Western Civilization - History Of European Society

Europe in the Age of The Cold War,1945–75617

occupation. The city of Berlin, although located deep

in the Soviet zone of occupation, was likewise divided

into sectors administered by the great powers.

The territorial changes were less dramatic in the re-

mainder of Europe. Austria was again detached from

Germany; like Germany, it was divided into zones of

occupation. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yu-

goslavia, and Romania were all restored to their approx-

imate frontiers of 1919. The most important changes in

eastern Europe involved the march of the Soviet Union

westward. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and

Lithuania (annexed in 1939) remained part of the

USSR, as did slices of eastern Poland (much of White

Russia, or Belarus), Czechoslovakia (much of Ruthenia),

and Romania (the province of Bessarabia). This re-

versed the perspective of the Peace of Paris: The 1919

treaties had created a “cordon sanitaire” of small east

European states as a barrier to the spread of Bolshevism,

but eastern Europe now stood as a buffer zone protect-

ing an expanded Soviet Union from western militarism

and anticommunism.

The territorial changes of 1945 led to a period of

great migration, especially of the German population

now scattered in many states. More than eight million

Germans left Poland and the Baltic states for Germany;

they were joined by nearly three million Germans dri-

ven out of Czechoslovakia (chiefly the Sudeten Ger-

mans), by more than a million Germans fleeing the

Soviet zone of occupied Germany, and by nearly an-

other million Germans from Hungary, Yugoslavia, and

Romania. Approximately thirteen million Germans were

uprooted in the period 1945–47. Similarly, some 3.5

million Poles moved into the territory newly acquired

from Germany and 1.5 million Poles fled the territory

acquired by the USSR. Hundreds of thousands of Ital-

ians (leaving the Istrian Peninsula, which was now Yu-

goslavian), Turks (driven from Bulgaria), and Ukrainians

(leaving Poland for Ukraine) shared this experience.

The Austerity of the 1940s and

the Economic Recovery

Much of Europe lay in ruins in 1945. Great cities from

London and Antwerp to Dresden and Leningrad were

devastated (see illustration 31.1). Ninety-five percent of

Illustration 31.1
Reconstruction of a Devastated Europe.For the second
time in thirty years, Europeans faced the task of rebuilding war-
ravaged cities, industries, and infrastructure in the late 1940s.

A photograph like this one could have been taken in dozens of

European cities from Rotterdam to Leningrad. It shows the cen-

ter of Nuremburg, Germany at the time of the war crimes trial.