StudySpace: Western Civilizations, 16 e.

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1. Introduction
1. Wasteland
1. Europe as land of wreckage and confusion
2. Refugees returned home
3. Housing now scarce, food in short supply
2. Trauma
1. The brutality of war
2. Civil war
3. Liberation and betrayal
3. Recovery
1. Government authority
2. Functioning bureaucracies
3. Legitimate legal systems
4. Memories
4. The emergence of the superpowers and the Cold War
5. Collapse of the European empires
2. The Cold War and a Divided Continent
1. The Iron Curtain
1. Teheran (1943) and Yalta (1945) Conferences
1. Soviets argue they had a legitimate claim to Eastern Europe
2. Churchill, Stalin, and the "percentages" agreement (1944)
1. Dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence
3. For the Soviets, Eastern Europe was "a sphere and a shield"
2. The Soviets and Eastern Europe
1. The "people's republics"
1. Sympathetic to Moscow
2. One party took hold of key positions of power
2. Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech (Fulton, MO, 1946)
3. Communists governments in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia (1948)
4. Yugoslavia
1. Tito declares his government independent of Moscow (1948)
2. Drew support from Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Yugoslavia
3. Expelled from Communist countries economic and military pacts
5. Soviet purges in the parties and administrations of satellite governments
1. Began in the Balkans
2. Extended through Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Poland
3. Renewed anti-Semitism
6. Greece
1. Local communist-led resistance
2. British and U.S. determined to keep Greece in their sphere of influence
3. Greece as touchstone for U.S. escalating fear of communist expansion
7. The two Germanys
1. Four occupied zones become two hostile states
2. Berlin divided as well
3. Three Western allies create a single government for their territories (1948)
1. Pass reforms to ease economic crisis
2. Introduce a new currency
4. Soviets retaliate with the Berlin Blockade (June 1948-May 1949)
1. Cut all roads, trains, and river access from the western zone to West Berlin
5. The Berlin airlift
6. The Federal Republic (West Germany)
7. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
3. The Marshall Plan
1. U.S. response to Soviet expansion was massive economic and military aid
2. The Truman Doctrine (1947)
1. Military assistance to anti-communists in Greece
2. Tied the contest for political power to economics
3. The Marshall Plan (1948)
1. 13 billion dollars of aid for industrial development over four years
2. Encouraged states to diagnose their own problems and develop solutions
3. Founded on the idea of coordination between European countries
4. The building block of future European economic unity
4. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, April 1949)
1. U.S., Canada and representatives from Western European states
2. Greece, Turkey, and West Germany added later
3. Armed attack against one is an armed attack against all
4. Eisenhower as senior military commander (1950)
4. Two worlds and the race for the bomb
1. Soviet response
1. Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)
2. Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM, 1947)
