Introduction for Chapter 28

28 Cold War Conflict and Consensus

1945–1965

The defeat of the Nazis and their allies in 1945 left Europe in ruins. In the immediate postwar years, as Europeans struggled to overcome the effects of rampant death and destruction, the victorious Allies worked to shape an effective peace accord. Disagreements between the Soviet Union and the Western allies emerged during this process and quickly led to an apparently endless Cold War between the two new superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union. This conflict split much of Europe into a Soviet-aligned Communist bloc and a U.S.-aligned capitalist bloc and spurred military, economic, and technological competition.

Amid these tensions, battered western European countries fashioned a remarkable recovery, building strong democratic institutions and vibrant economies. In the Soviet Union and the “East Bloc” (the label applied to central and eastern European countries governed by Soviet-backed Communist regimes), Communist leaders repressed challenges to one-party rule but also offered limited reforms, leading to stability there as well. Yet the postwar period was by no means peaceful. Anti-Soviet uprisings in East Bloc countries led to military intervention and death and imprisonment for thousands. Colonial independence movements in the developing world sometimes erupted in violence, even after liberation was achieved. Cold War hostilities had an immense impact on the decolonization process, often to the detriment of formerly colonized peoples.

Cold War conflicts notwithstanding, the postwar decades witnessed the construction of a relatively stable social and political consensus in both Communist and capitalist Europe. At the same time, changing class structures, new migration patterns, and new roles for women and youths had a profound impact on European society, laying the groundwork for major transformations in the decades to come.

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Life in Eastern Europe. This relief sculpture, a revealing example of socialist realism from 1952 that portrays (from left to right) a mail carrier, a builder, industrial workers, and peasants, adorns the wall of the central post office in Banská Bystrica, a regional capital in present-day Slovakia (formerly part of Czechoslovakia). Citizens in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries of the East Bloc saw many similar works of public art, which idealized the dignity of ordinary laborers and the advantages of communism. (Georgios Makkas/Alamy)

CHAPTER PREVIEW

Postwar Europe and the Origins of the Cold War

Why was World War II followed so quickly by the Cold War?

The Western Renaissance/Recovery in Western Europe

What were the sources of postwar recovery and stability in western Europe?

Developments in the Soviet Union and the East Bloc

What was the pattern of postwar development in the Soviet bloc?

The End of Empires

What led to decolonization after World War II, and how did the Cold War influence the process?

Postwar Social Transformations

How did changes in social relations contribute to European stability on both sides of the iron curtain?

Chronology

1945 Yalta Conference; end of World War II in Europe; Potsdam Conference; Nuremberg trials begin
1945–1960s Decolonization of Asia and Africa
1945–1965 United States takes lead in Big Science
1947 Truman Doctrine; Marshall Plan
1948 Founding of Israel
1948–1949 Berlin airlift
1949 Creation of East and West Germany; formation of NATO; establishment of COMECON
1950–1953 Korean War
1953 Death of Stalin
1955–1964 Khrushchev in power; de-Stalinization of Soviet Union
1955 Warsaw Pact founded
1956 Suez crisis
1957 Formation of Common Market; Pasternak publishes Doctor Zhivago
1961 Building of Berlin Wall
1962 Cuban missile crisis; Solzhenitsyn publishes One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1964 Brezhnev replaces Khrushchev as Soviet leader