How and why did European nations redefine their empires in the 1950s and 1960s? Essay

How and why did European nations redefine their empires in the 1950s and 1960s?

Book Reference: Levack, B. P., Muir, E., & Veldman, M. (2011). The West: Encounters & transformations (Vol. 2: Since 1550) (3rd ed). New York, NY: Longman.

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HY 1020, Western Civilization II 1
UNIT VI STUDY GUIDE
World War II & Redefining the West after World War II
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
1. Identify the expectations concerning war in the 1920s and 1930s.
2. Describe how European hopes and fears led to armed conflict in both Europe and Asia.
3. Explain how Nazi Germany conquered the continent of Europe by 1941.
4. Discuss why the Allies won in 1945.
5. Explain how and why the war against the Jews took place and what its consequences were.
6. Discuss what total war meant on the home front.
7. Explain why and how the world moved from World War II to the Cold War.
8. Discuss the impact of decolonization and the Cold War on the global balance of power.
9. Identify the patterns that characterized the history of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after the death of Stalin.
10. Describe the patterns that characterized the history of Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.
Unit Lesson
Twenty years after the end of World War I, Europe and the world were again engulfed in total war. The immediate cause was Hitler’s desire for a German empire in Eastern Europe, but there were other, longer-term factors that explain the origins of the war.
The origins of the Second World War are tied to the settlements of the first. The treaties signed after 1918 created a fragile peace for three reasons. First, redrawing the map of central and Eastern Europe did not fulfill the nationalist ambitions of all groups. Second, the League of Nations was too weak to be the basis of a new international order. Third, the peace settlements created new resentments among both the winners and the losers.
The Great Depression increased international instability as the various countries used tariff barriers to protect their economies, and some political leaders saw territorial expansion as a solution to their economic problems. In the face of the democracies’ passivity, Hitler made his first moves, withdrawing Germany from the League of Nations in 1933 and openly violating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1935 by rearming Germany. In 1936, Hitler signed an alliance with Italy, creating the Rome-Berlin Axis. Hitler again violated the Treaty of Versailles in 1936 by sending troops into the Rhineland and again in 1938 by annexing Austria to Germany, in a move called the Anschluss. In neither case did France or Britain act against Germany.
Early German military successes were the result of a new technology of modern offensive warfare that utilized a mobile, mechanized offensive force. Hitler’s plan for a German empire–the Third Reich–in Europe centered on the conquest of the
Reading Assignment
Chapter 27:
World War II, pp. 858-861, 864, 866, 869-870, 872, 875-885
Chapter 28:
Redefining the West after World War II, pp. 891-897, 900-910, 912-915
Supplemental Reading
See information below.
Key Terms
1. Appeasement
2. Berlin Wall
3. Blitzkrieg
4. Bretton Woods Agreement
5. Brinksmanship
6. Cold War
7. Containment
8. Decolonization
9. European Economic Community
10. Final Solution
11. German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
12. Holocaust
13. Iron Curtain
14. Lend-Lease Act
15. Marshall Plan
16. Munich Agreement
17. NATO
18. New Left
19. Nuremberg trials
20. Potsdam Conference
21. Rome-Berlin Axis
HY 1020, Western Civilization II 2
Soviet Union. Japanese expansionism brought the United States into the war, providing a crucial advantage in industrial production for the Allies. By the start of 1943, the Allies were on the road to a victory that came primarily from American and Soviet industrial supremacy and the Allies’ superior military strategy. The war ended with Europe facing an uncertain future in a radically changed world. It also deepened the commitment of the West to democracy; although, the war had not been simply a conflict between democracy and Nazism. The Soviet Union was victorious in Eastern Europe, and that set the stage for the Cold War that would soon emerge. Moreover, World War II called into question the West’s assumptions of superiority based on advances in technology and science, as those advances had unleashed both the horrors of the Holocaust and the atom bomb.
As the era of the European empires came to an end in the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence over the newly independent states, and, so, Cold War concerns became entangled with nationalist independence struggles. The European nations hoped to use their empires to enhance their power in the new international order, and they regarded their empires as economically crucial in the hard times that followed World War II. However, that war had strengthened the nationalist independence movements in the colonies. Decolonization was often entangled with the Cold War, which only became hot in developing countries where superpower rivalries intersected with nationalist conflicts.
Cold War concerns helped shape postwar society in Western Europe. Europe’s economies further integrated, and political centrism became the chief characteristic of political life. More importantly, material prosperity returned to Western Europe. Economic prosperity brought the import of non-European goods and pulled immigrants and women into the workforce. Affluence permitted more young people to pursue higher education as well. One of the most important cultural trends of postwar Europe was the increasing influence of the United States on European culture. The United States dominated scientific research and popular culture. Unprecedented prosperity allowed higher education systems to expand, and by the later 1960s, university campuses were becoming the center of powerful political protests and demonstrations. Much of this discontent focused on the ideas of the New Left, which declared that ordinary people possessed little power and warned that expanding state and corporate power threatened the individuality and independence of the ordinary citizen. Student protestors, who were influenced by New Left thinkers, demanded the right of ordinary people to participate in the structures that determined their lives. The Cold War was an ideological encounter. The Soviet Union’s claims to being democratic, and communist reformers’ hopes of social justice and political equality might develop, were crushed along with the Prague Spring. Meanwhile, democracy took firm root in Western Europe, but the idea that Europe was truly democratic was challenged by the protests of the late 1960s.
Supplemental Reading
Supplemental Readings are provided in the below links:
 Timeline of the Soviet Union (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1112551.stm
 Khrushchev biography (PBS) http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/bios/all_bio_nikita_khrushchev.htm
 Wilson Center Digital Archive http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collections
22. Structuralism
23. The Resistance
24. Third Reich
25. Third World
26. Truman Doctrine
27. Vichy regime
28. Warsaw Pact