Postwar Europe: 1953-1971

Postwar Europe: 195-1971

Western European Politics 

J. Robertson 

4 October 2012

Political Attitudes in the Apogee of Post-War Europe

The second part of Tony Judt’s book, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 discusses the sociopolitical revitalization of Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s. With the successful resurrection of the Western European economy, Judt tries to capture the continent as it finally heals its war wounds. Three events during this period are particularly indicative of Europe’s ideological rehabilitation from the radicalism that plagued it the past century. The first event- and perhaps the one with the most longstanding ideological impact- is the 1956 Hungarian revolution. The second set of events includes the disintegration of Britain as a major global power: no longer would the island nation hold much influence the future of continental Europe. Rather, during these decades Germany solidified itself as the continent’s economic leader. The third point discusses the rise of the Social Democrats and the marginalization of Marxist ideologies that had spearheaded revolutionary sentiments across Europe for over fifty years. Together, these events ended longstanding pretenses about the fungibility of far Leftist philosophies. After these events, Europeans accepted the unromantic disjunct between the demands of political philosophy and of political practice.

With Stalin’s death in 1953 and the appointment of Nikita Khrushchev as the First Secretary of the Communist Party, the USSR began to loosen the grip of the governmental hand on its satellite states.  This process required the reappointment of a number of satellite councilmen. Moscow appointed Imre Nagy (a ‘questionable’ reformist politician in Stalin’s view) as the new Chairman of the Hungarian Council of Ministers.  By 1955, Nagy’s politics inspired many national “informal ‘reform’ opposition” groups (Judt, p. 313-314). 

In 1956, increased public support led to the ‘League of Hungarian Students’ to draft a “’Sixteen Point’ manifesto detailing their economic and civil liberty demands to Moscow” (Judt, p. 315). They demanded Nagy become prime minister and that Hungary withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. In October, the League demonstrated in Budapest’s Parliament Square, tearing down Stalin’s statue and installing Nagy as the Prime Minister of Hungary. Soviet troops quickly arrived to suppress the movement. To avoid the media catastrophe that would surely follow in the wake of a violent military suppression, Soviet leaders chose to stand by and observe quietly. But when Nagy announced that he “was forming a multi-party government” and basing his authority on the public’s support, Moscow became agitated (Judt, p. 316).

When Nagy announced plans “to secure Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact,” Khrushchev realized that Hungary was “beginning to sound like the start of the contamination effect that the Soviet leaders had long feared” (Judt, p. 316).  The next day, troops were deployed towards Hungary and Soviet leaders convinced Nagy’s Minister of State, Janos Kadar, to head a counter-revolution against Nagy’s government.

 Nagy then declared Hungarian neutrality. But Soviet forces arrested Nagy and his administration before he could act upon it. The Red Army immediately reinstated Kadar’s government “within the next seventy-two hours” (Judt, p. 317). The Soviets gave Nagy a secret trial, ultimately sentencing him and his government leaders to death.

Despite the failure of the 1956 revolution, Hungary represented a fundamental turning point for Eastern European communism. Because of its media coverage in the West, many democratic nations intensified their efforts in fostering resistance movements within the USSR, hoping that they may one day incite the disassembly of the federation without resorting to war. As summarized by Judt: “it was not the Hungarians’ revolt but rather the Soviet repression which made the greater impression on foreign observers. Communism was now forever to be associated with oppression, not revolution” (Judt, p. 322). The events in Hungary ultimately served to extinguish any support for Communism that had managed to survive up to this point not only in Western Europe, but in the entire eastern bloc as well. Any enduring ideological support “was now just a way of life to be endured; after November 1956 the Communist states…began their descent into a decades-long twilight of stagnation, corruption, and cynicism” (Judt, p. 323). The threat of Communist ideology taking over Europe was effectively terminated. The only thing for the West to do at that point was to wait and the Soviet bloc unravel its own seams.

The second most striking development of this era was the solidification of Germany as an economic powerhouse juxtaposed to the dwindling relevance of the once-great British Empire. This reversal of economic fortune came directly from the antithetic roles each played in both world wars and their subsequent recovery plans.

The wars caused Britain to accrue an ostentatious debt and developed a firmly rooted cultural “stagnation and a deep fear of change” (Judt, p. 358). Rather than utilize the opportunity to revamp its capitalist economy under the Marshall Plan, Britain “never boasted any overall national strategic ambition” (Judt, p. 359). Parliament allocated raw materials to producers based on their respective pre-war market shares: a tactic that galvanized inefficiency and suppressed competition.

While other nations recognized the need for concessions in the post war economy, Britain believed that maintaining consistent output levels would guarantee financial re-stabilization. Soon enough, however, the market for British goods evaporated, as its reputation for producing low quality goods grew.

By the mid-1960s, British products “could not compete with the US, and later Germany, in any unprotected overseas market” in neither “quality nor quantity” (Judt, p. 357). These practices, alongside the dissolution of their colonial empire, and their inefficient expansion of higher education institutions, crushed any hope of Britain reclaiming its position as the dominant continental power.

The German boom of the 1960s, however, was the harvest of the economic seeds the Nazis had sown in the 1930s. The Nazis made profound investments in infrastructure, and in those industries where it could sustain an advantage. Having already been installed, Germany was ready to exploit these advantages with the capital supplied by the Marshall Plan. The government invested in and granted subsidies to the most promising industries. This fostered efficient production methods and weeded-out unprofitable businesses. An “inexhaustible supply of cheap labor” brought by lax immigration laws helped accelerate Germany’s economic recovery far past any other western state (Judt, p. 355).

Ideologically, the lesson from postwar Britain needs some disassembling. The haphazard funding by the government resonates with the grossly inefficient production plans of the USSR. By not incentivizing competition among private industry nor investing greatly in its upcoming labor market (as the Germans had done), British officials sabotaged its nations economic future role in the globalized economy. This pseudo-communist approach to the economy served as a prime example to its neighbors that at least the competitive element inherent in capitalism, for all practical purposes, should not be thrown out for the sake of promoting socialist ideology.

The third event that proves the most telling of the cultural and political changes taking place during this time comes through the continental rise of Social Democratic philosophy. Unlike the ultra radical movements of the past, this ideology emphasized social improvement for

all classes through peaceful and incremental changes. They advocated using “the resources of the state to eliminate…social pathologies…to build not economic utopias but good societies” (Judt, p. 363).

After decades of political turmoil, Europeans were more than ready to support an ideology that promoted social moderation and universal fairness. This proof was striking in the voting booth; “the remarkable thing about these voting figures…was their consistency” (Judt, p. 363).

 In addition, the 1960s demographic transformation of highly accessible education and “social mobility” led Europeans to grow “less disposed to identify automatically with the political movements and social affiliations of their parents’ world” (Judt, p. 372). Thus the widespread Social Democratic movement that made the 1960s a “vital” decade in which “both halves of the continent began their definitive turn away from ideological politics” (Judt, p. 448). Even the resurgence of early Marxism among intellectuals could not escape “its tragic denouncement…of the last illusions of Marxism as a practice” (Judt, p. 449).

            Overall, these points best summarize the sociopolitical climate of Europe between 1953 and 1971. With the Hungarian revolution terminating all enthusiasm for Communism as a practice, the relative failure of Britain’s anti-capitalist economic recovery, and rising popularity of the Social Democratic party, Europe during these decades can appropriately be seen as period of major departure from the experimental mood of the early twentieth century. Far from ideology, pragmatism now rooted itself as the guiding principle for all future government action. 

Bibliography 

Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin: New York. 2006.