Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (13 page)

The word ‘unity’ was one of the watchwords of the era – so much so that Charles de Gaulle even made it the title of his most important volume of war memoirs. It was an ideal to which everyone aspired, and which the war had made possible. Across western Europe, partisan groups of vastly different political persuasions had put aside their differences to form ‘national resistance councils’. By 1945 almost every nation in Europe had formed a ‘government of national unity’ in which all the political parties cooperated. At the end of the war, inspired by the spirit of unity between the Allies, fifty nations came together to draft the charter for a brand-new international institution: the United Nations.

For many ordinary people, the cooperation between different nationalities, and amongst people of differing classes and political persuasions, was one of the most inspiring things about the war. ‘Despite all the horrors,’ wrote Theodora FitzGibbon in her memoirs, the war ‘was not entirely destructive, for it produced a marked change in the attitude of British people to one another. Experiencing common danger made for a friendliness, almost a love, amongst total strangers’, regardless of the traditional barriers of class or sex.
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For Richard Mayne, a British soldier who had served with Belgians and Norwegians, and shared military hospitals with Frenchmen, Russians and Poles, the war had been ‘Une éducation européenne’. Afterwards he would become a European statesman, a colleague of Jean Monnet and Walter Hallstein, and one of the most enthusiastic champions of European union. As he would remember in later years,

Not all Europe’s ‘great expectations’ were to be fulfilled. But one underlay all the others: the sense of solidarity that so many had glimpsed during the war. Acknowledged or not, it informed most of men’s efforts to build a better world, a better Europe, and a better society – more equal, less rigid, less hierarchical, and freed from the artificial barriers that World War 11 had swept aside.
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Unfortunately, as history has shown, this expectation of universal solidarity was short lived. The Cold War would create a chasm between the eastern and western halves of Europe that would not be bridged for more than forty years. In Yugoslavia and other parts of Europe the rhetoric of ‘brotherhood and unity’ bore very little semblance to reality, and peace between competing groups was more often coerced than voluntary. Every instance of ‘friendship between strangers’ would be matched by one of hatred or revenge.

And yet, even in the bleakest periods of the postwar years, a core of those wartime ideals was always kept alive. They would eventually form the basis for a formal partnership between the European nations that is still expanding to this day.
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A Brave New World

It is important to remember that the hardship and the destruction of the war years did not affect everyone equally. Indeed, some people found themselves better off after the war than they ever could have imagined before it. The war changed the entire social structure in many regions, leaving the way open for new hierarchies and new centres of power to establish themselves.

The biggest winners in this postwar free-for-all were undoubtedly the various Communist parties of Europe, whose membership across the continent increased exponentially. For this reason, many on the left learned to think of the war as a blessing, despite all the destruction it wrought. ‘Even for the postwar generation in Yugoslavia,’ writes Slavenka Drakuli
, a journalist from Zagreb, ‘the war was not a futile and senseless blood-letting, but on the contrary, a heroic and meaningful experience that was worth more than its one million victims.’
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The revolutionary consequences of the war were felt not only in those countries that would end up under Communist rule, but also in the west. One of the first countries to experience a taste of the changes to come was Britain, during the very earliest stages of the war. The rationing system that was set up in Britain at the outbreak of hostilities was as revolutionary as anything the Communists could have dreamed up. Almost every basic item of food was rationed, as were other essentials such as clothing and household goods. Nobody was entitled to more food if they were richer, or of a higher social standing than their neighbours – the only people entitled to better rations were those in the armed forces, or those in occupations that required heavy physical labour. In other words, food was allocated on the basis of need rather than social or economic privilege. As a consequence the general health of the population actually
improved
during the war: by the late 1940s, infant mortality rates in Britain were in steady decline, and deaths from a variety of diseases had also dropped substantially since the prewar years. From the standpoint of public health, the war had made Britain a much fairer society.
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There were other changes in Britain during the war that had a similar effect, such as the introduction of conscription to people of all classes, and both sexes. ‘Social and sexual distinctions were swept away,’ wrote Theodora FitzGibbon, ‘and when a dramatic change such as that takes place, it never goes back in quite the same way.’
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The American war reporter Edward R. Murrow, who also witnessed the social changes brought about in Britain, put it more strongly: ‘[T]his war has no relation with the last one, so far as symbols and civilians are concerned. You must understand that a world is dying, that old values, the old prejudices, and the old bases of power and prestige are going.’
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On the continent similar changes occurred during the war, but in a rather different way. Here, because of both greater shortages and the more exploitative way that the Nazis and their allies ruled Europe, the rationing system did not work. Instead the people relied much more heavily on the black market – which meant city dwellers made regular trips to the countryside to barter their belongings for food. The war years saw a vast redistribution of wealth away from urban areas and into the countryside, thus reversing the trend of centuries. In Italy, for example, middle-class city dwellers were abandoned by their servants who preferred to return to their home villages where food was more plentiful. Peasants and shopkeepers, as one signora in northern Italy complained, were ‘today’s rich people’.
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In Czechoslovakia, the changes to some rural communities were dramatic. ‘The farmhouse would be twice its prewar size,’ wrote Heda Kovaly, a political prisoner who returned to Czechoslovakia after the war. ‘A refrigerator would be standing in the kitchen, a washing machine in the hall. There would be Oriental carpets on the floor and original paintings on the walls.’ Even the Czech farmers themselves were happy to acknowledge these changes: ‘No sense denying it – we did very well during the war.’
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For those who had been unable to take advantage of the social changes thrust upon them by the war, the liberation provided other opportunities. In Hungary, where 40 per cent of the peasants were either landless or virtually so, the arrival of the Red Army opened the way for some much-needed land reform. According to the Hungarian political theorist István Bibo, 1945 was indeed a liberation of sorts, despite all the violence and unpleasantness, because it sounded the death knell for the antiquated feudal system: ‘[F]or the first time since 1514 the rigid social system started to move, and move in the direction of greater freedom. ’
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Likewise, the liberation provided opportunities for workers in the industrial areas of Europe, such as France and northern Italy. Since all the major captains of industry and finance had been compromised by their collaboration with the wartime governments, the workers had a perfect excuse to take control of their workplaces in a way that would have been impossible before the war.

