Europe Since 1945: Cold War, Decolonization, Integration

This is Unit Eighteen of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the end of the Cold War, the postwar culture, four procedures, and Europe's second half-century on one line. Part one ended with the boom over and the argument reduced to how much to deregulate. This part is how the division ended and what the culture did meanwhile, and it pays off the unit's governing idea: Europe lost the world and found itself. Gorbachev ended the Cold War by letting go, and the Wall came down in eighty-nine without a shot. The culture ran the other way, from existentialism's freedom to postmodernism's suspicion, through sixty-eight's streets to a second wave of feminism that won in law what the first had won at the ballot. Then the methods: the Cold War on one line as drawn, tested and frozen; the Berlin map, which is the exam's calibration case; decolonization sorted by whether settlers lived there; and half a century of acronyms in order. By the end you will be able to describe the Cold War's end. To describe the culture. To sequence the Cold War and read the map. To sequence decolonization and integration. And to state the capstone.

Two entries on the Cold War ending: Gorbachev's openness and restructuring with Solidarity in Poland, then the Wall, reunification, the Union dissolved, and what followed in Russia and Yugoslavia as dated events.

Chernobyl reported; criticism exploded.

WC2 1725 Gorbachev, Glasnost, Perestroika, Solidarity

Brezhnev died in nineteen eighty-two. Gorbachev, from eighty-five, faced no growth and an unaffordable arms race against Reagan's buildup. Glasnost let Chernobyl be reported in eighty-six; perestroika allowed limited markets. Criticism exploded. In Poland Solidarity, Wałęsa's shipyard union of eighty, ten million strong with the Pope's backing, forced round-table talks in eighty-nine. Solidarity and John Paul the Second are witness-built.

Let go, and it fell without a shot.

WC2 1726 1989 to 1991: The Wall Falls, Germany Reunites, the USSR Ends; Russia's 1990s and the Yugoslav Wars

Gorbachev let the satellites go; the Wall fell in November nineteen eighty-nine and Germany reunited in October ninety. In August ninety-one a hardliners' coup failed, and in December the Union dissolved. Russia's shock therapy cut output forty percent; Yugoslavia broke into war from ninety-one. Fukuyama's end of history of ninety-two is the anchor's foil. Witness-named; Russia after the nineties is not characterized.

Five entries on the culture: condemned to be free, the grand narratives rejected and soup cans in the gallery, the Sorbonne occupied, Beauvoir's Other, and the second wave with the pill.

Condemned to be free.

WC2 1727 Existentialism: Condemned to Be Free, Bad Faith, Authenticity

Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus held that life has no inherent meaning: we are condemned to be free. Bad faith pretends a higher power dictates our choices; authenticity owns them. Its heyday ran from nineteen forty-five to about sixty, in Left Bank cafés, pessimism amid prosperity, before turning to Marxism and the third world. Anchor-only; Beauvoir is read later in this lecture.

Meanings built to serve power.

WC2 1728 Postmodernism and Pop Art: Foucault, Derrida, Warhol

Postmodernism rejected the grand narratives: meanings are built to serve power, the civilizing mission beside plunder the anchor's example. Foucault read insanity, crime and sexuality as inventions that justify surveillance; Barthes and Derrida emptied authorial intent, texts as word games. Warhol's soup cans of nineteen sixty-two, the anchor's sixty-eight corrected, put advertising in the gallery. Anchor-only.

The Sorbonne occupied, France paralyzed, then ebbing.

WC2 1729 The Youth Movement, the New Left, and May 1968

The boomers reached universities in unprecedented numbers and split into counterculture and protest, Vietnam the rallying point. The New Left rejected both Soviet and capitalist injustice and preached liberation. In May nineteen sixty-eight Paris students occupied the Sorbonne, a general strike paralyzed France, and by late June it ebbed. Universities and sexual rules loosened. Anchor-only; no witness treats sixty-eight.

He is the Subject; she is the Other.

WC2 1730 Beauvoir's Second Sex, and What Postwar Women Faced

Beauvoir's The Second Sex of nineteen forty-nine said woman is defined with reference to man: he is the Subject, he is the Absolute; she is the Other, quoted within one sentence from the archive. Postwar women had the vote and little else: dismissal for pregnancy, unequal pay, no marital rape, violence tolerated, American white women at sixty percent of men's pay.

Law, culture, and the pill.

WC2 1731 Second-Wave Feminism: Law, Culture, and the Pill

From the mid-sixties the second wave rose out of a counterculture whose men were as sexist as their fathers, the anchor says; Women's Lib, and Beauvoir joined the French movement. Its goals were anti-discrimination law and cultural equality. The pill was approved in nineteen sixty; contraception and abortion were legal by the late seventies. Abortion's continuing contest is noted, not argued.

Four procedures: the Cold War on one line as drawn, tested and frozen; the Berlin map that the exam uses to calibrate; decolonization sorted by settlers; and integration's acronyms in order.

Drawn by forty-nine; tested; frozen after sixty-two.

WC2 1732 Sequencing the Cold War, 1946 to 1968

Twenty-two years and the order tells the story. Forty-six: the iron curtain named. Forty-seven: the Truman Doctrine. Forty-eight: the Marshall Plan, the Berlin blockade from June. Forty-nine: the blockade lifted in May, NATO in April, two Germanies, the Soviet bomb in August. Fifty: Korea in June. Fifty-three: Stalin dies, Korea's cease-fire. Fifty-five: the Warsaw Pact. Fifty-six: the secret speech, Suez, Hungary. Fifty-seven: Sputnik. Fifty-nine: Castro. Sixty-one: the Bay of Pigs in April, the Wall in August. Sixty-two: the missile crisis in October. Sixty-four: Khrushchev out, Tonkin. Sixty-eight: the Prague Spring crushed in August. The pattern: the lines were drawn by forty-nine, tested at Berlin, Hungary and Cuba, and frozen after sixty-two into a rivalry fought by proxy and in space. Name the year for each before checking. Dates on the witness where the anchor lacks them; the blockade's are corrected.

