Rebirth of the West

Following the immediate postwar chaos, the first civilian governments in western Europe reflected the broad coalitions of the resistance movements and other opposition to the Axis powers. These reform-minded governments conspicuously emphasized democratic values to show their rejection of the totalitarian regimes that had earlier attracted so many Europeans. In France, the leader of the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle, governed briefly as chief of state, and the French approved a constitution in 1946 that established the Fourth Republic and finally granted the vote to French women. De Gaulle wanted a political system with a strong executive and, failing to achieve that, soon resigned in favor of centrist and left-wing parties. Meanwhile, Italy replaced its constitutional monarchy with a republic that also allowed women the vote for the first time. As in France, a resistance-based government was soon replaced by a coalition headed by the conservative Christian Democrats, descended from the traditional Catholic centrist parties of the prewar period. Other countries likewise saw the growing influence of Christian politicians because of their resistance to fascism.

Other voters in western Europe favored communist and labor parties. Symbol of the common citizen, the Soviet soldier was a hero to many western Europeans outside occupied Germany. People also remembered the hardships of the depression of the 1930s. Therefore, in Britain, despite the wartime successes of Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party leadership, the government of Labour Party leader Clement Attlee—though not Communist—appeared most likely to fulfill promises to share prosperity better among the classes. The extreme difficulties of the immediate postwar years provided further support for governments that would represent the millions of ordinary citizens who had suffered, fought, and worked incredibly hard during the war.

In West Germany, however, with the Communist takeovers occurring directly to the east and with memories of the millions of German soldiers who had died at the hands of the Red Army, communism and the left in general had little appeal. In 1949, centrist politicians came to power in the new state, officially named the German Federal Republic, whose constitution aimed to prevent the emergence of a dictator and to guarantee individual rights. West Germany’s first chancellor was the seventy-three-year-old Catholic anti-Communist Konrad Adenauer, who allied himself with the economist Ludwig Erhard. Erhard stabilized the postwar German currency so that people would have enough confidence in its soundness to resume normal trade and manufacturing, while Adenauer restored the representative government that Hitler had overthrown.

Paradoxically, given its leadership in the fight against fascism, the United States was a country in which individual freedom and democracy were imperiled after the war. Two events in 1949—the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic bomb and the Communist revolution in China—brought to the fore Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. senator fearing a reelection defeat. To win the election, McCarthy warned of a great conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. As during the Soviet purges, people of all occupations—including government workers, film stars, and union leaders—were called before U.S. congressional panels to confess, testify against friends, and say whether they had ever had Communist sympathies. The atmosphere was electric with confusion, for only five years before, the mass media had run glowing stories about Stalin and the Soviet system. By 1952, however, millions of Americans had been investigated, imprisoned, or fired from their jobs. McCarthy personally oversaw book burnings, and although the Senate finally voted to censure him in the winter of 1954, fearfulness and anticommunism had come to dominate political life.

Given the wartime destruction, the economic rebirth of western Europe was even more surprising than the revival of democracy. In the first weeks and months after the war, the job of rebuilding often involved menial physical labor that mobilized entire populations for such jobs as clearing the massive urban rubble by hand. Initially, governments diverted labor and capital into rebuilding transportation, communications, and industrial capacity instead of producing consumer goods. However, the scarcity of household goods sparked unrest. In the midst of this growing discontent, the Marshall Plan suddenly boosted recovery with American dollars; food and consumer goods became more plentiful; and demand for automobiles, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners accelerated economic growth.

The postwar recovery was helped by the continuation of military spending for the cold war and the adaptation of wartime technology to meet consumer needs. Civilian travel expanded as nations organized their own airlines based on improved airplane technology. Developed to relieve wartime shortages, synthetic goods such as nylon and a vast assortment of plastic products, ranging from pipes to rainwear, enriched civilian life. Governments also ordered bombs, fighter planes, tanks, and missiles (see “Taking Measure: Military Spending and the Cold War Arms Race, 1950–1970”) and sponsored military research. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 (see “The End of Empire in Asia”) increased U.S. orders for manufactured goods to wage that war, further sustaining economic growth in Europe. Ultimately, the cold war prevented a repeat of the 1920s, when reduced military spending threw people out of jobs and fed the growth of fascism.

Large and small European states alike developed and redeveloped modern economies in short order. In the twelve principal countries of western Europe, the annual rate of economic growth had been 1.3 percent per inhabitant between 1870 and 1913. Those countries almost tripled that rate between 1950 and 1973, attaining an annual per capita growth rate of 3.8 percent. Among the larger powers, West Germany surprisingly became the economic leader, achieving by the 1960s a stunning revival called the “economic miracle.” The smaller Scandinavian countries also achieved a notable recovery: Sweden succeeded in the development of automobile, truck, and shipbuilding industries. Finland modernized its industry and agriculture, which in turn forced the surplus farm population to seek factory work. Scandinavian women joined the workforce in record numbers, which also boosted economic growth and expanded prosperity. The thirty years after World War II were a golden age of European economic revival.

The creation of the Common Market, which evolved over time to become the European Union, was the final ingredient in the postwar recovery. In 1951, Italy, France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands took a major step toward cooperation when they formed the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)—an organization to manage the joint production of basic resources. According to the ECSC’s principal architect, Robert Schuman, ties created by joint productivity and trade would keep France and Germany from another cataclysmic war. (See “Document 27.1: The Schuman Plan on European Unity (1950).”) Then in 1957, the six ECSC members signed the Treaty of Rome, which provided for a more general trading partnership called the European Economic Community (EEC), known popularly as the Common Market. The EEC reduced tariffs among the six partners, developed common trade policies, and brought under one cooperative economic umbrella more than two hundred million consumers. According to one of its founders, the EEC aimed to “prevent the race of nationalism, which is the true curse of the modern world.” Increased cooperation produced great economic rewards for the six members, whose rates of economic growth soared.

Britain pointedly refused to join the partnership at first. Membership would have required it to surrender certain imperial trading rights among its Commonwealth partners such as Australia and Canada and, as one British politician put it, make Britain “just another European country.” Even without Britain, the rising prosperity of a new western Europe joined in the Common Market was striking.

Economic planning and coordination by specialists (as developed during wartime) shaped the Common Market. Called technocrats, specialists working for the Common Market were to base decisions on expertise rather than on personal interest and on the goals of the organization as a whole rather than on the demands of any one nation. The aim was to reduce the potential for irrationality and violence in politics, both domestic and international. Administered by a commission of technocrats based in Brussels, Belgium, the Common Market transcended the borders of the nation-state and thus exceeded the power of many elected politicians.