Sometimes there were darker reasons for the social changes caused by the war. In eastern Europe especially, the old prewar elites had been swept away as first the Nazis and later the Soviets deliberately decapitated the societies they overran. The removal of the Jews also paved the way for other groups to rise and take their place, both socially and economically. In Hungary many peasants came into possession of decent clothes and footwear for the first time when the property of expelled Jews was shared out in 1944.
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In Poland, where the Jews had made up a substantial portion of the middle class, a new,
Polish
middle class rose to take their place.
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Regardless of how such changes came about, there were many who thought them long overdue. Whether you were an English liberal reformer, a French factory worker or a Hungarian peasant, it was difficult not to come to the conclusion that there had been some very positive aspects to the war and its aftermath. Perhaps not for all, but certainly for some.

The postwar period saw an explosion of political activity and idealism at every level of society. Many of these hopes and ideas would be short lived, particularly in those areas of Europe that were about to see the establishment of new dictatorships. Many more would become compromised by political haggling, economic hardship or stifling bureaucracy. But the very fact of their blossoming at all, in the wake of the most destructive war the world has ever seen, was no mean thing. Europe was on the brink of an economic and spiritual rebirth that would be hailed by generations to come as a ‘miracle’.

If people at the time did not experience the approach of this ‘miracle’ quite as we imagine them to have done today, there was at least a universal sense of relief. It was enough to know that most of the continent’s oppressive dictatorships were no more, that the bombs had stopped falling, that the war was at long last over.

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Landscape of Chaos

In recent years there has been a tendency by some Western historians and politicians to look back at the aftermath of the Second World War through rose-tinted spectacles. Frustrated with the progress of rebuilding and reconciliation in the wake of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at the beginning of the twenty-first century, they pointed to the success of similar projects in Europe in the 1940s. The Marshall Plan in particular was singled out as the template for postwar economic reconstruction.

Such politicians would have done well to remember that the process of rebuilding did not begin straight away in Europe – the Marshall Plan was not even thought of until 1947 – and the entire continent remained economically, politically and morally unstable far beyond the end of the decade. As in Iraq and Afghanistan more recently, the United Nations recognized the need for local leaders to take command of their own institutions. But it took time for such leaders to emerge. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the only people who had the moral authority to take charge were those with proven records of resistance. But people who are skilled in the arts of guerrilla warfare, sabotage and violence, and who have become used to conducting all their business in strict secrecy, are not necessarily those best suited to running democratic governments.

For a long while, therefore, the only authorities capable of keeping control were the Allies themselves. Only Allied officials were universally recognized as untainted by association with the Nazis. Only the Allied armies had the strength or the credibility to impose some form of law and order. And only the presence of the Allies could provide the stability that was the prerequisite for any return to democracy. Despite the fact that they soon appeared to be outstaying their welcome, there was really no alternative to the maintenance of a huge Allied presence across the continent.

Unfortunately the Allies were completely unprepared to deal with the complicated and widespread challenges that faced them in the immediate aftermath of the war. Their soldiers and administrators were outnumbered by millions upon millions of displaced persons, whom they were required to feed, clothe, house and somehow repatriate. They were expected to distribute food and medicine for tens of millions of indigenous civilians, many of whom had been left homeless, starving and traumatized by the conflict. They had to create and promote civil administrations, in many cases from scratch, in a way that took account of the sensitivities of a population whose language and customs most Allied soldiers did not understand. They were obliged to act as a police force in a continent that had descended into chaos and lawlessness, and where weapons of all kinds were freely available. And, somehow, they were supposed to motivate a demoralized people into clearing away the rubble and rebuilding their shattered lives.