An island in the Soviet zone.

WC2 1733 Reading the Berlin Map

The map shows one city cut into four, three western flags and one Soviet, and the exam asks what it depicts. The answer is Berlin during the Cold War, and each wrong answer fails on one feature. Not the Second World War: no one occupied Berlin in sectors until it fell in May forty-five. Not nineteen eighteen: no foreign army entered Berlin at all. Not the Iron Curtain: that is a line across a continent, not a division inside a city, and the city sits a hundred miles east of it. Not reunification: nineteen ninety ended the sectors. What the four sectors mean: Germany's occupation zones repeated in miniature in its capital, so that West Berlin was a western island inside the Soviet zone, which is why Stalin could blockade it in forty-eight and why the East had to wall it in sixty-one. A map with the Wall drawn is sixty-one to eighty-nine; a map with an airlift corridor is forty-eight to forty-nine. Practice by dating three Berlin maps from what they show. The calibration drill; the sectors are on both witnesses.

Settlers meant war; no settlers meant negotiation.

WC2 1734 Sequencing Decolonization, 1947 to 1963

Sixteen years emptied the empires, and the order sorts by method. Forty-seven: India and Pakistan by negotiation and partition. Forty-eight: Israel by UN vote and war; apartheid formalized. Forty-nine: Indonesia recognized. Fifty-two: the Mau Mau rise; Nasser's coup. Fifty-three: the Iran coup. Fifty-four: Dien Bien Phu; the FLN rises. Fifty-five: Bandung. Fifty-six: Suez. Fifty-seven: Ghana by negotiation. Fifty-eight: de Gaulle. Sixty: the Congo; Nigeria; sixteen African states. Sixty-one: South Africa a republic. Sixty-two: Algeria. Sixty-three: Kenya. The pattern: Asia first, Africa a decade later; the negotiated exits, India and Ghana, came where no settlers lived, and the wars, Indochina, Kenya and Algeria, came where they did. Sort each case as negotiated, insurgent or partitioned. The anchor's Algeria and apartheid dates are corrected; the settler rule is the course's ordering of the anchor's cases.

Coal and steel, a market, a union, a currency.

WC2 1735 Sequencing Integration, 1951 to 2002

Half a century of pooling, and the exam wants the order of the acronyms. Fifty: the Schuman Declaration. Fifty-one: the ECSC, six members, coal and steel. Fifty-seven: the Treaty of Rome, the EEC, the Common Market. Sixty-seven: the institutions merged into the European Community. Seventy-three: Britain, Ireland and Denmark join. Eighty-one and eighty-six: Greece, then Spain and Portugal. Ninety-three: Maastricht in force, the European Union and the single market. Ninety-five: fifteen members. Ninety-nine: the euro as accounting money. Two thousand two: euro cash. Two thousand four: ten eastern members. Twenty sixteen: the Brexit vote. The pattern: economic pooling first, on the theory that markets would make war impossible; political union only after forty years; money last; and every step opposed by referendum somewhere. Name what each treaty added. Britain's and the eastern states' entry dates are the standard record; the rest on the witness.

One capstone entry: from ruins to union, the anchor's line that Europe lost the world and found itself, and the four threads the course's capstone gathers.

Lost the world; found a union; kept asking why.

WC2 1736 From Ruins to Union: Europe's Second Half-Century

The exam's last band runs from nineteen forty-five to the present, and the anchor's line through it is that Europe lost the world and found itself. In forty-five two outside powers held the continent, and their rivalry, named at Fulton and organized by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, cut it in two along a curtain, with Berlin's four sectors the picture of the cut. The West rebuilt on a compromise, social democracy and a welfare state that the right accepted and the left stopped trying to overthrow, and thirty glorious years followed. The East stagnated under a system whose failure the anchor leaves to three theories. The empires went in sixteen years, negotiated where no settlers lived and fought for where they did, and Suez in fifty-six showed that the old powers could act only by America's leave. What Europe built instead began with coal and steel in fifty-one and became a union in ninety-three and a currency in two thousand two. The Cold War it did not end; Gorbachev ended it, by letting go, and the Wall came down in eighty-nine without a shot in Berlin. The culture ran the other way, from existentialism's freedom to postmodernism's suspicion, through sixty-eight's streets to a second wave of feminism that won in law what the first had won at the ballot. The threads the capstone gathers: the state that promised order, the nation that promised belonging, the market that promised peace, and the individual who kept asking what any of them was for. Convention three holds throughout. Unit nineteen opens the capstone.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe Gorbachev's openness and Solidarity's ten million, the Wall falling, the Union dissolved, and Russia's nineties and Yugoslavia as dated events. You can describe condemned to be free, meanings built to serve power, the Sorbonne occupied, the Subject and the Other, and a second wave of law, culture and the pill. You can sequence the Cold War as drawn, tested and frozen, and read the Berlin map as four sectors making an island in the Soviet zone. You can sequence decolonization by settlers and integration by acronyms. And you can state the capstone: Europe lost the world and found a union, while the culture kept asking why, which is this unit's one idea. Unit nineteen opens the course's capstone.