What I learned from Tony Judt's "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945"

Recently, I finished reading Tony Judt's "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945", and I would like to share some of my impressions of this terrific book, which I think anyone even remotely interested in history would enjoy very much.

Let me begin by saying that it is a very informative book. While it's not written to be read only by history buffs, some elementary knowledge of European history is required to follow it; nevertheless, even well informed readers will learn many new things by reading the book. Moreover, the book does an excellent job of putting every single fact it describes into context, so the reader understands its significance to the way things turned out the way they did, both the hows and the whys. I, for one, was surprised to find out how much, immediately after the end of World War II and for some years on, the fear of a rearmed Germany, which would display the same territorial ambitions as the Third Reich, exceeded even the fear of the mighty Soviet military machine in Europe - and how it lead to coal, one of Germany's most important assets, being put under an international authority, the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, the harbinger of the European Economic Community that would evolve to be the European Union; that, in fact, fear lay among the seeds of European integration even more so than ideals of co-operation among peoples or the desire for an enlarged common market.

The descriptions in the book, particularly those of a devastated Europe in the aftermath of the war, are very realistic, they bring to mind scenes from movies of the Italian neo-realist cinema in their detail and realism. Another of the author's talents is his ability to switch from a broad approach to very detailed views of periods, countries, etc., in a way consistent with his whole narrative. The author might take us, for example, from a general view of the influence of the Catholic Church in politics throughout Europe (including Poland) to the specific role the Catholic Church played in Franco's Spain, and the reader will enjoy the transition. The book, then, is broad in its scope, but detailed enough, without becoming tiresome, for the reader to have gained a complete picture of the forces that led Europe to where it is today.

For my part, I learned a lot from Judt's description of the communist States of Eastern Europe. Judt narrates, in fascinating detail, how the Soviet Union managed to install puppet regimes in the lands it had conquered during the War, although communist sympathies among the local population were minimal; and how the leaderships of these regimes were always men (never women) of no more than average intelligence, with a bureaucratic set of mind and their ability to convey orders from Moscow being their most valuable asset. Each time someone more intelligent would rise to the top in a communist party, signs of independence would invariably lead to either an intra-party putsch or, worse, to the intervention of the Red Army (the role show trials played in the solidification of such regimes and the riddance of party leaders of Jewish descent is also accounted for - a notable exception was Poland in 1956, where the local party chiefs, primarily Władysław Gomułka, were able to convince the Soviets that a number of reforms they undertook would pose no threat to the stability of the Warsaw pact - and Moscow's relative tolerance in the matter made many people in Hungary believe that they could undertake similar reforms, leading to the intervention of the Red Army later that year). The fall of these regimes, precipitated by their inefficiency, which no propaganda machine could hide from their citizens, the restlessness such inefficiency caused and some small liberties granted to the population, in order to appease them, is another outstanding part in the book.


Finally, I should mention that one of the underlying themes of the book is the search for (or even the existence of) a common European identity, especially after the enlargement of the European Union in 2005 (the year the book was published) and the rejection of the european Constitutional Treaty by electorates in France and the Netherlands. Although English has become the lingua franca of today's Europe (to the extent that it is acceptable for a Flemish and a Walloon in Belgium to converse in English, rather than offend one another by not using their respective languages), a European identity seems to be being carved more in juxtaposition to the United States of America, rather than anything else. The welfare state (although Judt does recognize its limitations and the need for its overhaul) is a distinctly European, as opposed to American, feature. Even more important is the role of the State in matters of culture. European States pride themselves in the many state-run orchestras, theaters, cinema foundations, etc. they have, whereas in America art is left to the private sector (as it should, at least in this blogger's opinion); and, ironically enough, one of the central functions of the various European countries in their own cultural affairs is to prevent their cultural landscape from being americanized. And, last but not least, the Iraq war is mentioned as an example of the traditional powers of European integration (mainly France and Germany) chiding the countries that participated in the so-called "coalition of the willing" (Great Britain, France, the Czech Republic, etc.) as taking an un-European stance.


P.S. Tony Judt passed away a couple of weeks ago. He had suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease); he was active until the very end. He wrote down experiences of his illness, and essays on his life, among others, for the New York Review of Books. Many of these essays are still available online.