The Legacy of World War Two: Decline, Rise and Recovery
By William R Keylor
World War Two convulsed the world. In its aftermath Britain's international status was reduced,
two superpowers glowered at each other in a Cold War standoff, and Europe set its sights on
union. How did it all happen?
Three trends
The convergence of Anglo-American and Soviet military forces in the centre of defeated
Germany in the spring of 1945 terminated the European phase of World War Two - the most
lethal and destructive war in the history of mankind. Amid the euphoria of the Grand Alliance’s
victory over Nazism, three trends emerged that would radically transform Europe’s position in
the world in subsequent years.
'Everything seemed to point to the relative decline of Europe as a force in the world...'
The first of these trends was the beginning of the de facto partition of the continent into two
antagonistic political, socio-economic, and military blocs, each tied to the power that had
liberated it from German occupation. The second was the beginning of the decline of the
overseas colonial empires of the major European powers, notably those of Great Britain and
France.
These two developments - the bifurcation of Europe into Communist and non-Communist
halves, and the growing agitation for independence by the subject peoples of the colonial world transpired amid a severe economic crisis that engulfed continental Europe and the British Isles in
the early postwar years. Everything seemed to point to the relative decline of Europe as a force in
the world, as the United States and the Soviet Union assumed the status of the world’s sole
superpowers in a new bipolar international order.
The third trend was not nearly as visible as the first two at the end of the war. But it would
gradually emerge as a potential antidote to the disease that had afflicted what one observer,
applying to postwar Europe a popular reference to the decaying Ottoman Empire before the
Great War, called 'the sick man of the world'. This was the movement launched by a small but
energetic band of visionaries in favour of the economic and political unity of Europe.
The 'iron curtain'
Soviet troops during the Moscow May Day parade, 1951 © The European statesman who
developed the earliest and most acute appreciation of the significance of most of the postwar
developments described above was Winston Churchill. The two most influential public speeches
of his postwar career, delivered in the year 1946, addressed the topic of Europe’s present plight
and offered a prescription for how to recover from it. His famous speech at Westminster College
in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March unveiled the memorable metaphor of an 'iron curtain' separating the free peoples of western Europe from the oppressed peoples of Moscow’s satellites
to the east.
'Several US senators found the belligerent tone of his remarks toward Moscow "shocking".'
The heated rhetoric of Britain’s wartime leader denouncing the Soviet Union’s stranglehold over
the countries of eastern Europe is well known, and needs no elaboration. Suffice it to say that
Churchill’s harsh words for the Soviet Union were not greeted with universal enthusiasm in the
west. Several US senators found the belligerent tone of his remarks toward Moscow 'shocking'.
This negative reaction at the time reflected the fact that many Americans still believed that it
would be possible to work with their wartime Russian allies in securing the peace. The growing
disenchantment with Moscow that was brewing within the Truman administration was expressed
confidentially in top secret telegrams and memoranda, and would not reach the public until a
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year later, with the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine and the unveiling of the policy of
containing Soviet expansion.
So the out-of-power British leader’s candid appraisal of the deteriorating relationship between
the west and the Soviet Union, expressed a reality that no American or British government
official was yet prepared to acknowledge in public.
'Special relationship'
Politicians of six European countries sign the Treaty of Rome, 25 March 1957, establishing
European Common Market © A second important theme embedded in Churchill’s address at
Fulton - in addition to the one symbolised by the term 'iron curtain' - was foreshadowed by a
playful remark in President Harry Truman’s effusive introduction of his renowned guest: 'He’s a
great Englishman. But he’s half American.'
After expressing his misgivings about Moscow’s aggressive behaviour in eastern Europe,
Churchill proposed a remedy for the deteriorating international situation. He warned that:
'Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be
gained … without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking
peoples.'
He proceeded to contribute another memorable phrase to the lexicon of international relations one that promptly took its place alongside 'iron curtain' - calling for 'a special relationship
between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States'. An intimate partnership
between those two powers, ' … with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on the sea, all
over the globe, and in science and in industry, and in moral force,' he asserted, would provide
free peoples everywhere with 'an overwhelming assurance of security'.
United States of Europe
The second important address delivered by Churchill in 1946 is one that is well known to
scholars and Brussels bureaucrats but largely unknown to the general public. This was his call
for a 'United States of Europe' at the University of Zurich on 20 September.
