The postwar period is no longer current affairs but is becoming the recent past. As such, it is increasingly attracting the attentions of historians. Whilst the Cold War has long been a mainstay of political science and contemporary history, recent research approaches postwar Europe in many different ways, all of which are represented in this volume. As well as diplomatic, political, institutional, economic, and social history, this book contains articles that approach the past through the lenses of gender, espionage, art and architecture, technology, agriculture, heritage, post colonialism, memory, and generational change, and shows how the history of postwar Europe can be enriched by looking to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy. It covers all of Europe, with a notable focus on Eastern Europe. Including subjects as diverse as the meaning of ‘Europe’ and European identity, southern Europe after dictatorship, the cultural meanings of the bomb, the 1968 student uprisings, immigration, Americanisation, welfare, leisure, decolonisation, the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, and coming to terms with the Nazi past, the thirty-five essays in this book present a coverage of postwar European history that offers far more than the standard Cold War framework.
Introduction: Burdens and Beginnings: Rebuilding East and West Germany after Nazism