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hmmm..any suggestions as to the most influential act or event in the European postwar environment??? I'd think it would be the partioning of 'Europe' to 'East' and 'West'.
The creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (The Netherlands, Belgium, Lexembourg, France, Federal Republic (West ) Germany and Italyin the 1950s which evolved into the European Economic Community (EEC), and later the European Union (EU) with a common currency the Euro and pan European law and regulations.
And now I understand that film about postwar Europe very well. The 'Third Man' tells it all. And that was highlighting the crime, the degradation people went through, the amorality that existed after the War. Tough times for sure.
The Third Man is great. Excellent film.
Other good ones (for postwar Germany) is 'The Marriage of Maria Braun" by Fassbinder (somewhat allegorical)....and Germany Zero Hour, by an Italian director (but set more the immediate aftermath of the war).
The impact of the war was still being felt in the 1960s in Germany, the tail end of that. The "wiederaufbau" was almost complete, but people were still doubled up in apartments (Germany had to absord a big DP population from the east, so housing shortages there were pretty extreme).
The physical environment of urban Germany...particularly in the city centers... in that era was pretty new, since so much was replacement construction for the things destoryed during the air raids. Plus a lot of new housing outside of town.
Interesting era. I remember that era as I spent a summer in Germany as a kid ..staytin w. my grandparents...in the early 1960s.
Central planning and socialistic policies introduced by the postwar Labour Government which the Tories did not reverse.
Rather than ideology, I'd think that a bigger factor was that Britain was just really broke after the war, exhausted financially, period. There were still plenty of material shortages long after the shooting started - rationing of certain foodstuffs, materials, was still in effect for several years after 1945.
Great Britain, in order to pay back its war debt, geared its economy to export - such as automobiles, selling a lot to the USA, likely at the expense of providing consumer goods to locals. I'd think any government would have to be pragmatic for those reasons, Tory or Labour.
Rather than ideology, I'd think that a bigger factor was that Britain was just really broke after the war, exhausted financially, period. There were still plenty of material shortages long after the shooting started - rationing of certain foodstuffs, materials, was still in effect for several years after 1945.
Great Britain, in order to pay back its war debt, geared its economy to export - such as automobiles, selling a lot to the USA, likely at the expense of providing consumer goods to locals. I'd think any government would have to be pragmatic for those reasons, Tory or Labour.
You still have the Tories. What happened to the Whigs? I get a feeling from Winston Churchill's book that they kept splitting apart, never stable as one party.
I would argue that Europe didn't return to "normal" until the end of the Cold War. How don't know how you could have normalcy while half of Europe was under the thumb of the Soviet Union. It forgets the fist Czech uprising in 1953, followed by Hungry in 1956, the rise of Solidarity in Poland and finally fall of the Berlin Wall. Sixty years of two alliances bristling with arms with fingers on nuclear triggers... but then again considering Europe's history, maybe that was the norm.
You still have the Tories. What happened to the Whigs? I get a feeling from Winston Churchill's book that they kept splitting apart, never stable as one party.
The Whigs became the Liberal Party. The current Liberal Democrats are the successors of the Whig Party.
Thanks. Forgive me going just slightly off-topic and yet not. I had a surprise while cleaning house this morning.
I just found among my LPs: Edward R Morrow, "I Can Hear It Now". 1933-1945. A chronicle of the war and the years of crisis, told in the authentic sounds and voices of the men who made this history. It begins in 1933 with the first inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, embraces an epochal war, and concludes with the surrender of Japan and the commencement of a bewildering new period, the Atomic Age. It's full of things we heard on radio first. Memories.
Pays to clean house? <G>
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