3. Warsaw Pact (1955)
1. Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, East Germany
2. The nuclear arms race
1. Soviets test an atom bomb (1949)
2. Soviets and U.S. both have the hydrogen bomb (1953)
1. One thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima explosion
3. Intercontinental missiles and delivery systems
4. Atomic-powered submarines
5. The "nuclearization of warfare"
1. Polarized the Cold War
2. Forced other countries to join U.S. or Soviets
3. Generated fears that local conflicts might trigger a general war
6. The bomb as symbol of an age
1. Science, technology, and progress
2. the threat of mass destruction
3. Was the Cold War inevitable?
1. Stalin's ambitions fueled the Cold War
2. U.S. feared Soviet expansion
1. Unwilling to give up military, economic, and political power
3. Trust was impossible
4. A new balance of power
5. George Kennan and the policy of containment
6. Domestic intensification of the Cold War
1. Anxiety
2. Air raid drills, spy trials, "the menacing other"
5. Khrushchev and the "thaw"
1. Death of Stalin (March 1953)
2. Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) comes to power in 1956
1. Agreed to summit with Britain, France and the US
3. The "Secret speech" (1956)
1. Denounced Stalinist excesses
2. Allowed rehabilitation of some of Stalin's victims
3. "Destalinization"
4. The "thaw" (1956-1958)
1. Camps released thousands of prisoners
2. The rehabilitation of relatives executed or imprisoned under Stalin
5. Cultural expression freed up
6. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
2. The First Circle (1968)
3. The Gulag Archipelago (Paris, 1973)
4. Arrest and Exile
6. Repression in Eastern Europe
1. East German government faces economic crisis (1953)
1. 58,000 East Germans leave for the West
2. Strikes and unrest
3. Walter Ulbricht used fears of disorder to solidify one-party rule
2. Poland
1. Demands for more independence to manage their own economy (1956)
2. Government responds with military repression and promises of liberalization
3. Wladyslaw Gomulka pledges Poland's loyalty to the Warsaw Pact
3. Hungary
1. Imre Nagy: nationalist and communist
2. Much broader anti-communist struggle
3. Attempted to leave Warsaw Pact
4. Soviet troops occupy Budapest (November 4, 1956)
5. Hungarian citizens resort to street fighting
6. The Soviets install Janos Kadar
1. Staunch (Moscow) communist
2. The repression continues
7. Khrushchev and "peaceful coexistence"
1. NATO places nuclear weapons in West Germany
2. East Germans continue to flee (2.7 million between 1949 and 961)
3. Khrushchev demands a permanent division of Germany with a free city of Berlin
4. The Berlin Wall (1961)
3. Economic Renaissance
1. The "Economic Miracle"
1. War provided technologies with practical and immediate applications
2. Improved communications
3. Manufacture of synthetic materials, aluminum, and alloy steels
4. Advances in techniques of prefabrication
5. High consumer demand and high levels of employment
2. The role of government
1. The necessity of planning
2. West Germany provides tax breaks to encourage business investment
3. Britain and Italy offer investment allowances
4. broad experiments with the nationalization of industry and services
1. "Mixed economies" providing public and private ownership
2. France -- electricity, gas, banking, radio, television and auto industry are state-managed
3. Britain -- coal, utilities, road and rail transport, and banking are nationalized
5. West Germany experiences unprecedented economic growth
1. Production increased six fold (1948-1964)
2. Unemployment reached 0.4% (1965)
3. New housing units built
4. German demand for labor attracted foreign workers
6. France
1. Government plays direct role in industrial reform
1. Capital, expertise, shifts in national labor pool
2. Priority to basic industries
7. Italy
1. heavy subsidies from Marshall Plan
2. Olivetti, Fiat, and Pirelli become household names
3. By 1954, real wages 50% higher than they had been in 1938
4. Poverty continued to remain high in agrarian south
8. Britain
