A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1146 Ch. 27 • Rebuilding Divided Europe

the ability of European states to support their extensive social services. The
oil crisis also helped cause the economic recession that gripped Western Eu­
rope from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Inflation, which had been at
modest levels during the 1950s and 1960s but had been accentuated by the
U.S. war in Vietnam, then began to soar. The oil embargo brought unem­
ployment, which also strained European welfare budgets.

Conclusion

The end of World War II engendered two major changes that largely defined
international politics for the next decades. First, the post-war division of Eu­
rope into zones of U.S. influence in the West and Soviet domination in the
East brought a Cold War between the two superpowers, in which Western
European states, Soviet Eastern European and Balkan satellites, and so­
called Third World, or unaligned countries, most of them underdeveloped,
became caught up. Second, sacrifices made by the colonies of the European
great powers during the war—including military service and considerable
loss of life—encouraged national liberation movements. These movements
and the resistance they encountered from colonial powers led to a dramatic
period of decolonization.