To Hell and Back, I wrote in the Preface, was the hardest book I had ever attempted. That was until this book. This second volume on the history of Europe from 1914 to our own times posed still greater problems in both interpretation and composition. This is in no small measure because Europe’s history between 1950 and the present day has no single overriding theme comparable to the obvious centrality of world war which dominates the predecessor volume that covers the period 1914 to 1949. To Hell and Back followed a linear progression in and out of war, then again, in and out of war. No straightforward linear development adequately describes the complexity of European history since 1950. This is rather a story of twists and turns, of ups and downs, of volatile shifts, of a great and accelerating speed of transformation. Europe since 1950 has been a roller-coaster ride, complete with thrills and scares. This book aims to show how and why it lurched during those decades from one era of great insecurity to another.
The metaphor of the roller-coaster is not perfect. After all, a roller-coaster, for all its thrills and excitement, runs along fixed lines in a circuit and ends at a known point. Perhaps, too, its fairground imagery sounds too trivial and light-hearted for the seriousness, weightiness and, indeed, often tragedy of Europe’s history since the war. But it does capture the unevenness, the breathtaking moments, and the experience of being swept along by uncontrollable forces that affected – though in different ways – practically all Europeans during these decades.
The complexity of Europe’s history in this era poses significant problems for the ‘architecture’ of the book. These are compounded by the division of Europe for over forty years by the Iron Curtain. Other than as an idea of shared cultural identity (though one fragmented through religious, national, ethnic and class differences), Europe in these decades did not exist. Its two halves – western and eastern Europe – were themselves purely political constructs. The internal development of each half of the continent over that period is so different that it is impossible to integrate them in any coherent fashion until the fall of communism between 1989 and 1991. Although Eastern and Western Europe also thereafter remain profoundly different, the impact of rapidly accelerating globalization – a key theme of the volume – then makes it feasible to deal with them together, rather than separately.
The nature of such a wide-ranging work means, as in To Hell and Back, that I had to rely heavily upon the research and writing of others – even more so, in fact, since I have never undertaken specialized research on any aspect of this period. Having lived through it is no substitute. Someone suggested to me as I was starting the writing that this book should be easy, since the period coincided with much of my lifetime. But living through history produces memories that can be distorting or inaccurate, as well as possibly helpful. In a tiny number of places I have added a personal recollection in a footnote. But I have kept them out of the text. Personal anecdote and historical evaluation are in my view best kept apart. Leaving aside the frailties of memory, most of what passes by on a daily basis has only ephemeral resonance. Assessment of the significance of major occurrences nearly always requires not just detailed knowledge but the passage of time in which to digest it.
So the scholarly work of others is indispensable. Many works are specialist monographs or essays in learned journals. I mentioned in the Preface to To Hell and Back a number of excellent general histories of Europe in the twentieth century, to which I could now add Konrad Jarausch’s Out of Ashes. Specifically on the second half of the twentieth century the most compelling general study has been Tony Judt’s Postwar. Timothy Garton Ash’s books, brilliantly combining high-quality journalism and contemporary historical insight, have proved invaluable, especially on Central Europe. And a number of books by German historians – Heinrich August Winkler, Andreas Wirsching, Harmut Kaelble, Andreas Rödder and Philipp Ther – have helped me greatly. They are listed, along with other works that I have found particularly useful, in the select bibliography. They are only the tip of a very large iceberg. As in the predecessor volume, and in accordance with the format of the Penguin History of Europe series, there are no endnote references. As before, I have marked with an asterisk works in the bibliography from which I have drawn direct quotations.
