How did Europe change between the end of World War II and the early 21st century?
The division and reunification of Europe, the Cold War in Europe, European integration, and the collapse of communism after 1989
A focused answer to the WACE Modern History Unit 4 elective on the changing European world since 1945, covering the division of Europe, the Cold War, European integration, the fall of communism in 1989, and the new European order.
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What this dot point is asking
SCSA wants you to explain how Europe was transformed from the devastated, divided continent of 1945 into the integrated, post-Cold War Europe of the early 21st century. You need to handle the division of Europe by the Cold War, the contrasting development of Western and Eastern Europe, the project of European integration, the collapse of communism in 1989, and the new European order that followed. The elective is examined through source analysis and essays in the external paper.
Europe in 1945 was shattered: cities destroyed, economies ruined, millions dead or displaced. It quickly became the central arena of the Cold War. As described in the Cold War elective, the wartime alliance broke down, the Iron Curtain divided the continent, and Europe split into two blocs, the Western democracies aligned with the United States and the Eastern states under Soviet control. Germany itself was divided, and the Berlin Wall, built in 1961, became the physical symbol of a divided Europe.
The two halves of Europe developed very differently. Western Europe recovered with remarkable speed, aided by the Marshall Plan and by the post-war economic boom. Democratic governments and welfare states were rebuilt, and Western Europe enjoyed rising prosperity. Eastern Europe, by contrast, was reshaped on the Soviet model: one-party rule, planned economies and subordination to Moscow. Attempts to break free, the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968, were crushed by Soviet force, confirming the limits of Eastern European autonomy.
European integration was driven by the determination never to repeat the catastrophe of two world wars, and by the economic logic of a common market. Beginning with six nations, the community widened and deepened across the decades. Integration bound former enemies, especially France and West Germany, into cooperation, and created a distinctive model of pooled sovereignty that transformed the politics of Western Europe.
The decisive turning point was 1989. Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and his refusal to use force to prop up Eastern European regimes removed the threat that had held the Soviet bloc together. In 1989 communist governments across Eastern Europe collapsed in a wave of largely peaceful revolutions, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. Germany was reunified in 1990, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and the Cold War division of Europe ended.
The new European order brought both opportunity and instability. Formerly communist states moved towards democracy and the market and sought to join NATO and the European Union, which expanded eastward. But the collapse of communism also unleashed conflict, most tragically in the violent break-up of Yugoslavia through the 1990s. By 2001 Europe was being remade as an enlarging, integrating community, though questions about its borders, identity and unity remained open.
Historiographically, debate surrounds the causes of the 1989 revolutions, balancing Gorbachev's choices, the structural failure of the communist economies, and the agency of Eastern European dissidents and movements such as Poland's Solidarity. There is also debate over European integration: whether it is best understood as driven by idealistic peace-building, by economic self-interest, or by the strategic context of the Cold War.