In western Europe, the first two decades of postwar reconstruction had been overseen for the most part by center-right Christian Democrats (see "The Search for Political and Social Consensus" in Chapter 28). In the mid- to late 1960s, buoyed by the rapidly expanding economy, much of western Europe moved politically to the left. There were important exceptions to this general trend. Centrists remained in power in France until 1981. And in Spain, Portugal, and Greece, authoritarian regimes maintained control until the mid-1970s.

Despite these exceptions, the general leftward drift encouraged a gradual relaxation of Cold War tensions. Though the Cold War continued to rage outside Europe, western European leaders took major steps to normalize relations with the East Bloc. German Chancellor Willy Brandt (1913–1992) took the lead. In December 1970, he flew to Poland for the signing of a historic treaty of reconciliation.

Brandt’s treaty with Poland was part of his broader conciliatory foreign policy termed Ostpolitik (German for “Eastern policy”). Brandt aimed at nothing less than a comprehensive peace settlement for central Europe and the two postwar German states. Accordingly, the chancellor negotiated new treaties with the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, as well as Poland, that formally accepted existing state boundaries in return for a mutual renunciation of force or the threat of force. Using the imaginative formula of “two German states within one German nation,” he broke decisively with past policy and entered into direct relations with East Germany.

Brandt’s Ostpolitik was part of a general relaxation of East-West tensions, termed détente (day-TAHNT), which began in the early 1970s. Though Cold War hostilities continued in the developing world, direct diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union grew less strained.

The move toward détente reached a high point when the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, and all European nations (except isolationist Albania and tiny Andorra) met in Helsinki to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975. Under what came to be called the Helsinki Accords, the thirty-five participating nations agreed that Europe’s existing political frontiers could not be changed by force. They also accepted numerous provisions guaranteeing the civil rights and political freedoms of their citizens. The agreement was effective in diminishing Cold War conflict. Although Communist regimes would continue to curtail domestic freedoms and violate human rights guarantees, the accords encouraged East Bloc dissidents, who could now demand that their governments respect international declarations on human rights.

The shift to the left in western European politics also led to new domestic reforms. Building on the welfare systems established in the 1950s, politicians increased state spending on public services even further. By the early 1970s, state spending on such programs hovered around 40 percent of the gross domestic product in France, West Germany, and Great Britain, and even more in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Center-right Christian Democrats generally supported increased spending on entitlements — as long as the economy prospered. The economic slowdown of the mid-1970s undermined support for the welfare state consensus.