Europe would have to start again, but according to what principles? Socialists and communists believed that social revolution could start from scratch in this “year zero,” and in some countries left-wing parties won substantial popular support. By 1952, however, the left’s power had waned, and Europe’s most industrially advanced countries were dominated by conservative and middle-of-the-road parties. World War II had demonstrated that a modern government could oversee a nation’s economy. Consequently, most European countries introduced centralized economic planning. This mildly “socialistic” reform, along with emerging welfare-state policies pioneered in Scandinavia, blunted some left-wing demands for radical change.
The victory of moderate reconstruction took place in a changed international context. The Allies’ victory demonstrated that Europe would no longer enjoy central power in world affairs. The postwar world was bipolar, dominated by the United States and the USSR. The cold war between these two superpowers would affect every nation’s internal politics.
The United States helped consolidate the new Europe. In 1947, the European Recovery Plan, popularly known as the Marshall Plan, offered billions of dollars in aid. By the time the plan ended in 1952, industrial and agricultural production in Europe had surpassed prewar levels. Europe’s “great boom” in employment, standard of living, and productivity was under way. In exchange for helping Europe rebuild, however, the United States expected political allegiance. In 1949, the United States presided over the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance that committed members to oppose the USSR and national communist parties. Still, there were many local conflicts with U. S. policy. Many governments resisted the imposition of American will, sometimes by means of legislation that tried to constrain the power of American capital.
The growth of American power after World War I had convinced many Europeans that only a “United States of Europe” could compete in the new arena (p. 168). The “European Idea” was revived in the 1940s, when it became evident that countries would need to cooperate in order to rebuild. Moreover, the United States supported the pan-European idea because it believed a prosperous Europe would resist communism and offer markets for American goods.
The United Nations (founded in 1945), the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, and, in 1957, the European Economic Community (known as the Common Market) certainly constituted steps toward the goal of European unity. Yet the dream of a Europe without national boundaries was not realized. Nations insisted on their distinct cultural identities. Many Europeans argued that in the wake of American economic and political domination had come a cultural imperialism—that in advertising, fashion, and mass media, Europe was already becoming a colony of the United States. In the postwar era, then, we find a complex, often tense interplay among national identity, European unity, allegiance to America, and resistance to it.
World History