The eminent statesman who had begun his career at the turn of the 20th century, when Europe
was at the height of its military power and imperial glory, bemoaned the tragedy of 'this noble
continent' in the grim postwar period and proposed a bold scheme for rescuing it from its present
predicament. He declared:
'If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance … there would be
no limit to the happiness, the prosperity, and the glory which its 300,000,000 or
400,000,000 people would enjoy.'
(Note the designation of the hundred million citizens of eastern Europe as possible future
beneficiaries of the European project.)
Churchill then proposed a mechanism for achieving this ambitious goal which, he warned his
listeners, would astonish them.
'The first step in the recreation of the European family must be a partnership between
France and Germany … There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great
France and a spiritually great Germany.'
Churchill's vision
Churchill was extraordinarily perceptive in spotting the impending division of Europe into two
hostile blocs, and exceedingly perspicacious in foreseeing the eventual unification of much of the
non-Communist half of the continent under Franco-German leadership. But the blind spot caused
by his nostalgic affection for Britain’s imperial past prevented him from recognising that the era
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when the Union Jack fluttered above the land inhabited by a quarter of the world’s people was
coming to an end.
'... governments in London continued to cling to the Churchillian vision of Britain ... '
He made it plain in his Zurich speech that his own country would heartily cheer from the
sidelines if the nations of continental Europe adopted and implemented his proposal for
European unity, but would not itself be part of that bold and noble undertaking. Great Britain and
its Commonwealth, in close alliance with the United States, he declared, '… must be the friends
and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live'. But his countrymen would
keep their distance from their continental cousins, and continue to accord priority to their global
responsibilities and their privileged link to America.
In the early 1950s France rose to Churchill’s challenge and launched, in partnership with its
ancient antagonist across the Rhine, the first concrete project for European economic integration
- in the form of the European Coal and Steel Community. The pooling of the metallurgical
production of the six member states set in motion a chain of events that eventually resulted in the
25-member European Union of today.
As the campaign for European economic integration gathered steam during the 1950s,
governments in London continued to cling to the Churchillian vision of Britain as a sympathetic
supporter but not a contributing member of the European movement. And they persisted in
pursuing the status of a global power with a special link to the English-speaking superpower
across the Atlantic.
Unforeseen events
Then, two of the three assumptions that underlay Churchill’s vision for the future - that Britain
would be able to cling to its imperial role, and that it would be able to remain aloof from the
movement of continental economic cooperation - were overtaken by events. The man who had
defiantly declared in 1942 that he 'had not become the King's first minister in order to liquidate
the British Empire' was mercifully spared that embarrassment by his electoral defeat in 1945.
'... Charles de Gaulle had positioned his large frame at the European community's door, blocking
British entry ... '
The liquidation of the empire began while he sat on the opposition bench in the early postwar
years, and was completed toward the end of his life, during the administration of his fellow Tory
Harold Macmillan. The same Macmillan, recognising that Britain had missed the European bus
in the 1950s as it began to record impressive economic achievements, would belatedly attempt to
board it in the following decade.
But by that time the French President Charles de Gaulle had positioned his large frame at the
European community's door, blocking British entry in 1963 and again in 1967. His reason for
doing so was precisely the Churchillian admonition that had earlier kept Britain from
participating in the European movement - the island nation’s insistence on continuing to play a
global role in world affairs, in privileged partnership with the United States.
Britain subsequently joined Europe - figuratively with admission to the European Economic
Community in 1973, and literally with the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994. But the
question of which was more important, its trans-Atlantic 'special relationship' or its transChannel connections, remained an open question for the rest of the 20th century and has
continued to be so right up to the present day.
Find out more
Books
A Political History of Anglo-American Relations since 1945 by CJ Bartlett (Longman, 1992)
Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires by Muriel E Chamberlain (Oxford University
Press, 1999)
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Churchill’s Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940-1957 by John
Charmley (Harcourt, 1995)
The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War by Fraser J Harbut
(Oxford University Press, 1988)
The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts edited by Jussi Hanhimaki and
Arne Westad (Oxford University Press, 2004)
The Twentieth-Century World: An International History by William R Keylor(4th edition,
Oxford University Press, 2001, 5th edition forthcoming in December 2005)
A World of Nations: The International Order Since 1945 by William R Keylor (Oxford
University Press, 2003)
Decolonization since 1945: The Collapse of European Overseas Empires by John Springhall
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2001)
The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration since 1945 by Derek WUrwin
(Longman, 1994)
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