Post-war Europe as seen through the E.U

The Struggle for Europe: The History of the Continent since 1945. William I. Hitchcock. Profile Books. [pounds sterling]25.00. 513 pages. ISBN 1-8619-7233-4.

There has been no shortage of excellent histories of Europe from 1900 to 1945. They have all found it easy to choose themes: a European civil war, the decline of Europe, the rise of the superpowers, the age of ideologies or the crisis of capitalism. Europe since 1945 has been less well served with good general histories and has proved resistant to convincing general explanations. William Hitchcock is the latest in the field and has produced a very good, concise outline. It focuses on Western Europe but does justice to Eastern Europe, while placing the key issues in the context of continuing historical debates. The emphasis on the West is revealed in what emerges as his central theme--the origins and development of the European Union (EU).

The book is divided into four main sections. The first moves from the end of the Second World War to the early 1950s. He tells the familiar story of an enfeebled Europe, the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and the way co-operation between the wartime allies broke down as various East European nations fell to communist control. In the second part he considers how Western Europe witnessed an economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s (while not claiming that this was the child of the Marshall Plan), rapid decolonisation of most of its empires and the emergence of European integration. Against this he sets the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (principally Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) during the bleak final years of Stalin's rule and the more promising Khrushchev era. He centres developments in the 1960s on de Gaulle's efforts to dominate the emerging European Economic Community (EEC) and to lessen the American role in Europe.

In the next section Mr Hitchcock explores the way in which the framework built up since the 1940s was challenged from without by the rise in the price of oil and, from within, by the waves of student protest and workers' strikes in 1968, and later by terrorism. He demonstrates how the more critical outlook was duplicated in the communist bloc with the Prague spring of 1968 in Czechoslovakia. He talks of 'cracks in the wall' between East and West brought by Willy Brandt and by the Solidarity movement in Poland. In a chapter devoted to Margaret Thatcher he stresses the importance of the Falklands War for transforming her from 'embattled right-wing ideologue to a national leader'.

In the final part the author invokes Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities to describe events since 1989: 'It was the best of times, the worst of times'. The best times came in 1989-1991 when the Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, Germany was reunited, and, not least, the Soviet Union itself imploded. He also regards changes in the EEC as part of these beneficent developments. Renamed as the EU, its membership was enlarged, it developed common structures and expanded from economic co-operation to more overtly political co-ordination. The worst events followed on the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which brought war to Bosnia and Kosovo in particular and the lamentably slow international response.

William Hitchcock's account is crisp and clear and throws up some intelligent insights. However, more is needed on international affairs. He concentrates on the domestic developments and on global issues emerging from a consideration of internal affairs. Many developments, such as the origins of the Cold War, decolonisation and detente after 1969 are well handled. But others, such as the Korean War, Vietnam, East-West meetings and the pursuit of arms control before the late 1960s, require fuller exploration.

No new perspective is offered. Indeed, the author is rather conventional in outlook. He closes with a disquisition on the meaning of Europe, examining the dark elements of racism and extreme nationalism but remaining optimistic and with a reflection on the EU which seems to be the repository of many of his hopes. He is puzzled by many Europeans' critical attitudes to the EU, given that 'European integration has been the principal engine of prosperity and stability on the continent over the past half-century'. He suggests, rather glibly, that the solution to this might lie in the EU opening itself to greater scrutiny and Europeans accepting their responsibilities as citizens.

This treatment of 'Europe' is rather uncritical. It is refreshing for an American author not to claim that his country saved Western Europe. But he has overcompensated and has become unduly modest about America's vital contribution. The framework of security was American; US economic support in the 1940s was very important, even if not decisive. Moreover, 'Europe' was the way it was because of American encouragement. Would Europeans really have pursued tariff-free trade between themselves without American encouragement? Would France have trusted German economic and military resurgence without the reassurance of US military security? The struggle for Europe after 1945 was rarely a purely European affair.

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