REBUILDING DIVIDEDEUROPEThe Second World War ended with little of the optimism that
had followed the conclusion of the First World War. Winston Churchill,
for one, was pessimistic: “What is Europe now? A rubble heap, a charnel
house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate.” Four times more people
had been killed in World War II (as a direct or indirect result of the fight
ing) than had died in World War I, which had been “the war to end all
wars.” As the smoke of war cleared, Europeans struggled to comprehend
the devastation around them: flattened cities, crippled industry, and mil
lions of refugees. The world soon learned that more than 6 million Jews
had been exterminated by the Nazis. Countries that the German armies
had occupied or that had been Nazi allies had to determine how to deal
with collaborators, and they also faced the challenge of establishing demo
cratic political institutions. In the meantime, intellectuals wrestled with
the horrendous catastrophe that had occurred.
The shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy would pose a great chal
lenge. The economies of the Western nations recovered from the war with
remarkable speed and entered a period of spectacular economic growth.
Economic growth came even as superpower competition between the United
States and the Soviet Union made the other European powers less impor
tant in the world, as did the growing prodigious economic might of Japan
and the rise of China as a great power.
The European population grew from 548 million in 1950 to 727 million
in 2000. The post-war period brought a “baby boom.” Life expectancy
increased as people lived longer due to improvements in medicine and diet.
Mechanization and commercialization augmented agricultural production.
Because of what became known as a “Green Revolution,” more and more
rural people left the land for cities, which grew rapidly. Over the decades
that followed, greater opportunities for women became available. At the
same time, simultaneous revolutions in transportation, communications, and
consumerism transformed the way Europeans lived.
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CHAPTER 27