1. Harold Macmillan, "You've never had it so good" (1959)
2. The economy remained sluggish
3. Obsolete factories and methods
4. Unwillingness to adopt new techniques
3. European economic integration
1. European Coal and Steel Community (1951)
1. Coal accounted for 82% of Europe's primary energy consumption
2. Key to relations between West Germany and France
2. European Economic Community (EEC or Common Market)
1. France, West Germany, Italy, Britain, Holland, and Luxembourg
2. Abolition of trade barriers
3. Committed to common external tariffs
4. The free movement of labor
5. A unified wage structure and social security systems
6. The "Eurocrats"
7. Britain
1. Feared effects of ECSC on declining coal industry
2. Continued to rely on economic relations with the Empire and Commonwealth
8. EEC became the world's largest exporter (1963)
1. Total production 70% higher than it had been in 1950
3. Bretton Woods (July 1944)
1. Aimed to coordinate movements of the global economy
2. Created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank
3. All currencies pegged to the dollar
4. Economic development in the East
1. National income rose and output increased
2. Poland and Hungary strengthened their economic connections with the West
3. 30% of Eastern European trade done outside the Soviet bloc (1970s)
4. COMECON compelled other members to trade with the Soviet Union
5. The Welfare State
1. Economic expansion promised more comprehensive social programs
2. "Welfare state" coined by Clement Atlee (British Labour Party)
3. Britain
1. Free medical health care through the National Health Service
2. Assistance to families
3. Guaranteed secondary education
4. Welfare relief as entitlement and not poor relief
5. T. H. Marshall and social rights and social democracy
6. European politics
1. Pragmatism
2. Konrad Adenauer
1. West German chancellor (1949-1963)
2. Despised German militarism
3. Remained apprehensive about German parliamentary government
3. General Charles de Gaulle and the Fifth French Republic
1. Retired from politics (1946)
2. Returns to office after Algerian War (1958)
3. Insists on a new constitution
4. Strengthened executive branch of government
5. France withdraws from NATO (1966)
6. Cultivates better relations with Soviet Union
7. Modern military establishment, with atomic weapons
4. Revolution, Anti-Colonialism, and the Cold War
1. The "Third World"
1. Avoiding alignment with either superpower
2. The Chinese Revolution (1949)
1. Civil war since 1926
2. Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) -- nationalist
3. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) -- communist
4. Nationalists and communists defeat Japan
1. Mao refuses to surrender northern provinces
5. U.S. intervention
6. The Revolution was the act of a nation of peasants
7. Mao adapts Marxism to Chinese conditions
8. The "fall of China" provoked fear in the West
9. US considers China and the Soviet Union to be a "communist bloc"
3. The Korean War
1. A Cold War "hot spot"
2. Korea under Japanese control during WWII
3. Post-1945: Soviets control north (Kim Jong II) and U.S. controls south (Syngman Rhee)
4. North Korean troops attack across the border (June 1950)
5. U.S. brings invasion to the attention of the UN Security Council
1. UN permits an American-led "police action"
2. General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
1. Former military governor of occupied Japan
2. Leads amphibious assault behind North Korean lines
3. Wanted to press assault into China
4. Relieved of duty by Truman
3. Chinese troops support North Koreans
6. Stalemate
7. The end of the Korean conflict (June 1953)
8. Korea remained divided
4. Decolonization
1. The decline of older empires
2. Nationalist movements and independence
5. The British Empire unravels
1. India
1. Post-1945: waves of Indian protest for Britain to "quit India"
2. Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
1. Pioneered anti-colonial ideas and tactics
2. Advocated swaraj ("self-rule"), non-violence, and civil disobedience
3. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)
