norway there was even talk in 1945 of a party merger.

For many, however, this was too much of a class construct. The dilution of class was provided by the third strand of Social Catholicism. Despite the seemingly equivocal position of Pope Pius XII vis-à-vis right-wing authoritarianism during the war, Catholic opposition to Nazism had gradually hardened, and Catholics played a leading role in Resistance activities. Catholic political inspiration was derived ultimately from the two basic encyclicals of the Church, Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931) which stressed social justice while rejecting both dogmatic Socialism and unbridled free competition. At the heart of Catholic belief was a commitment to class conciliation. Christian Democracy sought to unite two alienated groups, the working classes and practising Catholics, and bring them into the mainstream of political life from which, at least in Catholic Europe, they had largely been excluded. Christian Democracy also considered social and economic rights to be as important as political rights, but argued that these applied across the whole community, that one class should not gain at the expense of others.

Whatever the ideological inheritance, all were profoundly affected by their common involvement in anti-Nazi activities. In that sense, one should not underestimate the importance of the Resistance movements in bridging the gap both between state and society and between the industrial and rural masses. In two major countries, at least, the working classes had largely been consigned to a social and political ghetto (admittedly partly of their own choosing) far removed from the centre of gravity of national political life. But in Italy, for example, there were in 1945 around 250,000 combatants in the northern partisan groups, and it was virtually the first time in modern Italian history that the peasants had been associated with other social groups in a political activity. Elsewhere, as in Belgium and the Netherlands, the electoral and organisational strength of Socialist parties may have prevented them from being totally marginalised, yet society and politics had nevertheless remained highly segmented and Socialist parties had only rarely participated in government. Even Britain might be said to have undergone a similar experience, with national mobilisation as an equivalent of Resistance participation. Only perhaps in Scandinavia had the working classes been accepted to some extent as an integral part of the political system.

Together, all these forces would work for a new society in which there would be benefits for all and an end to hardship, privation and insecurity. But if this brave new world was to come about, then those ideologies and movements which, in the eyes of the reformers, were old and discredited could not be allowed to regain control and influence in the postwar world. The best way, many argued, to ensure victory was a grand alliance of all progressive movements, an alliance that would possess sufficient strength and popular support to achieve electoral success: if there was, after all, a common purpose, then it made sense also t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• CHAPTER 1 Parameters and Perspectives
• CHAPTER 2 The Resistance in the Postwar World
• CHAPTER 3 Problems of Reconstruction
• CHAPTER 4 The Revival of Political Competition
• CHAPTER 5 Cold War and Atlantic Alliance
• CHAPTER 6 The Rebirth of Germany
• CHAPTER 7 Integration: The Postwar Beginning
• CHAPTER 8 From Cold War to Thaw
• CHAPTER 9 The Road to Rome
• CHAPTER 10 The Death of Colonialism
• CHAPTER 11 The Golden Economic Summer
• CHAPTER 12 Political Stability and Consensus
• CHAPTER 13 A Seesaw of Détente and Tension
• CHAPTER 14 What Kind of Europe?
• CHAPTER 15 Alienation and Protest
• CHAPTER 16 From Détente to New Cold War
• CHAPTER 17 Economic Dilemmas and Problems
• CHAPTER 18 The Extension of Democracy in Southern Europe
• CHAPTER 19 The Political Mosaic: A Politics of Uncertainty?
• CHAPTER 20 The Enlarged Community
• CHAPTER 21 The Improbable Decade
• CHAPTER 22 Altered States
• CHAPTER 23 Requiescat in Pace: Cold War Western Europe
• Bibliography
• Maps
• Index