Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, by historian and Professor of European Studies Tony Judt, is a towering accomplishment of research, synthesis, analysis and writing. No doubt this eloquent and arguably definitive historical text will be on academic curricula for years to come and read and discussed by anyone seriously interested in European history. The book delves deeply into the political, economic, social and cultural shifts and upheavals that defined the second half of the 20th Century in Europe, both Western and Eastern, and in its relation to the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It brilliantly reveals the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growing pains that followed both within Germany and, with the merging of the Eastern and Western Blocs, all of Europe. Finally, it paints a vivid map of the creation and evolution of European identity leading up to and following the Maastricht Treaty.

Postwar leaves few if any stones unturned. It is as comprehensive as one could wish and as meticulous in its details. As Neal Ascherson wrote in the London Review of Books, (Judt’s) “ability to offer batteries of small details and figures is astonishing.” Beginning with postwar reconstruction and the Marshall Plan and ending with the early years of the EU, Judt delineates not only the evolution of the European continent but the ramifications of its SOPEC metamorphosis. Tackling 55 years of European – and, by default – global history would likely have most writers unable to see the forest through the trees, but not so Judt. He masterfully focuses his vast knowledge into a fluid narrative with consistently clear direction. Take, for example, the names of his chapters. “Into the Whirlwind; Lost Illusions; The Spectre of Revolution; The End of the Affair; The Power of the Powerless; The Reckoning” – just to name a few. These titles place us right in the narrative of history, giving the book a novelistic drive. He then expands on this sense of story by pulling in diverse quotations at the start of each chapter. These range from the words of statesmen giving formal speeches to thinkers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, writing in 1945: “In the space of five years we have acquired a formidable inferiority complex” (Judt, 100). Or, with American frankness, James Baker in 1991: “We’ve got no dog in this fight” (665). Within the chapters themselves, Judt’s writing is confident and conclusive, and his structure is masterful. Postwar is, to a large extent, organized chronologically, however, when it is insightful to juxtapose two simultaneous narratives, Judt deviates from his linearity without losing clarity or purpose. An example of this is his treatment of the 1968 May Events in Paris and the simultaneous protests in Czechoslovakia. By examining both in their own individual capacity, Judt is able to thoroughly dissect the SOPEC consequences of each, while still tying them together as two movements representing the shared desire for freedom and reform that was so pervasive among the youth of both countries. 

Of course, history is less organized than any book can make it, and it’s unlikely that anyone has ever really felt personally located in political or economic history. For this reason, and clearly out of personal curiosity, Judt frequently dives into cultural and intellectual movements and evolving philosophical-political thinking. In one of my favorite chapters, The Power of the Powerless, he discusses how dissidents, writers and scholars looked at Communism in the 1970s and 1980s. Judt is an admirer of Václav Havel, the first, and almost reluctant, president of Czechoslovakia – a man who would have preferred staying in the theater and writing plays had his country not needed him – quoting his Presidential Address in 1990, “People, your government has returned to you” (585). With Havel, who started as one “of a tiny network of courageous individuals” (569), Judt sees a man who successfully turned intellectual conviction into political leadership. Judt finds another hero in Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he notes that German novelist Christa Wolf’s writing was fueled by her opposition to Communism. At the end of the chapter, he laments that writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his own Nobel acceptance speech, misjudged the capacity of the public exposure of Soviet violence to change the course of Soviet history.

Not surprisingly, Judt’s chapters on the 1960s and 1970s most vividly express the connections between personal philosophy and political change, exploring how a movement can be cultural at its heart (even if it professed to being political) and yet captivate a nation, create political chaos and shut down its universities. On the other hand, despite having been 24 years old in 1968, Judt seems disconnected with the energy and idealism of that seminal year and, I believe, underestimates its lasting cultural impact. He writes, “The solipsistic conceit of the age – that the young would change the world ‘by doing their own thing, ‘letting it all hang out’ and ‘making love, not war’ – was always an illusion, and it has not worn well” (398). Granted Judt is writing this 35 years later, but it is one of the few places in the book where he seems not to have caught the true spirit of the moment.

On the opposite spectrum of the kaleidoscopic color of ‘68 is the far less colorful fascist architecture of the Eastern Bloc. This, Judt notes, had an effect on the psyche of its inhabitants. He writes about films and television, noting that at the approach of the millennium, subjects became more nationalistic and more backward-focused, particularly in the UK. In fact, throughout the book, Judt keeps his reader aware of the ebbs and flows of people’s spirits both at a national level and, at times, even a family one, particularly when discussing radical changes between generations in a family or the economic hardships they endure. Judt is quick to observe that people – let’s say in their 30s and above - are reluctant to change, if change has not served them well in the past. Case in point: the older generation in Russia that felt that communism was at least a reality they knew – the lesser, then, of two evils – and how such personal responses had, when in large numbers, significant global ramifications. In discussing Gorbachev, Judt emphasizes the discrepancy between the worldwide fame and support Gorbachev received for his ideas and ideals, which he phrased almost as much culturally and philosophically as politically, and then his ultimate failure to inspire his own people as he inspired those abroad.

With a book this stunningly well-researched, it’s easy to forget that there’s an opinionated author behind it. Just when you start to see Judt reveal himself, he delivers another string of straight facts and details that suggest he is just reporting, a neutral journalist, if such a thing is possible. But what he is doing is not reporting, it is writing history, and history is narrative, and narrative is directed. Judt, as I mentioned, is nothing if not directed. His overarching point of view is pro-Europe. (Who would take on such a topic otherwise, you might ask?) There’s no question that Judt is on the side of European Union and the coming together of nations to secure postwar political, financial and social peace. Besides lauding the Marshall plan and NATO – hard to imagine anyone doing otherwise – Judt doesn’t think the U.S. “has a serviceable model to propose for universal emulation” (800). After Churchill, Judt also seems not to think the UK does either. He quotes Dean Acheson in his poignantly titled chapter, Lost Illusions: “Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role” (278). Judt tragically died in 2010 at 62, six years before Brexit was voted in by the British, but his discussion of the UK’s decision to keep the Pound rather than adopt the Euro suggests he felt the country was on the wrong track and not seeing the great European potential.

Ascherson humorously but accurately noted that “Judt has written, in great detail and at great length, the biography of a middle-aged continent trying, after a disgraceful past, to settle down and go straight.” And so it does. It’s in the last section of the book that Judt’s optimism makes an unapologetic appearance. Taking a step back for a moment and looking at the book as a fictional story, it seems that union is the redemption Judt seeks for his subject. It doesn’t begin to excuse the horrors of the war, but it does suggest that the postwar amnesia, that he and many felt was necessary, eventually led to something good and maybe enduring. Judt’s last lines usher in a new era that is no longer postwar but instead the birth of a European future: “In spite of the horrors of their recent past – and in large measure because of them – it was Europeans – who were now uniquely placed to offer the world some modest advice on how to avoid repeating their own mistakes. Few would have predicted it sixty years before, but the twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe” (800).