1. Led the pro-independence Congress Party
4. Ethnic and religious conflict
1. The Muslim League
5. British India partitioned into India (majority Hindu) and Pakistan (majority Muslim)
1. Brutal religious and ethnic warfare
6. Gandhi assassinated (January 1948)
7. Nehru as prime minister of India (1947-1964)
1. Program of industrialization and modernization
2. Steered a course of non-alignment with U.S.S.R. and U.S.
2. Palestine
1. Balfour Declaration (1917)
1. Promised a "Jewish homeland" in Palestine for European Zionists
2. Rising conflict between Jewish settlers and Arabs (1930s)
3. British limit further immigration (1939)
4. A three-way war
1. Palestinian Arabs -- fighting for land and independence
2. Jewish settlers determined to defy British rule
3. British administrators with divided sympathies
5. United Nations partitions territory into two states
6. Israel declares independence (May 1948)
7. Palestinian Arabs clustered in refugee camps
1. Gaza strip
2. West bank of the Jordan River
8. Israel recognized by U.S. and U.S.S.R.
3. Africa
1. Several west African colonies move toward independence
1. Britain leaves constitutions and a legal system but no economic support
2. Ghana seen as model for African free nations (1960)
2. More African colonies gain independence
1. Could not redress losses from colonialism
3. Mau Mau Rebellion (Kenya)
1. Killing of civilians
2. British set up internment camps
4. Britain tolerates aparthied in South Africa
1. Required Africans to live in designated "homelands"
2. Forbade Africans from traveling without permits
3. The management of labor
4. Banned political protest
5. Rhodesia declares independence (1945)
4. Crisis in Suez and the end of an era
1. Britain found the cost of maintaining naval and air bases too high
2. Protects oil-rich states of the Middle East
3. Nationalists force British to withdraw troops in Egypt within three years (1951)
4. King Farouk (1921-1965) deposed by nationalist officers and a republic is proclaimed (1952)
5. Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970)
1. Becomes Egyptian president
2. Nationalization of the Suez Canal Company
3. Financing the Aswan Dam
4. "Pan-Arabism"
5. Willing to take aid and support from the Soviets
6. Israel, France, and Britain found Pan-Arabism threatening
7. Egypt attacked by Israel, France and Britain (1956)
8. U.S. inflicts financial penalties on Britain and France, forced to withdraw
6. French decolonization
1. The French Experience
1. Decolonization was bloodier, more difficult, and more damaging to French prestige
2. The first Vietnam War, 1946-1954
1. The French in Indochina -- one of France's last imperial acquisitions
2. Nationalist and communist independence movements
3. Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)
1. Hoped for independence at Versailles (1919)
2. Marxist peasants organized around social, agrarian, and national issues
4. Allies support communist independence movement
5. Vietnamese guerilla war against the French
6. French pressed on for total victory
7. French establish a base at Dien Ben Phu (falls in May 1954)
1. French begin peace talks at Geneva
2. The Geneva Accords
8. Indochina divided into four countries
1. North Vietnam -- taken over by Ho Chi Minh's party
2. South Vietnam -- taken over by pro-western politicians
9. A virtual guarantee that war would continue
3. Algeria
1. Since the 1830s a settler state of three social groups
1. One million Europeans (farmers, vintners, working class, small merchants)
2. Muslim Berbers (formal and informal privileges)
3. Muslim Arabs (largest and most deprived sector)
2. Post-1945: Algerian nationalists called on the Allies to recognize their independence
3. Public demonstrations
1. Violence against settlers
2. French repression
4. France grants limited enfranchisement
1. Settlers and Berber Muslims
2. Arabs
5. Arab activists form the National Liberation Front (FLN) in the mid-1950s
6. Civil war on many fronts
1. Guerilla war between regular French army and FLN
2. FLN terrorism in Algerian cities
3. Systematic torture by French security forces
7. De Gaulle declares that Algeria would always be French
8. Algeria declares its independence by referendum (1962)
9. The war divided French society
1. The identity of France
5. Post War Culture and Thought
1. The black presence
1. Présence Africaine (published at Paris, 1947)
1. Aimé Césaire (1913-) and Léopold Senghor (1906-2001)
2. Both men were the exponents of "Negritude" ("black consciousness")
3. Assimilation was a failure
4. Powerful indictments of colonialism
2. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
1. Withdrawing into black culture was not an answer to racism
2. A theory of radical social change
3. Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
4. The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
3. Pointed to the ironies of Europe's "civilizing mission"
4. The re-evaluation of blackness
2. Existentialism
1. Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960)
1. Individuality, commitment, and choice
2. "Existence precedes essence"
1. Meaning in life is not given, it is created
2. Individuals are condemned to be free
3. "Bad faith" -- denying one's freedom
3. Camus: The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947), and The Fall (1956)
4. Existentialism and race
1. Race derived meaning from lived experience
5. Simon de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
1. The Second Sex (1949)
2. "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"
3. Asks why do women dream the dreams of men?
4. Marx, Freud, and the "woman question"
3. Memory and amnesia: The aftermath of war
1. Individual helplessness in the face of state power
1. George Orwell (1903-1950) -- Animal Farm (1946) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
2. Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) -- Waiting for Godot (1953)
3. Harold Pinter (b. 1930) -- The Caretaker (1960) and Homecoming (1965)
4. J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) -- The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955)
2. The Frankfurt School
1. Theodore Adorno (1903-1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
1. Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)
2. Indictment of the "culture industry" for depoliticizing the masses
3. Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
1. Nazism and Stalinism should be understood as a form of totalitarianism
2. The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
1. Totalitarianism worked by mobilizing mass support
2. Used terror to crush resistance
3. The "atomization" of the public
4. Made collective resistance impossible
3. Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)
1. Refused to demonize Nazism
2. Genocide as simply one more Nazi policy
4. Reaching a larger audience
1. Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird (1965)
2. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (1951)
3. Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959)
4. The Diary of Anne Frank (1947)
5. Repressing the past
1. War crimes and trials
2. Few executions led to cynicism
3. Mythologizing the resistance movement
6. The Cold War and the burying and distortion of memory
6. Conclusion
1. Fidel Castro
2. The Bay of Pigs (1961)
3. The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
1. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
4. Eisenhower and the "military-industrial complex"

 

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