The Struggle for Europe

THERE has been a recent upsurge in publications on twentieth-century European history. The trend is unsurprising. The end of the Cold War and the relentless conflict in Iraq provide scholars with new avenues for the theoretically complex and hazardous task of Europe-gazing. Nevertheless, while not threadbare, the register of work on post-1945 Europe is less weighty than that on the pre-1945 period. William Hitchcock and Eric Dorn Brose apply themselves to rectifying this shortcoming with some skill. Hitchcock's narrative stakes the terrain from 1945 to the end of the Cold War. It is ambitiously sweeping, despite familiar resonances. The break-up of the Grand Alliance after Yalta and Potsdam—the seeds of the Cold War, and the descent of the Iron Curtain—feature in the opening section. The complexity of relations behind the Curtain is noted, including Albanian and Yugoslav ‘transgressions’ from the Stalinist line (p. 118). Western Europe's impressive economic recovery and the debate about market integration occur in tow with the pressures of decolonisation—Hitchcock delves in particular into the Algerian Civil War and the Suez crisis. Eastern Europe under the Soviet yoke (the book focuses heavily on Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia) faced its own post-Stalin challenges, deriving some benefit from Khrushchev's policies of thaw, though these were, as is rightly pointed out, ‘contradictory’. Then came the ascent of the European Economic Community, including Gaullist efforts to limit the reach of American influence

Alliance · Art · Cold war · Decolonization · Economic history · Iron Curtain · Literature · Narrative · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law