World History

Unit 7: The World Since 1945

Chapter 28: Europe and North America in the Postwar Years

Mon, Apr 7, 2014

58. Tue, Apr 8, 2014

With this chapter we enter precipitously on the material that at least I (DrMcM) remember personally, though almost certainly you don’t (and Mr C. doesn’t either, I imagine). There is a subtle change that occurs in looking at it that I find interesting, though I’m not sure I’m entirely able to put my finger on it. Be that as it may, the book’s treatment is reasonably sound, though occasionally quirky and imbalanced. I have not yet figured out, for example, why it mentions the Vietnam War but gives only a passing sentence or so to the Korean War. These were in fact very large conflicts that lasted some number of years. (The conflict in Korea is still not officially over: the two Koreas stand in a state of suspended war even now.)

What it does discuss — and does a reasonably good job of analyzing — is the material that entered the curious post-war mix that fostered (in shockingly few months) the hard separation of powers into Warsaw Pact and NATO, and eventually gave rise to the Cold War, which really only came to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Whether it really ended even then, or merely transmogrified into something else, is something we can talk about.)

There are four main sections to the chapter, the first three dealing with Europe (though largely colored by its relations with the United States) and the last with North America generally. We’ll take the European portion today.

The consequences of the Second World War in terms of economics, population, national boundaries, and prevailing ideologies, cannot be overestimated. It affected every piece of human experience in most parts of the world. Europe, which had seen the war raging over it for much of its breadth, it was a massive economic and political reorganization.

You may recall that war reparations were one of the issues following on the First World War that drove (especially) Germany into the tailspin spiral of devaluing currencies (i.e., runaway inflation) and depression. I’ve mentioned here, I think, and elsewhere (I’m sure) the intriguing observation of Charles Williams, “when the means are autonomous, they are deadly”. One can ponder this in reference to money or almost anything that one might value. As a comment on the behavior of money, it is surely one of the more perceptive things ever said. After the Second World War, especially given the extent of the destruction of Germany and parts of France, there was very little realistic hope of getting any reparations payments from Germany: it would, as well, have extended the period of recovery from about a decade to probably a century. As it was, the Soviet Union insisted on reparations, but they took them in kind rather than in money — dismantling East German industry with shocking speed and pillaging a good deal of that in West Germany as well — with the result that while the United States and a few other countries were pouring money into West Germany, East Germany was being despoiled as thoroughly as possible. Within a generation, West Germany was once again one of the economic powers on the European state, and its Soviet-dominated Eastern counterpart was struggling.

• We usually talk — or have talked — about the “Free World” as opposed to other parts of the world that are apparently not so free. In the 1950s and 1960s this seemed fairly obvious to everyone (at least everyone in the United States)— but how valid is that assessment? What defines a state or a people as free? Democracy (in some form or other) is often held up as a marker for liberty. But is it? Can one have a lack of liberty in a democratic state? (This is a question that is driving at least some of the rhetoric of the current election, so it’s worth considering, wherever you come out on the issue.) Can one (on the other hand) have liberty under some form of government that is not democratic? We raised very early on in the course the issue of the consent of the governed. Does democratic election constitute such consent?
• How did the divergent approaches taken by the Soviet Union and the West produce different results in Germany and the other countries that fell under their general spheres of influence?
• World War I was largely triggered by tripwire treaties, alliances, and power blocs: certainly (at least in Europe), World War II was fought out between the Allies and the Axis powers. Do such alliances actually produce increased security for those who participate in them? If so, what are the advantages afterward? Why did the boundaries of these alliances switch so quickly from Axis/Allies to Warsaw Pact/NATO?

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