Attempts to Build Postwar Europe from Below in Stuttgart: Failure or Forerunner?

On May 2, 1964, a so-called Emigrationsparlament held its constituent meeting in the house of the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (dgb) in Stuttgart. The meeting was opened by a speech of the parliament’s president, Antonio Maspoli, in which he outlined the aims of the new institution and coined the phrase ‘The emigrant is a worker from and for Europe and Europe is his country’. In the months following the Emigrationsparlament gathered several times and Maspoli—a Swiss national known for his engagement in the trade unions in Switzerland—pleaded for the establishment of a ‘sort of a European parliament of the foreign worker’ in Stuttgart. Maspoli’s repeated claims initiated debates within the municipal government about the stimulation of self-help among foreigners and their growing involvement in issues concerning them. Furthermore, Maspoli obtained premises for the establishment of an international meeting point called ‘Europa-Club’. However, his wish of setting up a European parliament in Stuttgart remained unfulfilled. While the local government eventually established a council, the desired parliament of foreign workers did not come into existence. Hence, Stuttgart missed the opportunity to become the site of an elected European parliament and the activities of the ueg fell into oblivion.

Cities, Migration and the Historiography of Post-war Europe

The role of municipalities in migrant integration in post-war European history has largely slipped below the radar in previous migration research. Our special issue presents case studies on how Bristol, Dortmund, Malmö, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Utrecht managed migrant influxes from the mid-1940s to 1960s. Following interdisciplinary advances in local migration studies, our urban histories take a diversity of approaches, present diverse temporalities, and uncover municipal responses that range from generosity to indifference and to outright hostility. In all six cities, despite such diversity in local attitudes and municipal policies, municipal authorities had significant impacts on migrants’ lives. The introductory article explores how our urban perspectives contribute to scholarship on reconstruction and the post-war boom; welfare; democracy and citizenship; and European integration. Using local migration as a lens into postwar European history, we argue, provides important new insights for the historiography of postwar Europe.

Regime and Sociology: A Comparative History of Sociology in Postwar Europe with Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, this article presents a systematic comparison of differences in the institutional success of sociology in 25 European countries during the academic expansion from 1945 until the late 1960s. Combining context-sensitive national histories of sociology, concept formation, and formal analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions, the article searches for historical explanations for both successful and inhibited processes of the institutionalization of sociology. Concretely, it assesses the interplay of political regime types, the continuous presence of sociological prewar traditions, political Catholicism, and the effects of sociological communities in neighboring countries and how their various combinations are related to more or less well-established sociologies. The results can help explain adversary effects under democratic conditions as well as supportive factors under nondemocratic conditions.

Introduction

The introduction contextualizes the time, place, and setting in which the study takes place. Pilgrimage in Norway is resurging in a nation shaken by a right-wing terror attack and thus renegotiating ideas of nation, community, citizenship, and political theology. It contextualizes the pilgrimage in postwar Europe and the redevelopment of cultural heritage within the context of the European Union and projects of nation-building. The chapter further introduces the methodological concerns informing the study, and main themes to be taken up. The chapter concludes with an overview over the chapters.

Czechoslovakia and Soviet Foreign Policy

Although not addressed in his study of Soviet foreign policy in postwar Europe, Norman Naimark believes the Czechoslovak coup of February 1948 would make an ideal subject for a future monograph.

Marshal

This chapter recounts how the Comintern had been pushed into the background after moving first to Kuybyshev and then to Ufa, and finally away from the Moscow vortex. It tells of the eventual expiration of the Comintern in the summer of 1943, during which Fascist Italy also collapsed between July and September. It also refers to Vladimir Nazor, a well-known poet who joined the Partisans despite his advanced age, who wrote a few poems that were set to music by composer Oskar Danon in the glory of the newly minted Marshal Tito. The chapter discusses the arrival of the US delegation in Tehran for the Allied conference codenamed “Eureka” in November 1943 with a bundle of raw estimates and worst-case scenarios. It mentions Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's special advisor, who anticipated Soviet domination in postwar Europe.

Battleground Europe

This chapter explores the transformation of postwar Europe into a spiritual battleground between ecumenists and evangelicals, Protestants and Catholics, and American democrats and Soviet communists. As the occupation of Germany matured, both ecumenical and evangelical Protestants sought to win over Germany as a new anti-communist partner in the heart of Europe. They likewise sought to establish their competing spiritual orders across the continent through ecumenical tours of reconciliation and evangelical revivals. The postwar activism of American Protestants extended far beyond just seeking to revive Europe’s soul. Both ecumenical and evangelical Protestants mobilized to create a Protestant bulwark against Soviet communism across the continent, as well as to counteract a postwar resurgence of the Vatican and Roman Catholicism. Under their watch, the struggle for the soul of Europe began.

The human side of austerity: health spending and outcomes during the Greek crisis

The Greek crisis was the deepest in postwar Europe. Public spending on health, that had grown extremely fast in the first decade of the 2000s, was cut by almost 40 percent between 2010 and 2016, also un unparalleled figure in post-war Europe. Although some of the cuts were mitigated by a system of clawback on the private pharmaceutical industry and by increased household out of pocket expenditure, the provision of health services was also greatly impacted by the spread of long term unemployment, which in the employment-based Greek system left possibly millions of idnividuals without access to health services, until universal coverage was effectively restored in 2016. In this paper I aim at establishing the basic facts about the health crisis. Although care must be exercised in not presenting a simplistic, uniformly bleak picture, I show that several indicators point to a substantial deterioration in the health outcomes of the Greek population during the critical years of loss of universal coverage until 2016, in particular for the more vulnerable sectors of the population.

Architect of the European Payments Union

In 1946, Robert Triffin went on to the International Monetary Fund, where he became head of the Exchange Control Division, before moving to Paris to lead the International Monetary Fund’s Representative Office in Europe. Thereafter, he was a special adviser to the (US) Economic Cooperation Administration in Paris. During these years, his focal point of interest was the European Payments Union (EPU). In his analysis of postwar Europe, Triffin emphasized that several structural factors, especially the low level of gold and dollar reserves and weak industrial capacity, impeded the successful operation of market forces. He favored a pragmatic regional approach with the EPU, giving priority to the abolition of bilateral trade and payment restrictions. Triffin played a key role in the EPU negotiations, especially with his proposal for the EPU unit of account.