My approach follows that of To Hell and Back. As in that volume, I have been anxious to portray the drama, often the uncertainty, of the unfolding of history, occasionally by blending in contemporary views of events. So I have organized the book chronologically, in chapters covering relatively brief periods, with thematic subdivisions. The short Foreword outlines the nature of the interpretation. The first three chapters begin with Europe’s first post-war era of insecurity, moving from the tensions of the Cold War to the building of the two opposed blocs of Western and Eastern Europe down to the mid-1960s. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the astonishing and long-lasting post-war economic boom and its social implications, then with the bifurcation of culture – the doleful legacy of the recent past on the one hand, and conscious invocation of a new, modern and exciting atmosphere on the other. How this burst into youthful protest in the late 1960s, and the changing social and cultural values that were left from the period of student revolt, is explored in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 focuses upon a key decade: the fundamental change that occurred during the 1970s and early 1980s. Although the problems east of the Iron Curtain were by the 1980s mounting alarmingly for the leaders of communist states, Chapter 8 emphasizes the personal part played by Mikhail Gorbachev in unintentionally but fatally undermining Soviet rule, while Chapter 9 turns the spotlight on the part played in Europe’s ‘velvet revolution’ of 1989–91 by pressure for change from below. How difficult and often disillusioning the transition to pluralist democracies and capitalist economies was for the countries of Eastern Europe, and the disastrous collapse into ethnic war in Yugoslavia, form the main topics of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 examines the changes within Europe in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, in Chapter 12, I explore the concatenation of crises that have afflicted Europe since 2008 and cumulatively amount to a serious general crisis for the European continent. The Afterword turns from the past to Europe’s future, both the short-term prospects and the longer-term problems that will face the continent in a new era of insecurity.
To Hell and Back ended on a positive note. As Europe emerged between 1945 and 1949 from the double catastrophe of two world wars, the signposts to a brighter future were plainly visible – if under the cloud of the atomic bomb in possession of both superpowers. This book’s finale is more ambivalent – certainly as regards the longer-term future of Europe.
Things can change rapidly. So can historiography. Eric Hobsbawm, writing in the early 1990s, looked gloomily at the long-term crises likely to beset Europe and emphasized the destructive force of capitalism in his pessimistic conclusion. Most analysts, though, were far more positive about Europe’s recent history. A number of prominent studies of Europe’s twentieth century, written just before or after the millennium, struck a distinctly upbeat tone. Mark Mazower thought the ‘international outlook’ appeared ‘more peaceful than at any time previously’. Richard Vinen spoke of an ‘era of sound money’. Harold James wrote of the ‘almost complete ascendance of democracy and capitalism’ (though he did qualify this by pointing to increased disenchantment with that ascendancy) and saw globalization in almost entirely positive terms as the ‘recreation of an international society, culture and economy’. Developments in the still young twenty-first century might call such positive verdicts into question.
Tony Judt’s magisterial work, completed five years after the millennium, also ended on a broadly optimistic note. ‘Nationalism had come and gone’ in Europe, he adjudged. ‘The twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe’ were his concluding words. In the light of Europe’s disarray since 2008, the rise of nationalist and xenophobic parties in many countries, the long-term challenges that the continent faces, and the apparently irresistible rise of China’s position of world power and influence, these look like highly dubious presumptions.
Of course, short-term change is largely unpredictable. Europe’s future – still riding the roller-coaster – can climb up and swoop down in quick succession. At present (autumn 2017) the auguries are better from what they had been only a few months ago, though the crystal ball remains clouded. Long-term change is another matter. And here, the problems facing Europe (and the rest of the world) are daunting. Climate change, demography, provision of energy, mass migration, tensions of multiculturalism, automation, the widening income gap, international security and dangers of global conflict: all pose major challenges for the decades ahead. Just how well equipped Europe is to deal with these problems is hard to say. How to meet the challenges, to shape the future of the continent, lies not solely, but nevertheless in good measure, in the hands of Europeans themselves. In dangerous waters the convoy is best staying close together, not drifting apart. That means building upon and strengthening the levels of unity, cooperation and consensus, imperfect as they are, that have been gradually constructed since the war. With good navigation, everyone may traverse the perilous straits ahead to reach safer shores.
Writing the history of my own time has been enormously challenging. But I found it a rewarding task. I have learnt immeasurably more than I knew before about the events and changes that have shaped my life. At the end, I have a better sense than I did earlier about how my own continent has arrived at the present. For me, that in itself makes the enterprise worthwhile. As for the future: on that a historian’s predictions are no better than anyone else’s.
Ian Kershaw, Manchester, November 2017